The Economist - November 1 2025

Год выпуска: November 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: 84

THE BATTLE FOR NEW YORK

• A fight is brewing between Donald Trump and Zohran Mamdani: leader, page 9.
• As new jobs in finance dry up, New York City’s fiscal model is wilting: briefing, page 18.
• A political drama for the ages, opening soon in America’s biggest city, page 21.
• Mr Trump is not the only politician nostalgic for a bygone era: Lexington, page 27.

End of the rip-off economy

• From used cars to medicine, Al is radically improving market efficiency, page 63.

Milei’s triumph

• The electoral success of Argentine austerity shows that voters can take hard choices: leader, page 11.
• A surprisingly strong midterm win breathes new life into the president’s economic project, page 29.

Data-centre backlash

• Opposition is growing, page 22.
• Led by Nvidia, the Al industry has plans to reindustrialise America, page 23.

The financial case for Ukraine

• The giant bill is also a giant opportunity for Europe: leader, page 10.
• Europe must offer a big enough financial package to deter the Kremlin, page 54.

The world this week Politics

• Donald Trump met Xi Jinping in South Korea, their first face-to-face encounter since the American president took office in January. Mr Trump described their meeting as “amazing” and said China had agreed to a one-year trade deal and had promised to loosen its restrictions on exports of rare earths. Mr Trump also confirmed that China had made progress in reducing the flow of fentanyl from the country and he would therefore reduce the level of tariffs he had imposed on Chinese goods. Shortly before the meeting Mr Trump threatened to resume nuclear testing, but gave no details about what he meant.
• Mr Trump also visited Japan for talks with Takaichi Sanae, the new prime minister, who vowed to strengthen her country’s defence capabilities because of the “severe security environment”. The American president also went to Malaysia, where he signed more trade deals and oversaw the signing of an expanded ceasefire between Cambodia and Thailand. He also held talks with Lee Jae Myung, South Korea’s president, in which they secured a trade deal that lowers tariffs on Korean car exports.

A row over Reagan’s ghost

• Mr Trump earlier imposed an extra 10% levy on Canadian goods in retaliation for a TV ad aired by the government of Ontario province that had used a clip of Ronald Reagan criticising the use of tariffs. Seemingly annoyed by Ontario’s ad, Mark Carney, Canada’s prime minister, pointed out that only the federal government has responsibility for trade.
• Afghanistan and Pakistan said they would resume peace talks in Istanbul, a day after an announcement that they had ended in failure. The talks are aimed at finding a solution to hostilities between the two countries, which recently erupted into fighting along their border, killing dozens of people. Smaller skirmishes have continued despite a ceasefire. Pakistan accuses Afghanistan of giving succour to the Pakistani Taliban.
• A general election in the Netherlands produced a tight result. D66, a liberal party led by Rob Jetten, won the same number of seats as the hard right Party for Freedom (PVV), led by Geert Wilders, PVV had won the previous election in 2023. But no mainstream party will now deal with the pvv, so Mr Jetten looks likely to be the next prime minister.
• Volodymyr Zelensky said that Ukraine was ready to hold peace talks with Russia, and would even consider Hungary as a venue, but he would not pull back Ukrainian troops from the conflict, a Russian precondition for negotiations. A few days earlier European leaders failed to agree on a plan to use frozen Russian assets to fund Ukraine.
• The speaker of Georgia’s parliament announced that the pro-Russian government had asked the Constitutional Court to ban three pro-Western opposition parties, alleging that they threatened the constitutional order. Over the past 12 months Georgia has been gripped by pro-democracy protests amid a crackdown on the opposition. The court has nine months to decide the case.
• Catherine Connolly won Ireland’s presidential election. Ms Connolly ran as an independent but was backed by Sinn Fein and other parties of the left. Although the presidency is a mostly ceremonial role, Ms Connolly is a fierce defender of Irish neutrality at a time when the European Union is seeking greater commitments to collective defence.
• Hurricane Melissa left much of Jamaica without electricity and communications. Recording sustained winds of up to 3ookmh (185 miles per hour) it was the strongest-ever storm to hit the island. It barrelled on to Cuba and the Bahamas packing a less severe punch. Around 35 people have been killed by the storm, including in Haiti, a toll that is likely to rise.
• At least 121 people were killed in Brazil during police raids that targeted a large drug gang. Four of the dead were police officers. Around 2,500 security personnel were deployed, making it the biggest and deadliest operation ever in the country. President Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva called an emergency cabinet meeting, but also said organised gangs “destroy families”. The UN expressed its dismay and called for an investigation.
• Argentina’s president, Javier Milei, described his party’s landslide victory in midterm elections as historic. Liberty Advances (LLA) took 41% of the vote, trouncing the Peronists, who took 32%, and confounding pollsters who had predicted a close result, LLA even won Buenos Aires province, which recently gave the Peronists a significant win in local elections. Mr Milei’s radical economic reforms had run into stiff opposition, but the president said the election would bring about “the construction of a great Argentina”. The country’s bonds and stock-markets rallied.
• Israel carried out strikes in Gaza in retaliation for what it said was an attack by Hamas in which an Israeli soldier was killed. Hamas denied responsibility and said it was keeping to the ceasefire. Over 100 people were killed in the Israeli strikes according to the Hamas-run authorities, which didn’t say how many were combatants or civilians. Israel also accused Hamas of violating the ceasefire by returning a coffin with some remains of a hostage whose body had already been returned. Meanwhile, the king of Jordan said that international troops would not want to have to enforce peace in Gaza.

