The Economist - October 25 2025

Год выпуска: October 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

WINNING THE TRADE WAR

• After months of pain China is on top: leader, page 9.
• The country is winning its trade war with America: briefing, page 16.
• Chinese chipmakers are innovating around America’s embargo, page 67.
• America is copying the wrong things from China: By invitation, page 15.

Milei’s peso pain

• Argentina’s president faces his most dangerous moment yet: leader, page 10.
• The fate of Javier Milei’s economic reforms may turn on an upcoming election, page 25.

Taiwan’s plan B

• It is starting to hedge against the risk that America abandons it, page 31.

Why American women are quitting work

• The explanation lies in a mini baby boom, page 61.

Screen-addicted seniors

• Stop worrying about your children’s screen time. Start worrying about your parents’: leader, page 12.
• The digital habits that defined youth are transforming old age, page 50.

The world this week Politics

• Bolivia’s presidential election was won by Rodrigo Paz, a centrist, defeating a conservative candidate in the run-off. Luis Arce, the left-wing president, decided not to run owing to a schism in the ruling Movement to Socialism, which had held the presidency for 20 years. The left has been booted out amid the country’s worst economic crisis in years. Mr Paz promises to allow the private sector to expand in order to boost growth, but also to protect welfare programmes.
• Argentina’s central bank signed a $2obn currency-swap deal with the US Treasury just days ahead of midterm elections in Argentina that are seen as a referendum on the austerity policies of Javier Milei, the president. Scott Bessent, America’s treasury secretary, said the agreement would bring economic stability to Argentina, and that the US did not want to see another Latin American state fail. Details of the plan were not immediately available. American banks are reportedly hesitant to back it.
• America’s relations with Colombia deteriorated to a new low when Donald Trump said he would raise tariffs on Colombian goods and suspend aid, and accused its leftist president, Gustavo Petro, of being “an illegal drug leader”. This came after Mr Petro described America’s military strike on an alleged drugrunning boat last month in Colombian waters as “murder”. After news emerged that America had struck alleged smugglers in the eastern Pacific for the first time, Mr Petro said that attack was also “murder”.
• Meanwhile, a court in Bogota overturned the conviction of Alvaro Uribe on charges of attempting to bribe witnesses. The court found that a key witness who testified against the former conservative president was not credible, and that wiretaps used to justify the investigation had been illegal. Mr Uribe had been sentenced to 12 years’ detention. Mr Petro denounced the turnaround.
• America repatriated two men who survived a military strike on a submersible vessel that was allegedly trafficking drugs in the Caribbean. Two other people were killed in the attack. The men were returned to Colombia and Ecuador with the intent that they be prosecuted. But Ecuador released its citizen, saying it had not received a formal report of a crime being committed.
• J.D. Vance, America’s vice-president, Steve Witkoff, Mr Trump’s Middle East envoy, and Jared Kushner, who has been influential in brokering peace deals, visited Israel to bolster support for the ceasefire agreement with Hamas. Militants had earlier fired rockets into an area behind Israel’s line of control in Gaza, killing two soldiers. Israel struck back and briefly suspended aid. Palestinian officials said dozens of people had been killed in the skirmish, without noting how many were combatants or civilians. The American delegation was focused on getting Hamas to disarm, the next stage of the peace plan.

The flip-flopper-in-chief

• America imposed sanctions on Rosneft and Lukoil, Russia’s two biggest oil companies, after the Kremlin made it clear that Vladimir Putin was not interested in another summit with Mr Trump about Ukraine because its war aims hadn’t changed. The US Treasury said the sanctions, the first by the Trump administration to target Russian energy directly, were intended to stop the use of oil revenues to buy weapons. Oil prices rose sharply. It was another volte face by Mr Trump. A few days earlier at the White House he had reportedly told Volodymyr Zelensky to surrender parts of occupied Ukraine to Russia. European leaders gathered in London for a summit to discuss using frozen Russian assets to aid Ukraine, among other things.
• Nicolas Sarkozy began his five-year prison term, a month after the sentence was handed down for conspiring to use illicit Libyan campaign money. He is the first former French head of state to be jailed since Marshal Petain, a Nazi collaborator. Questions have been raised across France about why Mr Sarkozy was sent to prison while he appeals against his conviction. His lawyer has requested his release.
• Emmanuel Macron said that France’s controversial pension reform, which raised the minimum retirement age from 62 years to 64 and was passed in 2023, had been “necessary” but that it was now up to parliament to decide what to do with it. These were the French president’s first comments following the promise by his newly reinstalled prime minister, Sebastien Lecornu, to “suspend” the new rules until after the next presidential election in 2027. Mr Lecornu won a narrow vote of confidence in the assembly after winning opposition Socialist support with his announcement.
• Portugal’s parliament approved legislation that would stop women wearing face veils, such as the burqa and niqab, in public places (except for planes, places of worship and diplomatic functions). Anyone forcing a woman to cover her face could be sent to prison. The bill was proposed by the hard-right Chega party and supported by the centre-right. The president could yet veto it.
• Northern Cyprus, which proclaimed itself a state after Turkey’s invasion of Cyprus in 1974, held a presidential election that was won by Tufan Erhurman, who supports the reunification of the island. He got 63% of the vote. Turkey is the only country to recognise Northern Cyprus. In response to the result Turkey’s vice-president, Cevdet Yilmaz, said the “motherland” stood by Turkish Cypriots.

