[May 24th 2025]

The world this week

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The world this week

Politics

Business

The weekly cartoon

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The world this week

Politics

5月 22, 2025 03:18 上午

After an 11-week total blockade Israel announced that it would allow a
minimal amount of food into Gaza under pressure from America. A

small amount of aid has since entered the strip but the UN said it

was “a drop in the ocean”. Meanwhile Binyamin Netanyahu, the

Israeli prime minister, said the Israel Defence Forces would be

“taking control of all of Gaza”. Israel ordered residents of Khan

Younis to evacuate as it prepared to unleash an “unprecedented

attack”.

Britain suspended talks on a trade deal with Israel and imposed

new sanctions on Israeli settlers in the occupied West Bank. Britain,

France and Canada told Israel they would take “concrete actions” if

it continues an “egregious” expansion of military operations.

Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, Iran’s supreme leader, said he was doubtful that
talks with America would lead to a nuclear deal and that

America had made “outrageous” demands about Iran’s uranium

enrichment.

Marco Rubio, the American secretary of state, warned that Syria

could be weeks away from “potential collapse and a full-scale civil

war of epic proportions”, and that its new leaders needed support.

Cyril Ramaphosa, South Africa’s president, went to the White House, where
Donald Trump claimed falsely that white Afrikaner

farmers were being targeted in a genocide. In front of TV cameras,

Mr Trump forced Mr Ramaphosa and his entourage to watch a video

that included incendiary comments from opposition black nationalists

in South Africa. The scene was reminiscent of the treatment given to

Volodymyr Zelensky when he visited the Oval Office in February.

Ethiopia’s federal election board revoked the legal registration of

the Tigrayan People’s Liberation Front, the ruling party in the

troubled region of Tigray and once the country’s most powerful

political outfit. The board’s controversial decision follows months of

rising tensions between the TPLF, which is Ethiopia’s main opposition

party, and the federal government of the prime minister, Abiy

Ahmed.

A gunman shot dead two Israelis who worked at Israel’s embassy

in Washington as they left an event at a Jewish museum. The

suspect was taken into custody and shouted “Free, free Palestine”.

Israel’s ambassador said the victims, a man and a woman, were a

couple who were about to get engaged. The FBI is considering

whether to treat the kil ings as terrorism.

Donald Trump went to Capitol Hill to persuade Republicans to vote

for his One Big Beautiful Bill Act, a sweeping piece of tax-and-

spending legislation·. The bill would increase the federal deficit.

Citing a “decline in fiscal metrics”, Moody’s downgraded America’s

credit rating from AAA to AA1, meaning that for the first time

America does not hold a top-notch score from any of the three big

credit-rating agencies. Amid worries about America’s growing debt,

the yield on 30-year government bonds jumped to over 5%, the

highest in 18 months. And stockmarkets and the dollar suffered, too.

America’s Supreme Court allowed the Trump administration to end

protections against deportation for 350,000 Venezuelans who have

settled in the country under the Temporary Protected Status

programme. The court is still open to appeals against the

government in the matter.

Brexity things

Britain’s prime minister, Sir Keir Starmer, achieved a reset in

relations with the European Union at the first UK-EU summit since Brexit in
2020. The agreement highlighted defence, agri-food

products, the movement of younger people and use of e-gates at

airports. The deal was welcomed by many businesses and trade

groups as it will reduce some trade frictions. But its detractors,

notably the British fishing industry (worth less than 0.1% of British

GDP), claimed it was a sell-out. Public opinion has warmed to closer

ties with the EU since Brexit.

Britain’s net migration figure fell sharply in 2024 to 431,000, down

by half from the 860,000 recorded in the previous year. The official

numbers showed that immigration fell to 948,000, from 1.3m in

2023. The statisticians said the change was explained by a decrease

in immigration from outside the EU and an increase in emigration

from people who had arrived on study visas after the pandemic.

A phone call between Donald Trump and Vladimir Putin that was

supposed to press the Russians into peace talks with Ukraine

amounted to no more than puffery. Mr Putin kept to the status quo, repeating
his insistence that Ukraine make concessions. Mr Trump

seemed to suggest he would not make any further effort to find

peace and would leave Russia and Ukraine to it. The day before the
phone call Russia launched one of its biggest drone attacks of the

war, which mostly targeted Kyiv. Ukraine and Russia recently held

their first direct talks in three years. They lasted for just two hours.

Lithuania filed a lawsuit against Belarus at the International Court

of Justice in The Hague for facilitating and enabling the smuggling of

migrants across their border. The Baltic states and Poland have for

years alleged that Belarus and Russia are pushing migrants over

their borders to destabilise their countries. Lithuania contends that

this does serious harm to its “sovereignty, security and public order,

as well as to the rights and interests of the smuggled migrants

themselves.”

The first round of Poland’s presidential election saw Rafal

Trzaskowski, the liberal mayor of Warsaw, take 31% of the vote,

followed closely by Karol Nawrocki, the candidate of the hard right,

on 29.5%. Mr Trzaskowski is backed by Donald Tusk, the prime

minister. The closeness of the result was a surprise; Mr Trzaskowski

had a bigger lead in opinion polls. If he loses in a run-off on June 1st

it would complicate Mr Tusk’s efforts to pass reforming legislation.

The current hard-right president, Andrzej Duda, has blocked some

two dozen bills.

In Romania a presidential election run-off was won by Nicusor Dan,

the centrist mayor of Bucharest, who defeated George Simion, the

hard-right nationalist candidate. In the first round Mr Simion had

secured twice as many votes as Mr Dan, but in its wake Mr Simion

scared voters away with his hostility to NATO and Ukraine. The

previous presidential election in December was cancelled amid

claims of Russian interference.

The centre-right government in Portugal was returned to power in

a general election, though it again fell short of a majority. The hard-

right Chega (“Enough”) party, which campaigned on a platform of

slashing illegal immigration, surged in the poll, coming only slightly

behind the Socialists in the tally of votes and equalling their seats in

parliament.

In Argentina· the libertarian party of President Javier Milei won the mid-
term election for the Buenos Aires city legislature. The leftist

Peronists came second and the centre-right PRO party came a

humiliating third in its traditional stronghold. Markets cheered. Mr

Milei now looks better positioned politically ahead of national mid-

terms in October.

El Salvador’s Congress passed a law that imposes a tax on foreign

donations to local NGOs. Nayib Bukele, the president, described it as

a “foreign agents” bill. That invited comparisons to autocratic

regimes such as Russia, Venezuela and notably Georgia that have

passed similar legislation amid crackdowns on journalists and pro-

democracy organisations.

The relationship is over

The conservative Liberal-National coalition in Australia split, ending

a pact that had lasted for decades. The coalition was last in

government in 2022, suffering another defeat at a recent election.

The Liberals, who dominated the pact, take most of their support

from urban areas and will now be the sole party in opposition. The

smaller National Party gets most of its support from rural areas.

Japan’s government, which has seen its approval ratings sink to

record lows, was shaken by the resignation of the farming minister

for claiming he has never had to buy rice because his supporters

donate it to him. His comments sparked fury among voters who are

having to fork out record prices for the staple food.

This article was downloaded by calibre from

https://www.economist.com/the-world-

this-week/2025/05/22/politics

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The world this week

Business

5月 22, 2025 03:17 上午

Britain’s consumer prices soared by 1.2% in April, pushing the

annual rate of inflation to 3.5%. One factor behind the jump was a

more than 26% rise in water utility bills. Households also felt the

pinch from higher energy costs. Rachel Reeves, the chancellor of the

exchequer, described the figures as “clearly disappointing”. Traders

pared their bets on further interest-rate cuts from the Bank of

England.
America’s Senate moved a bill forward that would create the first

regulatory framework for stablecoins, digital currencies that are

tied to the value of an asset, usually the dollar. The Democrats had

initially blocked the bill over concerns about consumer protections,

but in the end enough of them joined Republicans on a procedural

vote to advance the legislation to its final stage.

An outage of Bloomberg’s terminals affected markets for 90

minutes. The terminals are widely used in financial trading and carry

data on live pricing. Users pay around $28,000 a year for each

terminal.

Novo Nordisk announced that its chief executive was stepping

down. Investors have expressed concerns that the pharmaceutical

giant is losing its competitive edge in the weight-loss market to rivals

such as Eli Lilly. Novo Nordisk makes the Ozempic and Wegovy

drugs. Its share price has slimmed down by 30% this year.

CATL made a successful debut on the Hong Kong stock exchange,

with its share price rising by 16% on the first day of trading. The

Chinese maker of electric-car batteries raised $4.6bn, which could

rise to $5.3bn if the underwriting banks exercise their options. It is

the biggest stock offering in the world so far this year, and the
second listing for CATL, which first went public in Shenzhen in 2018.

In reverse

Honda became the latest carmaker to cut back its investment in

pure electric vehicles because of slowing demand. It also scrapped a

target to achieve 30% of its sales in EVs by 2030. The Japanese

company is instead ramping up its forecasts for sales of hybrid

vehicles.

The member countries of the World Health Organisation formally

adopted the first ever pandemic agreement, which sets out the

tools to combat a global outbreak of disease, including the sharing

of vaccines. Once an annex covering data-sharing is agreed on the

treaty will be sent to member states for ratification.

In an announcement that could potentially undermine its partnership

with OpenAI, Microsoft said that it would add Grok’s artificial-

intelligence models to its Azure cloud-computing platform for

developers. Grok is a generative AI created by Elon Musk’s startup,

xAI, a potential rival to OpenAI. Microsoft is OpenAI’s biggest

investor and has integrated its models with Azure. But it wants to

add other models to the platform so that it eventually becomes the

dominant hub for developers.

OpenAI shrugged off the news from Microsoft by announcing it was

buying IO in a $6.5bn deal. IO is a startup founded by Sir Jony Ive,

best known for his work on designing Apple’s iPhone. OpenAI wil

work with Sir Jony’s team to develop new devices built specifically

for AI technology. We can “completely reimagine what it means to

use a computer”, said Sam Altman, OpenAI’s boss.

In Spain the backlash against mass tourism continued apace, as the

government ordered Airbnb to take 66,000 rental listings off its

website for breaking various regulations, such as not identifying

whether the property is owned by a person or a company. A court in

Madrid agreed that 5,000 listings must be removed immediately.

Protests have been held across Spain claiming that holiday rentals

are making local housing unaffordable.

A recent cyber-attack on Marks & Spencer could cost the company

£300m ($400m) in profit, it said, and operations won’t return to

normal until July. The British retailer’s digital logistics system has

been crippled, forcing staff to use pen and paper to replenish its

shelves. M&S insists that it has not underinvested in its cyber-

security systems and that the incident was a result of human error.

It has not said whether it paid the attackers a ransom.

Shopping baskets

Home Depot bucked a trend among big American retailers and

pledged not to raise prices in response to higher tariffs. Around

half the goods that the DIY chain sells are produced in America and

so it is less exposed to the duties than other companies. Target cut

its sales forecast but said that raising prices because of tariffs would

be a “last resort”. Donald Trump recently told Walmart to “EAT THE

TARIFFS” after it suggested it would have to increase prices. “I’ll be

watching,” he said ominously.

This article was downloaded by calibre from

https://www.economist.com/the-world-

this-week/2025/05/22/business

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The world this week

The weekly cartoon

5月 22, 2025 04:25 上午

Dig deeper into the subject of this week’s cartoon

Israel says it is unleashing an “unprecedented attack”

Israel’s radical new course in Gaza

The war in Gaza must end

The editorial cartoon appears weekly in The Economist. You can see

last week’s here.

This article was downloaded by calibre from
https://www.economist.com/the-world-

this-week/2025/05/22/the-weekly-cartoon

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Leaders

The man with a plan for Vietnam

Vietnam :: A Communist Party hard man has to rescue Asia’s great success
story

MAGA’s assault on science is an act of

grievous self-harm

Exit, pursued by an elephant :: America will pay the price most of all

The Senate should vote down Donald

Trump’s reckless tax cuts

A big baleful bill :: If it does not, a collision with the bond markets awaits

The best part of the UK-EU deal is a system

for doing more deals

Ever closer negotiation :: Sir Keir Starmer’s “reset” is still a hard Brexit. It
will need

softening

The plan to protect America by shooting

down missiles mid-air

Donald Trump’s Golden Dome :: It’s not as outlandish as it sounds

How Poland can keep its place at the heart

of Europe

Don’t throw it away :: If it turns inward, the country and continent will lose
out

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Vietnam

The man with a plan for

Vietnam

A Communist Party hard man has to rescue Asia’s great success

story

5月 22, 2025 05:51 上午

FIFTY YEARS ago the last Americans were evacuated from Saigon,

leaving behind a war-ravaged and impoverished country. Today

Saigon, renamed Ho Chi Minh City, is a metropolis of over 9m people

full of skyscrapers and flashy brands. You might think this is the
moment to celebrate Vietnam’s triumph: its elimination of severe

poverty; its ranking as one of the ten top exporters to America; its

role as a manufacturing hub for firms like Apple and Samsung. In

fact Vietnam has trouble in store·. To avoid it—and show whether emerging
economies can still join the developed world—Vietnam wil

need to pull off a second miracle. It must find new ways to get rich

despite the trade war, and the hard man in charge must turn himself

into a reformer.

Vietnam’s economy is booming, but its new leader is

worried·

That man, To Lam, isn’t exactly Margaret Thatcher. He emerged to

become the Communist Party boss from the security state last year

after a power struggle. He nonetheless recognises that his country’s

formula is about to stop working. It was concocted in the 1980s in

the doi moi reforms that opened up the economy to trade and

private firms. These changes, plus cheap labour and political

stability, turned Vietnam into an alternative to China. The country

has attracted $230bn of multinational investment and become an

electronics-assembly titan. Chinese, Japanese, South Korean and

Western firms all operate factories there. In the past decade

Vietnam has grown at a compound annual rate of 6%, faster than

India and China.

The immediate problem is the trade war. Vietnam is so good at

exporting that it now has the fifth-biggest trade surplus with

America. President Donald Trump’s threat of a 46% levy may be

negotiated down: Vietnam craftily offered the administration a grab-

bag of goodies to please the president and his allies, including a deal

for SpaceX and the purchase of Boeing aircraft. On May 21st Eric

Trump, the president’s son, broke ground at a Trump resort in

Vietnam which he said would “blow everyone away”.

But even a reduced tariff rate would be a nightmare for Vietnam. It

has already lost competitiveness as factory wages have risen above

those in India, Indonesia and Thailand. And if, as the price of a deal,

America presses Vietnam to purge its economy of Chinese

inputs, technology and capital, that will upset the delicate

geopolitical balancing act it has performed so well. Like many Asian

countries it wants to hedge between an unreliable America and a

bullying China which, despite being a fellow communist state, has

long been a rival and now disputes Vietnam’s claim to coastal waters

and atolls. The trade and geopolitical crunch is happening as the

population is ageing and amid rising environmental harm, from

thinning topsoils in the Mekong Delta to coal-choked air.

Mr Lam made his name orchestrating a corruption purge called “the

blazing furnace”. Now he has to torch Vietnam’s old economic model.

He has set expectations sky-high by declaring an “era of national

rise” and targeting double-digit growth by 2030. He has made flashy

announcements, too, including quadrupling the science-and-

technology budget and setting a target to earn $100bn a year from

semiconductors by 2050. But to avoid stagnation, Mr Lam needs to

go further, confronting entrenched problems that other developing

countries also face as the strategy of exporting-to-get-rich becomes

trickier.

Vietnam’s growth miracle is concentrated around a few islands of

modernity. Big multinational companies run giant factories for export

that employ locals. But they mostly buy their inputs abroad and

create few spillovers for the rest of the economy. This is why

Vietnam has failed to increase the share of the value in its exports

that is added inside the country. A handful of politically connected

conglomerates dominate property and banking, among other

industries. None is yet globally competitive, including Vietnam’s loss-

making Tesla-wannabe, VinFast, which is part of the biggest

conglomerate, Vingroup. Meanwhile, clumsy state-owned enterprises

still run industries from energy to telecoms.

To spread prosperity, Mr Lam needs to level the playing field for

smaller firms and new entrants. That means hacking back a

bewildering licensing regime and allowing credit to flow to small

firms by shaking up a corruption-prone banking industry. Legislation

issued this month abolishes a tax on household firms and

strengthens legal protection for entrepreneurs. That is a step in the

right direction, but Mr Lam also needs to free up universities so that

ideas flow more easily and innovations thrive.

This is where it gets risky. Vietnam’s people would without a doubt

benefit from a more liberal political system. But although that may

also help development, China has shown that it may not be essential

—at least not immediately. What is crucial is facing down powerful

vested interests that hog scarce resources. A good start would be

forcing the oligarchs to compete internationally or lose state support,

as South Korea did with its chaebols. Often they are protected by

cronies and pals within the state apparatus and the Communist

Party. Encouragingly, Mr Lam has already begun a high-stakes

streamlining of the state, including by laying off 100,000 civil

servants. He is also halving the number of provinces in a country

where regions have sponsored powerful factions within the party.

And he is abolishing several ministries. All this will modernise the

bureaucracy, but it is also a bril iant way of making enemies.

The autocrat’s dilemma

The danger is that, like Xi Jinping in China, Mr Lam centralises power

so as to renew the system—but in the process perpetuates a culture

of fear and deference that undermines his reforms. If Mr Lam fails,

Vietnam will muddle on as a low-value-added production centre that

missed its moment. But if he succeeds, a second doi moi would

propel 100m Vietnamese into the developed world, creating another

Asian growth engine and making it less likely that Vietnam will fall

into a Chinese sphere of influence. This is Vietnam’s last best chance

to become rich before it gets old. Its destiny rests with Mr Lam,

Asia’s least likely, but most consequential, reformer. ■

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up to our weekly Cover Story newsletter.

This article was downloaded by calibre from

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vietnam

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Exit, pursued by an elephant

MAGA’s assault on science is

an act of grievous self-harm

America will pay the price most of all

5月 22, 2025 09:07 上午

Editor’s update (May 22nd): The Trump administration revoked

Harvard University’s ability to enroll international students.

THE ATTACKS have been fast and furious. In a matter of months the

Trump administration has cancelled thousands of research grants·

and withheld bil ions of dollars from scientists. Projects at Harvard

and Columbia, among the world’s best universities, have been

abruptly cut off. A proposed budget measure would slash as much as

50% from America’s main research-funding bodies. Because

America’s technological and scientific prowess is world-beating, the

country has long been a magnet for talent. Now some of the world’s

brightest minds are anxiously looking for the exit.

Why is the administration undermining its own scientific

establishment? On May 19th Michael Kratsios, a scientific adviser to

President Donald Trump, laid out the logic. Science needs shaking

up, he said, because it has become inefficient and sclerotic, and its

practitioners have been captured by groupthink, especially on

diversity, equity and inclusion (DEI). You might find that reasonable

enough. Look closely at what is happening, though, and the picture

is alarming. The assault on science is unfocused and disingenuous.

Far from unshackling scientific endeavour, the administration is doing

it grievous damage. The consequences will be bad for the world, but

America will pay the biggest price of all.

The MAGA revolution threatens America’s most innovative

place
America’s scientific prowess is a huge global subsidy·

Trump’s attack on science is growing fiercer and more

indiscriminate·

America is in danger of experiencing an academic brain

drain·

How cuts to science funding will hurt ordinary Americans·

One problem is that actions are less targeted than the administration

claims, as our special Science section this week explains. As Mr

Trump’s officials seek to stamp out DEI, punish universities for

incidents of antisemitism and cut overall government spending,

science has become collateral damage. A suspicion that scientists

are pushing “woke” thinking has led grant-makers to become allergic

to words like “trans” and “equity”. As a consequence, it is not only

inclusive education schemes that are being culled, but an array of

orthodox science. Funding has been nixed for studies that seek, say,
to assess cancer risk factors by race, or the prevalence of sexually

transmitted diseases by sex.

The attack on elite universities takes this to an illogical extreme.

Because the White House sees colleges as bastions of wokeness and

antisemitism, it has withheld funding for research at Harvard and

Columbia, no matter in which subject. Overnight, projects on

everything from Alzheimer’s disease to quantum physics have been

stopped. When scientists warn of the harm this does, they risk being

seen as part of a scornful anti-MAGA elite that has been protected

for too long.

More fundamentally, the claim that Mr Trump will stop groupthink is

disingenuous. MAGA reserves a special hatred for public-health and

climate researchers, whom it regards as finger-wagging worrywarts

determined to suppress Americans’ liberties—as they did in

lockdowns and school closures during covid-19. The consequence is

that spending on vaccine and climate research will be gutted most

viciously of all. With the stroke of a pen, officials are trying to

impose new rules that tell scientists what areas of inquiry they may

pursue and what is off-limits—a shocking step backwards for a

republic founded on the freethinking values of the Enlightenment.

Meanwhile, genuine problems with the way science works in America

are being neglected. Mr Kratsios is right that there is too much

bureaucracy. America’s best researchers say they spend two out of

five days on form-fil ing and other administrative tasks, instead of in

the lab. Research is becoming more incremental. New ways of

funding, such as lotteries, are worth trying. So far, however, the

White House has not set out plans to make science work better.

Indeed, when scientists are uncertain whether their work will still be

funded, or if they take to the courts to challenge arbitrary grant

terminations, American science becomes less efficient, not more so.

Congress and the courts may yet act to limit the scale and the scope

of these anti-science endeavours. Even so, the damage of the past

few months will soon be felt. Savage cuts to the National Oceanic

and Atmospheric Administration mean worse weather-forecasting,

making it harder for farmers to know when to plant their crops, and

for local authorities to prepare for natural disasters. Those to the

Centres for Disease Control and Prevention will make it harder to

monitor, and thus curb, outbreaks of disease.

There will also be longer-term harm. Although Mr Trump hopes his

tariffs will lure businesses to invest in America, their research

spending is unlikely to fill the same gaps as publicly funded basic

work, much of which may not be commercialised for years, if ever.

