The Economist - 23 August 2025

Год выпуска: August 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

All-American silicon

The fantasy of home-grown chipmaking

• The fantasy of all-American chipmaking: leader, page 7.
• Everyone wants the world’s biggest chipmaker to leave Taiwan. But TSMC is a culture, not just a company: briefing, page 13.
• To survive, once-mighty Intel must break itself apart, page 50.
• Japan was a chipmaking powerhouse. Can it be one again? Page 26.

Ukraine: the war for Donald’s ear

• Who will America’s president listen to next? Leader, page 8.
• Vladimir Putin’s wish to destroy Western unity as well as Ukraine is as fierce as ever, page 38.
• Security “guarantees” for Ukraine are plagued by woolly thinking, page 39.

How heatwaves threaten pregnancies

• Hotter days are a risk to pregnant women and their babies. Not enough is known about why: leader, page 9, and analysis, page 47.

Washington, DT

• Donald Trump’s bossing of the capital city is part of a long history—and a national trend: Lexington, page 21.

The end of brainstorming

• Enjoy the peculiar melange of whiteboards and humans while you can: Bartleby, page 54.

The world this week Politics

• Volodymr Zelensky travelled to Washington, DC, to meet Donald Trump for talks on ending the war in Ukraine. Mr Zelensky was backed by seven European leaders including the heads of NATO and the European Commission. The American president proposed a bilateral meeting between Mr Zelenksy and Vladimir Putin, Russia’s president, after which he would join them for three-way talks. Russia has yet to respond to the proposal.
• Mr Trump was equivocal on the nature of any security guarantees that America might offer Ukraine. The Kremlin has said attempts to settle Ukraine’s security guarantees without Russian participation are a “road to nowhere”.
• Spain sent around 2,000 soldiers to battle some of the country’s worst wildfires on record. At least four people were killed as fires ravaged hundreds of thousands of acres of land. The area destroyed by fires is said to be twice the size of London. Pedro Sanchez, Spain’s prime minister, returned early from holiday to deal with the crisis.
• Asylum-seekers will be removed from a hotel in Essex after an English court granted a temporary injunction to stop them being housed there. The decision follows weeks of protests outside the Bell Hotel in Epping after a man staying there was charged with sexual assault. He denies the charges. The ruling is a further blow for the Labour Party and a boon for the populist Reform UK, which supported the protests. Nigel Farage, Reform’s leader, welcomed the ruling and said he hopes it “provides inspiration to others across the country”.
• In the first round of Bolivia’s presidential elections, voters turfed out the ruling socialist party, after nearly 20 years in power. Neither of the frontrunners secured enough votes to win outright. Rodrigo Paz, a centrist senator, and Jorge Quiroga, a right-wing former president, will head to the polls in a run-off on October 19th.
• America is beefing up its military presence in the southern Caribbean, sending air and naval forces and 4,000, marines and sailors. Officials told Reuters the aim is to combat drug threats in the region; in February America designated several gangs as foreign terrorist organisations. The buildup suggests an attempt to rattle Venezuela’s leader.

He’s back

• Canada’s Conservative leader Pierre Poilievre won a parliamentary seat after a by-election victory in rural Alberta. Mr Poilievre secured 80% of the vote in the safe Conservative riding. He had lost his seat in Ottawa, a constituency he had represented for more than 20 years, when the Conservatives suffered a general-election defeat in April of this year.
• Hamas said it had accepted a ceasefire deal under which it would release ten living hostages and the bodies of 18 more in exchange for a 60-day halt in the fighting. Israeli officials say they will accept a deal only if it returns all of the 50 remaining hostages, around half of whom are thought to be alive. Hundreds of thousands of Israelis took to the streets to protest against the government’s decision to continue the war and its failure to secure the release of the hostages. Israel says it has begun the first steps of its planned offensive in Gaza City. The Israel Defence Forces called up 60,000 reservists ahead of the plan, which has been met with widespread international condemnation.
• Bezalel Smotrich, a far-right Israeli minister, said a controversial settlement plan has been approved. The El project would split the occupied West Bank in two and in effect cut it off from East Jerusalem. Mr Smotrich said “the Palestinian state is being erased from the table”.
• A UN commission said it was likely that members of Syria’s interim government forces as well as fighters linked to the former regime had committed war crimes during an outbreak of sectarian violence in March. Around 1,400 people were killed, most of them were civilians, said the report.
• M23, a rebel group backed by Rwanda, killed at least 140 people in eastern Democratic Republic of Congo in July, according to a new report by Human Rights Watch. The report is a reminder that violence in the region continued despite peace agreements brokered by America and Qatar.
• Choguel Kokalla Maiga, the former civilian prime minister of Mali, was charged with embezzling public funds and jailed awaiting trial. Mr Maiga, who was appointed by the military junta following a coup in 2021, was dismissed in November last year.
• In America the Justice Department is expected to begin providing documents to a congressional investigation related to the deceased childmolester Jeffrey Epstein by August 22nd. The scandal will probably continue to cause headaches—many congressmen who returned home during the summer recess have faced questions from constituents, and Democrats plan to force it onto the agenda when they return in September.
• Six Republican governors promised to send National Guardsmen to Washington, DC, to aid President Donald Trump’s crackdown on crime and homelessness. As many as 1,900 troops have been mobilised to patrol the capital, including the 800 guardsmen that America’s president called up on August nth.
• J.D. Vance, America’s vice-president, was heckled by protesters while visiting troops in Washington, DC. The Justice Department is reportedly investigating the city’s official statistics, which suggest that violent crime spiked in 2023, but then fell dramatically.
• Closing arguments began in Hong Kong in the trial of Jimmy Lai, a pro-democracy media tycoon. Mr Lai is accused of colluding with foreign forces and sedition; he denies the charges. The 77-year-old faces life imprisonment if found guilty.
• More than 300 people were killed in floods that swept through north-west Pakistan.

