The Economist - 12 July 2025

Год выпуска: July 2025

Автор: The Economist Newspaper and The Economist Group

Жанр: Экономика/Политика

Издательство: «The Economist Newspaper Ltd»

Формат: PDF (журнал на английском языке)

Качество: OCR

Количество страниц: 80

Scrap the asylum system and build something better

• The asylum system is not working. Time to build something better: leader, page 9, and briefing, page 16.
• Denmark’s lefties defied the liberal consensus on migration. Has it worked? Charlemagne, page 45.

The race for a $1trn unicorn

• Venture capitalists are vying to build the first $1trn startup. What could go wrong? Page 53.

Hormones and mental health

• If their reputation improved, hormones could help heal the mind, too: leader, page 12, and analysis, page 67.
• New health clinics are serving up injectable testosterone to bros, page 23.

Why Britain is a bargain

• The country is cheap, and should learn to love it: leader, page 10.
• British stocks and bonds look like a bargain, page 46.
• Thank stagnant wages and Brexit, page 47.

What Trump owes William F.

• Buckley The conservative crusader prefigured Donald Trump’s populism: Lexington, page 24.

The world this week Politics

• The search and rescue mission continued in central Texas to find any survivors from flash floods that killed at least 120 people. More than 170 are missing and the death toll is expected to rise as the flood waters recede. At least 35 children were killed, including at a summer camp for girls that was swept away in the deluge. Amid criticisms about local flood defences, the state’s governor, Greg Abbott, said that a special session of the legislature would discuss flood-warning systems and relief for devastated communities, among other things.
• The Supreme Court decided that the Trump administration could proceed with its plan to sack potentially hundreds of thousands of federal workers, overturning a lower court’s suspension of the executive order. The Supreme Court did not say whether the order was legal, however, and it may still be challenged.
• Elon Musk announced the formation of the America Party, which he previously said would primarily challenge Republicans who voted for Donald Trump’s “big, beautiful” tax-cutting, deficit-raising bill. Mr Trump described Mr Musk’s idea as “ridiculous” and said he “had gone off the rails”. Investors in Tesla, Mr Musk’s car company, took fright, sending its share price down.
• Talks continued in Qatar aimed at implementing a ceasefire between Israel and Hamas in Gaza. The negotiations were given a push by Mr Trump, who is pressing Israel to reach a deal. Binyamin Netanyahu, the Israeli prime minister, met Mr Trump at the White House, his third visit since January. In Gaza, dozens of people have been killed in Israeli airstrikes in recent days.
• The Houthi rebels in Yemen, who are backed by Iran, attacked commercial vessels in the Red Sea for the first time since December. Two Greek-owned ships were targeted by drones and missiles. Four crewmen were killed, making it the Houthis’ most lethal attack on shipping to date. One ship was en route to Saudi Arabia, the other to Turkey. Israel responded immediately to the first attack by carrying out air strikes on Yemeni ports.
• At least 31 people were killed in the latest anti-government protests in Kenya, according to the country’s human-rights commission. Demonstrators have been angered by allegations of police brutality. The president, William Ruto, urged police not to use lethal force, and said they should shoot protesters in the leg instead.

Ever-changing moods

• Following a phone call with Volodymyr Zelensky, Donald Trump promised to send more crucial air-defence weapons to Ukraine, a week after the Pentagon said it was suspending shipments because it was running low on stocks. The Ukrainian president seems to have Mr Trump’s backing at the moment; Mr Trump is currently “unhappy” with Vladimir Putin. Soon after the announcement, Russia attacked Ukraine with 728 drones, the biggest attack of the war so far.
• Britain and France agreed for the first time to “co-ordinate” their nuclear deterrents, and vowed a joint response to any “extreme threat” to a European ally. The announcement was made during Emmanuel Macron’s state visit to Britain, the first by a political leader from the EU since Brexit. It was also announced that the Bayeux Tapestry, which illustrates the story of the Norman conquest of England in 1066, will be displayed in England for the first time in 900 years at an exhibition at the British Museum that starts in late 2026.
• In France police raided the headquarters of National Rally, the hard-right party led by Marine Le Pen and the biggest party in the assembly, as part of an investigation into whether it broke campaignfinance laws.
• The lower house of the Dutch parliament passed legislation to deter migrants, such as reducing the period in which someone can temporarily claim asylum in the Netherlands from five years to three and curtailing the right of families to join approved asylum-seekers. The measures have long been promised by Geert Wilders, whose hard-right Party for Freedom has the most seats in the lower house.
• The Red Cross warned that Iran could forcibly deport another lm Afghans back to Afghanistan this year. The UN refugee agency estimates that at least 800,000 Afghans have already been sent back this year, 600,000 of them since Iran launched a crackdown on foreigners in June, which is also when Israel attacked Iran.
• Russia formally recognised the Taliban government in Afghanistan, the first country to do so since the Islamic militants swept back to power in 2021. Women’s rights groups said Russia’s decision gave succour to a government that is rolling back basic freedoms. Meanwhile, the International Criminal Court in The Hague issued arrest warrants for the Taliban’s supreme leader and the chief justice for their persecution of women.
• Protests in Mexico City against an influx of foreigners turned violent. Mexico’s president, Claudia Sheinbaum, condemned the violence and racist slogans, but has pledged that the government will do more to tackle the problems associated with gentrification. The number of foreign residents and tourists has increased since the pandemic. Locals allege that they are being displaced by unaffordable rents.
• Donald Trump said Brazilian goods shipped to the United States would be subject to a tariff of 50%. He made the announcement in a letter to President Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva, in which he said that Jair Bolsonaro, Brazil’s former far-right president, was being treated unfairly. Mr Bolsonaro will soon face trial on charges that he plotted a coup to remain in power after he lost an election in 2022. Mr Trump called the case a “witch hunt”.
• The United States withdrew its top diplomat from Colombia, which initially responded in kind. In June President Gustavo Petro accused Marco Rubio, the US secretary of state, of trying to overthrow him. Mr Petro and his diplomats have since sought to backtrack from that. Tensions are high after it was claimed that Mr Petro’s former foreign minister was trying to push him from power.