As funding is frozen, the danger of a brain drain looms. In the first

three months of the year the number of applications for overseas

jobs from American scientists rose by a third compared with the

same period in 2024; foreign researchers applying to come to

America fell by a quarter. The country’s reputation for welcoming

talent will not be so easily regained. If the belief that academic

freedom is curtailed takes hold, the scientists who remain could self-

censor their lines of inquiry for years to come.

The consequences will be felt around the world. America is the

planet’s biggest backer of public research; it is home to half of all

science Nobel laureates and four of the ten best scientific-research

universities. The knowledge uncovered by American scientists· and

resulting innovations such as the internet and mRNA vaccines have

been a boon to humanity. When America retreats, everyone is

robbed of the fruits of this ingenuity.

Exit, pursued by an elephant

It is America, however, that will feel the pain most of all. At the

beginning of the 20th century there was no branch of science in

which Uncle Sam led the world. At the century’s end there was none

where it did not. America’s triumphs—its economic prowess, and its

technological and military might—were interwoven with that

scientific success. As America pulls back, it will cede ground to

authoritarian China· as a scientific superpower, with all the benefits

that confers. MAGA’s assault on science is not just about DEI, nor is

it about universities. It is first and foremost an act of self-harm. ■

For subscribers only: to see how we design each week’s cover, sign

up to our weekly Cover Story newsletter.

This article was downloaded by calibre from

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is-an-act-of-

grievous-self-harm
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A big baleful bill

The Senate should vote down

Donald Trump’s reckless tax

cuts

If it does not, a collision with the bond markets awaits

5月 22, 2025 05:56 上午

COMPLACENT ABOUT being the world’s haven, America has been

budgeting without any sense of restraint. Over the past year the

federal government has borrowed a staggering $2trn, or 6.9% of

GDP, even though no crisis has drained its coffers. On May 16th
Moody’s, a rating agency, stripped the country of its last headline

triple-A credit score. Yet on May 22nd the House of Representatives

passed, by just one vote, President Donald Trump’s “big, beautiful”

budget bill, which cuts taxes and raises deficits. Reflecting the rising

fiscal risk, the yield on 30-year Treasuries has risen to 5.1%, the

highest since 2007, amid a sell-off

America has more fiscal leeway than other countries, but the

Republican Party seems determined to test its limits. Net federal

debts have grown to 100% of GDP, a near-trebling over two

decades, meaning that the Treasury will soon pay more than $1trn

per year in debt interest, almost as much as it spends on health care

for the old. Politicians who should be debating how to tighten their

belts are instead poised to raise borrowing still further. Unless they

think again, they risk stoking a crisis.

Trump will be unpleasantly surprised by America’s tariff

revenues·

Some Republicans pretend that their budgeting is sound, but they

are guilty of a sleight of hand. The bill’s main effect is to take the

temporary tax cuts from Mr Trump’s first term and make them

permanent. A continuation of the status quo, they argue, is not a

new expense. The bill also adds new tax cuts which, to keep down

costs, will supposedly expire in 2028. In other words, sunset clauses

for new tax cuts seem to count as a saving, but stopping scheduled

sunsets comes free. To this fantasy, the bill adds cuts to clean-

energy subsidies and Medicaid, health insurance mostly for the poor, to
produce a slight fiscal tightening.

In reality the bill makes it more likely that America will exhaust its

fiscal space. Today’s official forecasts, which suggest that net debt

interest could soon hit a record high as a share of GDP and then

keep rising, are bleak—and they assume that the 2017 tax cuts

expire and that deficits will narrow. The new law would ensure that

deficits stay around 6-7% of GDP, raising forecast debt in 2034 by

about $3trn. And if new temporary tax cuts become permanent, the

cost could exceed $4trn. These measures include tax exemptions for

tips and overtime pay that were promised by Mr Trump during his
election campaign. Once enacted, they will be hard to get rid of,

whatever the law says.

Republicans hope that two things will fill this giant hole. One is tariff

revenues·. This may be partly true, but their estimated proceeds

range from $1.4trn-2.9trn over a decade. Moreover, the figures

include reciprocal duties that are on hold pending talks to reduce

them, after their announcement caused a mini-run on dollar assets.

The other great Republican hope is economic growth. Yet today’s bil

is far less pro-growth than Mr Trump’s past tax reforms, which

included a big permanent corporate-tax cut. The tip and overtime

exemptions are gimmicks. The bill even includes a big increase in

the deduction that high earners can claim on account of their state

and local tax bills, which in effect subsidises lower levels of

government to raise the taxes they levy. When combined with Mr

Trump’s tariffs, the overall effect on growth will be negative.

Moreover, whereas in 2017 a deficit increase arguably provided a

helpful stimulus, there is less slack in the economy today, meaning

that more spending is likely to be offset by higher interest rates.

Junkie debt

The bill now passes to the Senate, which should vote against it. The

belief that deficits will never matter is dangerous, especially as

doubts mount over the country’s commitment to economic stability

and low inflation under Mr Trump. America needs lower spending

and higher taxes to bring down borrowing. When politicians do not

face up to reality, the bond market eventually forces reality upon

them—and that could prove sudden and painful. ■

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Ever closer negotiation

The best part of the UK-EU

deal is a system for doing

more deals

Sir Keir Starmer’s “reset” is still a hard Brexit. It will need softening

5月 22, 2025 03:17 上午

FANS AND FOES of this week’s agreement between Britain and the
European Union have made hugely exaggerated claims about it. Sir

Keir Starmer heralded it as historic and the start of a new era. The

prime minister’s opponents accused him of betraying Brexit or of

kil ing it altogether. The truth is that the deal sensibly, if modestly,

reduces some of the worst trade frictions introduced after Britain’s

exit from the EU five years ago. And it adds a new pact to work

together on rebuilding Europe’s defences, an urgent task given

Russian aggression and American equivocation. But this “reset” is

neither historic nor an act of betrayal. Brexit remains “hard”.

Alongside defence, the main agreement was for Britain to align with

EU food standards, thereby easing frictions that have hit exports

hard. Linking carbon-adjustment and electricity schemes will also

help trade. A planned youth-mobility programme should benefit both

sides, as will Britain’s promise to consider rejoining the Erasmus+

student-exchange scheme. The same goes for closer co-operation on

data exchange through the Europol policing agency. Sir Keir reckons

the overall package may boost Britain’s economy by about £9bn

($12bn) in 2040: that is only 0.3% of GDP, but for a sluggish

economy it is still welcome·.

This being a trade negotiation, both sides made concessions. Sir Keir

rolled over the EU’s access to British fishing waters for 12 extra

years, to 2038, outraging many fishermen. His alignment with EU

food regulations means accepting rules which Britain has very little

say in making, and some role for the European Court of Justice.

Against this, aligning with food rules simplifies trade between Great

Britain and Northern Ireland. And Britain retains the freedom to

strike trade deals with third countries, as it has just done with

America and India.

The claim by Kemi Badenoch, leader of the Conservatives, that this

is a sell-out is absurd. Sir Keir has stuck to all three red lines that

Labour put in its party manifesto last year: no single market, no

customs union and no free movement of people. Indeed, for most of

the period after 2016, when Britain voted to leave the EU, this

version of Brexit would have been deemed to be “hard” not “soft”.

Voters were sold a vision in which swashbuckling post-Brexit Britain

would be global and deregulated at the same time as it set its own

rules to control trade and immigration. Acknowledging that this

outcome was always a fantasy is not a betrayal, but the welcome

intrusion of reality.

Ms Badenoch is also ignoring a shift in public opinion. Most voters

now think the vote to leave was a mistake. A majority, even in Nigel

Farage’s Reform UK, favour closer relations with Brussels. So do

most business groups.

EU leaders seem pleased not because they think they have won a

battle but because they want closer relations with an important

partner. This is clearest in defence, since building a credible

European system of security requires not just more money but also

the full participation of one of the continent’s military powers.

Warmer relations also increase the chances of further improvements

in the Brexit deal.

What next? This week’s agreement is really a road map to a deal:

years of negotiations now lie ahead. Perhaps its best feature was to

establish a system of annual summits, with working parties

implementing future deals. This framework could eventually even

lead to a re-examination of Sir Keir’s red lines. A future government

may have a mandate to trade off sovereignty against membership of

the customs union.

The direction of travel towards a closer relationship is now set. Other

countries in Europe that are not members of the EU are working

their way along a similar course. Norway is starting a new debate

about joining the club. The Swiss have spent over 30 years

negotiating every detail of their relationship. Post-Brexit Britain must

get used to that, too. ■

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Donald Trump’s Golden Dome

The plan to protect America

by shooting down missiles

mid-air

It’s not as outlandish as it sounds

5月 22, 2025 05:53 上午

IN THE 1980S scientists working on Ronald Reagan’s Strategic

Defence Initiative proposed what seemed like a madcap scheme to

defend America. Thousands of interceptor satellites would orbit

Earth and attack enemy missiles as they took off. The idea fizzled

out. It has been resuscitated by Donald Trump, who on May 20th

said that his Golden Dome missile-defence shield would cost $175bn

in total, take two to three years to complete and offer “close to

100%” protection.

Mr Trump’s vision sounds just as fantastical as Reagan’s. “We call it

super technology,” he declared. “Nobody else has it.” But in essence,

the Golden Dome is not as outlandish as it might once have been. In

fact, done well, it could become a useful part of America’s defensive

arsenal.

Star wars returns·

In the 1980s putting sensors into space and building miniature

computers to sit inside thousands of interceptors was very

expensive. Now, thanks in part to Elon Musk and his company

SpaceX, launch costs have fallen dramatically. The Congressional

Budget Office (CBO), a non-partisan think-tank, estimates that the

cost of developing a constellation· that could defeat one to two

intercontinental-range ballistic missiles (ICBMs) has fallen by 30% to

40% compared with estimates in 2004 and 2012.

The Golden Dome idea also promises to be more useful—which is

why the Biden administration began work on the space-based

sensors that would track cruise missiles and the digital pipes that
pass tracking data from satellite to satellite. America’s adversaries

increasingly wield missiles that can take more circuitous routes to

the continental United States, circumventing the radars and

interceptors designed for attacks coming over the polar region. In

addition, the threat to America used to come solely from nuclear-

armed missiles. It now includes non-nuclear conventional missiles

that might target ports, air bases and other military infrastructure.

Inevitably, Mr Trump’s claims are exaggerated. No missile-defence

system will ever offer blanket protection. America would need

36,000 space-based interceptors to defeat just ten North Korean

ICBMs, allowing for 30 seconds of decision time, according to the

American Physical Society, a group of physicists. Countering larger

salvoes from Russia and China, and covering every corner of

American soil, would cause those numbers to mushroom. So, too,

would the cost. Even a modest shield, designed to parry a couple of

ICBMs, could cost $161bn-542bn over 20 years. That is an enormous

sum at a time when the modernisation of nuclear forces is also

expected to demand $946bn by 2035.

In practice, Mr Trump should be more modest in his ambitions—and

not only because of the cost. In his executive order in January, he

demanded a system that could defend against any foreign aerial

attack. In his announcement this week, he promised that cruise,

ballistic and hypersonic missiles would all be destroyed. If so, it

would be destabilising. Fearing that their nuclear deterrent forces

might become ineffective, China and Russia would seek to expand

their arsenals—in China’s case even faster than today—or to build

weapons that would give American leaders even less warning time.

In reality, some Russian and Chinese nuclear-armed ICBMs would

always get through. However, that does not mean homeland missile

defence is pointless. In recent years, Israel, Ukraine and India have

all shown how blocking even a modest share of incoming projectiles

can limit the damage and buy some decision-making time for

political leaders— who might otherwise feel compelled to fire back at

once. ■

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which brings together the best of our leaders, columns, guest essays

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Don’t throw it away

How Poland can keep its place

at the heart of Europe

If it turns inward, the country and continent will lose out

5月 22, 2025 05:38 上午

TWICE IT VANISHED from the map, swallowed up by its rapacious

neighbours. After it emerged from the second world war as a Soviet

satellite, it endured decades of oppression. Today, Poland has

transformed itself into Europe’s most overlooked military and

economic power—with a bigger army than Britain, France or

Germany and living standards, adjusted for purchasing power, that

are about to eclipse Japan’s. Yet, just when Poland should stand

proud and tall once more, is it about to throw away its influence?

That is the question Poles face in the decisive run-off vote· to elect

their president on June 1st. One vision, from the candidate of the

Law and Justice (PiS) party, is a brand of right-wing nationalism that

feeds off conflict with Poland’s neighbours and the European Union.

The other, from the centre, is that, in a dangerous world, Poland

needs Europe to magnify its strengths, just as Europe needs Poland

as a source of security and economic dynamism. Unfortunately, at

the moment the right may have the upper hand.

Poland’s election will cement or ruin its standing in Europe·

The ignored stockmarket superstar

Why so much is riding on Poland’s presidential elections

For the past three decades, Poland has shown how much a country

can achieve by European integration and good economic policy.

Since 1995 income per person has more than trebled. Since it joined

the EU in 2004 Poland has never known recession apart from briefly

at the height of the covid-19 shutdown. During those two decades,

its average annual growth has been almost 4%.

The fruits of that growth are on display across the country. Warsaw,

the capital, boasts Europe’s tallest building outside Russia, the Varso

tower; and below it bustles with designer shops and cafés, IT

startups and fashion houses. Out in the once-neglected countryside

fine roads, often built with EU money, criss-cross vistas of well-

tended fields, farms and new houses.

Poles used to flock abroad to find work, but for some years now

home has been a stronger draw. Manufacturing is booming, thanks

to Poland’s proximity to Germany, continuing to do well even as its

western neighbour, like much of Europe, has stagnated. When

Germany, under its new chancellor, Friedrich Merz, starts a planned

new burst of infrastructure and defence spending, Poland is likely to

be a beneficiary.

Long attuned to the threat from Russia, Poland has used its wealth

to enhance its security. It now musters the largest army in Europe

after Russia, Ukraine and Turkey, and the third-largest in NATO. It

spends well over 4% of its GDP each year on defence, far above the

2% that has been the NATO target since 2014, and plans to raise

that to over 5% next year.

This has translated into influence. These days the group that counts

in European security is sometimes dubbed the four musketeers: the

young addition to Britain, France and Germany is Poland, like the

superlative swordsman d’Artagnan. Tellingly, its prime minister,

Donald Tusk, travelled to Kyiv earlier this month with his three

counterparts to stress that Europe is ready to stand by Ukraine even

as America’s commitment has weakened. Poland’s stance is in sharp

distinction to the rest of the “Visegrad Four”. Hungary under Viktor

Orban and Slovakia under Robert Fico have both taken the side of

Russia rather than Ukraine; and the Czech Republic is expected to

tilt in that direction after elections in October.

Given Poland’s record, much of it achieved during the total of ten

years in which PiS has been in power, you might conclude that it

could continue its renaissance with either candidate in June’s run-off

election—especially as the role of president in Poland is less powerful

than that of prime minister. However, that would be a mistake.

Under the constitution, the president’s veto can be overridden only

by a three-fifths majority in the Sejm, the lower house, which Mr

Tusk does not command. The current president, Andrzej Duda, is a

former PiS politician who has blocked or delayed many of the new
government’s reforms and is now termed out. PiS wants his

successor to be Karol Nawrocki, a fierce ideologue who would be

even less accommodating than Mr Duda. Mr Nawrocki is almost

certain to use his powers to block Mr Tusk’s agenda, so as to pave

the way for a PiS victory in the next parliamentary elections. To win

the presidency, he would depend on support from far-right parties

that exploit growing anti-Ukrainian feelings; one is openly

antisemitic.

This matters because Mr Tusk is trying to unravel PiS’s capture of the

state while it was most recently in office, from 2015 to 2023. In that

time, while pursuing mostly sensible economic and security policies,

PiS systematically took over independent institutions, including the

judiciary, the media, the civil service, the central bank and the

banking system. PiS’s fights with Brussels over the rule of law

caused Poland to be temporarily shut out of some of the EU’s aid

programmes.

By contrast, Mr Tusk is a committed European—he previously served

as the president of the European Council in Brussels. Under him

Poland has co-operated with other European countries on security,

diplomacy and defence to the benefit of all. Were Poles to use the
presidential election to vote in Rafal Trzaskowski, a Tusk ally who is

Warsaw’s mayor, EU co-operation would be easier and Poland’s

influence would grow further.

The world has changed since Mr Tusk took over. With another

Donald back in the White House, the task of building up Europe’s

strategic autonomy is not just a luxury but an urgent necessity.

Poland could not only set an example in security, but also serve as a

powerful voice for supporting Ukraine and deterring Russia.

Economically, Poland is an example to central and eastern European

countries; and Mr Tusk could be a proponent of the economic

reforms the EU desperately needs.

Don’t throw it away

Next week’s election is finely balanced. In the first round the

candidates of the hard right took around 52% of the vote. Were Mr

Nawrocki to win the second round, both Poland and Europe would

suffer. Europe would lose a source of dynamism, and Poland would

risk losing the place at the heart of Europe it has worked so hard to

claim. ■

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Letters

Poland and the threat from Russia

A selection of correspondence :: Also this week, the Church of England,

adventures in

Sudan, Canada, IT projects, clean air

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A selection of correspondence

Poland and the threat from

Russia

Also this week, the Church of England, adventures in Sudan,

Canada, IT projects, clean air

5月 22, 2025 03:18 上午

Letters are welcome via e-mail to letters@economist.com

Find out more about how we process your letter On the front line

You underscored the urgency of European resolve in the face of the

threat from Russia (“What Putin wants”, May 10th). Yet you mistook

realism for extremism when criticising Poland and the Baltic states

for taking the Russian threat “to the other extreme”. It is not Poland

that lends weight to Vladimir Putin’s propaganda, rather it is

appeasement, dressed up as nuance. In 2022, when Russia invaded

Ukraine, European leaders said they should have listened to the

Poles. We would rather not have that same bitter satisfaction twice.

History has taught us not to confuse a dictator’s age with his

appetite, nor to build detente on the ruins of other countries’

sovereignty.

If Mr Putin’s war is ideological, as you admit, then so too must be

Europe’s defence. It should not be rooted in wishful thinking, but in

moral clarity and strategic spine. Poland does not fear shadows, it

recognises patterns.

Piotr Wilczek

Ambassador of Poland

London

The perspective of the Baltic states has been shaped by history,

geography and experience, and has a clear understanding of

authoritarian ambitions. If we are to be labelled extremists, let it be

for recognising early the true nature of the Kremlin’s intentions and

for taking the necessary steps to defend our people, our values and

our democratic way of life.

It is not the principled position of the Baltic states that has hardened

NATO’s posture. It is Russia’s consistent destructive behaviour.

Events over the past decade have shown that the real failure has not

been excessive vigilance, but the lack of it. Were more countries as

“extreme” in their assessments and actions, perhaps neither Ukraine

nor the rest of Europe would be facing the threats we see today.

Lina Zigmantaite

Chargée d’affaires
Embassy of Lithuania

London

The Church of England

I am happy to say that your vivid picture of the apparent decline of

the Church of England is not borne out by the facts (“Churchgoing, going …
gone?”, May 10th).

Although there is always real sadness when a church closes, it is a

tribute to the dedication of clergy and an army of passionate

volunteers that we can maintain our commitment to being a

Christian presence in every community. In fact, closure is relatively

rare in the Church of England. In the past 11 years 197 consecrated

places of worship closed. This is out of 16,000 church buildings. And

this takes no account of new congregations launched or once-closed

churches that have reopened.

In my own diocese I think of The Well church in north Swindon, a

new congregation which had been meeting in a school hall but has

just moved into a new building. And on the former airfield at Filton

in Bristol where supersonic jets were developed, we have

established a new church for the new population, Concord church.

In fact across the country, the numbers in the pews have grown for

each of the past four years and the number of people who are part
of a local Church of England congregation stands at over a mil ion

once again. Far from the gloomy picture portrayed, I see a much

more hopeful one.

Rt Revd Vivienne Faull

Lead bishop for Church of England buildings and Bishop of Bristol

A great Sudanese adventure

Your article on the old White Nile ferry rekindled memories of my trip from
Juba to Kosti in 1971 (“Sunken and rusting”, May 3rd). The

ferry consisted of a classic river steamer with houseboats lashed all

round to maximise the number of passengers. This made for a bulky

journey, especially near Juba where the river was narrower. We

crashed from bank to bank, mostly as a clumsy means of making a

bend. After a couple of days we entered the Sudd, considered to be

Earth’s largest swamp, which Sir Samuel Baker, an explorer, called “a

veritable Styx”. Yet our experienced captain could pilot us downriver

at night with just a searchlight to remind him of the main channel.

On the upper deck I observed crocodiles and spectacular sky-fil ing

displays of lightning.

CHASE UNTERMEYER

Houston

Liberal spending plans

You noted Mark Carney’s plans to jump start Canada’s economy by lowering
taxes, slashing red tape and investing in infrastructure (“To

govern in econometrics”, May 3rd). What goes unmentioned is that

the new prime minister also intends to run substantial budget

deficits that over the next three years are projected to be higher

than under Justin Trudeau.

Mr Carney proposes an “operating” budget for ongoing costs and a

“capital” budget for so-called investments. But these investments wil

be financed by borrowing, adding to the debt burden that younger

Canadians like myself and my infant son will bear for decades.

Deficits also risk fuelling inflation at a time when restraint is needed,

not stimulus.
Mr Carney likes to say “elbows up”, a term he has borrowed from ice

hockey. Canadians might prefer he kept his elbows down, and his

spending too.

Sahil Chhabra

Tecumseh, Canada

Search for the guilty

Bartleby is right that IT projects would do better if they were less

bespoke (May 10th). But he is wrong to think they would also improve if
more time was spent on planning. When people think

they should have spent more time planning their IT project what

they really mean is: “I wish I knew then what I know now”. It won’t

fix the problem. People mean different things when they discuss this.

