Flagship

Trump tariffs trigger fury

World leaders reacted with fury and automotive stocks plunged following US President Donald Trump’s announcement of sweeping tariffs on car imports. Brazil, Canada, Japan, and the European Union slammed the duties, with Germany — the bloc’s carmaking giant — saying the EU must “respond firmly.” Trump threatened “far larger” levies against purported allies Canada and Europe if they joined forces against the US, suggesting an expansion of an already sprawling trade war that has enveloped American friends and rivals alike. Some US companies, such as Tesla, may be insulated from the barrage, but Bridgewater’s co-chief investment officer warned that American firms depend upon “global cooperation and unconstrained policy makers. Both are at risk.”

Europe looks to China on trade

The European Union trade commissioner is in Beijing with the two giant economies contemplating a rapprochement in the face of growing US protectionism. European capitals have grown hawkish towards China in recent years, in part over alleged trade and rights abuses, but also to show allegiance to Washington in its standoff with Beijing. US President Donald Trump’s trade war has upended that approach, and Chinese officials have undertaken a “charm offensive” in Europe, “telling their counterparts that the time is right for detente,” the South China Morning Post said. Patching up will come at a cost, though. “Europe will have to zip its lip over China’s abuses,” The Economist warned.

Trump slams leak as ‘witch hunt’

US President Donald Trump dismissed Signalgate as a “witch hunt” as the White House scrambled to shift blame and downplay the leak’s importance. Administration officials told a Congressional committee that no classified information was shared in a group chat which inadvertently included the editor-in-chief of The Atlantic, but the chat logs revealed times and details of upcoming strikes on Yemen, information that is usually closely guarded. Trump’s playbook is “to never apologize or take responsibility,” a Bloomberg columnist wrote, instead looking to “redirect and deflect”: Notably, the president even claimed Signal “could be defective.” The extraordinary scale of this breach, though, may be “too big to sweep under the rug.”

EU calls for food stockpiling

The European Union called on households to stockpile enough food to last 72 hours in readiness for possible war. The Ukraine conflict, Washington’s adversarial stance, and the lack of readiness exposed by the COVID-19 pandemic have forced a rethink: Among the threats Europe faces is “armed aggression against member states,” the European Commission warned, as well as disasters such as floods or wildfires, and in a crisis the first days are vital. European countries have begun to step up defense preparedness: France and the UK are boosting military cooperation to help Ukraine, while Sweden said it would raise defense spending from 2.4% to 3.5% of GDP and called for NATO to set a higher spending target.

US turns to Latam to curb migration

The US homeland security chief threatened to intensify an immigration crackdown during a visit to Latin America. Standing in front of a cell in a notorious El Salvador prison, on the first leg of a three-nation tour, Kristi Noem warned that migrants who entered the US illegally could be jailed abroad. Noem’s trip came as a US judge upheld a temporary block on efforts by the Trump administration to deport migrants using wartime powers, part of a growing dispute between the government and the courts. Ultimately, El País noted, the prison visit offered “a symbol of the Trump administration’s hardline stance on undocumented migration and the lengths to which it is willing to go to combat it.”

AI firms’ U-turn in Trump era

Artificial intelligence firms emboldened by US President Donald Trump’s pro-AI stance are seeking to remove rules that govern the potentially dangerous technology. AI firms used to call for more regulation: In 2023, more than a dozen tech leaders backed planned curbs, and Elon Musk warned of AI’s “civilizational risks.” But as Trump has sought to roll back safety requirements and said that AI is crucial for outpacing China, tech companies are following his lead. Meta, Google, and OpenAI have asked the White House to block state-level laws, and declare it legal to use copyrighted material to train AI models, The New York Times reported. However, other firms, such as Anthropic, say some of these demands will increase AI’s risks.

South Sudan leader detained

The main rival to South Sudan’s leader was placed under house arrest, ramping up fears of civil war. The head of the United Nations mission in the country this week warned that South Sudan was on the brink of a return to the conflict that killed an estimated 400,000 people from its independence in 2011 until a peace deal was agreed in 2018. The US and Britain have reduced their diplomatic presence in the country over the possibility of conflict, while Norway and Germany have temporarily shut their embassies. The detention of First Vice President Riek Machar amplifies those fears: He and President Salva Kiir have long been at loggerheads, with their coalition government regarded as fragile.

Ozempic’s impact on pensions

The rise of weight-loss drugs could upend the pensions industry, actuaries warned. Pension providers estimate how long the average person will live after retirement, and manage their funds accordingly. But Ozempic and other GLP-1 drugs could significantly increase life expectancies: Obesity raises the risk of a host of diseases, and around 6% of US citizens already take some form of weight-loss drug. Actuaries assume life expectancies will go up, a Financial Times columnist noted, but there are hints that the GLP-1 revolution could have as big an impact as the decline in smoking, but in a more concentrated time, and pension companies are already seeing the topic crop up in results calls with analysts.

The case for human spares

“Spare” human bodies without brains could offer a much-needed source of organs for donation, three prominent life scientists argued. Organs are in short supply: More than 100,000 patients are waiting for a transplant in the US alone. The root cause is “a severe shortage of ethically sourced human bodies,” the researchers said in MIT Technology Review. But advances in biomedical research may soon make it possible to grow human and animal “bodyoids,” lab-grown bodies developed from stem cells, which lack any sentience or ability to feel pain. Technical roadblocks remain, and “many will find the concept grotesque,” but we already use brain-dead bodies for experiments, and “the potential benefits… are great.”

Kashiwara wins the other math ‘Nobel’

A Japanese mathematician won the Abel Prize for his work on symmetries. The Abel is, alongside the Fields Medal, one of the most prestigious awards in math: Confusingly, both are sometimes called the “Nobel of mathematics,” but the Abel is perhaps the closer match since it, too, is named after a 19th-century Scandinavian whose name ends in -bel. Masaki Kashiwara’s work links several branches of mathematics, including “geometry, algebra, and analysis” according to the Abel committee, often translating a problem from one sphere to another, allowing him to use different tools to solve it. Kashiwara is the first Japanese person — and indeed “the first person based outside North America, Europe, or Israel,” Nature noted — to win the award.

• Brazil’s president concludes his trip to Japan with a meeting with the Japanese emperor.
• Dozens of executives and ministers gather in China for the Boao Forum.
• The Ski Jumping World Cup takes place in Slovenia.

The number of bitcoin-mining computers plugged into a hydroelectric dam in Zambia. Each machine makes around $5 a day, but the dam on the Zambezi river provides cheap energy, making it profitable. The dam also provides electricity for around 15,000 people and a hospital in the local town, but before the computers were plugged in, half of the plant’s electricity was wasted each day because uptake was slow. Now the bitcoin mine “accounts for around 30% of the plant’s revenue,” the BBC reported, allowing it to keep prices down.

Two Strangers Trying Not to Kill Each Other, Manon Ouimet and Jacob Perlmutter. This documentary exploring the 30-year marriage of two artists, Joel Meyerowitz and Maggie Barrett, reveals “the relationship of a late-life couple with unprecedented intimacy and candour,” according to BFI Sight and Sound: Ouimet and Perlmutter are themselves a couple, and coax from their subjects “an act of mutual self-portraiture.” Watch Two Strangers Trying Not to Kill Each Other at your local theater.

The new partnership between DoorDash and Klarna to offer installment loans for food delivery is the latest effort to turn normal commerce into Wall Street-bound cash flows, wrote Semafor’s Liz Hoffman.

It’s all “a bit spicy,” even for one executive who does it for a living. But if the economy cracks, Hoffman wrote, how eager will consumers be to stay current on their burrito bonds?