The Economist - November 8 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: 100

The relationship recession

• The rise of singlehood is reshaping the world: leader, page 9,and briefing, page 16.
• A new industry of Al companions could change what it means to be human, page 51.
• Tinder, Hinge and Bumble are betting big on Al, page 65.
• Tech bros and religious conservatives are desperate for people to have more babies, page 55.

China’s global power play

• The country is providing cheap, clean energy in huge quantities. The world should take the win: leader, page 10.
• China is a renewableenergy superpower. See our Special report, after page 40.
• It is cranking up its belt-and-road scheme, page 33.
• The climate action that matters is in the global south, By Invitation, page 15.

The meaning of Mamdani

• Democrats risk drawing the wrong lessons from one good day: leader, page 11, and analysis, page 19.
• Gavin Newsom uses Trumpian tactics: Lexington, page 24.

Nigel Farage: Captain Sensible

• Reform UK’s fiscal prudence is welcome, if unproven: leader, page 12, and analysis, page 49.
• Is Mr Farage like Giorgia Meloni? Page 48.
• The left and taxes: Bagehot, page 50.

Wake up, Airbnb

• Brian Chesky wants to offer more than a bed to sleep on. Will his strategy work? Page 61.

The world this week Politics

• Zohran Mamdani, a self-described democratic socialist, won New York’s mayoral race, and will be the first Muslim to lead the city. Despite polls suggesting the race was tightening, Mr Mamdani took 50% of the vote, compared with 42% for his main challenger, Andrew Cuomo. Mr Mamdani campaigned on making New York a more affordable place to live for workers, extolling policies such as rent freezes and free universal child care. Turnout was high. He was the first candidate for mayor to win over a million votes since John Lindsay in 1969.

A night to remember

• It was a good night for Democrats elsewhere in the smattering of elections that were held in America. Abigail Spanberg-er won the governor’s race in Virginia, taking the office back from the Republicans (governors cannot serve consecutive terms in the state). She is the first woman to hold the job. And Mikie Sherrill chalked up a sizeable margin of victory to become New Jersey’s governor, holding the office for the Democrats.
• In California voters overwhelmingly approved Proposition 50, a proposal to redraw the state’s congressional districts, which could see the Democrats gain five seats. Backed by the governor, Gavin Newsom, the blatantly partisan redistricting plan is intended to counter the Republicans’ blatantly partisan efforts to redraw congressional boundaries to their advantage elsewhere in America. In Maine a ballot measure that would have required voter ID at voting stations and restricted early access to voting was roundly rejected.
• The Trump administration warned that it would have to reduce air traffic by 10% at America’s 40 busiest airports because the government shutdown has caused problems staffing traffic control. The shutdown passed the 35-day mark, making it the longest ever, breaking the previous record that had been set nearly seven years ago.
• Dick Cheney died at the age of 84. Said to be the most powerful vice-president in American history, Mr Cheney was pivotal in helping to craft George W. Bush’s national-security policies in the aftermath of September nth 2001, and was an unrepentant defender of America’s invasion of Iraq. He was defence secretary when Iraq invaded Kuwait in 1990. Often portrayed as a Machiavellian figure, Mr Cheney embraced his portrayal as the Darth Vader of the Bush government.
• At least 142 people were killed as Typhoon Kalmaegi tore through the Philippines. Most of the deaths were due to drowning caused by the flooding that swept through towns in central Cebu province.
• Major General Yifat Tomer-Yerushalmi, the Israel Defence Forces’ most senior lawyer, resigned and was then arrested after she took responsibility for the leaking of a video purporting to show the abuse by Israeli soldiers of a Palestinian detainee. Allies of Binyamin Netanyahu, the prime minister, seized on the scandal to renew their attack on Israel’s legal establishment.
• Donald Trump said that America’s armed forces would take action in Nigeria to stop the “mass slaughter” of Christians by Islamist militants. His comments caused alarm in Nigeria, though it was unclear what any specific action would entail. Terrorist groups in Nigeria often target civilians, both Christians and Muslims. There is no evidence of a Christian genocide.
• More reports emerged of mass executions in el-Fasher, a city in Sudan’s Darfur region, carried out by the Rapid Support Forces, a rebel group that evolved from Arab militia. The World Health Organisation has condemned the reported killing of 460 people at one hospital alone. Other reports suggest men are being separated from women before being taken away to be shot.
• Samia Suluhu Hassan was sworn into office for a second term as Tanzania’s president, following an election in which her opponents were all but disqualified from running. The opposition has rejected the result. Early estimates suggest that many hundreds of people have been killed during postelection violence, a figure that the government claims has been exaggerated.
• The European Union published a progress report on countries that aspire to join the bloc. Albania and Montenegro are “on track” to close accession negotiations, it said, and Moldova’s reforms are “achievable”. It praised Ukraine for its progress, but said the pace of reforms to stamp out corruption would have to quicken if it wanted to complete negotiations by late 2028. The report noted that more work was required on judicial reforms or stabilising politics in Bosnia, Kosovo, North Macedonia and Serbia if they want to join. It described Georgia as “a candidate country in name only”.
• Russia claimed it was close to capturing Pokrovsk, a small city and transport hub in eastern Ukraine. Volodymyr Zelensky acknowledged that Ukrainian forces were being pressed hard but denied that Russia had taken full control of the area. If Pokrovsk falls it would be Russia’s biggest battlefield success since Avdiivka in February 2024.
• Germany’s chancellor, Friedrich Merz, said that Syrians should no longer claim asylum because their country’s civil war is over, and that repatriations of Syrians should begin. At least im live in Germany after fleeing their home country. Mr Merz’s comments are intended to counter the rise of the populist-right Alternative for Germany (AfD) ahead of state elections next year.
• Peru suspended diplomatic relations with Mexico, after a former prime minister took refuge in the Mexican embassy in Lima and requested asylum. Betssy Chavez was briefly prime minister in late 2022 at the end of the presidency of Pedro Castillo. She faces criminal charges in relation to Mr Castillo’s attempt to dissolve the legislature, which resulted in his ousting from office.