And a multi-year plan simply can’t predict how tech will evolve

during the lifetime of your project. In Mike Tyson’s phrase, everyone

has a plan until they get punched in the face.

The broader tech industry has worked out that the best way to

manage IT projects is to have a plan, to accept that the plan is likely

to be wrong and therefore work to get your tech out in front of

selected users quickly. Then take the punch in the face that your

customers will inevitably give you with good grace and use what you

learned to adapt the plan.

Large IT projects with extensive planning phases are doomed to

underperform their more agile alternatives. A more iterative

approach stands a greater chance of success.

Alan Buxton

Rickmansworth, Hertfordshire

When an architect designs a skyscraper she knows in advance where

she’d like to put the elevators and the heating and ventilation. The

whole building can be shown on a sheet of paper and built

accordingly.

Software application designers enjoy no such luxury. Managers and

end users really have no idea what they’re actually going to want a

new application to do until they start seeing it do something new or

differently. And then come the four most expensive words in project

management: “While you’re at it…”

Tom Short

San Rafael, California

The terminology in IT is revealing. The customer is a “user”. But the

users really do not know what they want nor do they have the ability

or skills to lay out their specifications clearly. No one fully

understands the existing systems or the ramifications of any

changes, let alone all of the business rules being implemented. Of

course, the new head of IT always knows best and that the previous

head was useless.

And then there is the wonder of estimating timelines. Many, many

times I was asked to come up with a quick “no binding” estimate. I

would always pause and think out aloud, “Hmmm, let me see, how

long will it take me to do something I have never done before.”

Douglas Mustaine

Paarl, South Africa

Asking a software expert to estimate the cost of a project is akin to

asking Shakespeare how long it will take to write “Romeo and Juliet”.

There is no answer until it’s done.

Tim Morris

Hutton Magna, Durham

Bartleby associated the success or failure of IT projects with British

football teams (Spurs equalled disappointment, for example). The

column should have been delayed to include a reference to projects

that exceed expectations. After their FA Cup Final win on May 17th,

Crystal Palace would have been the perfect example.

David Meader
Sydney

It’s all relative

“How dirty are electric vehicles?” , you asked (April 19th). I am reminded of
the quote from Lee Iacocca when he was at Ford: “How

much clean air do we need?”

James Wooster

Lake Tapps, Washington

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By Invitation

An influential voice from the right laments

Trump’s attack on universities

Die, DEI :: One version of thought control is being replaced with another that
is

worse, argues Richard Hanania

Europe can’t defend itself properly without

projecting soft power, argues Jerzy

Pomianowski
Empires of the mind :: Investment in supporting democracy in its
neighbourhood and

beyond is not charity. It serves strategic interests

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Die, DEI

An influential voice from the

right laments Trump’s attack

on universities

One version of thought control is being replaced with another that is

worse, argues Richard Hanania

5月 22, 2025 10:05 上午

Editor’s update (May 22nd): The Trump administration revoked

Harvard University’s ability to enroll international students.

ON HIS SECOND day in office, President Donald Trump issued an

executive order ending affirmative action in government contracting.

I took it as a sign that my work over the years advocating against

DEI (diversity, equity and inclusion) programmes and broad

interpretations of the Civil Rights Act of 1964 had made a difference,

particularly my 2023 book, “The Origins of Woke”, and my

participation in Project 2025, the presidential-transition project for

Trump 2.0.

Unfortunately, it is now clear that, rather than sticking to the

principles of colour blindness, merit and individual liberty that I

believe in, the Trump administration seeks to implement its own

version of thought control and federal-government overreach.

This can be seen most clearly in the letter of demands the

administration sent to Harvard on April 11th and its announcement

that it was cutting off research funds to the university. The letter

stated that Harvard must cease all DEI and affirmative-action

policies in hiring, promotions and admissions.

So far, so good. It was the Civil Rights Act and later Title IX that
were used to force race- and sex-conscious policies onto universities

and private business in the first place. Beginning under Richard

Nixon, the attitude was that if higher-education institutions wanted

federal funding, they had to play by the government’s rules. In an

Orwellian twist, the Civil Rights Act’s prohibition on discrimination

was read as a charter to all-but-mandate race and sex preferences in

hiring and admissions. By trying to undo some of the damage, the

Trump administration is acting in accordance with the 14th

Amendment of the constitution, the Civil Rights Act and Supreme

Court precedent.

Yet on top of sensible proposals, the administration made a series of

radical and unprecedented demands. It called for the audit of entire

fields of study, in part on the grounds that they “reflect ideological

capture”. Even more far-reaching is a requirement that steps be

taken to achieve viewpoint diversity across academic fields and

departments. The administration cites no law here. While the Civil

Rights Act banned discrimination based on certain protected

characteristics, political ideology is not one of them. Harvard, as a

private university, is therefore free to be as liberal and anti-Trump as

it wants.
It gets worse. At the same time as the administration accuses

Harvard of being ideologically captured, it demands new ideological

screening of foreign students, so as not to admit antisemites,

supporters of terrorism or “students hostile to the American values

and institutions inscribed in the US Constitution and Declaration of

Independence”. Given how much Americans debate their values and

constitutional principles, there is no way such a requirement can be

anything but an ideological litmus test for who gets to study at

Harvard.

Even if the law did allow such steps, there is a direct contradiction

between the goal of viewpoint diversity and the principle of merit,

which the administration is claiming to defend. We all have an

interest in our top institutions selecting students and faculty based

on intelligence, competence and their fit within a programme.

Having ideological litmus tests for professors and scientists would do

more damage to the principle of merit than race and sex preferences

ever have, given how few individuals with advanced degrees identify

as conservatives. A study in 2022 showed that among donations by

scientists to the two major political parties in federal elections, less

than 10% went to Republicans. Are we to give the small minority of

Trump supporters in science something approaching half the

available jobs in the name of equity? It is hard to imagine a DEI

programme that is more radical than that.

It is understandable where the concern with ideological diversity

comes from. Conservatives have been discriminated against by

universities through practices like diversity statements, which screen

for the acceptance of certain left-wing ideas. That said, the theory

that one needs present discrimination to overcome past

discrimination is the precise logic of DEI. Conservatives in that case

understand that the cure can be worse than the disease, as forcing

factors unrelated to merit into the processes of hiring and

admissions ends up creating more unfairness and resentment.

Moreover, certain fields have nothing to do with politics at all. There

are few reasons to worry about a left-wing bias in mathematics. The

position that there is no such thing as politically neutral scholarship

is another terrible idea from the left that conservatives would be

better off not borrowing.

Harvard is now suing, and is likely to win, if only because the

administration did not follow proper procedures to cut off funding.

Yet the damage to American institutions is likely to be long-lasting.

The careers of young scientists have been thrown off track, as

research into topics as important as curing cancer and reversing

ageing has been frozen. American science will be in a perilous state

as long as this administration sees universities as enemies that need

to be destroyed, rather than institutions that can be reformed within

the confines of existing law.

Conservatives have been correct to criticise and fight against DEI

programmes and other perversions of civil-rights law. They have

been winning this battle politically, in front of judges, and in the

court of public opinion, and I am proud to have played a part in the

process. It is now time to reject the nihilistic approach that seeks to

dismantle institutions via demands that are both illegal and

unworkable. Harvard may never be an institution where MAGA has a

large constituency. Accepting that is necessary for being at peace

with the idea of America as a pluralistic society.■

Richard Hanania is the founder and president of the Centre for the

Study of Partisanship and Ideology.

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Empires of the mind

Europe can’t defend itself

properly without projecting

soft power, argues Jerzy

Pomianowski

Investment in supporting democracy in its neighbourhood and

beyond is not charity. It serves strategic interests

5月 22, 2025 03:18 上午

IN 1941 WINSTON CHURCHILL established the Political Warfare

Executive, a clandestine organisation dedicated to waging

psychological warfare against the Axis powers. This unit produced

and disseminated propaganda aimed at damaging enemy morale

and bolstering resistance throughout occupied Europe and within

Nazi Germany. Churchill understood what we risk forgetting today:

“The empires of the future are the empires of the mind.”

More than eight decades later, European leaders have agreed to

defend European values, freedom and democracy by rearming the

continent. Rightly so. Deterrence proved effective during the cold

war. Democracy and strength do not contradict each other. Yet, as

the continent builds its military capacity, some fundamental

questions remain about the role of soft power in a comprehensive

security and defence strategy.

Is the projection of soft power vital to European defence? In other

words, can Europe defend its values and way of life without winning

the hearts and minds of those subjected to aggressive toxic

narratives from autocratic leaders like Vladimir Putin? Can it manage

migration when corrupt neighbouring regimes weaponise refugee

flows? Can it ensure sustainable economic prosperity when it works

in partnership with countries that lack judicial independence and rule

of law?

Support for democracy is a founding value of the European Union,

but it is also necessary for Europe’s long-term stability, prosperity

and global influence. As it faces mounting threats to democracy at

home and abroad the EU must champion democratic values

worldwide and integrate them into all of its policies.

The wake-up call is clear. The transatlantic alliance is fraying. Europe

can no longer count on America to guarantee its security, even as

the world experiences a daunting wave of authoritarianism: the V-

Dem Institute, a research outfit, estimates that today 72% of the

world’s population live in autocracies, up from 48% ten years ago.

Europe and America have long worked together to provide foreign

assistance that promotes democratic values, respect for human

rights and the rule of law, through programmes that build trust

through people-to-people relations. Now, though, sharp cuts to

foreign-aid budgets across Europe and the collapse of American

foreign-assistance funding are undermining Western democracies’

collective ability to project soft power.

Foreign aid lays the groundwork for a strong security architecture by

building both deep understanding of local contexts and trust with

like-minded individuals, including those living in autocratic states.

Reducing defence strategy to tanks and bunkers is strategic myopia.

Support for democracy has traditionally constituted a very small

portion of foreign-assistance budgets, yet it engages far more closely

with local actors than other initiatives. Slashing budgets for things

like promoting independent media, increasing government

transparency and reforming law enforcement risks creating a

vacuum which anti-democratic voices can fill. It also undermines

trust in the values promoted by the West.

Today, not only autocrats but also democratically elected leaders in

Africa and Asia are questioning whether they need to embrace what

the autocrats refer to as “Western values” to drive economic

development. Many are, for instance, unwil ing to vote against China

at the UN Human Rights Council because they count on Chinese

investment. This is not new, of course. What is new is that they now

see a collective West that is withdrawing its support.

As Churchill recognised from ancient military principles, it is better to

fight on enemy territory than at home. The battle of winning the

hearts and minds of those living in Russia, China, Iran and other

authoritarian states must remain an integral part of our defence

strategy. The evidence shows that supporting democracy works: the

broadly democratic transitions of former communist countries,

including my native Poland, stand as testament.

Today’s iron curtain is built from social-media algorithms used by

“troll armies” and new kinds of propaganda that exploit basic human

emotions. Yet despite the tech revolution and the shifting of the

global economy’s tectonic plates, autocracies still operate in familiar

ways. Just like during the cold war, they seek to control citizens and

isolate populations by limiting the flow of information and ideas,

forcing individuals to rely solely on the state and stymieing civil

society.

The delivery of foreign assistance is by its nature multi-layered and

highly contextual. In Moldova, for instance, guaranteeing access to

reliable information and electoral integrity are more urgent than they

might be elsewhere, as the country faces intense pressure from

Russia ahead of elections in September. The potential closure of

Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty owing to a withdrawal of funding by

the Trump administration is another pressing concern. It would leave

mil ions across Eastern Europe, Central Asia and many other parts of

the world without access to independent information and debate. Is

it acceptable that China, Russia and Iran fill this void?

Any ground lost today will be far more difficult to recover in the

future. Although Europe cannot fill the immense hole left by

America’s retreat, it can fill strategic gaps, by focusing on

neighbouring countries and those that are candidates to join the EU.

Not doing so would make Europe more vulnerable to external

threats.

More dictators abroad will inevitably lead to deteriorating regional

economies, increased migration, more serious security challenges

and less stable democracies at home. Foreign assistance is too often

mischaracterised as charity when, at its base, it serves the strategic

interests of those who provide it. Though perhaps an unpopular

sentiment, the reality is clear: there is a self-interest inherent in

foreign assistance. By helping others, Europe is helping itself. ■

Jerzy Pomianowski is executive director of the European Endowment

for Democracy and a former deputy foreign minister of Poland.

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Briefing

Vietnam’s economy is booming, but its new

leader is worried

Dawn or dusk? :: Export-led growth may soon run out of steam

Vietnam, squeezed between America and

China, looks for new friends

Wooing the world :: It might even try to invigorate ASEAN

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Dawn or dusk?
Vietnam’s economy is

booming, but its new leader is

worried

Export-led growth may soon run out of steam

5月 22, 2025 05:52 上午 | Hanoi and Ho Chi Minh City

IT IS A contrarian argument from an improbable contrarian.

Vietnam’s economy may be the envy of South-East Asia, having

averaged 6% annual growth over the past 15 years, but it is in

urgent need of radical reform. So, at any rate, asserts To Lam, who

spent eight years running Vietnam’s ruthless security services before

becoming general secretary of the Vietnamese Communist Party last

year. He is busy sacking civil servants and amending economic laws

in pursuit of a “revolution” to “liberate all productive forces”. “Time

does not wait for us,” he warned his comrades soon after taking

charge.

Vietnam’s economy has come a long way since the Vietnam war

ended 50 years ago, leaving an already poor country in ruins. At first

the victorious communist regime tried to “liquidate” the private

sector. Shortages, rationing and hunger followed. In the 1980s the

Soviet Union’s economic troubles meant less aid for Vietnam,

exacerbating the malaise. Annual inflation reached 454% and half of

Vietnamese were living in poverty. The death of one of Mr Lam’s

predecessors in 1986 paved the way for a new general secretary to

legalise private enterprise and embrace market forces.

The man with a plan for Vietnam·

Renewing the renewal

Doi moi or “renovation” has been an astonishing success. Over the

past 40 years GDP per person has increased 18-fold and poverty has

plummeted. Foreign investors, attracted by Vietnam’s cheap labour,

political stability (it is a single-party, authoritarian state), proximity to

Asian suppliers and generous incentives for manufacturing, have

built lots of factories assembling consumer goods for export. A trade

deal with America, accession to the World Trade Organisation and,

more recently, multinationals’ desire to diversify away from China

have provided further reasons to invest.

Yet the forces that have propelled Vietnam’s boom are slowing or

reversing. The pool of cheap workers is dwindling and wages are

rising. Instead of largely free trade with America, Donald Trump is

threatening tariffs of 46%. It is getting harder to maintain good

relations· with both America and China, Vietnam’s second-biggest

trading partner. And there has been relatively little spillover from the

foreign-owned factories to the rest of the economy. Vietnam risks

becoming stuck as an assembly hub, adding little value to

components manufactured elsewhere. Shifting onto a more

promising developmental path will not be easy—and Mr Lam is

staking his tenure on it.

Foreign factories are the linchpins of Vietnam’s recent prosperity.

Annual foreign direct investment (FDI) reached $19bn in 2023.

Foreign enterprises accounted for a fifth of GDP that year, up from

6% in 1995. The biggest is Samsung, whose complex in Pho Yen, a

factory town near Hanoi, employs some 160,000 workers, who

assemble the bulk of Samsung’s smartphones. The FDI boom, in

turn, has produced a surge in exports, which have risen eight-fold

since 2007, to $385bn a year. Foreign firms account for just 10% of

employment and 16% of investment, but 72% of exports. Samsung

alone accounts for 14%.

Yet Vietnamese workers are simply assembling parts made, by and

large, in China or South Korea. Even as export volumes have

ballooned, the average unit value has stagnated (see chart 1).

Vietnam adds less value to its exports than do nearby Malaysia and
Thailand. Because final assembly is labour-intensive, productivity is

low. Vietnam’s output per hour worked is 37% below the average for

upper-middle-income countries in Asia. Over 90% of jobs in

manufacturing require few or no skills.

Local firms struggle to meet the standards necessary to take part in

global supply chains. Multinationals in Vietnam source the lowest

share of local inputs of any country in East and South-East Asia.

Despite Samsung Electronics’ huge presence in Vietnam, none of its

core suppliers is a homegrown Vietnamese firm, noted a recent

article in Guancha, a Chinese news outlet, that was widely read

among the Vietnamese elite. The small number of Vietnamese firms

that do supply global manufacturers mainly provide simpler

materials, such as cardboard and plastics.

Meanwhile, Vietnam has reached the “Lewis turning point”, at which

developing economies exhaust their rural labour surpluses and

wages begin to rise swiftly. Between 2014 and 2021, over 1m

agricultural jobs disappeared each year despite a growing labour

force; in 2022-23 the pace decelerated to 200,000. Labour costs in

manufacturing are already higher than in India or Thailand and are

set to climb by a further 48% by 2029, according to the Economist

Intelligence Unit, our sister company. Vietnam could soon end up too

expensive for labour-intensive manufacturing yet too technologically

unsophisticated to do much else—a classic middle-income trap.

Other obstacles to growth loom. It is not just unproductive rural

workers that Vietnam is running short of: the total workforce aged
15-64 will peak around 2030, according to Vu Thanh Tu Anh and

Dwight Perkins, two economists. Ho Chi Minh City and Hanoi, which

together generate over a quarter of Vietnamese output, are among

the most flood-prone cities in the world. The rich farmland of the

Mekong Delta, Vietnam’s breadbasket, is shrinking by 500 hectares a

year. Most threatening of all are Mr Trump’s tariffs: Michael Kokalari

of VinaCapital, an investment firm in Ho Chi Minh City, estimates that

they would reduce long-run growth by 2.5 percentage points a year.

Mr Lam evinces a keen understanding of these challenges. “Do not

let Vietnam become an assembly-processing base… while domestic

enterprises learn nothing,” he urged in January. He wants to make

local firms more innovative and productive. Earlier this month the

Politburo approved a big tax break for spending on research and

development. It also adopted special incentives for local firms

working with foreign investors. The private sector, Mr Lam says, is

“the most important driving force of the national economy”. He

wants to lift its share of output to 70%, from around 50% today.

Life is not easy for Vietnam’s private sector, doi moi notwithstanding.

Regulations are complex, enforcement is opaque and the state

dominates banking and so controls access to credit, too. All this

tends to benefit big, politically connected businesses. Rigged bids for

public procurement, sweetheart land deals and cut-price loans are

rife. Successful businessmen, in turn, are expected to contribute to

society. Moving capital outside Vietnam is frowned upon. In 2021

Nguyen Thi Phuong Thao, the bil ionaire founder of Vietjet, a private

airline, promised Linacre College at Oxford University £155m ($215m

at the time) to rename itself Thao College. The donation never

materialised, presumably because the government blocked it.

Pham Nhat Vuong, Vietnam’s richest man, made his first fortune

hawking instant noodles in Ukraine in the 1990s. He sold his

restaurant business to Nestlé and invested the proceeds in Vietnam’s

luxury property market. His company, Vingroup, soon became the

country’s biggest developer. It then parlayed that business into a

sprawling conglomerate, which does everything from designing

smartphones to setting up schools. A subsidiary called VinFast is

South-East Asia’s biggest homegrown electric-vehicle maker. It sold

nearly 100,000 EVs in 2024.

Vietnam’s politicians admire South Korea’s chaebols and would like

local conglomerates to evolve in a similar manner. But though the

state showered chaebols with largesse, its support was time-bound

and tied to success in export markets. In 1999 politicians allowed

Daewoo Group, then the third-biggest chaebol, to collapse.

None of Vietnam’s conglomerates, in contrast, is globally

competitive, in part because the state holds rivals at bay. Vietnam’s

EV charging network is compatible only with VinFast’s cars. Yet

VinFast has lost $9bn since 2021 producing EVs, many of which are

sold to other businesses owned by Vingroup. The government is

considering shoring up Vingroup by giving another subsidiary,

VinSpeed, a $60bn contract to build a high-speed railway.

As well as exposing conglomerates to more competition, Mr Lam wil

have to find ways to invigorate Vietnam’s smaller firms. Lacking the

political clout of state-owned enterprises, conglomerates and foreign

investors, they have trouble getting access to land, credit and

permits. Banks tend to insist on property or durable-goods inventory

as collateral for loans, says Chad Ovel of Mekong Capital, a private-

equity firm in Ho Chi Minh City. Few are wil ing to lend against

projected future cashflows.

Small businesses also face a shortage of talent. Partly this is because

the state hoovers it up: over half of state employees have tertiary

degrees, versus around 15% at foreign-invested firms and 5% at

domestic firms. But the bigger reason is the education system.

Attainment lags behind other countries in Asia (see chart 2). Unlike

China, Singapore or South Korea, Vietnam has no world-class

universities, and its best institutions rank below their counterparts in

India or Malaysia. Most Vietnamese universities are state-run and

the curriculum is watched closely by communist apparatchiks. Even

engineering students must spend as much as a quarter of their time

taking mandatory classes on Marxism-Leninism and Ho Chi Minh

thought, complains a Vietnamese academic.

It can’t carry the whole economy

Despite ambitions to build a semiconductor industry, Vietnam has

only 5,000 or so chip engineers. By 2030 it will need 15,000 chip

designers and 10,000 assembly engineers, according to a recent

forecast. There are also too few linkages between universities and

industry, such as internship programmes, says Thomas Vallely, the

founder of Fulbright University Vietnam.

Improving life for small businesses will also require a leaner, more

capable state. This is where Mr Lam has been boldest. He has

abolished five ministries and eliminated an entire layer of the

bureaucracy, at the level of Vietnam’s 705 districts. He is reducing

the number of provinces from 63 to 34. All this is eliminating

100,000 jobs from the civil service. He has decreed that there should

be a 30% reduction in red tape.

At the same time Mr Lam wants to build administrative capacity. He

has called for higher pay for capable civil servants. Some of his

changes seek to reverse the legacy of “blazing furnace”, an anti-

corruption campaign initiated by his predecessor. Over 330,000 party

members were prosecuted or punished and tens of thousands

resigned. The effect was to make bureaucrats drastically risk-averse.

