The Economist - November 29 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: 80

What China will dominate next

• Two more industries that China is soon to dominate: leader, page 9.
• The country’s cut-price drugmakers stand to make more money abroad than at home, page 32.
• Why China is pulling ahead in the robotaxi race, page 55.

MAGA’s Al split

• A user’s guide to the battle between technooptimists and neo-Luddites, page 19.

Ukraine: ambush averted?

• What Ukraine and Europe should learn from Donald Trump’s attempt to impose peace: leader, page 11.
• A baffling week of diplomacy may lead towards a peace plan, or Ukraine’s downfall, page 40.
• If the fighting on the battlefield ends, the infighting in Europe will begin: Charlemagne, page 44.

A dispatch from Iran

• Why Iran is making surprising overtures to America and why the West should heed them: leader, page 12, and briefing, page 16.

Rethinking cholesterol

• There's much more to the substance than just “good” and “bad”, page 66.

The world this week Politics

• President Donald Trump said that “tremendous progress” had been made in negotiations between Ukraine and Russia. A controversial 28-point peace proposal drafted with Russia was revised during a meeting between American, Ukrainian and European officials in Geneva. Ukraine’s president, Volodymyr Zelensky, said he was ready to discuss “sensitive” issues, which include territorial concessions and his country reducing its armed forces.
• A judge in Georgia dismissed the racketeering case against Mr Trump and others, ending the criminal jeopardy of the president for allegedly trying to overturn the 2020 election. Three other criminal cases against Mr Trump have been dismissed or put aside since he was returned to office.
• Mr Trump called the shooting of two National Guard members near the White House in Washington an “act of terror”. The guardsmen were in critical condition. The suspected attacker, 29-year-old Rahmanullah Lakanwal, is believed to have arrived from Afghanistan in 2021, prompting Mr Trump to vow a crackdown on unvetted immigration.

Something’s blooming

• Mr Trump will visit Beijing in April. The president accepted an invitation from his Chinese counterpart, Xi Jinping, during a phone conversation in which they discussed trade and global security. A reciprocal visit is planned for later in 2026.
• Marjorie Taylor Greene said she would resign from America’s House of Representatives following a public feud with Mr Trump. The president had called the congresswoman from Georgia, once a staunch ally, a “traitor” for her calls to publish files related to Jeffrey Epstein, a dead sex offender.
• COP 30 in Brazil ended with a disappointing lack of new promises to phase out fossil fuels. Roughly 80 delegations, including the European Union and Britain, had been pressing for quicker climate action, but large oil-producers opposed any stricter resolution. Next year’s conference will be held in Turkey after Australia dropped its hosting bid.
• Jair Bolsonaro began his 27-year prison sentence for plotting a coup after losing the 2022 election. Brazil’s former president had been under house arrest since August but was recently taken into police custody for tampering with his ankle monitor. He denied attempting to flee and blamed medicine-induced “paranoia”.
• China escalated its dispute with Japan at the United Nations. In a letter to the UN’s secretary-general, Antonio Guterres, its representative accused Japan of “a grave violation of international law” when Takaichi Sanae, the prime minister, suggested her country would provide military assistance to Taiwan in the event of a Chinese invasion. Meanwhile Taiwan’s president, Lai Ching-te, said that the country would boost defence spending by $4obn to fend off “intensifying” Chinese threats.
• Several South-East Asian countries faced catastrophic floods. Some 2.7m people battled the deluge in southern Thailand; the city of Hat Yai recorded its heaviest rainfall in 300 years. The army deployed ships and helicopters to deliver aid. At least 30 people were killed by landslides on Java, Indonesia’s most populous island. In Vietnam a bus was swept off the road. Malaysia evacuated some 21,000 people.
• At least 55 people were killed and hundreds were missing after a fire engulfed seven high-rise apartment blocks in Hong Kong’s Tai Po district. As firefighters quelled the blaze, there were mounting questions over accountability. Police arrested three construction-company employees for suspected manslaughter.
• Spain’s attorney-general, Alvaro Garcia Ortiz, resigned in anticipation of a supreme-court ruling that found him guilty of leaking details of a tax probe involving the partner of a prominent conservative politician. It is a blow to the socialist government of Pedro Sanchez, who appointed the chief prosecutor in 2022 and defended his innocence.
• Italy’s parliament voted unanimously to make femicide—the murder of a woman because of her gender—a crime punishable by life imprisonment. The law is a response to several high-profile cases of violence against women and includes harsher measures against stalking and revenge porn.
• Ukraine attacked the Shatura power station in Russia, which provides 6% of the electricity to nearby Moscow, the capital. The drone strike damaged three transformers. Ukraine also killed three people and injured several others in a large drone strike on Novorossiysk, a Russian port city. Russia continued to pummel Kyiv, Ukraine’s capital.

