The Economist - 30 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: 80

WHAT BRAZIL CAN TEACH AMERICA

The trial of Jair Bolsonaro

• With the trial of the former president, Jair Bolsonaro, Brazil is setting an example to other democracies, including the United States: leader, page 7, and briefing, page 13.
• Ana Lankes uncovers the hidden story of a scheme to take down democracy: 1843, page 49.

The Federal Reverse

• What to make of Donald Trump’s attack on the central bank: leader, page 9, and analysis, page 61.
• Research points to lower long-run interest rates—so long as the Fed is left alone: Free exchange, page 67.

Can China keep innovating?

• Xi Jinping’s industrial policy is attracting fans abroad. But don’t forget the downsides: leader, page 10.
• China has become an innovation powerhouse. Is its model sustainable? Page 55.

After tariffs: India’s next move

• Donald Trump has triggered a trade and defence crisis: how should Narendra Modi respond? Leader, page 8.
• India is rethinking its place in the world, page 25.
• Will the scrap with America accelerate India’s reforms? Page 28.
• Mr Modi’s answer to American tariffs is the Indian consumer: Banyan, page 30.

Office life: feuds, grudges and revenge

• Welcome to the dark side of the workplace: Bartleby, page 59.

The world this week Politics

• At least 20 people, including health workers, were killed in Israeli strikes on a hospital in Gaza. Five of the dead were journalists. Israel said it had targeted a “camera positioned by Hamas” but did not provide evidence of this. An initial inquiry by the Israel Defence Forces found “gaps” that demanded further investigation. Meanwhile, large protests in Israel called for the release of the hostages still held in Gaza and an end to the war.
• The Integrated Food Security Phase Classification, a system backed by NGOs to monitor food crises worldwide, confirmed that parts of the Gaza Strip are now in famine. (Israel denies there is famine in Gaza.) It estimated that more than half a million people are already in phase five, characterised by extreme food deprivation, acute malnutrition and starvation-related deaths. For now the famine is centred in the densely populated area around Gaza city.
• The Democratic Republic of Congo and M23, a militia backed by Rwanda, resumed peace talks in Qatar. The two parties, which are engaged in a long-running conflict in eastern Congo, had previously missed a deadline to reach a deal following a ceasefire agreement in July.

C’est reparti

• The French government is on the brink of collapse, again. François Bayrou, who has been prime minister for less than nine months, called a vote of confidence for September 8th over his deeply unpopular debt-reduction plans. His minority centrist administration is caught between parties on the left and the hard right in the National Assembly. Several have indicated they will not support Mr Bayrou in the vote, which he has described as a choice between “responsibility” or “chaos”.
• Charles Kushner, America’s new ambassador to France, breached diplomatic protocol by accusing Emmanuel Macron of not doing enough to combat antisemitism, telling the French president that his pending recognition of a Palestinian state will “embolden extremists, fuel violence, and endanger Jewish life in France”. That prompted an official rebuke by the French government. Mr Kushner is the father of Jared Kushner, one of Donald Trump’s sons-in-law.
• Steve Witkoff, Mr Trump’s special envoy, prepared for another consultation with Ukrainian officials in New York. Mr Witkoff wants Volodymyr Zelensky to hold a meeting with Vladimir Putin ahead of a potential trilateral summit involving Mr Trump. The American president once again raised the threat of imposing “very serious” sanctions on Russia if it does not agree to a ceasefire. Meanwhile, Ukraine admitted that Russian forces had entered Dnipropetrovsk, an industrial region in eastern Ukraine, but said it had stopped the advance.
• The Danish foreign ministry summoned America’s top diplomat in Copenhagen to explain why Americans with links to the Trump administration were reportedly conducting covert operations in Greenland to drum up support for independence from Denmark. Lars Lokke Rasmussen, the foreign minister, said such clandestine actions would be “unacceptable”.
• A former pupil at a Catholic school in Minneapolis shot dead two children, aged eight and ten, during a mass at the school. The 23-year-old shooter, who had reportedly identified as transgender and was suffering from depression, committed suicide at the scene.