Mr Lam has instead sought to engender an atmosphere of tolerance

of mistakes.

Stepping back to get ahead

Deeper political questions remain unanswered. For Vietnam to grow

quickly, the state must become not just more efficient, but also less

controlling. Take the digital economy, one of Mr Lam’s highest

priorities. Despite a shortage of software engineers, Vietnam has a

surprisingly peppy startup scene. Yet the government censors the

internet and keeps tech firms on a tight leash. The state-owned firm

that dominates power generation struggles to supply reliable

electricity. Construction began in April on Vietnam’s first “hyperscale”

data centre. But it is not being built by a giant of the industry like

Amazon or Alibaba. Instead Viettel, another state firm, is in charge.

A new R&D centre for AI and semiconductors in Danang has been

set up by FPT, a conglomerate that will soon be majority-owned by

Vietnam’s Ministry of Public Security, which Mr Lam used to lead. It

is hard to imagine Vietnam becoming a digital powerhouse with the

government so firmly in control of so much of the digital economy.

For now, Mr Lam’s position seems secure. He has elevated allies to

important posts and is pushing through sweeping reforms with little

discernible resistance. A party conference in January, at which he

will seek to extend his tenure, may give dissenters a chance to

weaken his position, however. Mr Lam has shown he understands

the task ahead of him. He has yet to prove he is capable of

completing it. ■

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Wooing the world

Vietnam, squeezed between

America and China, looks for

new friends

It might even try to invigorate ASEAN

5月 22, 2025 03:17 上午

THE FIRST Asian leader to reach Donald Trump by phone after he

announced “reciprocal” tariffs in the Rose Garden on April 2nd was

To Lam, the general secretary of Vietnam’s Communist Party. He

offered to eliminate all tariffs on American goods. Mr Trump praised

Mr Lam in a subsequent post on social media. Mr Trump’s tone

changed a few days later, however, when Mr Lam welcomed Xi

Jinping, China’s leader, to Hanoi for his second state visit in three

years. Mr Trump declared that the pair were meeting to work out,

“How do we screw the United States of America?”

Few countries are as caught up in the geopolitics of the moment as

Vietnam. It lies between America and China in many supply chains.

The two countries are its two biggest trading partners. It is a

communist dictatorship like China, but also spars with China over

fishing and mineral rights in the South China Sea.

Under Mr Lam’s predecessor, Nguyen Phu Trong, who died last year,

Vietnam pursued “bamboo diplomacy”—bending, but not breaking

when bigger powers huff and puff. Other non-aligned countries have

struggled, but Vietnam has emerged mostly unscathed. Though it

has refused to condemn Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, for example, it

gets none of the opprobrium reserved for the likes of India and

South Africa.

How has Vietnam been able to do it? “They’re a bit of a special case,

because they have enormous moral capital,” says Andrew

Goledzinowski, until recently Australia’s ambassador in Hanoi. Mr

Lam has also energetically pursued new trade, defence and

diplomatic relationships, visiting 13 countries since becoming general

secretary in August.

What does Mr Lam hope to achieve by all this globe-trotting? The

priority seems to be to reduce Vietnam’s reliance on America and

China. Closer economic co-operation with the European Union, with

which it already has a free-trade agreement, would help offset

reduced exports to America. Russia could help it develop cheap

nuclear plants. South Korea, already a big investor, could also

provide affordable weapons.

Mr Lam is looking to other middling powers, too, whether fellow

free-traders in the Trans-Pacific Partnership or to a less open

economic bloc, ASEAN. Vietnam has been a fairly passive member of

the group, says Nguyen Khac Giang of the ISEAS-Yusof Ishak

Institute, a think-tank in Singapore. But could Mr Lam try to

liberalise ASEAN, which set up a free-trade area in the late 1990s

but has done little to dismantle the non-tariff barriers that

undermine it?■

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Asia

How to fix India’s sclerotic justice system

Do it with conviction :: There are plenty of ideas but not enough action

America’s new ship-killer missiles come to

the Philippines

Deterring China :: US Marines are training to defend Taiwan in a new way

Vietnam’s diaspora is shaping the country

their parents fled

Meet the Viet Kieu :: As well as sending remittances, many are returning to
their

homeland

On its own terms, ASEAN is surprisingly

effective

Banyan :: The group has helped keep countries from each others’ throats

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Do it with conviction

How to fix India’s sclerotic

justice system

There are plenty of ideas but not enough action

5月 22, 2025 05:39 上午 | Delhi

IN MOST FAITHS judgment is delivered in the afterlife. India’s

judiciary seems to have adopted a similar approach. Earlier this year

in the central city of Bhopal, a newspaper revealed that a case filed

in 1959 was still winding its way through a local court—despite the

accused and witness having died many years ago. For Bhushan

Gavai, the Supreme Court judge who was appointed as India’s chief
justice on May 14th, this is a familiar problem that has vexed all his

predecessors.

India’s judicial system is painfully slow. Across the country more

than 50m cases are awaiting a verdict. Of those, nearly a third have

been pending for more than five years (see chart), while around half

have been delayed by at least three years. Outside a district court in

Saket, a suburb of Delhi, Seema Chauhan, a 34-year-old, arrives for

a hearing in a domestic-violence case, only to find out that there has

been an adjournment from the judge for a later date. But for Ms

Chauhan, that is not news: her case started in 2016.

All this has meant India has consistently fared worse on composite

measures of justice than several of its peers, including Indonesia,

China and Vietnam, according to the World Justice Project, a

research outfit. On a specific indicator of judicial speed, India ranked

131st out of 142 countries, below Pakistan and Sudan. According to

the India Justice Report, a non-profit, the courts’ backlog is expected

to increase by at least 15% by 2030. India’s judiciary is not in a

“mere state of stasis but a downward spiral”, says Gautam Patel, a

former judge of the Bombay High Court.

Several factors explain the judiciary’s malaise, but they all are rooted

in weak management. At every level, judges are hindered by archaic

rules. Mr Gavai, the new chief justice, will only have six months in

his role before mandatory retirement rules force him out. His

successor will only enjoy the post for less than three months. Mr

Patel, the former high court judge, complains that he has had to

assess district judges on their punctuality and courteousness,

despite never seeing them in court.

The judiciary is also overworked and understaffed. Nearly a third of

judge positions and a quarter of support staff roles in high courts are

vacant. But fil ing vacancies alone is not enough. Even at full
strength, the caseload would never be cleared because of new cases

constantly being filed. In 2024 the lower courts disposed of 23m

cases, even as 25m were added. Our calculations suggest clearing

the backlog would also require a 40% productivity increase,

sustained over five years.

The consequences of this malaise are vast. Around 75% of India’s

prisoners are awaiting trial, the sixth-highest share in the world.

Judicial delays also have enormous economic impact. In addition to

legal expenses, people like Ms Chauhan face the opportunity cost of

forgone wages. These alone amount up to at least 0.5% of GDP in a

year, according to work by DAKSH, an Indian legal think-tank.

Firms are even bigger economic victims. Many are dragged into long

disputes, often over basic contracting issues. In 2019 the World

Bank estimated that enforcing a contract in India can take roughly

1,500 days (a little less than four years), compared with less than

500 in the rich world and China. India’s courts are no longer an

instrument for resolving disputes between parties, but one for

buying time, says Arghya Sengupta, founder of the Vidhi Centre for

Legal Policy, another think-tank.

Clogged-up courts could lead to corruption. In March, officials

responding to a fire at the house of Justice Yashwant Varma, a judge

in Delhi’s High Court, discovered among the burnt items currency

notes worth 150m rupees ($1.8m). Mr Varma is under investigation

by the Supreme Court for possible corruption, but denies any

impropriety. Critics, however, think that graft thrives in dysfunctional

systems.

One solution is to outsource the court’s administrative work away

from judges to management specialists. Other countries with similar

common-law systems, such as Australia, Britain and Canada, have

used agencies to improve judicial performance. In Kenya, reforms

introduced in 2011—which instructed judges to organise more pre-

trial conferences and set case deadlines—have reduced the country’s

backlog. Crucially, such reforms do not require constitutional

changes, nor do they compromise the judiciary’s independence.

Another solution, which has been implemented, is specialised courts.

But these too are already burdened with the same problems. For

instance, more than 200,000 cases, involving claims of at least 18trn

rupees, are piled up in various debt-recovery tribunals across the

country. Meanwhile alternative dispute mechanisms, such as

arbitration and mediation, that let parties settle matters between

themselves outside court, are still under-developed.

Defining independence

Little has changed because judicial delays are not a big political

issue, according to Dr Sengupta. “We’ve long assumed courts wil

manage themselves,” he says. In 2014 the ruling Bharatiya Janata

Party (BJP) tried to involve the government in judicial appointments,

which are controlled entirely by the courts and long considered

opaque. The BJP’s proposal triggered a backlash from judges and

was eventually struck down by the Supreme Court on the ground

that it undermined the judiciary’s independence. But independence,

Dr Sengupta points out, should not mean “insulation”.

And although the judiciary has resisted government intervention in

judicial appointments, critics argue it is hardly insulated from political

influence. Lately, several decisions have seemingly favoured the

government. In a recent interview, Prashant Bhushan, a Supreme

Court lawyer and anti-corruption activist, claimed that “post-

retirement jobs awarded to judges by the government” severely

undermined judicial independence by creating perverse incentives

for sitting judges.

Still, there are reasons to be optimistic. For all its faults, Indians are
more confident in their courts than Americans, Britons and

Japanese, according to Gallup, a pollster. And there is some evidence

to suggest that, on the whole, the judiciary is fair. In a recent study,

a team of economists from the Development Data Lab in Washington

found no evidence that judges in India exhibit bias towards groups

from their own communities, based on an analysis of more than 5m

Indian criminal cases between 2010 and 2018.

Some courts have also shown they can improve their performance.

Southern India dominates a national ranking of judicial performance

put together by the India Justice Report. As in other domains, this

superiority is thanks to better governance. Southern judiciaries use

budgets more efficiently, invest more in court infrastructure and

maintain better staff-to-case ratios than their northern counterparts.

They have also used technology, which perhaps offers the biggest

opportunity for improving the judiciary. The High Court of Kerala, for

example, has pioneered machine-learning examination of filings to

speed up judges’ work and a case-management system that tightens

schedules. If AI can help sort out this very human problem, then

India stands to benefit. ■

Stay on top of our India coverage by signing up to Essential India,

our free weekly newsletter.

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Deterring China

America’s new ship-killer

missiles come to the

Philippines

US Marines are training to defend Taiwan in a new way

5月 22, 2025 05:57 上午 | Basco

Island hopping

ON APRIL 22ND a Chinese aircraft-carrier strike group sailed within

three nautical miles of the Philippines’ northernmost islands. It was

an unusual show of force. China’s reason for sabre-rattling was

clear: in late April, America flew a new short-range missile system to

Basco, in the Batanes island chain, for the first time.

The system’s deployment was the most important addition to annual

military exercises held by America and the Philippines. The director

of the exercise, Brigadier General Michael Logico of the Philippine

army, was on hand as the missile system was deployed. “I always

see this as a positive, when China reacts to us. It only means that

we have probably done something worthy of their attention,” he

says.

The airfield at Basco is a short, gently sloping runway on a

mountainous postage stamp of an island. But the Batanes are key

terrain, the closest that America can get to Taiwan on the territory of

an ally. And it is here that the United States Marine Corps is

rehearsing for the first time a new way of defending Taiwan, in the

hope that it will deter China from ever attempting to seize the self-

governing island by force.

At the centre of the new strategy is the Navy Marine Expeditionary

Ship Interdiction System (NMESIS). The missile system is not the

hardest-hitting weapon in America’s arsenal. But it is small, light,

easy to move and hard to find. Mounted on the back of a modified

and remote-controlled version of the Humvee, it can hide in the

steep emerald hills of the Batanes.

In last month’s exercise America spread its marines throughout the

Batanes, as it might do if it feared a Chinese attack on Taiwan. In

that scenario, marines would be in place to fire NMESIS at Chinese

vessels in waters south of Taiwan, or even those landing on its

southern beaches. In doing so, they could block Chinese ships from

breaking out beyond what strategists call the first island chain, the

long archipelago extending from Japan to Taiwan to the Philippines

to Borneo. Such an approach would limit China’s options in an

invasion or blockade, and allow America to surge forces into the

Western Pacific without having to fight its way in.

The marines in the Batanes know that they will be vulnerable to

China’s own missiles. That is why a big part of their mission is to

remain undetected before firing. Even if China were to take out

some of the batteries on the islands, it could not be confident that it

had got all of them. “Chinese military planners do not like

uncertainty,” says T.X. Hammes, a retired colonel at the National

Defence University in Washington. Small units like these “create

uncertainty because they are mobile”.

To deter an attack on Taiwan, American war-planners are focusing

on creating uncertainty throughout the Western Pacific. Each of

America’s armed services is studying how they can spread their

forces out so as to survive an onslaught. For each service, it is a big

shift, requiring an overhaul of their doctrine and equipment.

The strategy is not without its challenges. First, there are questions

about whether China could detect signals from the marines’

electronics, allowing it to take them out before they get a shot off.

“Our electromagnetic signature is very low,” says Colonel John

Lehane, the commander of the 3rd Marine Littoral Regiment, which

brought NMESIS to the Batanes. Keeping it that way will require

constant updates.

Mobility is another work in progress. The marines’ strategy sees

them moving from island to island, dodging missiles, in a smaller

and faster new vessel called the light amphibious warship. But

shipbuilding delays in America mean that none has yet been built.

For now, moving NMESIS around requires hitching a ride on older,

larger amphibious ships or C-130 aircraft based at vulnerable

airfields.

Colonel Hammes questions whether the Batanes are where the

marines should be. The islands are closer to Taiwan than Luzon, the

Philippines’ biggest island. But they are small, which might make it

easier for China to find marines on them. Better, he says, to stay on

Luzon, with more places to hide. That would require longer-range

missiles. The marines are working on firing Tomahawk cruise

missiles from the same chassis as NMESIS, which would increase its

range from 185km to over 1,600km.

https://t.me/+NA8muckncd4yNDUx

Then there’s the question of politics. The marines’ strategy relies

upon access to the territory of allies such as Japan and the

Philippines. It also assumes that their supply lines would be cut early

in a conflict, and that they might need to rely on the support of the

local community. America remains popular in the Philippines, its

former colony. But many local officials in the northern Philippines are

unhappy about the American military presence, fearing that they wil

get caught in the crossfire.

The pro-American president, Ferdinand Marcos junior, is term-

limited, so he cannot run in the next presidential election in 2028.

His vice-president, Sara Duterte, is the frontrunner. Mr Marcos and

Ms Duterte fell out shortly after taking office, and he had been

seeking to oust her in a trial in the nation’s Senate. But in midterm

elections on May 12th, voters denied Mr Marcos the two-thirds

majority required to remove her.

Ms Duterte is the daughter of Rodrigo Duterte, who as president

from 2016 to 2022 limited the Philippines’ military co-operation with

America and cosied up to China. Her father is now awaiting trial at

The Hague on charges of crimes against humanity committed in a

brutal drug war during his presidency. But if Ms Duterte wins the

same office, she could reorient the Philippines’ foreign policy yet

again.

There remain doubts, too, about Donald Trump’s wil ingness to

defend Taiwan and allies like the Philippines. But the marines are

focused on honing their craft, not politics. “The more we do it, the

better we get at it,” says Lieutenant General Michael Cederholm,

who heads the marines’ largest combat formation, while flying back

from observing the deployment of NMESIS in the Batanes. “And

today we got a little better and a little stronger.” ■

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Meet the Viet Kieu

Vietnam’s diaspora is shaping

the country their parents fled

As well as sending remittances, many are returning to their

homeland

5月 22, 2025 03:18 上午 | HO CHI MINH CITY

FIFTY YEARS ago Thinh Nguyen left his homeland aboard an

American navy ship. Some of his compatriots escaped in helicopters.

Tens of thousands fled in makeshift boats. Many more, including Mr

Nguyen’s father and brother, were left behind as troops from North

Vietnam stormed into Saigon, then the capital of American-backed

South Vietnam. The chaotic evacuation marked the end of the

Vietnam war, badly damaged American credibility and left Vietnam in

Communist hands. It also helped create one of the world’s biggest

diasporas.

Today, the Vietnamese diaspora is a force of around 5m people,

living and working everywhere from America to eastern Europe.

They also do a lot for Vietnam. They send back roughly $16bn of

remittances a year, one of the highest hauls in Asia and greater than

the diasporas of Indonesia or Thailand. But far more than their

money, the people themselves are transforming the home country.

Half a decade on, Vietnamese emigrants and their children are

coming back, bringing with them not just wealth but also the skills

and education they have picked up abroad. Hundreds of thousands

of overseas Vietnamese, who are known as “Viet Kieu”, visit their

homeland every year. Official data on how many stay permanently

are scarce, but many do.

The flow began slowly in the 1990s, when memories of war were

still fresh. The government started to encourage Viet Kieu to return,

describing them as “an inseparable part of the Vietnamese nation”.

Some came back to start businesses after the Communists opened

up the economy through market reforms called doi moi. Mr Nguyen,

who had worked in Silicon Valley, returned in 2002 to found a

software company. Vietnam was “the new El Dorado” and “startup

heaven”, he says, because costs were low. His return coincided with

a thaw in relations with America, which helped Vietnam develop its

successful, export-oriented economic model.

In the years since Mr Nguyen arrived, Vietnam’s economy has

boomed·. Last year it grew by 7%, faster than any other country in

Asia. Companies such as Samsung and Apple have set up in

Vietnam, which is now a crucial cog in global supply chains,

exporting everything from smartphones to trainers. The diaspora is

returning to take up opportunities in these bustling tech and

manufacturing industries, as well as many others. They can use their

upbringing abroad to their advantage: some American-Vietnamese

work for Intel, which assembles chips in Vietnam.

Viet Kieu also come to connect with their roots. Having grown up

abroad, they want to see what their homeland is like and improve

their language skills. It is not always an easy transition. John Vu, a

33-year-old who grew up in America, moved to Saigon—known

today as Ho Chi Minh City—in 2019 and organises meet-ups for Viet
Kieu. He says some complain that “they stand out like a sore thumb”

and that locals speak English to them even when they try to speak

Vietnamese. Younger returnees also face resistance from their

parents, who knew a different Vietnam.

Celebrations for the 50th anniversary of the end of the Vietnam war

—which the government calls “Reunification Day”—were complicated

for some Viet Kieu. On April 30th tens of thousands of Vietnamese

gawped at fireworks and fighter jets soaring above tanks and troops

in Ho Chi Minh City. Mr Nguyen stayed at home. To him, having lived

through the fall of Saigon, “it is not a cause for celebration.” But

younger Viet Kieu, as well as many local Vietnamese, do not have

the same painful memories. Mimi Vu (no relation), who moved from

America several years ago, was among those who felt “happy the

country is united”. Some, though, were just happy to get a few days

off work. ■

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the-country-

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Banyan

On its own terms, ASEAN is

surprisingly effective

The group has helped keep countries from each others’ throats
5月 22, 2025 05:51 上午

IT HAS AT times been hard for Banyan to be a fan of the Association

of South-East Asian Nations (ASEAN). The Economist is plain-

spoken; the ten-country club has an irritating habit of talking around

the big issues. We are not the only ones who have been frustrated

by the bloc’s reserve. Activists decry its refusal to condemn the

human-rights records of its more abusive members. China hawks

bristle at its reluctance to call out by name its pushy neighbour to

the north. It is not much of an economic bloc. When ASEAN

convenes in Kuala Lumpur this week for its twice-annual summit,

Banyan may sympathise with those complaining that it isn’t doing

what they want it to do—or appearing to do very much at all.

For all that, ASEAN gets too little credit. Judged not by the yardsticks

of others but rather according to the interests of its own members, it

is often quietly effective. On flashpoints, such as the South China

Sea and the civil war in Myanmar, members have diverse views. Yet

membership of the bloc at least keeps them from actively working

against each other’s interests. ASEAN’s grey, consensus-based

incrementalism is never going to shake the world. Without it,

though, the region would be more divided or exploited by bigger

powers.

What do critics get wrong about ASEAN? One common claim is that

its positions are invariably reduced to the views of the most timid or

the most stubborn member. That is not quite right. Increasingly, the

bloc tends to coalesce around the median stance of its members.

Take the contest over the South China Sea. The Philippines has

sought to get the organisation to object strongly to China’s bullying

of its vessels. But other members do a lot of business with China

and care much less about distant maritime disputes. Landlocked

Laos, in thrall to China, seeks to get the group to blame America for

tensions.

ASEAN hasn’t backed the Philippines’ view—but it hasn’t adopted the

position of Laos, either. It criticises aggression in the South China

Sea. Even though it is mealy-mouthed about naming China as the

aggressor, there is no mystery about the culprit’s identity. Requests

by Laos and other China dependants to blame “outside powers” (ie,

America) for the tensions are routinely rejected.

Another common criticism is of the bloc’s principle of “non-

interference”: the idea that member countries will not get involved in

each other’s domestic affairs, however brutally managed they may

be. Yet this view is out of date. After Myanmar’s army seized power

in 2021 and started massacring civilian protesters, some ASEAN

members, among them Indonesia, Malaysia and Singapore, were

outspoken in their objections to the coup. They helped persuade

fellow members to ban the junta chief, General Min Aung Hlaing,

from the group’s summits, while calling firmly for an end to the

violence. ASEAN will not formally expel the junta—or seat its pro-

democratic opponents, for that matter. Myanmar’s lower-ranking

officials still attend some meetings. The junta has not been

suspended. But it can no longer veto decisions and its views carry

little weight.

