The Economist - 19 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: 76

Winning the war on cancer

• Progress against cancer has been slow, steady—and remarkable. Long may that continue: leader, page 7.
• How the advances against a killer are mounting up: briefing, page 13.

Al and the death of the web

• In the age of artificial intelligence, the internet needs a new business model: leader, page 8.
• The tragedy of the digital commons, page 50.

The geopolitics-defying economy

• The world economy’s superpower is resilience. However, bit by bit, it is being chipped away: leader, page 9.
• How the economy has evaded each and every crisis, page 57.

KGB v CIA

• Three new books look at the blind spots of the cold war’s greatest rivals, page 67.

The rise and rise of women’s sport

• Female athletes have advanced in leaps and bounds. Now to branch out, page 47.

The world this week Politics

• Donald Trump announced a deal that will enable NATO countries to buy American Patriot air-defence systems, missiles and ammunition, and send them to Ukraine. The president outlined the plan during a visit to the White House by Mark Rutte, NATO’s secretary-general, who said eight countries were already signed up and would ship the weapons quickly. It was unclear how strong the commitments were, given the constraints on government budgets in NATO.
• As Ukraine rises in Mr Trump’s estimation, so Russia falls. After expressing his frustration with Vladimir Putin, Mr Trump signalled that he would impose 100% tariffs on countries that buy Russian goods if a peace deal isn’t reached within 50 days. Many Ukrainians shrugged. They’ve been promised support before that has never materialised.
• The UN’s human-rights mission in Ukraine reported that 232 civilians had been killed and 1,343 injured in June, the highest number for any month since the war started in February 2022. Russia launched ten times more missile and drone attacks against Ukraine than in June 2024, it said. July has “brought no respite”.
• François Bayrou, the French prime minister, outlined a spending freeze, cuts to some benefits and a vaguely defined “solidarity contribution” from the “most affluent” to help get the budget deficit under control. He also wants to scrap two public holidays—Easter Monday and Victory in Europe day—to boost growth. France is “addicted to public spending”, said Mr Bayrou, comparing the situation to that faced by Greece in 2008.
• Israel carried out waves of air strikes on government forces in Syria and hit the defence ministry in the capital, Damascus, as it promised to protect the Druze people in the south of the country, where dozens of people have been killed amid fighting with government troops. Binyamin Netanyahu, the Israeli prime minister, spoke of a “deep brotherly alliance” with the Druze.
• Mr Trump met Qatar’s prime minister, Sheikh Mohammed bin Abdulrahman al-Thani, to discuss the progress of talks on an American-backed proposal for a ceasefire between Israel and Hamas in Gaza. Qatar is hosting the talks. In Gaza 20 people were killed in a crush at an aid hub run by the Gaza Humanitarian Foundation. The GHF, backed by the American and Israeli governments, blamed agitators from Hamas for instigating the incident, and said the militants’ claims that tear-gas and shots were fired were “blatantly false”.
• Eight Palestinians, six of them children, were killed in an Israeli missile strike as they collected water. The Israel Defence Forces said it was aiming at nearby militants, but its missile had malfunctioned. It is investigating and “regrets any harm” to civilians.

Pick a Democrat...

• Andrew Cuomo announced that he would run as an independent in New York’s mayoral election. Mr Cuomo, a favourite of establishment Democrats, lost his party’s primary to Zohran Mamdani, a democratic socialist, who is now the official Democratic candidate. Mr Cuomo says he will pull out before November if polls show him splitting the opposition vote to Mr Mamdani. Eric Adams, the current Democratic mayor, is also running as an independent.
• America’s Supreme Court once again sided with Donald Trump, and decided that he could proceed to fire about half the workforce at the Education Department, in effect gutting its capacity to operate. The court has also cleared the way for lay-offs at other federal departments, including at the State Department, where staff working on refugee policy were abruptly terminated.
• The Trump administration launched an investigation into Brazil’s supposedly “unfair” trading practices. Brazil does not have a trade surplus with America, but Mr Trump has nonetheless threatened 50% tariffs on all its exports, starting on August 1st. He is incensed that Brazilian courts are prosecuting Jair Bolsonaro, a populist former president, for allegedly trying to mount a coup More than 3,000 people have been killed in Haiti since January 1st, according to the UN’s human-rights office, as the gangs that in effect rule the country increase their attacks outside Port-au-Prince, the capital. The expansion of territory controlled by the gangs poses a threat to the wider Caribbean region from increased trafficking in arms and people, the report said.
• In Argentina a row erupted between the president, Javier Milei, and his vice-president, Victoria Villarruel, over pension reform. Mr Milei has said he will veto a recent bill from Congress that increases pensions and disability benefits. But he directed his ire at Ms Villarruel, who, as president of the Senate, allowed the legislation to proceed. After Mr Milei shared social-media posts describing her as “stupid” and a “traitor”, Ms Villarruel told her boss to “grow up”.
• The US Justice Department charged a former Costa Rican minister for security with trafficking cocaine. Celso Gamboa Sanchez is in custody in Costa Rica awaiting extradition. He was also a judge.
• Another big diplomatic row loomed between China and Taiwan, after it was confirmed that the Taiwanese president, Lai Ching-te, is to visit Paraguay in August, and will almost certainly have to travel through an airport in the United States. Paraguay is one of only a dozen countries to recognise Taiwan formally. China argues that letting Taiwanese politicians change planes in America is somehow a violation of China’s claim to rule Taiwan, a self-governing democratic island.
• Details emerged of one of Britain’s most serious security lapses. The personal details of 19,000 Afghans who had worked with Britain before the Taliban seized power in 2021 were leaked by accident in early 2022. The incident was not discovered until the names started appearing on Facebook in August 2023. As a result thousands of Afghans were secretly brought to live in Britain. The leak and relocation programme came to light only after a judge lifted a two-year gagging order on the media.