With friends like these

• Wang Yi, China’s foreign minister, met Narendra Modi, India’s prime minister, on a visit to Delhi amid warming relations. Mr Modi hailed “steady progress” and said he “looked forward” to seeing Xi Jinping in China this month.
• Kim Jong Un, North Korea’s dictator, said the country must rapidly boost its nuclear arsenal in the wake of “hostile” joint American-South Korean military drills. Mr Kim called the exercises an “obvious expression of their will to provoke war”, according to state media.

The world this week Business

• Howard Lutnick, America’s commerce secretary, confirmed that the Trump administration was considering taking a io% stake in Intel. Mr Lutnick said the deal would convert the grants allotted to the firm under Joe Biden’s CHIPS Act into equity. Meanwhile SoftBank, a Japanese tech investor, announced it would invest $2bn in Intel. Shares in the floundering American chipmaker, which had risen on early reports of the government’s plan, climbed higher following SoftBank’s announcement.
• Other American tech stocks slid amid worries about high valuations and low returns from artificial intelligence. The NASDAQ, a tech-heavy index, dropped by 2.5% in the week to August 20th. Shares in Nvidia, a maker of Ai chips, fell by 2.8%. Those of Palantir, a software firm, fell by nearly 12%.
• Mr Trump extended his campaign against the Federal Reserve. America’s president called for Lisa Cook, one of the governors on the Fed’s board, to resign after Bill Pulte, the head of the Federal Housing Finance Agency, accused her of falsifying bank documents and property records to obtain a mortgage. Ms Cook said she had “no intention of being bullied to step down”. Mr Trump has urged the Fed to cut interest rates and lambasted its chairman, Jerome Powell.
• The bosses of Rio Tinto and BHP, two mining companies, met Mr Trump to discuss Resolution Copper, a long-delayed project in Arizona. Rio says the mine would provide 25% of America’s copper demand for 40 years. On August 18th, a day before the meeting, an appeals court temporarily blocked its development. Mr Trump slammed the ruling, writing: “our Country, quite simply, needs Copper-AND NOW!”
• A Japanese startup, JPYC, said it had won regulatory approval to issue a stablecoin pegged to the yen this autumn. Like dollar stablecoins, which are usually backed by Treasuries, the tokens will be backed by assets such as Japanese government bonds, jpyc plans to issue tokens worth ¥itrn ($6.8bn) over the next three years.

Wide of the mark

• Target posted a 22% drop in net profit, year on year, in the second quarter. The ailing American retailer said that Michael Fiddelke, a company insider, would take over as its boss next year. That did not reassure investors. The company’s shares fell by nearly 10%.
• Novo Nordisk halved the price of Ozempic, its weight-loss drug, for Americans who cannot obtain it through their health-insurance schemes. The Danish drugmaker reckons 98% of Ozempic’s American
• users get the drug through their insurers. But the firm is under pressure from cheap competitors. Shares in Novo, which have plunged over the past year, rose on the news.
• Annual inflation in Britain rose to 3.8% in July, up from 3.6% in June. That is the highest figure since January 2024. Traders trimmed bets that the Bank of England, which lowered its key interest rate to 4% on August 6th, will cut rates next month.
• Flight attendants ended a three-day strike after union leaders reached a deal with Air Canada, the country’s largest carrier. The action grounded hundreds of flights, affecting around 500,000 travellers. Air Canada will start paying attendants half their hourly rate for boarding passengers, which was previously unpaid.
• BlackRock struck an $nbn deal to lease natural-gas facilities from Saudi Aramco. The American asset manager will lease them back to the state-owned energy giant for 20 years. In recent years Black-Rock has poured cash into infrastructure deals in Saudi Arabia, which is eager to attract foreign capital.
• Indonesia’s central bank lowered its main interest rate from 5.25% to 5%. It attributed the decision to low inflation and the need to boost growth. In the second quarter the economy grew at an annual rate of around 5.1%, the fastest in two years.
• Xiaomi’s revenue rose by 31% year on year in the second quarter. The Chinese tech firm’s earnings from its smartphone business dropped slightly over the same period. Its electric-vehicle unit narrowed its losses to 300m yuan ($42m), down from 500m yuan in the previous quarter. Xiaomi expects its EV business to turn a monthly or quarterly profit by the end of the year.

Grinning from ear to ear

• Sales of Labubu dolls pushed Pop Mart’s net profit up by 400% year on year in the first half of 2025. Collectors outside the Chinese toymaker’s home market have gone crazy for the smiling, elvish trinkets. Some 40% of sales were abroad. The firm, whose shares have risen by nearly 250% since the start of the year, is worth more than three times as much as Mattel and Hasbro, America’s biggest toymakers, combined.

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