One reason the club is wil ing to freeze Myanmar out is because it

helps keep bigger countries outside ASEAN constructively engaged

with the region. The club has become an unrivalled convener in Asia

of bigger powers. America, China, India and Russia all send top

leaders to the annual East Asia Summit, hosted by whichever

country happens to be holding ASEAN’s rotating chair. ASEAN shapes

the summit agenda, as well as the language used to address big

regional problems. This is a crucial aspect of its soft power.

Two other points are often missed, but are key. First, in a region rife
with family political networks, familiar ties among leaders count.

Family political dynasties nearly always bode ill for governance at

home. But, like it or not, the fact that six of the nine leaders coming

to Kuala Lumpur are the children of former leaders who once made

deals over golf means there is a degree of ease in the new

generation’s dealings with each other.

Second—and try not to yawn—but a crucial and rarely acknowledged

corps of regional diplomats keeps the ASEAN show on the road.

Unseen, they lend ASEAN vital ballast and, not least, deepen

familiarity among neighbours who once had remarkably little to do

with each other. If ASEAN has kept its relevance, it is to them that

much of the credit goes.■

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surprisingly-

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China

How China became cool

Soft power :: Western livestreamers and Chinese video games have
burnished the

country’s image

A sex scandal in China sparks a nationwide

debate

Medical affairs :: The affair has morphed into a discussion about privilege
and

fairness

China’s universities are wooing Western

scientists

Brain drain :: And they are reaching beyond academics with Chinese heritage

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Soft power

How China became cool

Western livestreamers and Chinese video games have burnished the

country’s image

5月 22, 2025 04:56 上午 | BEIJING

THE LEADERS of the Communist Party might be surprised to find

they are indebted to a bouncy 20-year-old livestreamer from Ohio

called Darren Watkins junior. He goes by the screen name

“IShowSpeed” and has in one visit done more for China’s image

abroad than any amount of turgid party propaganda. On a two-week

trip in March and April he showed his 38m followers the country’s

rich history (with a backflip on the Great Wall), friendly people (he

joked with China’s finest Donald Trump impersonator) and advanced

technology (he danced with a humanoid robot, had a KFC meal

delivered by drone, and tried a flying taxi). As he drove into a lake in

Shenzhen, safe within an amphibious James-Bond-style electric SUV,

Mr Watkins was agog. “Oh my God, this car is not sinking…China got

it, these Chinese cars got it!” Or, as he says frequently throughout

his visit, “China’s different, bro.”

It is the kind of enthusiasm that leaders have long wanted to inspire

in foreigners. The party has tried to cultivate “soft power” that gets

a country what it wants without using “hard” coercion or military

force, and has long criticised the “anti-China” narrative in Western

media. In 2013 the Politburo said soft power was essential to the

“Chinese dream of national rejuvenation”. This was no easy task.

China’s propaganda falls flat overseas, where many are wary of its

authoritarian past (and present).

Increasingly, though, more people, especially the young, seem

wil ing to look past China’s ugly side. That is not mainly thanks to

party spin doctors. Mr Watkins is one of a parade of foreign vloggers

posting on their trips since China reopened after covid. Chinese firms

have bleeding-edge technology and cultural exports. And the

country’s image has been helped by a slump in America’s popularity,

courtesy of President Trump. On May 15th there was a sense that

the People’s Daily, the mouthpiece of the Communist Party, could

not quite believe it was publishing an article entitled “How did China

become cool?”

A decade ago China was spending $10bn a year attempting to boost

its image overseas, according to one American scholar. The sum may

now be higher. Officials have set up 500 “Confucius Institutes” in

foreign colleges that offer Mandarin tuition and cultural programmes.

State-run media churn out positive stories on Western social media.

Hundreds of foreign journalists are invited to China each year and

shown highlights such as the impressive high-speed rail network.

But these top-down efforts have been eclipsed by bottom-up

innovations. DeepSeek, an artificial-intelligence star, made headlines

in December when it announced models that were much cheaper to

train and nearly as effective as Western ones. Chinese electric

vehicles are being snapped up by overseas buyers, and Chinese

consumer drones have been world-leading for years. Now cultural

products are gaining fans overseas. China watched with envy as

South Korean K-pop took off round the world in the 2010s. Chinese

music and television remain niche interests outside the Mandarin-

speaking world, but the country is becoming a big hitter in gaming.

Four of the ten highest-grossing mobile games of 2024 were made

in China. One such is Genshin Impact, a role-playing adventure

which rakes in over $1bn a year. Last year a Chinese firm released

Black Myth Wukong, the country’s first blockbuster video game.

Featuring the mischievous Monkey King, it is steeped in Chinese

folklore. Some 30% of its 25m players are said to be outside the
country.

The media the world consumes are increasingly shaped by China,

too. TikTok, a short-video app owned by Bytedance, a Chinese firm,

is downloaded more than any other social-media app worldwide.

Viewers in countries such as Mexico and Indonesia have also

embraced Chinese “micro-dramas”, minute-long episodes designed

to be watched on mobile phones.

Emerging from lockdown

Several polls suggest China’s popularity hit a low point during the

pandemic but then turned a corner. Every year Brand Finance, a

consultancy, asks 100,000 respondents worldwide what they think of

different countries and their influence. The results put China’s

“brand” at eighth in the world in 2021 and second this year, behind

America. Polls by the Alliance of Democracies Foundation, an NGO in

Denmark, show a steady improvement in global attitudes towards

China since 2022, with its “net perception rating” rising from -4%

that year to +14% in the latest survey, published this month.

America’s has dropped from +22% to -5% just in the past year. A

recent poll by Pew, a pollster, showed that even in America, where

China is widely disliked, opinions have warmed recently. Young

people, in particular, are softer on China.

Asian neighbours tend to be more sceptical. Many have territorial

disputes with China and worry about its military spending. In

Europe, there are “hard limits” to how popular China can become

because of its lack of democracy and poor human-rights record,

reckons Andrew Chubb of Lancaster University in Britain. Plenty of

critics of Communist Party policies towards the Uyghurs in Xinjiang,

for instance, say the current enthusiasm whitewashes the party’s

authoritarianism. Others say the party is just shrewder now. They

believe it is quietly but actively facilitating visitors like Mr Watkins.

Still, China’s government seems confident that, if people pay a visit,

they will like it, wherever they are from. Officials are scrambling to

get tourists back after numbers slumped during the pandemic. Last

year China scrapped visa restrictions for citizens from 38 (mainly

European) countries to visit for up to a month. Some 30m foreign

tourists visited China in 2024, nearly 80% more than the year

before, though still fewer than the pre-covid peak.

The trickiest task for China’s propagandists is to let the country’s

appealing side speak for itself, says Shaoyu Yuan of Rutgers

University in New Jersey. That is “uncomfortable for a system that’s

built on message discipline and control”, he says. Last year a group

of 70 students from Duke University in North Carolina visited China

on a study trip. They were pestered by state-run media pressing

them to say nice things about China, according to an online account

by one disgruntled student. A camera crew, she recalled, “taught me

to recite a poem in Mandarin that included the line ‘I love China’”. As

any teenager will tell you, China would be much cooler if it did not

try so hard. ■

Subscribers can sign up to Drum Tower, our new weekly newsletter, to

understand what the world makes of China—and what China
makes of the world.

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Medical affairs

A sex scandal in China sparks

a nationwide debate

The affair has morphed into a discussion about privilege and fairness

5月 22, 2025 03:18 上午

THOUGH THE trade war has been a hot topic of debate on Chinese

social media over the past month, the Chinese public appears to
have been just as exercised about an old-fashioned sex scandal at

one of the country’s most elite hospitals. The scandal has morphed

into a full-blown debate about privilege, ethics and (the lack of)

fairness in Chinese society.

The story broke in mid-April and revolves around a senior surgeon

called Xiao Fei at the China-Japan Friendship Hospital in Beijing. The

first the public knew of Mr Xiao was when his estranged wife posted

a letter online, alleging that he had been having affairs with work

colleagues, including a junior doctor called Dong Xiying. The letter

also accused Mr Xiao and Ms Dong of walking out of a surgical

theatre where he was preparing for an operation, and leaving the

anaesthetised patient unattended by a doctor for 40 minutes.

The hospital announced on April 27th that it had investigated the

allegations and found they were “basically true”. It said Mr Xiao had

been sacked and expelled from the Communist Party. (He told state

media that he had not violated medical ethics, that he had left the

patient for 10-20 minutes in the care of anaesthetists, and the

reason for doing so was to defuse a dispute with a nurse.)

That was not enough to satisfy some members of the public, who

suspected there was more to the story and had already started
sniffing around. Top hospitals are redoubts of a health-care system

that many citizens view as deeply unfair. Seeing specialists requires

hours or even days of queuing. Treatment can be costly, often

prohibitively so for the poor or migrants from the countryside. So if

there was dirt, there were plenty of ordinary people wil ing to dig it

up.

Back-door admissions

What they revealed was that Ms Dong had got her start in medicine

on an experimental programme known as the “4+4” at Peking Union

Medical College, one of the nation’s most prestigious. The scheme

offers outstanding students with an undergraduate degree in

another discipline an accelerated path to qualification as a doctor

after four years, rather than the usual pathway which takes more

than a decade. Ms Dong had studied economics at Barnard College

in New York. Netizens asked why an American economics degree

meant she needed only four years of medical school, and whether

the 4+4 programme was simply a back door for the well-connected

into a profession where people’s health and indeed lives were on the

line.

In late April and early May the topic became one of the hottest
online. On Weibo, a microblog platform, posts with the hashtag

“Xiao Fei has been dismissed, when will Dong Xiying’s issues be

investigated?” attracted more than 200m views. Some of China’s

tabloid media joined the fray. “Frankly, this farce has evolved into an

issue of social fairness,” Jimu News, an online service, posted to its

Weibo account. It referred to reports that Ms Dong’s papers had

suddenly disappeared from an academic database. “Could there be

some hidden secrets that cannot see the light of day, prompting a

hasty cover-up?”

Difficult operations

The scandal has put the authorities on the spot. Though they can

sometimes suppress news completely, once a scandal gathers steam

it can become more dangerous to try to squash it. So they try to

manage it. State media have covered the main developments, but

censors have struggled to keep online debate in check. It has veered

into withering criticism of official corruption in hospitals and

academia; of callous self-centredness among the well-connected;

and, above all, of the way that plum jobs get taken by the high-

born. As the economy falters and work becomes harder to find, the

Communist Party is even less keen than usual to encourage

discussion about such matters.

On May 15th the health ministry announced that Mr Xiao and Ms

Dong had been stripped of their licences to work as physicians. The

government will be hoping that those punishments—and the

ministry’s promise to conduct a “comprehensive assessment” of the

kind of fast-track scheme that Ms Dong joined—will put the whole

affair to rest. By sacrificing the protagonists, it may be able to avoid

making any further serious changes. Not surprisingly, the story has

been pulled from Weibo’s list of “hot searches”.

Though the scandal has left a bitter taste, the public seems not to

have lost its ability to laugh. One joke online has a patient admitting

that he pulled strings to be treated at that particular hospital,

whereupon the surgeon confesses that he, too, used contacts to get

his job. The assistant surgeon admits the same. Finally the virus

asks, “Am I the only one who got here on his own merits?” ■

Subscribers can sign up to Drum Tower, our new weekly newsletter, to

understand what the world makes of China—and what China

makes of the world.

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nationwide-debate

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Brain drain

China’s universities are

wooing Western scientists

And they are reaching beyond academics with Chinese heritage

5月 22, 2025 05:49 上午

CHARLES LIEBER had few options. On April 28th the renowned

former Harvard chemist took up a new post at Tsinghua University’s

Shenzhen campus. Mr Lieber had been looking for a perch after he

was convicted in America in 2021 for hiding ties to Chinese research

funding. He is one of a handful of senior Western scholars who have

recently taken up posts in China. Others have done so more from a

position of choice.

The websites of Peking University and Tsinghua University,

respectively, recently confirmed that Gérard Mourou, a French Nobel-

prizewinning physicist, and Kenji Fukaya, a decorated Japanese

mathematician, were joining their faculties. This month Alex Lamb,

an AI researcher, confirmed he was leaving a lab at Microsoft in New

York for Tsinghua’s new AI college. “I think that Tsinghua is a very

good university,” Mr Lamb wrote in an email. “The quality of the

undergraduate students is extremely strong and Tsinghua’s ability to

recruit strong graduate students is rapidly improving.”

The MAGA revolution threatens America’s most innovative

place

America’s scientific prowess is a huge global subsidy·

MAGA’s assault on science is an act of grievous self-harm

The scholars join a dozen leading scientists of Chinese heritage who

have recently left Western colleges for China. They include Sun

Song, a star mathematician at the University of California Berkeley,

who moved to Zhejiang University, home of DeepSeek, an AI firm.

“‘Talent’ is becoming as important a core goal of central planning to

Beijing as ‘workers’ were under Mao,” wrote Jeroen Groenewegen

and Antonia Hmaidi for MERICS, a European think-tank. In 2021, Xi

Jinping set a goal to make China attract global talent by 2030 and be

the top destination for the brightest by 2035.

Recruiting from the West focuses on two groups: a small number of

senior researchers like Mr Mourou, and a greater number of early-

career bright sparks, like Mr Lamb. At a big Communist Party

meeting in 2024, China’s leadership said it would refocus its efforts

to attract foreign scholars, including by making it easier for skilled

workers to move there. Universities have been more active in

promoting national scholarship funds established in 2021 to woo

foreigners.

President Donald Trump’s re-election has caused a growing number

of Western scholars to look east, says Yu Xie of Princeton University.

More than half of the post-doctoral students in America are foreign,

many of them Chinese. During Mr Trump’s first term, America’s

justice department investigated many researchers with links to

China, including Mr Lieber. Many of the cases failed in court, but had

a chil ing effect. More than half of Chinese and Chinese-American

researchers thought about leaving America, says Mr Yu, and it is

likely a few hundred did so.

This time Mr Trump casts a broader shadow. He is reportedly

planning $23bn in cuts over the next fiscal year to government-

funded science. That is on top of a campaign against higher

education, challenging the academic independence of institutions

such as Harvard by holding their federal grants hostage. China’s

state media recently crowed that uncertainty in America “is causing

a broader community of scientists to lose confidence in building their

careers there”.

Funding cuts are forcing difficult trade-offs on scientists looking to

continue their work. Though the gap between America and China in

innovation has shrunk, China’s research ecosystem is stil

bureaucratic and hierarchical, and lacks true intellectual freedom.

And disaffected boffins in America do have other choices. The

European Union said on May 5th that it will spend €500m ($566m)

courting them.■

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understand what the world makes of China—and what China

makes of the world.

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wooing-western-

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United States

What happens if the Inflation Reduction

Act goes away?

Reduction Redux :: Evaluating the effects of scrapping green subsidies in

Washington

California has got really good at building

giant batteries

Of volts and jolts :: At peak times they provide 30% of the state’s electricity

How much worse could America’s measles

outbreak get?

Rash decisions :: Our charts show how falling vaccination rates could lead
to a surge

in cases

A court resurrects the United States

Institute of Peace

DeDOGEd :: Elon Musk’s protégés may win by losing

The MAGA revolution threatens America’s

most innovative place

More than a feeling :: Cuts to funding risk hobbling Boston’s science

establishment

Joe Biden did not decline alone

Lexington :: His party and the press lost altitude along with him

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Reduction Redux

What happens if the Inflation

Reduction Act goes away?

Evaluating the effects of scrapping green subsidies in Washington

5月 22, 2025 10:45 上午 | NEW YORK

“IT’LL BE somewhere between a scalpel and a sledgehammer,” was

how Mike Johnson, speaker of the House, described the emerging

Republican approach to the Inflation Reduction Act (IRA), Joe

Biden’s signature climate law. Pressure from companies and

congressmen with clean-energy projects benefiting from its subsidies

in their districts (most are found in Republican counties) suggested

surgical precision would prevail. But relentless pressure to abolish

the IRA from the president, who is a fan of dril ing, baby, dril ing and
denounced the law as the “Green New Scam”, pointed instead to

brute force. The president reinforced this by dropping in on a private

party caucus on May 20th to strong-arm waverers and threaten

dissenters with a MAGA primary challenge. “They won’t be

Republicans much longer…they’d be knocked out so fast,” he

declared.

The House has already approved a draft law that, when it comes to

the IRA, looks more like a sledgehammer. Next the Senate will get to

work on its proposal. The two versions will then be reconciled by

committee. The White House wants the compromise deal ready by

July 4th, though August seems more realistic (a collapse of the

whole effort remains possible, too). All this sausage-making raises

two questions for energy policy. Is the IRA dead? And if it is, wil

that end America’s clean-energy boom and herald a sooty

recarbonisation of the economy?

At first glance the bill seems more scalpel-like. The House proposal

phases out renewable subsidies between 2029 and 2032, in line with

the IRA’s original timeline. It includes seemingly innocuous rules on

which institutions are eligible for tax credits and keeping China out

of the energy supply chain.

The original law aimed to make clean energy politically popular in

America by subsidising domestic manufacturing of solar panels, wind

turbines and other components. Voters might not prioritise reducing

carbon emissions, the theory went, but they do like domestic

manufacturing. There ought to be some overlap with the new

orthodoxy on economics.

Because the cost of tax credits depends on private investment plans,

estimates of the bill’s effect come in a range rather than a dollar

amount. The American Action Forum, a conservative think-tank,

reckons the bill would trim about 60% of the IRA’s tax credits,

saving $515bn by 2034. The Cato Institute, a libertarian think-tank

which previously warned that the IRA’s uncapped provisions could

cost $4.7trn by 2050, has called the Republican effort too timid. That

makes it sound as if it falls short of the president’s aim to kill the

IRA.

Look closer, though, and the proposal brims with rules designed to

stifle clean energy. “It is a sledgehammer masquerading as a

scalpel,” says Abigail Ross Hopper, head of the Solar Energy

Industries Association, a lobby group. Wood Mackenzie, an energy

consultancy, argues that the details will undermine the business case

for “the vast majority of clean energy projects in the United States”.

Three provisions in particular stand out. First, the bill kills

“transferability”. The IRA incentivised companies with a wide range

of tax liabilities to invest in clean energy. The new bill eliminates this

sweetener, even for technologies like nuclear power and carbon

capture that are generally favoured by Republicans.

Second, provisions regarding “foreign entities of concern” (read:

China) are written with calculated vagueness. While Biden-era rules

narrowly restricted imports of Chinese battery cells, the new

legislation is at once sweeping and impenetrable. Credits appear

denied if “any component, subcomponent, or applicable critical

mineral” is “extracted, processed, recycled, manufactured, or

assembled” with forbidden foreign connections. Various such

provisions guarantee years of regulatory confusion. Higher tariffs on

Chinese-made components would come on top of that.

The third change is the timing of payments. Currently, projects

qualify for tax credits from when construction begins but earn them

only when operational. The new proposal awards credits only after

operations begin. Given the vagaries of permit-granting, it can take years to

start generating power. That will make it harder for new

projects to earn credits.

Together, these provisions make the House proposal “unworkable”,

says Rich Powell, head of the Clean Energy Buyers’ Association

(CEBA), a trade group representing large electricity users (which

include America’s big tech companies). Studies commissioned by

CEBA predict that the repeal effort will lead to sharp increases in

electricity prices, by roughly 10% in 2026 for industrial and

commercial customers. Mr Powell warns that it “will make it harder

to stand-up US manufacturing in clean energy,” which ought to

bother a president obsessed with factory jobs.

If the outlook for the IRA seems bleak, what does that mean for

energy and carbon emissions in America? Analysis by the Rhodium

Group, a research firm, suggests that, under the IRA, America was

on track to slash its greenhouse gases by 40% from their 2005 level
by 2035. With a de facto repeal it will slow down, but may stil

manage a reduction of nearly 30% below the same benchmark (see

chart 1). Even taking account of oil-friendly provisions in the current

budget bill, such as the end of credits for purchasing electric vehicles

and a repeal of more stringent fuel-economy standards for petrol

vehicles introduced by the Biden administration, America wil

continue to decarbonise. Clean energy supply will continue to grow,

but at a slower pace than it would have with the IRA.

The reason, explains Kevin Book of ClearView Energy Partners, a

research firm, is that tax credits are only one factor. State-level
regulations· like “renewable portfolio standards” play an important

role. Not only will these not be abandoned with the IRA, they may

be strengthened in Democratic states. Such a “rollback rebound”

took place in response to the first Trump administration’s attempted

assault on green energy.

Price helps, too. The International Energy Agency, an official body,

estimates that unsubsidised renewables already compete with, or

beat, new fossil-fuel plants in many parts of America. Rhodium

projects 342GW of renewable capacity will still be added by 2035,

producing as much electricity (after accounting for intermittency) as

roughly 100 nuclear plants.

John Ketchum, the CEO of NextEra Energy, a big utility, recently

offered investors this dose of what he called energy pragmatism.

“Renewables are here today. You can build a wind project in 12

months, a storage facility in 15, and a solar project in 18 months.”

Gas turbines, by contrast, require four years or more to build, obtain

permits and connect to the grid.

Last year, 90% of new power capacity in America came from carbon-

free sources. Fresh data from the early days of Mr Trump’s second

term confirm that over half of all electricity in March came from non-
fossil sources for the first month on record. These may be dark days

for green energy on Capitol Hill. Slowing the rate of decarbonisation

is bad news. But sunlit uplands do still beckon. ■

Editor’s note: This story was updated after the House passed

Republicans’ draft budget bill.

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Of volts and jolts

California has got really good

at building giant batteries

At peak times they provide 30% of the state’s electricity

5月 22, 2025 03:18 上午 | MOJAVE

Listen for the rattle

A RENEWABLE ENERGY corridor is rising in eastern Kern County,

California—where the Mojave Desert meets the Sierra Nevada

mountains. Among the wind turbines, solar panels and Joshua Trees

are giant batteries that look like shipping containers. Tesla workers

tinker with the ones at the Eland solar and storage project,
developed by Arevon Energy. They wear sun hats and boots and

warn your correspondent to watch out for rattlesnakes.