Royal performance

• King Charles invited Donald Trump to Britain for his second state visit. He is the only American president to be officially invited twice for a state visit; his first was hosted by Queen Elizabeth II in 2019. Mr Trump and his wife, Melania, will stay at Windsor Castle for three days in September. Perhaps by design, MPs won’t be in session, so he will not be able to address Parliament. He wasn’t allowed to do so in 2019 either.

The world this week Business

• The European Union said that it would be virtually impossible for its current volume of trade with America to continue if Donald Trump carried out his threat to impose tariffs of 30% on EU goods on August 1st. The EU is considering tit-for-tat duties on American products, such as aircraft, bourbon and cars. The president also announced that he would impose a 30% tariff on Mexican imports. A duty of 17% was immediately levied on Mexican tomatoes, to protect American farmers. Around 70% of the tomatoes sold in America come from its southern neighbour.
• Although Mr Trump’s promised trade deals have been few and far between he did strike one with Indonesia this week, which lowers its reciprocal tariff rate from 32% to 19%.
• America’s revenue from customs duties hit a new monthly high of $27bn in June, bringing the total over the second quarter to a record $64bn. The extra revenue helped the government register a surprise budget surplus in the month. Meanwhile, Chinese exports picked up again in June after America and China agreed to lower tariffs. China’s exports to America grew by 32.4% compared with May. The port of Los Angeles, the main hub for Chinese exports to the us, had its busiest-ever June. Exporters are rushing to beat a new tariff deadline in August.
• Boosted by the rush to ship goods abroad, China’s GDP was 5.2% bigger in the second quarter compared with the same three months last year, a slightly better growth rate than economists had expected. The figure masks a sluggish domestic economy.
• Nvidia announced that it would resume sales of its H20 artificial-intelligence chips to China, after receiving assurances from the Trump administration that licences would be granted. Jensen Huang, the company’s chief executive, had lobbied hard to urge Mr Trump to lift restrictions on selling the chips. Nvidia’s share price jumped, as did that of Advanced Micro Devices, which can resume shipments of its MI308 chips to China.

What do I do to please you?

• Not all the stars of the Al boom are shining. ASML, the dominant supplier of high-end lithography machines in chipmaking, saw its stock slide when it forecast lower sales this quarter and possibly no growth next year. It blamed increasing “macroeconomic and geopolitical” uncertainty. Still, ASML’s revenue rose by 23% in the second quarter, year on year.
• The annual rate of consumerprice inflation in America rose in June, to 2.7%. Core inflation, which excludes energy and food prices, crept up to 2.9%. It was unclear how much of the rise in prices was due to tariffs. The price of clothing was up but car prices fell. Fuel and food prices drove an unexpected rise in Britain’s inflation rate, to 3.6%, an 18-month high.
• Alimentation Couche-Tard, the Canadian owner of the Circle K chain, dropped its $46bn bid for Seven & i Holdings, the Japanese operator of 7-Eleven convenience stores. It blamed Seven & i’s board for a “campaign of obfuscation” over the deal. It would have been the biggest foreign takeover of a Japanese company.
• WPP, the world’s largest advertising company, appointed Cindy Rose as its new chief executive. Ms Rose is currently an executive at Microsoft. She joins WPP as investors fret that it is too big to adapt to the challenges from Al and digital platforms, which are disrupting the industry, wpp recently issued a profit warning, causing its share price to plunge.
• Britain launched a new £650m ($870m) electric-vehicle scheme to encourage the transition away from petrol cars. A grant of up to £3,750 will be made available for eligible new EVs priced under £37,000. There have been several such schemes to encourage motorists to buy green. Fleet sales have accounted for the bulk of Britain’s new EV registrations in recent years.
• America’s big banks reported solid earnings for the second quarter, helped by strong revenues from trading in equities amid the market volatility over tariffs. Jamie Dimon, the chief executive of JPMorgan Chase, described the American economy as “resilient” and praised “tax reform” and deregulation, a change of tone from his bleak outlook at the end of the first quarter of the year.

The bully pulpit

• Investors were spooked and the dollar fell amid reports that Donald Trump had asked some congressmen if he should fire Jerome Powell as chairman of the Federal Reserve. Earlier the president suggested he could dismiss Mr Powell over a $2.5bn renovation of the central bank’s building. “I didn’t see him as a guy that needed a palace to live in,” said Mr Trump, who has his own monarchical tendencies. King Donald later said it was “highly unlikely” he would sack Mr Powell.

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