It’s all on Carney now

• The minority Liberal government in Canada presented its first budget since Mark Carney became prime minister in March. The fiscal blueprint includes a big increase to investment in infrastructure that is intended in part to offset the economic damage from America’s tariffs. Defence spending will rise to 2% of GDP this year, increasing to NATO’s target of 5% by 2035. The budget deficit is set to balloon.
• After two decades and at a cost of $1bn the Grand Egyptian Museum opened in Giza. It is described as the world’s largest archaeological collection. Among the 100,000 artefacts on display are the contents of the tomb of Tutankhamun.

The world this week Business

• America’s Supreme Court heard arguments for and against the legality of Donald Trump’s tariffs. The case focuses on levies that Mr Trump imposed using his emergency powers, such as duties in relation to fentanyl trafficking, reciprocal levies and punitive tariffs, including those imposed on Brazil. Duties levied on certain industries, including car parts and chips, are not part of the case. The justices seemed inclined to doubt the legality of the tariffs. They may rule later this year or next year.

Ready for his relaunch

• Mr Trump renominated Jared Isaacman to head NASA. The president withdrew his original nomination in May, the White House suggesting at the time that Mr Isaacman was not in “complete alignment” with Mr Trump’s agenda. In part that was because Mr Isaacman, a space entrepreneur, is close to Elon Musk, with whom Mr Trump fell out. It had also emerged that Mr Isaacman had donated to Democrats, though he describes himself as “relatively apolitical”.
• Unilever set December 8th as the date it will start selling shares in Magnum Ice Cream. The spin-off of the conglomerate’s ice-cream assets has been delayed by a month because of the government shutdown in America, which held up regulatory approval of the IPO. The stock will trade in a primary listing in Amsterdam and secondary listings in New York and London.
• Orsted reported a quarterly net loss. The developer of offshore wind power blamed the “negative development” on tariffs and the Trump administration’s order to stop working on a big project off Connecticut and Rhode Island (a court has since reversed the order).
• Meanwhile, Orsted sold a 50% stake in the world’s largest wind farm, still under development off the coast of east England, to Apollo, a privateequity firm, for $6.5bn.
• More evidence emerged of the effect of Mr Trump’s decision to scrap tax credits for new sales of electric vehicles. The incentive ended on September 30th; Ford said its sales of EVS in October fell by 25% compared with October last year. Jim Farley, the company’s chief executive, has predicted that sales of EVS will drop from around 10-12% to 5% of America’s car market in October.
• One of the main beneficiaries of the boom in artificial intelligence, Palantir, reported a 63% year-on-year rise in quarterly revenue. The company develops data-analytics software and does a lot of military work. But Palantir’s share price fell sharply after it emerged that Michael Burry, an investor based in Silicon Valley, had placed a bet against its stock. Mr Burry is best known for predicting and profiting from the collapse of the subprimemortgage market.
• Amazon’s share price reached a record high after it announced a $38bn deal to provide OpenAl with data-centre capacity through Amazon Web Services. Amazon had earlier reported a 20% rise in quarterly revenue, year on year, at its cloud-computing business. That helped push net profit up by nearly 40%, to $21.2bn.

On a caffeine high

• Struggling to compete against low-cost rivals in China, Starbucks decided to sell a majority stake in a new joint venture to Boyu Capital, a private-equity firm with headquarters in Hong Kong. Star-bucks said the deal would help it expand in China, from today’s 8,000 coffee shops to an eventual goal of 20,000.
• Kimberly-Clark, a consumergoods company best known for its Andrex, Huggies and Kleenex brands, agreed to buy Kenvue, the maker of Tylenol, in a deal valued at $48.7bn. Kenvue’s stock has struggled since being spun out of Johnson & Johnson in 2023. Its share price fell sharply in September when Donald Trump suggested that pregnant women shouldn’t take Tylenol, a painrelief medication, claiming without good evidence that it has links to autism.
• As it battles to retain its market share in America for weightloss treatments, Novo Nordisk reported a 37% increase in sales at its obesity-care business for the first nine months of the year, but lowered the range of its expected annual revenue and profit. The Danish company could get a boost from the Trump administration’s ambition for Medicare and Medicaid to cover weight-loss medications for the first time.
• The opening of Shein’s shopping outlet in Paris, its first physical store in the world, was overshadowed by news that France is investigating it for selling childlike sex dolls on its website (the wider investigation includes other ultra-cheap shopping platforms that are mainly based in China). The government said it would block Shein’s website for also selling weapons. The firm is co-operating. The news didn’t stop shoppers from queuing for Shein’s opening day, under the watchful eye of riot police.

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