The amount of battery power in California rose from 500 megawatts

(MW) in 2018 to nearly 16,000 in 2025. Nearly a quarter of

America’s battery capacity is in California alone, according to

BloombergNEF, a research firm. Texas is not far behind. The battery

boom tells a story of solar power’s supremacy. In the middle of the

day, when the sun is strongest, as much as three-quarters of the

state’s electricity can come from solar. Batteries charge in the

afternoon when solar power is cheap, and release energy in the

evenings when Californians get home and crank up their air

conditioners. At their daily peak, around 8pm, batteries can provide

as much as 30% of the state’s electricity.

California and Texas supercharged their battery power in ways that

exemplify the states’ different approaches to energy markets. As per

usual, the Golden State relied on regulation. In 2013 the California

Public Utilities Commission (CPUC) ordered the state’s three big

investor-owned utilities to procure 1,325 MW of energy storage by

2020 to help meet renewable targets and stabilise the grid. That

goal was easily met. “Our system is much better positioned now,

particularly to deal with extreme weather events”, says Elliot Mainzer,

chief executive of the California Independent System Operator, which

manages electricity across the state’s grid.

In Texas, developers spied an opportunity for energy arbitrage.

Operators could profit by buying cheap solar power and selling it at

a higher cost later in the day. In 2024 Texas surpassed California to

become the fastest-growing storage market.

The sun doesn’t always shine and the wind doesn’t always blow.

Batteries help plug the gap. Mark Jacobson, an engineering

professor at Stanford University, found that most days this year

contained periods when solar, hydropower and wind, helped by

batteries, met 100% of California’s demand—even though just 54%

of the state’s electricity generation comes from renewables. Because

most lithium-ion batteries provide just four hours of power, they

cannot yet replace baseload generation from gas, nuclear or

geothermal.
The battery bonanza may slow down. Donald Trump’s tariffs on

China, where the battery supply chain is concentrated, and the

gutting of the Inflation Reduction Act’s clean-energy tax credits·

would be a double whammy). These changes will hurt renewables’

ability to meet demand as power-hungry data centres come online,

argues Kevin Smith, the boss of Arevon. Additionally, a recent fire at

a battery facility in Moss Landing, on California’s coast, has spooked

communities. One Monterey County supervisor called it “a Three Mile

Island event”. Such incidents are relatively rare, but the CPUC has

set new safety standards to try to assuage fears. After a few heady

years, the battery industry may soon need a jolt. ■

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Rash decisions

How much worse could

America’s measles outbreak

get?

Our charts show how falling vaccination rates could lead to a surge

in cases

5月 14, 2025 11:12 上午

AMERICA’S MEASLES outbreak is alarming for several reasons. What

began as a handful of cases in Texas in January has now surpassed

800 across several states, with many more cases probably going

unreported. It is the worst outbreak in 30 years and has already

killed three people. Other smaller outbreaks bring the total number

of cases recorded in 2025 so far to over 1,000. But above all, public-

health experts worry that the situation now is a sign of worse to

come. Falling vaccination rates and cuts to public-health services

could make such outbreaks more frequent and impossible to curb,

eventually making measles endemic in the country again.

Currently, measles is considered “eliminated” in America, meaning
that outbreaks start from imported cases and end within 12 months

(to be endemic a disease must be present in a country year-round).

Typically, imported cases lead to just a few new infections because

vaccination rates in most places are high enough to prevent further

spread. Occasionally, though, imported cases will hit a pocket—such

as a neighbourhood or county—where too few people are jabbed. If

that is an area with many children per family, a crowded

neighbourhood and lots of social mingling (at church for example)

an outbreak can grow very big very fast. The largest outbreaks of

the past twenty years have all been in such places: close-knit

religious communities, such as Amish or orthodox Jewish ones,

where misinformed fears about vaccine safety had taken hold.

The hotspot of the current outbreak is a Mennonite community in

Gaines County, Texas. More than 400 cases have been reported in

the county so far. Its source (or “patient zero”) has not been

identified but measles cases linked to that outbreak have turned up

in nearby counties and in several other states. Cases in Gaines

County exploded because only 81% of children starting school there

have had the MMR vaccine (which protects against measles, mumps

and rubella). With a disease as contagious as measles, 95% vaccine

coverage is needed to stop it from spreading.
Few places have vaccination rates as low as in Gaines, but the

number of counties where too few children have had the MMR jab is

growing. In February researchers from Johns Hopkins University

published an analysis of MMR rates in kindergarten-aged children in

the 37 states that make county-level data available. They found that

in the 2022-24 school years two-thirds of counties had MMR rates

lower than 95%. Worryingly, the data show a widespread decline in

vaccination: around a third of the counties that are now below the

threshold had been above it in the 2017-2020 school years; the

median county vaccination rate has fallen in most states. One of the

largest drops is in Wisconsin—no county there has an MMR

vaccination rate above 85%. It is among the most permissive states

for vaccine exceptions in schools, allowing opt-out for personal-

conviction reasons (along with medical and religious exemptions,

which most states have); parents only have to submit a written note.
What will be the outcome of falling vaccination rates? A study

published in JAMA, the journal of the American Medical Association,

in April estimated that, if current childhood vaccination rates remain

unchanged, after two decades measles will probably become

endemic in America again. Under these circumstances, there will be

an estimated 850,000 measles cases in the next 25 years, and

around 850 deaths. If, however, the MMR rate in each state falls by

10%, endemicity will arrive earlier and there could be 11m measles

cases in the 25-year period. In that scenario there would be around

11,000 deaths to the disease, each of which could have been

avoided.

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DeDOGEd

A court resurrects the United

States Institute of Peace

Elon Musk’s protégés may win by losing

5月 22, 2025 03:18 上午 | WASHINGTON, DC

Peace on the Potomac

THE NIGHT the United States Institute of Peace (USIP) was taken

over, March 17th, staffers from Elon Musk’s Department of

Government Efficiency (DOGE) walked round its headquarters

smoking cigars and drinking beers while they dismantled the signage

and disabled the computer systems. The takeover of the USIP

building in Washington, DC, earlier that afternoon was one of the

more notable moments of President Donald Trump’s revolution in the

capital, because the think-tank is not actually part of the executive

branch. The Institute’s board and president, George Moose, a

veteran diplomat, were summarily fired. He and other senior staff

were ultimately forced out of the building at the behest of three

different police agencies. Then a DOGE staffer handed over the keys

to the building to the federal government.

All this was illegal, according to Judge Beryl Howell, of the

Washington, DC district court, in a ruling on May 19th. Judge Howell

declared that the dissolution of USIP was “effectuated by

illegitimately-installed leaders who lacked legal authority to take

these actions”, and so was “null and void”. The result implies that Mr

Moose is once again the president, and the board reinstated. The

building, which was paid for partly with private money, must be

returned. So too must the Institute’s $25m endowment (of which

around $15m was donated privately). USIP staffers, almost all of

whom were fired in late March, must decide if they want their jobs

back. George Foote, USIP’s lawyer, says he expects the government

to appeal. A White House spokeswoman called the ruling the result

of a “rogue judge”, and said it “will not be the last say on the

matter”.

USIP was created in 1984 by a bipartisan group of members of

Congress, including two war veterans, as a research organisation

devoted to peacebuilding. Its board is appointed by the president,

on the advice of the Senate, but according to the law establishing it,

USIP is an “independent, nonprofit, national institute”. According to

Mr Foote, “it was important to the founders that they not have an

organisation tucked into the State Department or built into the White

House”. This status, Mr Foote argues, gives its staffers a degree of

freedom in their research and advice that officials in the State

Department would not have. Since its foundation, its work has

extended beyond research into matters like negotiating local peace

deals in Iraq or Nigeria. Much of its $55m budget was spent on

grants to charities.

The fact that USIP might become a target of the Trump

administration was foreseeable. Last September the Heritage

Foundation, a Republican-aligned think-tank with close links to Mr

Trump’s team, criticised the organisation. USIP’s staff, Heritage said,

mostly donated to Democrats; the institute’s work, Heritage argued,

had expanded beyond what was mandated by law—defence-

adjacent research—into international development. Yet Heritage

called on Congress to restrict its funding and hold hearings to look at

its bias. It did not suggest the president could just shut it down.

In her judgment, Judge Howell argued that the government chose

“blunt force, backed up by law enforcement officers” to impose its

legal view that the president has almost unlimited power over almost

anything the government funds. In reality, she concluded, not

everything funded by Congress is part of the “executive branch”, and

so the government’s sweeping assertion of absolute power is

unjustified. In effect she ruled that the legislature retains the right to

restrict the president’s power over certain institutions. This, Mr Foote

argues, has implications that go beyond USIP. It is a “victory for the

rule of law”, he says.

Goodwill toward men

What will happen now? Before March, it seemed unlikely that

Congress would have agreed to shut down USIP. The organisation

had Republican supporters, and indeed, under the continuing

resolution passed that month, it is fully funded until September.

Assuming a higher court does not overrule Ms Howell, USIP will be

revived. Now that the organisation has become such a partisan

cause, however, Republicans in Congress may feel the need to close

it by legal means. In the budget bill they are preparing, Congress

could fairly easily cut the institute’s funding to the bone. It could also

allow Mr Trump to appoint new board members and complete the

closure that way.

Still, for now, USIP is back. On a rainy afternoon on May 21st, a

small group of its staffers walked back into their headquarters. There

was no serious physical damage, they said, but it will take time to

discover which of the computer systems remain intact and restart

work. For now, “we intend now to resume our stewardship and

custodianship of the building”, said Mr Moose. “It’s a very meaningful

place.” ■

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More than a feeling

The MAGA revolution

threatens America’s most

innovative place

Cuts to funding risk hobbling Boston’s science establishment

5月 22, 2025 05:48 上午 | BOSTON

SCIENCE SOMETIMES advances not by design but by happenstance.

Thirty years ago a graduate student in chemical engineering at the

Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) was describing a

bottleneck in his work over drinks at a bar in Cambridge,

Massachusetts. A Harvard student heard and suggested a solution

using microchip manufacturing technology that his lab had recently

developed. The casual exchange led to a collaboration under the

guidance of Donald Ingber, a Harvard cell biologist, that eventually

helped pioneer organ-chip technology—lab-grown models of human

organs on tiny chips. Dr Ingber would go on to found a biotech firm

in Boston that commercialised the technology.

The story’s arc is very Boston: federally funded academic research

and serendipitous encounters among brainiacs spawning innovation

and biotech firms. If science has a centre of gravity it is along the

Charles river, which snakes between Boston and Cambridge, where

MIT, Harvard, world-class hospitals and venture-capital firms all

share a riverbank. Yet that same concentration of science makes the

area vulnerable to politics. President Donald Trump’s policies on

universities and his administration’s proposed cuts to science funding

threaten not only Massachusetts’s sprawling research and biotech

ecosystem, but also the country’s competitive edge in innovation.

For 17 of the past 19 years universities and hospitals in Boston have

received more funding from the National Institutes of Health (NIH)

than those anywhere else (see chart). Roughly one in eight of

America’s top 40 research universities call the Boston area home. Of

all these institutions no place has drawn Mr Trump’s ire quite like

Harvard. Just hours after Harvard’s president refused to comply with federal
demands to restructure the university, Dr Ingber was among

the first of its scientists to receive a stop-work order on his grants.

Then on May 5th Linda McMahon, the education secretary, sent a

rambling letter to Harvard with an extraordinary threat: the

university will no longer receive any new federal research grants.

Like a keystone species, Harvard supports research and development

far beyond its campus; unsettle Harvard, and the effects will be felt

widely. Its federal grants often depend on collaborations among

universities and hospitals across the region. Among the economies

of America’s 20 largest metro areas, none has a greater share

dedicated to the sciences and related industries (see chart). This

patch of land is home to more biotech firms than anywhere else in

the world.

MAGA’s assault on science is an act of grievous self-harm

America’s scientific prowess is a huge global subsidy·

China’s universities are wooing Western scientists·

The University of Massachusetts (UMass) medical centre, 40 miles

west of Cambridge, is a juggernaut in RNA research, a field that

underpins some of the most promising therapeutic advances. UMass

has already paused PhD admissions and laid off employees at its

biomedical-sciences institute. “What science has in common with

business is that we don’t do well with uncertainty in our external

environment,” says Phil ip Zamore, a biologist who heads the

university’s RNA Therapeutics Institute. “We can handle uncertainty

in an explanation for nature, but it’s terrifying to think ‘how am I

going to pay my postdoc?’” he adds. Most of his graduate students

go into biotech.

Some consequences will be harder to measure. Biotech and

pharmaceutical firms rely on a stream of discoveries from federally

funded university labs doing open-ended research. Much of this

research initially has no obvious commercial use. But the more

federal money flows into university labs, the greater the chance that

scientists will stumble upon discoveries that industry can turn into

the next life-saving drug. Sekar Kathiresan, the head of the Boston-

based biotech firm Verve Therapeutics, expects to spend $2bn

developing a drug that could treat heart disease, which is the

leading cause of death in the world. “The technology we’re using to

turn off a cholesterol-raising gene in the liver to lead to lifelong

cholesterol-lowering”, he says, was made possible by scientists at

the Broad Institute in Cambridge who invented base editing in 2016.

“Generous federal funding for science is critical for the next

generation of ideas and cures,” he adds.

With the fight raging most fiercely inside Massachusetts, the state

has in many ways led the resistance to Mr Trump’s funding cuts and

woo-woo approach to science. Since February the state’s attorney-general

has filed two lawsuits against cuts to NIH funding. Others
have joined both suits. Harvard, too, is pushing back in court. As one

of the most progressive places in the country, Massachusetts is

anathema to Trumpism, notes Michael Goldman, a longtime

Democratic operative in the state. “But the British couldn’t break

Boston, the New York Yankees couldn’t break Boston and neither can

Trump,” he says. It is not just Bostonians who should hope he’s

right. ■

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Lexington

Joe Biden did not decline

alone

His party and the press lost altitude along with him

5月 22, 2025 03:18 上午

ACCEPT, FOR a moment, Joe Biden’s contention that he is mentally

as sharp as ever. Then try to explain some revelations of the books

beginning to appear about his presidency: that he never held a

formal meeting to discuss whether to run for a second term; that he

never heard directly from his own pollsters about his dismal public

standing, or anything else; that by 2024 most of his own cabinet

secretaries had no contact with him; that, when he was in

Washington, he would often eat dinner at 4.30pm and vanish into

his private quarters by 5.15; that when he travelled, he often

skipped briefings while keeping a morning appointment with a

makeup artist to cover his wrinkles and liver spots. You might think

that Mr Biden—that anyone—would welcome as a rationale that he

had lost a step or two. It is a kinder explanation than the

alternatives: vanity, hubris, incompetence.

In fact, by March 2023, there were times, behind the scenes, when

Mr Biden seemed “completely out of it, spent, exhausted, almost

gone”, according to “Original Sin”, by Jake Tapper, of CNN, and Alex

Thompson, a reporter for Axios. In one encounter in December

2022, he did not remember the name of his national security adviser

or communications director. “You know George,” an aide prodded Mr

Biden in June 2024, coaxing him to recognise George Clooney, who

was starring at a fundraiser for him.

Mr Biden’s aides tried to compensate by walking beside him to his

helicopter, to disguise his gait and catch him if he stumbled, and by

using two cameras for remarks to be shown on video so they could

camouflage incoherence with jump cuts. Jonathan Allen, a reporter

for NBC, and Amie Parnes, a reporter for the Hil , describe in “Fight”

how aides would tack down fluorescent tape to guide the president

to the lectern at fund-raisers. Once the most loquacious of

politicians, Mr Biden ended up clinging to brief texts on

teleprompters for even casual political remarks.

Such in-plain-sight accommodations point to what is slightly

ridiculous about the present exercise of exposing Mr Biden’s decline.

It was obvious to many people: to donors, to some Democratic

politicians on the rare occasions they met him and, most important,

to Americans, who saw through his pretence long before June 2024,

when he fell apart in debate with Donald Trump. In April 2023, only

a third of voters told Pew Research that they thought Mr Biden was

“mentally sharp”.

For that reason, focusing on Mr Biden’s health is useful now less to

tell a cautionary tale about his own decline, made even more

melancholy by his cancer diagnosis, than one about the decline of

his party and the press. “Fight” details how, after Mr Biden failed in

debate, party leaders struggled to prevent the electoral catastrophe

they foresaw. Even the most influential of Democrats, Barack

Obama, who is portrayed as lacking confidence in both Mr Biden and

Vice-President Kamala Harris, emerges in this account as ineffectual

as he belatedly seeks some sort of “mini-primary”.

The parties have become so weak that whoever becomes their

nominee can dominate them. Mr Biden’s vanity, and that of his

family and closest aides, overrode common sense about whether he

should seek a second term. Few Democrats spoke up about his

infirmity while he was in office. With few exceptions, journalists from

left-leaning news organisations, quick to deplore Mr Trump’s

behaviour, competed to expose Mr Biden’s frailty only once

Democrats were pushing him out. Journalists from right-leaning

news organisations are still pounding away at Mr Biden’s mental or

ethical lapses; they show less interest in Mr Trump’s.

“We got so screwed by Biden as a party,” David Plouffe, the rare

Democrat in either book wil ing to attach his name to such criticism,

told the authors of “Original Sin”. Mr Plouffe helped run Ms Harris’s

campaign for president after she replaced Mr Biden. Mr Plouffe

describes as “one of the great lessons from 2024” something that

only a condescending, insular political organisation could possibly

need to learn: “never again can we as a party suggest to people that

what they’re seeing is not true”. (Regular readers may recall that
Lexington, and The Economist, urged Mr Biden not to run again back when
he was riding high, after the Democrats overperformed in the

midterms of 2022.)

Many Democrats who condemn Republican congressmen for lacking

the courage to oppose Mr Trump and call out his lies might instead

pause to consider their own weakness, calculation or inattention.

Even after that shocking debate, Democratic leaders who insisted Mr

Biden was fit for a second term included not just Ms Harris but

Governor Gavin Newsom of California, Governor J.B. Pritzker of

Illinois and Representative Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez of New York, all

possible presidential candidates. Have they since absorbed Mr

Plouffe’s lesson?

A bridge, abridged

It’s the easy one. The party will probably not nominate an oldster

again any time soon. Neither book shows that Mr Biden’s age led to

policy failures by degrading his decision-making, as opposed to his

communication skills (as essential as breath to a president).

Regardless, nominating a young candidate won’t resolve the party’s

confusion. The hard questions for Democrats are not about Mr

Biden’s age but about how they should face the other challenges he

struggled with, including immigration, the deficit and the

implementation of his own infrastructure plan.

Revisionist historians may someday emphasise Mr Biden’s legislative

achievements. But those cannot compensate for his hubris. Having

once declared himself a bridge to a new generation, he became,

instead, just a bridge “from one Trump term to the next”, the

authors of “Fight” conclude. This may not be merely a story of the

decline of a man, his party and the media. It may turn out to be

about the decline of American democracy itself. ■

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The Americas

Mexico battles the MAGA movement over

organised crime

Mexico’s resilient gangs :: To keep America at bay Claudia Sheinbaum takes

on
Mexico’s gangsters

Wildfires devastated the Amazon basin in

2024

A losing battle :: They wiped away all progress governments had made to
curb

deforestation in recent years

An election win boosts Javier Milei’s reform

project

Argentina economic reform :: Lower inflation brings popularity. Popularity

brings

power, which helps with lowering inflation

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Mexico’s resilient gangs

Mexico battles the MAGA

movement over organised

crime

To keep America at bay Claudia Sheinbaum takes on Mexico’s

gangsters

5月 22, 2025 04:56 上午 | Tijuana

CLAUDIA SHEINBAUM came to power in October promising to tackle

Mexico’s entrenched, murderous gangs. Her record was convincing.

As mayor of Mexico City she curbed violence by using data and

improving policing. She has started applying similar methods on a

national scale.

Crime-weary Mexicans welcomed the intelligence-led crackdown. Ms

Sheinbaum has enjoyed high approval ratings. But her assault on the

gangs has always had a second audience: America’s President

Donald Trump and MAGA Republicans who see Mexico as a source of

their country’s problems. Ms Sheinbaum is bent on convincing Mr

Trump that she has the gangs in hand. Officials in Washington have

been considering drone strikes on Mexican drug labs and cross-

border raids by special forces without consulting Mexican officials.

That would sorely diminish Ms Sheinbaum at home.

Short of military action, Mr Trump has not been holding back. Citing

the need to stem flows of migrants and fentanyl into the United

States, his government in February designated Mexican gangs as

foreign terrorist organisations and slapped tariffs on Mexican

exports.

More recently, American attention has intensified. The Trump

administration appears to be making plea deals with members of the

Sinaloa Cartel, Mexico’s largest gang, without the knowledge of

Mexico’s government. Details are not public. On May 11th the

governor of Baja California, a Mexican border state, announced that

her American visa had been revoked, as had her husband’s. (She

says the decision is administrative and implies no misconduct.) A list

of other Mexican officials reportedly facing similar treatment is

circulating. Authorities in the United States have not explained, but

the revocations are thought to result from American suspicions that

Mexican officials are colluding with gangsters.

The change of gear has jolted Mexico. Officials worry that it will not

be possible to squash the gangs fast enough to keep MAGA at bay,

despite dramatic changes in the past six months. Ms Sheinbaum has

abandoned the security policy identified with her predecessor,

Andrés Manuel López Obrador, of “hugs not bullets”. His approach

assumed that poverty was the root cause of crime, and that the best

way to curb it would be through government-led social schemes. In

practice, Mr López Obrador mostly let the gangsters prevail.

Ms Sheinbaum has instead pushed intelligence gathering and co-

ordination between different branches of Mexico’s security

apparatus. She has also started to negate some of Mr López

Obrador’s militarisation of the police, which critics say led to brutality

and shoddier detective work. Her security secretary, Omar García

Harfuch, is hiring investigators for a new police agency which, along

with a new special-forces branch, should eventually bring 15,000

officers under his command.