The world starts to notice

• The rebel Rapid Support Forces in Sudan took full control of el-Fasher, a city in the Darfur region. Reports emerged that the RSF, which evolved from Arab militias in Sudan, was executing non-Arab civilians. Egypt, Saudi Arabia and others condemned the killings. The chairman of the Foreign Relations Committee in America’s Senate called for the RSF to be designated as a terrorist group.
• Mali closed all its schools and universities because of a fuel shortage caused by Islamist militants, who have blocked tankers on highways from delivering fuel. Bamako, the capital, has been particularly affected by the disruption.
• Three African countries went through the motions of holding elections. Tanzania’s president, Samia Suluhu Hassan, was expected to have won re-election, after the leading opposition candidates were barred from running. A curfew was imposed after protests broke out. The main opposition was also banned in Ivory Coast’s poll, so it was no surprise that Alassane Ouattara secured a fourth term as president. The result of Cameroon’s presidential election, held on October 12th, was announced, giving Paul Biya an eighth term; violent protests greeted the result.

The world this week Business

• America’s Federal Reserve cut interest rates for the second time this year, reducing its benchmark rate by another quarter of a percentage point to a range of between 3.75% and 4%. The cut was expected and markets were more interested in the announcement by Jerome Powell, the Fed’s chairman, that another reduction this year was “far from certain”. The Fed also announced that it will stop reducing its portfolio of bond holdings (a process known as quantitative tightening, which reverses quantitative easing, when the portfolio is expanded). The Fed’s holdings peaked at $9trn in 2022 and are around $6.6trn today.
• The Bank of Japan left its main interest rate on hold at 0.5%. Markets still expect an increase by the end of the year as inflation in Japan remains elevated, in part because a weak yen has pushed up import costs.

Coming to an office near you

• Amazon started to carry out swingeing job cuts that it had warned earlier this year would come with the adoption of Al. It is reducing its number of white-collar staff by 14,000 (out of a corporate workforce of 350,000), with more job losses to come next year as it aims for a reported total of 30,000. Amazon employs overturn people overall in full-time and part-time jobs. In June Andy Jassy, its chief executive, said the increasing use of Ai tools and agents would eliminate the need for routine staff work.
• Corporate jobs are experiencing a bloodbath elsewhere, too. As part of its cost-cutting drive UPS revealed that it had taken an axe to 34,000 positions in its operational workforce so far this year, and another 14,000 in management. This is in part because the logistics company is no longer handling Amazon’s parcels, which had become uneconomical to deliver. Nestle recently announced 16,000 job cuts, 12,000 in white-collar work. And Target said it would sever 1,800 corporate roles.
• It is not only corporate jobs that are under pressure. General Motors announced 1,750 job cuts at its electric-vehicle and battery factories, and another 1,550 temporary lay-offs at the battery plants.
• Alphabet’s quarterly revenue passed $ioobn for the first time, sending its share price up. In the other eagerly awaited tech earnings, Meta and Microsoft reported profit and revenues that topped expectations, but the big increases in costs for both companies from spending on artificial intelligence spooked investors.
• OpenAl and Microsoft updated their partnership agreement, moving OpenAl towards a for-profit setup and away from its non-profit roots. Microsoft’s holding in OpenAl is 27% and valued at $135bn, meaning the developer of ChatGPT is worth $5oobn. Sam Altman, OpenAi’s boss, said it would probably pursue a future IPO but that there were no plans to do so at present.
• Nvidia announced $5oobn-worth of orders for its Ai processors and a deal to build seven supercomputers for the Department of Energy. Jensen Huang, Nvidia’s CEO, said that some of its Blackwell graphicsprocessing units were now being produced in Arizona, placating Mr Trump, who wants to “bring manufacturing back” to America.
• Investors’ giddiness for all things Al-related pushed stock-markets to new highs. Nvidia’s market value reached $5trn, just three months after passing $4trn. Microsoft’s market capitalisation closed above $4trn for the first time following the news of its stake in OpenAl. Apple also hit a $4trn valuation ahead of its earnings.
• Lukoil, Russia’s second-biggest oil producer, announced that it would sell most of its international assets to Gunvor, a Swiss company, because of America’s recently announced sanctions on Russian energy. Lukoil is a private company, whereas Rosneft, Russia’s biggest oil provider (also subject to sanctions), is state owned. Oil prices jumped when the penalties were announced but have levelled off. The sanctions come into effect on November 21st and will particularly affect countries like India, which buys lots of Russian oil.
• Westinghouse unveiled an $8obn agreement with the American government to build nuclear reactors in the United States. Mr Trump issued an executive order in May to “ensure the rapid development” of nuclear energy, in part to feed the enormous appetite for power from Ai data centres.

Into the sunset

• John Malone said he would step down as chairman of Liberty Global and Liberty Media, respectively the holding companies for his stakes in telecommunications, including Virgin Media 02, and Formula One and Live Nation Entertainment. Over a 50-year career Mr Malone was instrumental in driving the growth of cable television, selling his company, TCI, to AT&T for $50bn in 1999. His biography is titled “Cable Cowboy”.