Letting the victims down

• A commission that has been created to investigate the grooming-gangs scandal in Britain suffered another blow when four survivors of sexual abuse quit the victims’ panel. The four women raised concerns about the inquiry’s transparency, and that its remit was being expanded to look at all child abuse, rather than the specific crimes committed by gangs of mostly South Asian origin. They also don’t want the inquiry’s chairman to come from social care or the police, the very institutions that have failed the victims. Shabana Mahmood, the home secretary, insisted the inquiry would not be “watered down”.
• Takaichi Sanae took office as Japan’s new prime minister. Ms Takaichi is reportedly preparing a big economic package that will tackle inflation, invest in industries such as AI and chipmaking, and bolster national security. To ease inflationary pressures, the government plans to abolish a “temporary” tax on fuel that has been in place since the 1970s. Stockmarkets rose, but the yen fell; Ms Takaichi has said the government should hold more sway over the central bank and “co-ordinate” policy.

The world this week Business

• Donald Trump signed an agreement with the Australian prime minister, Anthony Albanese, that gives America access to Australia’s deposits of critical minerals and rare earths. The American government is searching for deals to expand its reserves of the raw materials and wean its supply chain off a reliance on China, which dominates global production.
• China recently tightened its export controls on rare earths, prompting Mr Trump to say he would impose ioo% tariffs on Chinese goods in retaliation.
• China’s economy was 4.8% bigger in the third quarter compared with the same three months in 2024. It was the slowest pace of GDP growth in a year. Although China’s export industry is thriving, domestic demand remains weak.
• Britain’s annual rate of inflation remained at 3.8% in September. Markets had expected it to hit 4%, but food prices did not rise as much as predicted. It was the third consecutive month where inflation stood at 3.8%. Although that is stubbornly higher than the Bank of England’s 2% target, the betting now is that interest rates will be cut before the year’s end.
• A jury in New York found BNP Paribas liable to pay damages to three Sudanese refugees for its provision of financial services to Omar al-Bashir, Sudan’s former president. The refugees have accused the French bank of aiding the Bashir regime’s genocidal campaign in the late 1990s and 2000s by giving it access to American financial markets. The jury awarded them $21m in damages. Thousands of other Sudanese have joined a class-action lawsuit. BNP Paribas said it was not allowed to introduce crucial evidence at the trial and was confident the verdict would be overturned on appeal.

Not feeling very charitable

• The chairman of Novo Nordisk and six independent directors are to step down from their roles amid a disagreement with its largest investor, the Novo Nordisk Foundation, over its strategic direction. The company, which makes Wegovy and Ozempic, has fallen behind Eli Lilly in the market for weight-loss treatments.
• Despite its record sales in the third quarter, driven by a rush from buyers to claim a now-expired tax credit, Tesla’s net profit fell by 29%, year on year, as it spent more on Al. Meanwhile, ISS, which guides shareholders on how they should vote at company meetings, advised Tesla’s investors to reject a proposed pay package of up to $itrn for Elon Musk. Although it is linked to future performance, the package is no guarantee that Mr Musk will not be distracted by his other ventures, said ISS.
• General Motors raised its forecast of annual profit and said the costs it expects to incur from tariffs will come in a bit lower at up to $4.5bn, rather than the $5bn it had previously projected. The carmaker’s stock surged by almost 15% to a record high. That was despite GM booking a $i.6bn charge because it is reducing its capacity to make electric vehicles amid a slowdown in demand.
• Netflix’s share price plunged after its quarterly operatingmargin came in below guidance (it had booked charges from a tax dispute in Brazil). It also gave little detail about ad sales, other than saying it had been a record quarter. Netflix has stopped issuing subscriber numbers but revenue grew by a healthy 17%, year on year. The fall in the stock underlines investors’ skittishness about future profits at tech firms.
• Netflix is said to be one of several companies interested in making a bid for Warner Bros Discovery. Warner has noted the “unsolicited interest” from “multiple parties” and reportedly rejected a nearly $6obn offer from Paramount. It reiterated its previously announced plan to separate its film studio and cable broadcast businesses, but said it would consider other alternatives, such as a “transaction” for the whole company or separate deals for Warner Bros and Discovery.
• The government shutdown in America has forced Unilever to delay the demerger of its icecream business. The company said the Securities and Exchange Commission had been unable to process the documents to allow shares in the business to trade in a secondary listing in New York. The stock was supposed to start trading in the main listing in Amsterdam on November 10th. The SEC has had to put most of its staff on furlough, delaying other share offerings.

Robot wars

• Amazon was reported to be planning to expand its use of robotics, which could mean it employs 600,000 fewer workers than it would otherwise need by 2033. That would be despite selling twice as many products as it currently does by then. Amazon said the reports were misleading. The reports also said Amazon was expecting a backlash and training executives not to use terms such as “automation” or “Al”.

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