Flagship

EU hits back at US tariffs

The European Union hit the US with a raft of new tariffs in response to Washington imposing 25% levies on steel and aluminum imports. The expansion of US President Donald Trump’s trade war moves beyond even the transatlantic “fight that blew up in his first term,” Politico noted, with Brussels saying it would reinstate earlier duties on American exports including Harley-Davidsons, bourbon, and jeans, and soon unveil further curbs. China, too, vowed “all necessary measures” after having announced tariffs on American farm goods this week. Two trade experts argued that while the tariffs “seek to address a real challenge… they will not solve the underlying problem,” and would ultimately make goods reliant on steel and aluminum more expensive for Americans.

Worries over US consumers mount

Mounting evidence indicates US consumers are under severe stress. Americans’ willingness to spend helped the US ward off the risk of recession in recent years but they may finally be paring back. Three major US airlines warned this week of disappointing first-quarter results, blaming flagging consumer demand. Americans are missing monthly car-loan repayments at the highest rate in more than 30 years, and average inflation-adjusted household credit-card debt recently topped $10,000 for the first time since 2009. Prior scares about US consumers had limited impact on the overall economy because debt or delinquency levels were concentrated among low-income Americans. That is now changing: “We’re seeing heightened credit stress among high-income consumers,” one analyst told The Wall Street Journal.

Trump’s energy plans criticized

US President Donald Trump’s administration is wrongly prioritizing fossil fuels in an effort to solve a looming power shortage, the CEO of the largest US electricity provider told Semafor. NextEra CEO John Ketchum’s remarks at the CERAWeek energy confab comes with the US for the first time in a generation facing growing power demand thanks to the electrification of entire sectors as well as data center construction. Trump has rolled back support for green energy and pushed oil companies to drill more. Still, Ketchum’s criticism was an outlier at CERAWeek, where oil and gas giants were “relieved to have permission from the White House to stop genuflecting on the climate crisis,” Semafor’s climate & energy editor wrote.

Pressure on Putin over ceasefire

Washington and Kyiv’s proposed 30-day ceasefire in Ukraine will intensify pressure on Russia, but Moscow is unlikely to make concessions, analysts said. US President Donald Trump and Russian leader Vladimir Putin may speak as soon as this week, but Western security officials expect Putin to present deliberately “maximalist” demands in order to prolong the conflict, Bloomberg reported. That owes in part to domestic pressures: Putin’s militarization of Russian society has created a huge corps of veterans, meaning he “is unlikely to demobilize,” one expert said. Yet not accepting the ceasefire would also create problems, potentially derailing the recent reset in US-Russia relations.

Venezuela stops taking US deportees

Venezuela said it would stop taking deportees from the US in response to Washington’s decision to revoke oil giant Chevron’s operating license in the country. In a further blow to US President Donald Trump’s plan to deport millions of undocumented migrants, Ecuador’s president said he would not accept deportees from other countries. Latin America, under pressure from Washington, has been forced to find ways to respond to a sudden influx of migrants deported from the US, many of whom are being sent to countries they fled from and in which they haven’t lived in for decades, if at all.

China recruits researchers

Chinese universities are recruiting top researchers away from Western institutions as an intellectual arms race heats up. The South China Morning Post found a number of acclaimed academics of Chinese origin who have decades of combined experience working in the US in physics, semiconductors, and mathematics, who have now returned to China. Other countries are “much more serious about attracting the highly skilled,” than the US, The Economist noted, and Washington has alienated Chinese researchers through a now-disbanded program scrutinizing scholars with links to China, ostensibly to fight economic espionage. But Beijing, too, “has made clear that recruiting is a priority,” The Wall Street Journal noted.

Gulf welcomes migrants

The Gulf is redefining mainstream thinking about migration, offering a counternarrative to anti-immigrant sentiment in the West, a New York Times opinion piece argued. The European Union this week unveiled plans to deport more migrants, while the US launched a “self-deportation” app encouraging immigrants living illegally in the country to leave. The Gulf, by contrast, has been loosening controls and pivoting from a stratified system to “open its doors” to a range of skilled workers, Lydia Polgreen wrote in the Times. Dubai, in particular, is collapsing a distinction between immigrant and expatriate, while also rebuffing core tenets of Western discourse around asylum and naturalization. “Dubai is, in many ways, a glimpse into what the future might look like.”