Wedded to the past

• The EU’s top court ruled that Poland must recognise the marriage of a same-sex couple, despite Polish law not allowing such unions. It said the two men, who had been married in Germany, would thus preserve their freedom of movement and the “right to respect” for family life. Poland’s government said it would comply with the verdict.
• Israel killed Hizbullah’s top military chief, Haytham Ali Tabatabai, in Beirut. The second major strike on Lebanon’s capital since an American-brokered ceasefire a year ago highlights the fragility of truces in the region. Israel also launched its biggest raid in the West Bank since the start of its truce with Hamas in October, with hundreds of soldiers entering Tubas, a town near the city of Nablus.
• The Gaza Humanitarian Foundation closed. The aid group, which was supported by Israel and America, had been criticised for endangering Palestinians, many of whom were killed attempting to get food from its distribution centres (the group denied anyone died at its centres). Since October more aid has entered the Gaza Strip.
• Gunmen abducted 303 schoolchildren and 12 teachers from a Catholic school in Nigeria’s Niger state, with dozens managing to escape.
• Separately, 24 girls who had earlier been abducted from a boarding school in Kebbi state were freed; another had escaped on her own. Nigeria has closed schools nationwide as kidnappings have intensified in recent weeks.
• Agroup of soldiers seized power in Guinea-Bissau, a narco-state in west Africa, and detained the president. The apparent coup follows a disputed presidential election in which both the incumbent, Umaro Sissoco Embalo, and his main opponent claimed victory before formal results. The putschists claimed that they acted to counter attempts to destabilise the country.

The world this week Business

• Rachel Reeves, Britain’s chancellor, delivered her second budget, which by 2029-30 will increase yearly spending by £11bn ($14.5bn) and taxes by £26bn. The extra spending starts now, but taxes will rise only gradually, so the government will need to borrow more than planned over the next four years. It has made no serious attempt to cut its ballooning welfare bill. Markets nevertheless reacted positively: government-borrowing costs fell, especially for long-dated debt, and the pound strengthened.
• Meanwhile, France’s National Assembly rejected parts of a budget draft put forward by Sebastien Lecornu, the country’s third prime minister in 12 months. Both of Mr Lecornu’s immediate predecessors left office after failing to pass their own budgets.
• The IMF agreed a new four-year funding programme with Ukraine, worth $8.2bn. It will be used to help stabilise the country’s economy and meet the mounting costs of its war with Russia. Ukrainian officials believe the facility will help them obtain funding from others, which is badly needed to shore up the public finances.
• Tech stocks staged a recovery after a difficult few weeks.
• America’s NASDAQ.100 index fell by 8% between late October and November 20th, but has since risen by 5%. Investors’ hopes were buoyed by comments from Mary Daly and Chris Waller, two attendees of the Federal Reserve’s monetary-policy meetings, suggesting the central bank will cut interest rates in December.
• Traders now put the probability of such a cut at over 80%.
• Yet the share price of Nvidia slid further. Reports on November 24th suggested that Meta, one of Nvidia’s biggest clients, is considering buying chips from Google instead. The next day Nvidia lost over $100bn, or 3%, of its market value. It has fallen by 13% since its peak. The same day the share price of AMD, Nvidia’s main rival, dropped by 4%. That of Alphabet, Google’s parent, has soared.

Paper hands

• Owners of bitcoin are suffering badly: its price has plunged by 27% since October. Many “crypto treasury” firms, which exist to hold digital assets and give shareholders exposure to them, have done far worse. Some have reportedly started selling their stockpiles as a result, raising fears of a self-reinforcing doom loop.
• Chinese “open” artificial-intelligence models, which are free to download and tweak, are overtaking American ones. A study by the Massachusetts Institute of Technology found that Chinese models’ share of downloads over the year to August was 17%, compared with 16% for American models.
• Robinhood said it intends to launch a futures and derivatives exchange, together with Susquehanna. The retail broker and marketmaker are partnering up to offer a range of prediction contracts linked to events such as sports matches and elections.
• ВНР abandoned its takeover bid for Anglo American, a smaller mining rival. Anglo American is instead merging with Teck Resources, and has turned down bids from BHP twice in the past 18 months. The two merging companies run neighbouring copper mines in Chile, and once joined will rank among the top five producers of the metal globally.
• Decades after it started investing in China, Volkswagen now says it can build electric cars made entirely in the country. Compared with production costs in Germany, those in China are around 50% lower for some models. Europe’s largest carmaker plans to release about 30 types of electric vehicle in China over the next five years. It has also been trying to cut the number of workers it employs in Germany by 35,000. This year, progress has slowed, as far fewer people have quit voluntarily.

Chain reaction

• Investors are increasingly betting that nuclear energy will power artificial intelligence. X-energy, a company backed by Amazon, has raised $7oom to build nearly 150 small modular reactors in America and Britain. Valar Atomics and Aalo Atomics, two rival nuclear-reactor builders, have also raised funds recently.
• A potential treatment for Alzheimer’s, developed by Novo Nordisk and already used as a diabetes drug, failed a latestage trial. The pharmaceutical giant’s share price dropped sharply in response, continuing a long slide. Meanwhile Eli Lilly, one of Novo Nordisk’s rivals, became the first healthcare firm to reach a market value above $1trn.
• “Wicked: For Good”, the second part of a film based on the hit Broadway musical, pulled in $150m in American ticket sales on its opening weekend. Its performance was the second-best of the year so far, behind “A Minecraft Movie”.

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