The government says it has made 20,000 arrests for serious

offences since October, seized 154 tonnes of illegal drugs and

confiscated over 10,000 firearms. This far outstrips the rate of

seizures and arrests under Mr López Obrador. Recovery of stolen

fuel, a black-market business worth hundreds of mil ions of dollars,

has also increased. Quotidian co-ordination with the United States

has improved. In February both countries agreed that border patrols

would meet more often and share more information. The number of

migrants nabbed crossing the border illegally has plummeted since

Mr Trump’s election, as has the amount of fentanyl being seized by

US Customs and Border Protection.

Tijuana, just south of the border with California, is a good place to

see Ms Sheinbaum’s new model in action. General Gilberto Landeros,

security minister of Mexico’s Baja California state, says local, state

and federal security teams meet daily to co-ordinate operations.

Better data are helping, he says. After it became clear that more

murders were happening during officers’ meal breaks, schedules

were adjusted to provide constant cover. Vetting of municipal police

is under way: around a third of officers have been reviewed so far,

with 35-40% failing to meet standards. They will be asked to leave

the force.

In Sinaloa province, Mexican troops have largely contained an

ongoing war between two factions of the Sinaloa Cartel. The border

is less porous, says someone involved in the fentanyl trade there. It

has been challenging to make “arrangements” with officials, he says.

It is too soon to see the impact of Ms Sheinbaum’s policies in the

crime statistics. The official murder rate has been falling since 2018,

when it peaked at 30 per 100,000 people; last year it was 19 per

100,000. Some of this fall is probably illusory; there has been a

sharp rise in disappearances, mostly murders without a body. And on

nearly every other measure, from extortion to robbery, crime has

risen. On May 20th two government officials were shot dead in

Mexico City, a highly unusual crime in the capital. Although the

amount of fentanyl seized at the border has gone down, drug

seizures in general doubled between February and April, suggesting

the gangs may be turning to other products to offset the fentanyl

crackdown.

Security, fast and slow

Tackling these problems involves much more than fighting crime: it

would appear to entail restructuring Mexican society. The gangs no

longer simply run drugs and smuggle migrants into the United

States. They also control or take a cut of legitimate businesses, such

as avocado-growing, fishing or stalls selling tortillas. This merger of

crime with the legal economy goes hand in hand with deep

corruption. Mr Trump’s claim of an “intolerable alliance” between

Mexico’s federal officials and its gangs is an exaggeration. But Crisis

Group, a think-tank based in Brussels, has documented local-

government officials’ collusion with gangsters. So far Ms Sheinbaum

seems either unwil ing or unable to pursue crooked officials.

As the slow work of excising organised crime from society continues,

the administration in Washington is stepping up the pressure. Once

made in private, calls by hawks in the MAGA camp for military

intervention have grown louder. The Pentagon has tripled the

number of active-duty troops on the border and has deployed

drones, spy-planes and armoured cars. “If you take [Trump] at his

word—as we do—it’s a real threat,” says a Mexican official.

Mr Trump may be losing patience. In April Ms Sheinbaum refused his

offer to send troops into Mexico. In response he said: “She is so

afraid of the cartels that she can’t even think straight.” Military action

by the United States would be expensive, and not necessarily

effective. If some big gangs were clobbered by American strikes,

those left unscathed would probably expand, triggering more brutal

turf wars. “Anyone who understands the details knows how unviable

[intervention] is,” says another Mexican official.

Ms Sheinbaum’s plan could certainly be improved, for instance

through a greater focus on dismantling the financial networks behind

the gangsters, says Francisco Rivas of the National Citizen

Observatory, a Mexican think-tank. A shortage of money is another

problem. Mexico’s spending on security was already the lowest

relative to GDP of any country in the OECD, a group of mainly rich

countries, when Ms Sheinbaum cut it by 36%. An economy shaken

by Mr Trump’s trade attacks and a political system that favours

handouts and nationalistic projects will make it hard to find more

cash. Her plan may keep Mr Trump’s drones at bay. Eliminating

Mexico’s gangsters will be harder. ■

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A losing battle

Wildfires devastated the

Amazon basin in 2024

They wiped away all progress governments had made to curb

deforestation in recent years

5月 22, 2025 07:22 上午 | Bogotá

SMOKE CHOKED Earth’s lungs last year. Of the 51,000 square

kilometres (an area the size of Costa Rica) of mature tropical forest

destroyed in Latin America in 2024, wildfires accounted for 60%, a

record high. The area destroyed was 142% larger than in 2023,

wiping out progress that Brazilian and Colombian governments had

made in curbing deforestation.

These sobering data were published on May 21st by Global Forest

Watch (GFW), a monitoring service run by an NGO called the World

Resources Institute which uses satellite data to measure tree loss.

Climate change is raising temperatures and drying the air, turning

the rainforest into a tinderbox. Last year was the hottest on record,

with the effects of warming compounded across the Amazon

rainforest basin by the El Niño weather phenomenon. When farmers

set fires to clear space for growing soyabeans or grazing cattle, the

blazes often spiralled out of control. GFW calculates that fires

released 1.15 gigatonnes of carbon dioxide into the atmosphere,

more than all of South America generated by burning fossil fuels in

2023.

Brazil, where most of the Amazon sits, lost more tropical forest than

any other country, around 28,200 square kilometres. That was also

the most Brazil had lost since 2016. The numbers are a blow to the

environmentalist president, Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva, known as Lula.

Although critics point to contradictions in his green agenda, his

efforts to protect the Amazon had been working. Deforestation had

dropped by a third between 2022 and 2023.

But Lula’s policies proved to be less potent than climate change.

Brazilians had been excited by recently published data suggesting

that deforestation fell again in 2024, but those data do not account

for fires as GFW data do. Last year Brazil suffered the deepest

drought since records began. Wildfires were particularly ferocious

and difficult to fight. They caused 60% of the deforestation in the

Brazilian Amazon. Such conditions are likely to worsen in future.

Brazil’s search for economic growth is adding to the Amazon’s woes.

States bordering the Brazilian Amazon have been rolling back

protections in order to boost agricultural output. In October

legislators in Mato Grosso removed tax breaks for companies that

commit to trade soya without deforestation. Last month, lawmakers

in neighbouring Rôndonia passed an “amnesty law” to forgive past

deforestation. The message for ranchers is that land can be grabbed

with impunity, all but encouraging slash-and-burn expansion.

To see what an unencumbered boom in beef and soya production

looks like, Brazilian policymakers should look across their south-

western border at Bolivia. Bolivia’s leaders have spurred industrial

farming on deforested land for years through loan programmes and

tax breaks. In 2019 the government lifted a ban on beef exports and

approved legislation encouraging farmers to expand the agricultural

frontier with fire. Beef exports and forest destruction surged in

tandem. Deforestation in Bolivia has increased more than five-fold

since 2019, according to GFW. Cattle-ranching was responsible for

57% of all deforestation in the country between 2010 and 2022,

according to a recent study. Punishment is rare. Of the 136 cases

authorities opened on illegal land-clearing in 2024, just six ended in

a sentence.

As a result, Bolivia lost 14,800 square kilometres of forest in 2024,

the second-most of any country, up 200% from 2023. It lost more

than the Democratic Republic of Congo did, despite having just 40%

of its forested area. Fires drove nearly two-thirds of the damage,

according to GFW.

Bolivia’s leaders were not the only group who gave in to the lure of

turning rainforest into cash. Peru’s government amended its forestry

law in 2024 with a view to expanding agriculture, in effect offering

amnesty to those who had cleared land illegally. Tropical forest loss
in the country rose by 25% in 2024, partly as a result. In Colombia,

rebel groups are cashing in on record-high gold prices by mining ore

from beneath cleared forest. They are also expanding coca

plantations. Loss of primary forest rose by 49% last year. The high

level of deforestation is a consequence of deteriorating security.

Even the most pristine parts of the Amazon are threatened. Guyana,

which has lots of untouched forest, wants the world to pay to keep

its biodiverse, carbon-rich rainforests standing. Yet deforestation

there rose by 275% in 2024 (albeit from a low base) owing to

wildfires and illegal gold mining. Against climate change, even the

best intentions can be easily dashed. ■

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Argentina economic reform

An election win boosts Javier

Milei’s reform project

Lower inflation brings popularity. Popularity brings power, which

helps with lowering inflation

5月 22, 2025 03:17 上午 | MONTEVIDEO

Shouting in the city

IN MOST OF the world mid-term elections for half of the seats in a

city hall would be ignored by presidents and markets alike. Not so in

Argentina. Javier Milei, the libertarian president, made his

spokesperson his party’s leading candidate in elections held on May

18th in Buenos Aires. He cast the capital’s ballot as a referendum on

his government. His party won 30% of the vote, compared with

27% for the leftist Peronists and 16% for the centre-right PRO, the

party of a former president, Mauricio Macri. Argentine shares soared

in response and sovereign bonds rose. Having beaten Mr Macri in his

stronghold, Mr Milei intends to sideline him entirely, trying to

subsume the PRO ahead of national mid-terms in October.

Argentine politics have been in flux since Mr Milei won the

presidential race in late 2023 running as an angry outsider. He has

slashed spending and brought raging inflation sharply down. In April

he partially floated the peso. Yet Argentina has a history of woeful

economic policy, and Mr Milei’s steps are not enough. A reformer

also has to show repeatedly that he can keep the Peronists out. A

struggling government and resurgent Peronists, even in minor

elections, can spook markets and send the economy spiralling. This

week’s win is a boost, though despite compulsory voting, turnout

was at a historic low of 53%.

Two conclusions emerge. One is that politics will probably get

angrier and dirtier. Mr Milei’s style is to rage against perceived

enemies; the press is now a prime target. “People don’t hate

journalists enough,” is his new catchphrase. Mr Milei also made his

spokesperson the lead candidate while keeping him in post and

giving him juicy announcements close to the election. More worrying

was a fake video, generated using artificial intelligence, purporting to

show Mr Macri urging people to vote for Mr Milei’s party in order to

block the Peronists. It was shared on election eve by social-media

accounts close to the president, including one widely reported to

belong to his powerful spin doctor.

The second is that the government will continue to think that

bringing inflation down is the path to electoral success—and will bet

everything to that end. That is why after allowing the peso to float

within a band, prompted in part by the IMF, the government has

done all it can to keep the peso strong, avoiding a depreciation that

would push inflation up. Interest rates remain high, while the

government has tweaked rules to encourage foreigners to convert

dollars into pesos in order to profit from a form of carry trade. A

temporary tax break is pushing soyabean exporters to sell their

harvest fast, also boosting the peso. The central bank has declared it

will not buy dollars to rebuild its reserves until the peso touches its

limit of 1,000 to the dollar, and has allegedly fiddled in the futures
market to strengthen it. To the same end the government is

expected to announce a loosening of rules on tax evasion,

encouraging Argentines to bring an estimated $270bn hidden in

mattresses back into the formal economy.

The approach is working, for now. Post-float depreciation was

modest. Monthly inflation fell to 2.8% in April. Mr Milei may benefit

from a flywheel effect whereby markets cheer his victory, which in

turn boosts sovereign bonds and confidence in the peso, further

staving off an inflationary depreciation. If inflation keeps falling he

could win handsomely in October.

But flywheels can break down. The peso remains very strong, and so

vulnerable to a depreciation, especially once the harvest ends in July.

(Mr Milei surely hopes to delay any reckoning until after the mid-

terms.) Boosting the peso makes exports less competitive. The

central bank’s refusal to buy dollars to rebuild net reserves comes as

it needs $5bn-odd by mid-June to meet the demands of the IMF’s

new programme. It is preparing to borrow to do so, but that only

delays the problem. The other risk is that the Peronists, who

increased their seat share in Buenos Aires, do well in the mid-terms.

That could spook people into dumping the peso, thus prompting
inflation. For now such worries have not punctured Mr Milei’s

euphoria. ■

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Middle East & Africa

Meet Africa’s ascendant right

Culture wars :: They are devout, well-connected and have a MAGA wind in
their sail

A bitter race to elect the head of Africa’s

pivotal bank

A bank that divides Africa :: America has lost interest, but the rest of the
world

should not

Cyril Ramaphosa keeps his cool with

Donald Trump
Putting the white in White House :: The episode underlined Donald Trump’s
warped

views of South Africa

Israel says it is unleashing an

“unprecedented attack”

Gaza on the brink again :: More war beckons, as Donald Trump freezes out
Binyamin

Netanyahu

The world’s worst conference

Things fall apart, again :: Hell on earth in Dubai-on-the-Med

One happy Damascus

Donald Trump’s sanctions gift to Syria :: But the technicalities of easing

sanctions wil

prove tricky

Many of Syria’s diaspora are not yet ready

to go home

We’re out of there :: But they are encouraged by the lifting of sanctions

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Culture wars

Meet Africa’s ascendant right

They are devout, well-connected and have a MAGA wind in their sail

5月 22, 2025 04:56 上午 | NAIROBI

THE AFRICAN family is under threat. That, at least, was the

message of the “Pan-African Conference on Family Values” held in

Nairobi, Kenya’s capital, this month. Delegates from across Africa as

well as several from Western countries described a continent on the

cusp of social collapse. Attendees were told that “foreign ideologies”

were producing an epidemic of abortion, homosexuality and “gender

confusion”. One of the Kenyan organisers blamed incest on sex

education. Everyone agreed their liberal opponents were on the

march. “The people on the other side who are pushing this agenda

are relentless,” declared David Oginde, chair of Kenya’s Ethics and

Anti-Corruption Commission.

Africa’s Christian right sees itself as a plucky, righteous David

struggling against a godless, liberal Goliath. This has never been

quite right; today it is wildly misleading. Their ties to right-wingers in

America mean Christian conservatives in Africa now wield great

clout. Donald Trump’s re-election has given “all the anti-rights

groups new energy, new power,” says Emmanuel Lee Mutwiri, a

Kenyan activist. And the wrecking of the United States Agency for

International Development (USAID) and cuts to the sexual-health

and advocacy programmes it supported offers a singular chance to

undo liberal gains.

More conferences devoted to “family values” are planned in Africa.

They are sponsored by powerful conservative Christian groups from

the West, including Family Watch International (FWI) and the

Alliance Defending Freedom (ADF), which helped overturn Roe v

Wade, the ruling that enshrined the right to abortion in America. By

nudging African policymakers in ever more il iberal directions on

sexuality and gender, such groups have already had a big impact on

African politics. In recent years lawmakers in Kenya, Ghana, Nigeria

and elsewhere have demanded sweeping anti-LGBTQ measures. In

2023 Uganda passed one of the world’s harshest anti-homosexuality

laws, including the death penalty for some same-sex acts. Bills

targeting trans people and abortion are next, warns Pius Kennedy, a

local activist.

Links between Christian conservatives in Africa and the West are not

new, but two key developments help explain the strength of their

alliance today. First, the AIDS epidemic in the early 2000s drew the

attention of American evangelicals who opposed gay rights.

American church groups brought a new militancy to the continent’s

gay-rights debate, says Kapya John Kaoma, a Zambian priest at

Boston University who studies anti-LGBTQ politics.

The second was the election of Barack Obama, which convinced

some Christian conservatives in America that the ground they had

lost to liberals there might be irreversible. As the global culture wars

heated up, Africa was heralded as “the last man standing” in defence

of biblical values.

Outsiders have flung money at African conservative causes. A study

of financial filings by the Institute for Journalism and Social Change,

a global media initiative, found that 17 American Christian groups

together spent at least $16.5m in Africa in the four years to 2022;

the total spend in 2022 was about 50% more than in 2019. This was

probably only a fraction of the total disbursed by foreign religious

groups over this period, notes Claire Provost, one of the authors.

American churches do not have to disclose their overseas spending.

Africa’s Christian conservatives have grown more effective. In 2014

Uganda’s constitutional court struck down an anti-gay law on

procedural grounds. Ten years later the court upheld a more

draconian version. The breadth of today’s anti-liberal coalition has

helped. According to the Wall Street Journal, FWI helped organise

the “family values” conference in 2023 in Uganda; the Russian

embassy paid for it. The anti-gay bill soon became law. Copycat bills

popped up in Kenya and Ghana.

A bit less fire and brimstone

The tactics used have grown more sophisticated, too. Africa’s

Christian right once argued against abortion and homosexuality in

“demonic” terms; now “they couch their arguments in the language

of rights itself”, says Ayo Sogunro, a Nigerian human-rights scholar.

Conference speakers in Nairobi stressed the rights of parents to

protect their children from early sexualisation. “Folks are being

prepped and primed in a different way,” says Ramatu Bangaru, a

pro-choice activist in Sierra Leone.

The movement is also homing in on multilateral institutions. Sharon

Slater, FWI’s founder, hosts annual “training sessions” for African

politicians hoping to advance these causes at the UN. In Nairobi she

warned that the World Health Organisation’s new pandemic-

preparedness agreement poses “a threat to the African family”

because it includes provisions for sexual and reproductive health

care. ADF has applied (so far unsuccessfully) for observer status at

the African Commission on Human and Peoples’ Rights to lobby its

officials. FWI has set up shop in Ethiopia’s capital, which hosts the

African Union.

But perhaps most important, today’s Christian right has allies in the

upper echelons of power. Several of Africa’s most influential leaders,

including President Wil iam Ruto of Kenya and Abiy Ahmed,

Ethiopia’s prime minister, are born-again Christians. Many of those in

their inner circles are too. In recent years several African first ladies,

notably Janet Museveni of Uganda, have been courted by

conservative Christian groups and have then promoted socially

traditional policies.

Such policies are often also politically expedient. Africans rarely

resent people from other countries, ethnicities and faiths, but

homophobia is still widespread, according to Afrobarometer, a

pollster. In countries with recent polling data, large majorities also

strongly oppose abortion. Unpopular governments may be tempted

to exploit these sentiments. Since taking office in 2022, Mr Ruto—

who last year faced mass protests against his rule—has spoken out

forcefully against gay rights. Neighbouring Ethiopia is grappling with

a protracted civil conflict. Though it has a relatively liberal abortion

law, an aggressive anti-abortion movement has suddenly taken root,

about which the government has been strikingly silent.

The Trump administration has further boosted Africa’s ascendant

right. In the past, governments seeking good relations with America,

such as Mr Ruto’s, tended to avoid legislation as brazenly il iberal as

Uganda’s 2023 bill. Today “what we are going to see the Kenyan

government promoting is what aligns with the Trump

administration,” predicts Martin Onyango of Kenya’s Centre for

Reproductive Rights. Controversial anti-LGBTQ laws and efforts to

limit abortion rights in Kenya may well be looked at more favourably.

Christian conservatives also stand to benefit from the closure of

USAID. Charles Kanjama of the Kenyan Christian Professionals

Forum says that aid money should come “without strings attached

and without shoving the LGBT agenda down our throats”. “How did

we get to the point where America is sending taxpayer dollars all

over the world to NGOs that undermine religious freedom?” agreed

J.D. Vance, America’s vice-president, in February. Some in the

administration’s orbit say that PEPFAR, America’s scheme for fighting

AIDS which was frozen in January, should be restored—if the money

goes to anti-abortion Christian NGOs.

Liberals have long complained about the way Western religious

conservatives have fanned intolerance in Africa. But their African

counterparts may not need much outside support. Even “things we

can all agree are bad, such as female genital cutting, are now up for

debate again”, notes Gil ian Kane of Ipas, an American group that

campaigns for safe abortion and contraception. Big shifts, such as

the growth of evangelical Christianity, particularly among young

Africans, herald a more socially conservative future. Like right-

wingers elsewhere, Africa’s Christian right relies on a sense of peril

to drum up support. But today it is their liberal rivals who have

reason to worry. ■

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A bank that divides Africa

A bitter race to elect the head

of Africa’s pivotal bank

America has lost interest, but the rest of the world should not

5月 22, 2025 03:18 上午 | ABIDJAN

Samuel Maimbo: results-driven team player

COMBINE THE secrecy of a papal conclave with the national rivalries

of the Eurovision Song Contest and you have a sense of what wil

happen on May 29th during the election of the next president of the

African Development Bank (AfDB).

This 60-year-old development finance institution, and who runs it,

matter more than ever. Cuts in aid will hit Africa especially hard. It is

likely to lose at least 30% of the total grant funding coming from

abroad, much of which is essential for government operations.

President Donald Trump says he is cutting America’s sizeable

contribution to the AfDB. Private capital is still not fil ing

infrastructure gaps.

Moreover, as the African Union is becoming increasingly ineffective,

Africa needs a strong pan-African institution with legitimacy, a clear

orientation, and money to unite the region. The African Continental

Free Trade Area and other slow-moving initiatives to beef up Africa

in global negotiations need champions. The AfDB has bil ions of

dollars to deploy: for African states that is a lot to fight for. But as
the bank’s presidential race heats up, the institution that should

transcend national rivalries is exposing them.

The main job of the bank’s president is to set out the continent’s

most pressing development needs and oversee the projects to tackle

them. It is also to inspire the confidence that encourages partners to

contribute more capital, which the bank then borrows against on the

market. The outgoing president, Akinwumi Adesina, helped raise the

bank’s profile, but not enough money to cushion against current

shocks.

In 2023 the bank disbursed $6.1bn, less than half the sum raised by

the Inter-American Development Bank for a region less than half as

populous. Africa remains the only region where the World Bank is

still a bigger project backer than the regional development bank

designed primarily for that purpose. Currently too little capital is

spread too thinly across many projects that the bank is forced to

pick up because African governments often neglect them.

On priorities, little separates the five candidates. All call for job

creation, interconnected infrastructure and intra-Africa trade. They

all big up their connections and expertise. Zambia’s Samuel Maimbo,

coming from the World Bank, stands out for his global experience
and has bold plans for tackling the continent’s stubborn trade

obstacles. He is also determined to woo back the Americans by

proving Africa’s worth. Mauritania’s Sidi Ould Tah has the bonus of

coming from the Arab Bank, given the growing appetite for new

partners, especially in the Middle East.