In a polarized world, where do people find their happiness? Semafor, in partnership with Gallup and in coordination with the World Happiness Report editorial team, will present the latest data and insights at The State of Happiness in 2025: A World Happiness Report Launch Event, exploring key themes around kindness, generosity, and policies that enhance well-being.

Join Costa Rican Ambassador to the US Dr. Catalina Crespo-Sancho, Finnish Ambassador to the US Leena-Kaisa Mikkola, Icelandic Ambassador to the US Svanhildur Hólm Valsdóttir, special guest Gurudev Sri Sri Ravi Shankar, and more to explore the report’s key themes around kindness, generosity, and happiness and policies that enhance well-being.

Mar. 20, 2025 | Washington, DC | RSVP

SAfrica seeks budget reboot

​​South Africa’s finance minister will today make a second attempt to present a budget with the governing coalition’s future in the balance. Enoch Godongwana cancelled the planned budget last month after the pro-business Democratic Alliance, the second-biggest member of the government, said it failed to address decades of soaring debt and slowing economic growth. Local outlets reported the African National Congress will propose a lower increase in VAT — the main sticking point in the first draft — that it hopes will be enough to secure the budget’s passage, although doubts remain. “If the ANC fails to win the support of the DA this time, observers may question how long the [coalition] can last,” The Economist wrote.

Manchester United’s megastadium plans

Manchester United unveiled ambitious plans for a mammoth $2.6 billion new home. The storied soccer club wants to build a 100,000-seat stadium, which would be the largest in Britain, in time for the 2030-31 season, and has enlisted Norman Foster’s architecture firm to build a structure that one of the team’s co-owners compared to the Eiffel Tower in terms of future global recognition. But United’s strategy is out of keeping with the approach of other elite clubs — Barcelona, Liverpool, and Real Madrid have all been renovating existing sites — and its supporters were not uniformly positive about the plans: “Will it drive up ticket prices and force out local fans? Will it harm the atmosphere?” a fan group asked.

Older music crowds out new tunes

The persistent popularity of older music may be crowding out newer hits. About half of all songs played on streaming services are at least five years old, a figure that rises to nearly 75% when it comes to rock music, according to data compiled by Billboard. That points to a troubling trend, music writer Chris Dalla Riva warned: “Not only does it signify culture being stuck, but it means that it will be harder than ever for young artists to have a career.” The figures aren’t as depressing as they might first seem: Half of all the “old” songs played were from the 2010s — hardly yesteryear, at least from the perspective of Flagship’s 40-something writers.

• Ireland’s taoiseach, or leader, meets with US President Donald Trump in Washington.
• Quebec hosts a meeting of G7 foreign ministers.
• A new crew made up of two US astronauts, one from Japan and one from Russia, sets off for the International Space Station.

Year by which every country in the Middle East and North Africa is projected to experience water stress, according to a report by the Center for Strategic and International Studies think tank. That means every country in the region will be using at least 80% of their available water resources: “Dealing with the seismic social and economic shifts… will require thoughtful planning,” the report’s authors warn, before adding, “but the region is currently mired in crisis management, with international interest diminishing and aid budgets plummeting.”

Mayhem by Lady Gaga. Le Monde pointed to the tricky balance faced by the artist — once a challenger to icons like Madonna, now herself challenged by younger rivals such as Dua Lipa — and describes her seventh album as a return “to the fundamentals that built her success: abundant energy, machine sounds carefully dirtied by production, and immediately memorable choruses.” Listen to Mayhem on Spotify.

The US Democratic Party’s reckoning over age and “gerontocracy” appears to be on hold — key figures in the anti-Trump resistance, right now, were born in the 1940s, Semafor’s David Weigel reported.

“We have to meet incivility with incivility,” said Rep. Al Green in a radio interview, explaining why he shook his cane at the president. Green, along with Vermont’s Sen. Bernie Sanders, have, despite their age, stoked enthusiasm among the Democratic grassroots as few other legislators have done so far.