Voices in the machine

• America’s State Department has warned its embassies that someone is impersonating Mr Rubio using artificial intelligence. The person has sent Ai-generated messages on Signal to three foreign ministers and two American politicians. Elon Musk wanted to replace half a million government workers with AI when he ran the Department of Government Efficiency (he is not the Al impostor, we think).

The world this week Business

• Donald Trump pushed back a deadline for countries to reach a trade deal with America from July 9th to August 1st, though he maintained his threat to impose stiff tariffs should those talks fail. Japan and South Korea, for example, would face duties of 25%. The EU, which is hoping to strike a preliminary deal, has so far been excluded from the latest broadside. The president is piling the pressure on countries that have not yet reached a deal. Only Britain and Vietnam have agreed to “frameworks” so far. Canada, China and Mexico are being treated separately.
• Mr Trump also announced that he would impose a 50% tariff on copper starting on August 1st in order to encourage domestic production of the metal. The price of copper soared on New York markets, but fell on the London Metal Exchange as traders bet that global demand would drop, leading to a huge 25% premium between New York and London prices.
• Linda Yaccarino announced that she is stepping down as chief executive of X, Elon Musk’s social-media platform. She held the job for two years. No reason was given for her departure. The day before her announcement it emerged that X AI, which technically owns X, has had to remove posts generated by its Grok chatbot that praised Adolf Hitler.
• Australia’s central bank surprised markets by keeping its main interest rate on hold at 3.85%. The Reserve Bank of Australia was widely expected to plump for a cut, given that inflation has moderated, but the bank’s accompanying statement emphasised its concern about uncertainty in the global economy.
• Britain’s public finances are in a precarious position, the Office of Budget Responsibility warned in a report. Underlying public debt as a share of the economy is now at its highest level since the early 1960s, it said, and government efforts to tackle debt have had only limited success; it recently backtracked on welfare reform, for example. With the government’s borrowing costs in bond markets on the rise, the country’s fiscal outlook “remains daunting”.

Winners and losers

• Nvidia hit $4trn in market value, the first company to do so. With demand for its high-end Al chips showing no signs of waning, the company’s share price has risen by 45% since early May. By contrast, Samsung forecast 356% fall in its second-quarter operating profit, year on year. It blamed America’s restrictions on chip sales to China for the drop in profit, though analysts have noted that it is falling behind SK Hynix and Micron in supplying Al chips to the industry, most notably to Nvidia.
• CoreWeave, a provider of Al cloud-computing services, agreed to buy Core Scientific, a rival, for $9bn. Nvidia is a big investor in CoreWeave, which buys its graphics processing units and rents them out to tech firms. CoreWeave also has a relationship with Core Scientific by leasing its data centres to increase Al power. Core-Weave’s IPO in March raised only a fraction of what it had sought, but its share price has since soared by 300%.
• As it contends with disruptions to its supply chain because of tariffs, Apple appointed a new chief operating officer. Sabih Khan takes up the job amid Mr Trump’s threats to impose stiff levies on smartphone makers unless they move production to America. Separately, Apple is reportedly seeking to buy the rights to broadcast Formula One racing events in America after the success of “Fl”. Starring Brad Pitt, the film is Apple’s biggest box-office hit.
• Shein has filed documents to float shares in Hong Kong, according to press reports, in part as a means to press Britain’s financial authority into approving its proposed IPO in London. The London listing of the Chinese e-commerce firm has been held up by scrutiny of its supply chain and related risk to its business from its dealings in Xinjiang, where China has suppressed the Uyghur population.
• Shein’s IPO would be a boost for the London market, where funds raised from share flotations are at a 30-year low. By contrast the number of firms waiting to list in Hong Kong is at an all-time high. Hong Kong raised more money from IPOs in the first half of the year than either the New York Stock Exchange or Nasdaq.

Foot relief

• The American government said passengers at airports would no longer have to remove their shoes as they go through security, ending a two-decade policy that was introduced amid the threat of jihadists concealing bombs in their footwear. Travellers “will be very excited” by not having to expose their feet, said Kristi Noem, the secretary for homeland security. Airport screeners have been told to toe the line on the new policy.

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