Unlikely enemy of the state

• FBI agents raided the home and office of John Bolton, who was Mr Trump’s national security adviser in his first term. They have since fallen out. The search is reportedly linked to Mr Bolton’s handling of classified information. The raid hasn’t stopped him criticising Mr Trump. He has since described the president’s strategy on Ukraine as “utterly incoherent”.
• Kilmar Abrego Garcia was taken into custody again by America’s immigration authorities. Mr Abrego Garcia hit the headlines in March when he was wrongly deported to El Salvador. He was eventually sent back to the US. The government wants to deport him to Uganda, but a judge has blocked that order until she can hold a hearing.
• At a court in New York, Ismael “El Mayo” Zambada, the founder of the Sinaloa drug gang in Mexico, changed his plea to guilty for a list of crimes including drug-smuggling and money-laundering. He was arrested in Texas last year after being tricked into flying to El Paso. Prosecutors are not seeking the death penalty for Mr Zambada, who is 77.
• At least 34 soldiers were kidnapped by a dissident faction of FARC, a former rebel group, in Colombia. They were snatched during a military operation in an area known for cocaine smuggling. A few days earlier a drone attack on a police helicopter near Medellin killed 13 people and a car bomb in Cali killed another six. President Gustavo Petro blamed the dissidents and drug gangs for the spate of violence.
• China announced that North Korea’s leader, Kim Jong Un, will attend a military parade in Beijing on September 3rd commemorating the 80th anniversary of the end of the war against Japan and the second world war. It will be Mr Kim’s first trip to China since 2019. Over 20 other foreign leaders are expected, including Russia’s Vladimir Putin.
• Australia cut diplomatic ties with Iran after accusing it of being behind attacks on a Jewish restaurant and a synagogue in 2024, describing them as “dangerous acts of aggression” by a foreign power. The government said Iran’s Revolutionary Guards had used “a complex web of proxies to hide its involvement”.
• Ranil Wickremesinghe was granted bail in Sri Lanka following his arrest on charges of misusing public funds while in office. Mr Wickremesinghe has been the country’s prime minister six times and was president for two years from 2022 after Gotabaya Rajapaksa was ousted during widespread unrest. His supporters insist he is innocent.
• South Korea’s new president, Lee Jae-myung, met Donald Trump at the White House, where they discussed a trade deal and the thorny issue of paying for the 28,500 American troops in the country. Mr Trump raised the possibility of America taking ownership of the Korean land that houses American bases. Coinciding with the summit, Korean Air announced a big order for 103 Boeing planes. Mr Lee said the meeting was a success, but that his staff had been worried he might face a “Zelensky moment” in the Oval Office.

The world this week Business

• Donald Trump announced that he would sack Lisa Cook from the Federal Reserve’s board of governors, the first time a president has formally tried to dismiss a sitting governor from the central bank. Mr Trump said he had “cause” amid allegations that Ms Cook had lied on her mortgage applications (no charges have been brought). Ms Cook’s lawyers said she would fight her removal and insisted that the president lacked the authority to fire her. The matter will probably be decided in the Supreme Court; in May it all but confirmed that Fed governors can be removed only for cause.
• Mr Trump’s actions helped push up the yield on American 30-year government bonds briefly, to 4.96%. Meanwhile, the yield on British 30-year gilts rose to 5.64%, nearing a 27-year high, amid concerns about the country’s persistently high inflation. The government is widely expected to announce more tax rises in the coming months to fill a fiscal hole.
• The White House said it had also fired Susan Monarez as head of the Centres for Disease Control after she refused to resign. Ms Monarez had been in the job only since July but clashed with the administration’s scepticism on vaccines. Three other CDC officials reportedly resigned.
• America’s tariff of 50% on Indian goods came into force. Mr Trump doubled the levy because of India’s purchase of Russian oil. America is India’s largest trading partner. Meanwhile, Canada decided to lift the retaliatory tariffs it had imposed on most American products, except for aluminium and steel, as it works to secure a trade agreement. The European Union was also preparing to drop tariffs on all American industrial goods, another of Mr Trump’s key demands.
• In an update to its projections, America’s nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office estimated that increases in tariffs would reduce the government’s primary deficit by $3.3trn over the next decade and cut payments on interest by $700bn, if the higher rates of trade duties persist. The projections do not account for the impact of tariffs on GDP growth, nor do they consider the most recent levies on the EU and India.

State capitalism

• Howard Lutnick, America’s commerce secretary, said that the Trump administration was considering whether to take equity stakes in big American defence companies, such as Lockheed Martin, which he described as “basically an arm” of the government. The news follows confirmation by Intel that the government has taken a roughly 10% stake in the chipmaker, funded by federal grants.
• The future of Orsted, the world’s biggest developer of offshore wind farms, was blown off course after the Trump administration ordered all work to stop on a $4bn project off the coast of Rhode Island that was 80% completed. The order mentioned national-security issues, which Orsted said it would rush to resolve. The Danish company recently warned that “adverse” developments in America were affecting its business.
• Nvidia reported another sturdy set of earnings, with revenues of $46.6bn in the second quarter, up by 56%, year on year. Jensen Huang, the chipmaker’s chief executive, dismissed concerns that Al investments would slow and that its business in China might suffer, as he predicted worldwide spending of up to $4trn on Al by the end of the decade.
• SpaceX conducted a successful test flight of its Starship mega-rocket after a series of failures earlier in the year, and deployed dummy satellites for the first time. Starship is vital for both SpaceX’s fast-growing Starlink internet service and America’s plans to return astronauts to the Moon.
• Keurig Dr Pepper, an American soft-drinks company which also owns the Green Mountain coffee brand, agreed to buy JDE Peet, based in the Netherlands and one of the world’s biggest suppliers of coffee and tea beverages, for $18bn. The coffee assets of both will be combined into one company, which will be worth roughly the same as Nestle’s coffee business and listed separately in America. When the merger is completed JDE Peet will delist from the Amsterdam stock exchange.

Over a barrel

• In the latest example of the perils of rebranding a familiar favourite, Cracker Barrel reversed its recent decision to change its logo and will now stick with the original imagery. The Southern-themed restaurant chain had wanted to ditch a picture of an elderly white man (known as “Uncle Herschel”) and the words “Old Country Store” from the logo. That triggered an anti-woke backlash on social media. It was all over for the company when Donald Trump called on it to revert to its old design, adding that at least Cracker Barrel might get a “billion dollars’ worth of free publicity”.

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