They may all claim to want more intra-Africa collaboration but the

divisiveness of the race, even within subregions, shows how hard it

is to build a continental consensus. South Africa, with one of the

biggest vote shares has its own runner, Swazi Tshabalala, instead of

joining the rest of the southern bloc to back Mr Maimbo. Ms

Tshabalala is the only woman on the ballot and has served as the

bank’s vice-president. France appears to be backing Mr Tah from

Mauritania. This means that Senegal, whose relationship with France

is fractious, has put forward its own candidate, a former economic

minister, Amadou Hott. He is backed by Nigeria, which has the

largest vote share in Africa, at 9%. A former finance minister of

Chad is running too.

Non-African donors to the bank wield special importance and a

combined 41% vote share, complicating the politics even more. Rich

non-African economies are key to maintaining the bank’s AAA rating.

Despite Mr Trump’s announcement, that still includes America, which

was pivotal in lobbying for Mr Adesina’s Rwandan predecessor in

2005. Within the region, votes are proportional to each country’s

capital contributions. The winning candidate needs at least half of

the total vote and also half of the African vote.

Ultimately the race is about politics, not policy. Key states like Egypt

and Nigeria are banking on whom they will get the most cash out of

(and who will demand the least in return). The bid for the job will be

over soon. The bid for more funds will be a longer, harder fight.■

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Putting the white in White House

Cyril Ramaphosa keeps his

cool with Donald Trump

The episode underlined Donald Trump’s warped views of South

Africa

5月 22, 2025 03:17 上午

CYRIL RAMAPHOSA, the South African president, went to the Oval

Office to salvage his country’s economic ties with America. But he

was ambushed by his host, who dimmed the lights to show videos

about what he has falsely called a “genocide” against white farmers.

Mr Ramaphosa kept his cool. But the episode underlined Donald

Trump’s warped views of South Africa—and how hard it will be to

change them. The Trump administration has cut aid to Africa’s

largest economy and seems set to cancel the preferential trade

terms enjoyed by South Africa (and many other countries in the

continent). It has also offered asylum to white South Africans; 59

have so far been granted refugee status.■

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Gaza on the brink again

Israel says it is unleashing an

“unprecedented attack”

More war beckons, as Donald Trump freezes out Binyamin

Netanyahu

5月 22, 2025 04:56 上午 | JERUSALEM

IN A CAREER of many crises Binyamin Netanyahu, Israel’s prime

minister, faces a defining moment. The path he chooses may alter

Israel’s relationship with the Palestinians and America, its closest

ally. One route involves reinvading Gaza to try to eradicate Hamas,

which the Israel Defence Forces (IDF) are poised to do. That would

cause more casualties, and further damage Mr Netanyahu’s relations

with America and the Gulf states. The other path would involve a

truce that could topple Mr Netanyahu’s government but repair

Israel’s influence in the White House at a time when Mr Trump is

reinventing American policy towards the Gulf, Syria and Iran. The

implications of that shift could last decades.

The odds of the first path, reinvasion, are now dangerously high. On

May 19th Mr Netanyahu said the IDF would be “taking control of all
of Gaza”. His finance minister, Bezalel Smotrich, a leader of one of

the coalition’s far-right parties, went even further. “We are

destroying what is still left of the strip, simply because everything

there is one big city of terror,” he said.

Read all our coverage of the war in the Middle East

The IDF has warned Gazans to leave Khan Younis, a key city, ahead

of an “unprecedented attack”. Israel hopes a final surge wil

eradicate what remains of Hamas. On May 13th a strike may have

killed Muhammad Sinwar, one of its last senior commanders. The

humanitarian cost is likely to be staggering. Since the collapse of a

ceasefire on March 18th, perhaps 5,000 Gazans have been killed,

taking the total to over 50,000, including combatants. Hunger is

widespread. In preparation for a ground attack the IDF has been

conducting over 100 strikes a day.

The Trump administration appears to have granted Israel licence to

act, but Mr Netanyahu himself appears not to have its support. Steve

Witkoff, Mr Trump’s envoy, is said to have privately urged Mr

Netanyahu to return to a deal. J.D. Vance, the American vice-

president, was planning to go to Israel this week but has cancelled

his visit, apparently because he did not want to appear to endorse

Israel’s latest military expansion. Mr Trump and those close to him

are refraining from openly criticising Israel’s government. The

president has repeatedly said he would like to see the war end, for

the hostages to be freed and for food to be let into Gaza. In public

he has put the onus on Hamas. But the new distance between

America and Israel may be widened still more if Israel reinvades

Gaza.

Mr Netanyahu was blindsided by America’s decision to embark on

talks with Iran on a nuclear deal. Likewise Mr Trump’s

announcement that America had agreed to end its bombing

campaign of the Houthis in Yemen, despite their continuing missile attacks on

Israel, caught the prime minister unawares. Israel was

conspicuously absent from the president’s itinerary during his Middle

East tour. Saudi Arabia was meant to be the next Arab country to sign Mr
Trump’s Abraham accords by normalising its ties with Israel,

but Mr Trump has accepted that this will not happen until the war in

Gaza is over. Mr Trump met Syria’s new president, Ahmed al-Sharaa,

and announced that he was lifting American sanctions on Syria, a step Israel
had argued against. For Israel, having a free rein in Gaza

seems to have come with a striking loss of influence.

Is the other path, a new truce, still possible? “Our operation in Gaza
is staged so at any moment we can pull back if there’s a ceasefire,”

says an Israeli general. Diplomacy may not be dead. American and

Qatari diplomats are pressing Israel’s and Hamas’s teams in Doha to

reach a new deal. Hamas has freed an American-Israeli soldier. Israel has
allowed in a trickle of supplies to be distributed by aid groups,

despite its claims they let Hamas steal them.

The probable death of Mr Sinwar may also help bring a ceasefire.

With another hardliner out of the way, Hamas’s more pragmatic

political leaders, who are based outside Gaza, may have more

leeway. Still, the main obstacles to peace remain. Israel wil

countenance only a temporary truce, during which more of the

hostages would be freed and more aid allowed in. But Hamas has

ruled out any deal unless it permanently ends the war and is balking

at Israel’s demand that it disarm and send its surviving Gazan

leaders into exile.

Pressure is increasing on both sides. A majority of members of the

European Union want the chance to re-examine Israel’s free-trade

agreement with Europe, its main trading partner. Britain has

suspended talks on a new trade deal. A majority of Israelis favour

ending the war. Yair Golan, the leader of the opposition Democrats

party, warned Israel could become a pariah state: “a sane country

does not wage war against civilians, does not kill babies as a

pastime, and does not engage in mass population displacement.”

And Hamas is under pressure, too, as its people starve. In polls,

around half of Gazans say they would leave given the chances.

Perhaps there will be a last-minute compromise. Without it, the

future looks bleak. Mr Netanyahu says he will end the war only once

he has won “total victory”. The total devastation of Gaza and

isolation for Israel look more likely. ■

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Things fall apart, again

The world’s worst conference

Hell on earth in Dubai-on-the-Med

5月 22, 2025 03:17 上午

“LIBYA BUILD” was billed as the largest construction expo ever to

have been held in north Africa. It lured businessmen from China,

Turkey and Malta. But as they arrived on May 12th, mortars began

falling. Gunmen in trucks fitted with heavy machineguns opened fire,

seizing control of half of the capital, Tripoli. Burnt-out cars littered

the streets. Schools, markets and banks shut their gates. Militiamen

broke into the central bank. And someone stole the gazelles from
Tripoli’s zoo. Britain quietly reversed its travel advice, eased a month

earlier, and cautioned against all trips to Tripoli. Ships in the port

have hurried away. Turkey, a key government ally, has airlifted its

citizens to safety.

Efforts in Tripoli to reset the country after the overthrow of

Muammar Qaddafi in the Arab spring of 2011 are faltering again.

The stalemate between the internationally recognised government in

the west, led by Abdul Hamid Dbeibeh, and Khalifa Haftar, a

strongman who with his sons rules the east, has been broken. A

conflict that most assumed was dormant has erupted into its worst

violence for five years. Despite his international recognition, Mr

Dbeibeh was always the weakest of the two. Unlike the Haftars, he

was a construction tycoon, not a warlord. His hold on power

depends on an edgy coalition of militias. When they grew restive, he

challenged them. After some initial success, he has failed.

The immediate cause of the strife is money. Mr Dbeibeh and his

family have emptied the coffers of what should be Africa’s oil-richest

state. Falling oil prices mean they have not been replenished. As Mr

Dbeibeh’s pay-offs shrank, the militias grew rebellious and looked for

alternative revenue streams, such as holding hostage the bosses of

utility companies. Fearing his rule was under threat, Mr Dbeibeh’s

guards invited Abdul Ghani al-Kikli, perhaps the most notorious

militia leader, for a meeting on May 12th and killed him. They then

turned on the capital’s biggest gang, the Special Deterrence Force

(Rada), a Salafist force that controls Tripoli’s prime airport and its

most populous neighbourhood. But Rada fought back until it held

half the city.

Most Tripolitanians are fed up. They are tired of a leader whose

greed has punctured the promise of Dubai-on-the-Med. They are

exhausted by the wait for elections, promised for 10 months after

the UN appointed him caretaker prime minister in February 2021.

Many see Mr Dbeibah as one of the fulul, or remnants of the Qaddafi

regime. After a ceasefire welcomed by the UN on May 14th,

thousands of protesters poured into the streets, echoing the same

demands that they often made against the Qaddafis in 2011: an end

to the regime, elections and a reunification of east and west.

The Haftars are weighing their chances of exploiting discontent in

the west. They already control the parliament in the east, most

oilfields and some 80% of the country (see map). Their bloody siege
of the capital failed in 2020, but they have since wooed allies in the

hope of a comeback. Their supporters in Zawiya and Zintan are said

to be on the move. And there are reports of a mobilisation at Sirte in

the centre and Ghadames on the Algerian border, perhaps to distract

armed groups who hitherto sided with Mr Dbeibeh. At a session of

parliament on May 19th in Benghazi, Libya’s second city and the

Haftars’ stronghold, representatives declared Mr Dbeibeh

“illegitimate” and proposed replacements. Fearful that a reckoning

looms, some of Mr Dbeibeh’s ministers have resigned.

The Libyan prime minister is said to have sent his family to London,

but he is clinging to office. Desperate to appear in control, he has

summoned henchmen from his hometown of Misrata to secure the

streets. They are said to have shot protesters. With the capital’s

main airport still under Rada’s control, he has reopened Tripoli’s

mothballed international airport for the first time in years. He vows

to turn Mr Kikli’s Tripoli barracks into a park and rid the capital of its

remaining militias, or, as he calls them, “blackmailers, criminals” and

“sharks”. But without them, his hold could grow even more fragile.

Libyans and foreign diplomats have begun to speak of his rule in the

past tense. At least with the airport reopened he has a way to

escape. ■

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Donald Trump’s sanctions gift to Syria

One happy Damascus

But the technicalities of easing sanctions will prove tricky

5月 22, 2025 03:17 上午 | DAMASCUS AND DUBAI

EVEN THE loudest advocates for Syria were shocked when President

Donald Trump announced he would lift sanctions on Syria earlier this month.
Ahmed al-Sharaa, Syria’s jihadist-turned-president, was a

“good young attractive guy” with a “very strong past”, Mr Trump told

reporters on Air Force One. A policy shift that some in Syria feared

would take ages—if it took place at all—happened overnight.

The unexpected news lit up Damascus, the capital. Syrians have

long struggled under one of the harshest sanctions regimes ever put

in place. The euphoria that followed the ousting of the dictator,

Bashar al-Assad, in December had ebbed months ago. Now

optimism is back. Western banking apps began to flicker to life

within hours of the announcement. DP World, an Emirati operator,

unveiled an $800m deal to run the port of Tartus. “My phone rang

continuously for 48 hours,” says a prominent Syrian banker.

Many are keen to do business in Syria. Yet lifting sanctions may be

neither swift nor smooth. Mr Trump seems untroubled by the nitty-

gritty of doing so. “I think the announcement took quite a few

people by surprise in the administration…It’s still a work in progress,”

says a congressional aide in Washington, DC. The Caesar Act is a

key part of the sanctions edifice, a pile of punitive measures against

the Assad regime. Mr Trump has pledged 180-day suspensions for

provisions in the act. State-backed Gulf firms and private capital in

the region may take heart, but it will not reassure Western

institutions, which are inclined to be more cautious.

The president could scrap at least nine sanctions-related executive

orders. So far, he has not. Meanwhile, a dysfunctional Congress wil

struggle to repeal Caesar provisions before next year—probably as a

footnote in a must-pass bill, such as the defence budget. Marco

Rubio, the secretary of state, has urged Congress to act, warning

that waivers alone “are not going to be enough to attract foreign

investment”. Meanwhile, hawks in Mr Trump’s administration who

remain unconvinced by Mr Sharaa’s Damascene conversion from

extremism may try to frustrate relief moves, some in Washington

predict.

Reconstruction and trade will almost certainly be led by the Middle

East. Commercial heavyweights in the Gulf are revving up for a

return after nearly 14 years of war. Spinneys, a regional supermarket

chain, is scouting sites; Zain, a Kuwaiti telecoms giant, has come in;

and Saudi private capital is eyeing Syria’s derelict cement plants. “An

economic boom is inevitable,” says a big car importer. Only weeks

ago few would have dared such optimism. The telecoms minister is
pushing for 5G. Plans are afoot to build a metro in Damascus and

overhaul water and power infrastructure. The new Syria is not short

on ambition.

Much hinges on money. Syria’s readmission to SWIFT, the world’s

financial messaging network, is deemed crucial. Among finance

types in Damascus, the consensus is that connectivity will resume

within weeks, easing transfers and allowing Syrians around the world

to send bil ions of dollars in remittances home. But without greater

clarity, and further guidance from their governments, Western

institutions will remain wary. “Syria’s financial system is a black box

that nobody understands,” says Stephen Fallon, a banking and

sanctions expert. “If I run a Western bank and I accidentally receive

funds from terrorists, it’s me the American regulators will come

after.” ■

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We’re out of there

Many of Syria’s diaspora are

not yet ready to go home

But they are encouraged by the lifting of sanctions

5月 22, 2025 11:30 上午

Take me home to the place I belong

“I WILL SELL all of this gold and move back to Syria by the spring,”

Ousama Sabbagh enthused in his jewellery shop in a majority-Syrian

district in the Turkish city of Bursa, south of Istanbul. That was five

months ago. Today his shop looks little different than it did then. Mr

Sabbagh now wants to move in September, cheered by President

Donald Trump’s recent pledge to lift America’s sanctions against

Syria. That decision has given new hope to Syrians abroad, says Dr

Haytham Alhamwi of the Syrian British Consortium, a lobby. Business

folk in the diaspora think sanctions relief and international aid are

vital for rebuilding the country and making it safe.

More than 6m Syrians were living abroad when Bashar al-Assad was

toppled in December. Since then, over half a mil ion have moved

back, says the UN. Four-fifths of the rest say they want to return

one day. But many know that after almost 14 years of devastating

civil war the move home will not be easy.

For one thing, essentials like housing, clean water and electricity are

patchy; according to a UN poll of refugees in the diaspora, 81% of

homeowners who fled abroad say their houses are no longer

habitable. Many schools and hospitals are in ruins. This puts off

families with children or the elderly.

Another deterrent is a shortage of jobs. At least a quarter of Syrians

back home lack work. Doctors, teachers and academics doubt they

will find employment. Announcements about sanctions relief have

been encouraging but a favourable climate for investment is stil

some way off.

Meanwhile, reports of theft and intimidation by armed groups,

especially in Aleppo, once Syria’s commercial hub, are scaring off the

diaspora. Until a modicum of law enforcement and justice is

established, non-Sunni minorities, especially the Alawites, who were

favoured by the Assad ruling family, fear retribution if they return.

Wealthier individuals with foreign passports have been going to and

fro to rebuild homes or set up businesses. Lifting sanctions may

prompt bigger flows of remittances. But although some Gulf firms

might be ready to sweep in, for some Syrians abroad returning is an

all-or-nothing decision. By going to Syria they may risk losing their

right to stay as refugees in countries such as Britain.■

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Europe
Poland’s election will cement or ruin its

standing in Europe

Populists at the gates :: Can Donald Tusk and Rafal Trzaskowski hold back
the hard

right?

MAGA misses the mark in Romania

European elections :: A liberal wins the presidential race

Donald Trump dashes any hope that he will

get tough with Russia

After the call :: He has nothing but kind words for Vladimir Putin

American threats push Greenland closer to

Denmark

Independence on pause :: The fear of invasion is undermining the anti-

colonial

movement

Europe’s mayors are islands of liberalism in

a sea of populists

Charlemagne :: City bosses are the functioning bits of increasingly

dysfunctional

polities

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Populists at the gates

Poland’s election will cement

or ruin its standing in Europe

Can Donald Tusk and Rafal Trzaskowski hold back the hard right?

5月 22, 2025 05:40 上午 | WARSAW

THE CHEERS at Rafal Trzaskowski’s election party on May 18th

sounded unconvincing. So was his margin of victory. The liberal

mayor of Warsaw came away with 31.4% of the vote in the first

round of Poland’s presidential election, compared with 29.5% for his

main rival, Karol Nawrocki, the candidate of the nationalist Law and

Justice (PiS) party. Mr Trzaskowski, backed by Poland’s prime

minister, Donald Tusk, and his centrist Civic Coalition (KO), had long

been the front-runner. Ahead of the run-off, scheduled for June 1st,

the tables have turned.

The reason is the strong showing by not just Mr Nawrocki but the

entire hard right. Slawomir Mentzen of Konfederacja, a MAGA-ish

libertarian party, took 14.8% of the vote. Grzegorz Braun, an open

antisemite, got a scary 6.3%. Polish liberals are worried. Mr Tusk

needs Mr Trzaskowski to win to continue rolling back the state

takeover that PiS undertook while in power from 2015-23. But rather

than breaking Europe’s populist wave, Mr Trzaskowski may end up

being swallowed by it.

How Poland can keep its place at the heart of Europe·

The ignored stockmarket superstar

Why so much is riding on Poland’s presidential elections

The election comes as Poland is stepping into the international

limelight. The war in Ukraine has shifted the continent’s centre of

gravity to the east. Poland is the region’s heavyweight, an

economically thriving country of 37m. Its position in Europe is at its

strongest in centuries, says Adam Szlapka, the country’s minister for

the European Union. The question is whether it can take advantage

of it.

Poland’s new confidence starts with its economy. Real GDP per

person has risen almost uninterruptedly for over three decades.

Adjusted for purchasing power, it was 3.1 times as high in 2024 as in

1995, compared with 1.5 for the EU as a whole. Unemployment is

under 3%, according to Eurostat’s seasonally-adjusted figures.

Poland boasts the EU’s tallest building (and its fastest-rising housing

prices). Hundreds of bil ions of euros in EU aid have helped bring

roads, agriculture and health care up to European standards. Its

infrastructure contrasts with the deterioration in its western

neighbour: Polish trains are now more punctual than German ones.
Prosperity has brought fast-rising tax revenues. Where other

European governments are fiscally constrained, Poland’s has

freedom to act. A decade-old universal child-benefit programme

pays 800 zlotys ($212) per month per child. Defence spending leapt

from 2% of GDP in 2019 to 4.7% this year, and will exceed 5% in

2026. Some strains are showing: the budget deficit hit 6.6% of GDP

last year, but public debt is a manageable 55% of GDP, though

growing.

Until recently, Poland punched below its weight diplomatically. That

worsened under PiS-led governments. PiS’s leaders picked fights

with Germany and aligned Poland with Viktor Orban, Hungary’s

autocratic leader. They also imitated Mr Orban’s takeover of the

public media and the courts, thus clashing with the EU, whose aid

was blocked for years.

Things began to shift with the war in Ukraine. Within Europe, Poland

enjoyed an “I told you so” moment, having long warned complacent

Westerners about Russia. Meanwhile, its role as the main logistical

partner for American military aid to Ukraine strengthened the

transatlantic relationship. The return to power in 2023 of Mr Tusk, a

former president of the European Council, patched up relations with

the EU. A trip to Kyiv this month by Mr Tusk and the leaders of

Britain, France and Germany showcased Poland’s central role.

It’s not over

The stumbling block remains politics at home. The outgoing

president, Andrzej Duda, is aligned with PiS, and has used his veto

to stymie Mr Tusk’s agenda—especially over restoring the rule of law.

On taking power in 2015, PiS packed the constitutional court and

seized control of the body that appoints judges. European courts say

judges appointed under PiS are therefore illegitimate. Mr Tusk’s

government promised the EU it would fix the problem as a condition

for restoring aid. But Mr Duda blocked a bill to vet the new judges.

Where Polish liberals see an effort to restore the rule of law, backers

of PiS see tit-for-tat state capture. Under Mr Tusk “democracy can be

openly violated for supposedly pro-democratic goals,” says Piotr

Glinski, a former deputy prime minister under PiS. Some such claims

have merit. The government stretched constitutional bounds to fire

PiS’s propaganda chiefs at the state broadcaster. It now leans the

other way, though less blatantly. But most of the complaints seem

unfounded and political. The head of the PiS-aligned constitutional

court is investigating what he calls a “coup d’état”, despite lacking

any authority to launch investigations. As for the judges, Adam

Bodnar, the justice minister, says he is duty-bound to restore EU

standards. He rattles off a list of prosecutions of former PiS officials

for self-enrichment and abuse of office: “Should we forget about

those cases?”

Polls show frustration. A victory by Mr Trzaskowski would let Mr Tusk

push ahead. But on some issues his problem is division in his own

coalition, which includes the progressive New Left, the centrist

Poland 2050 and the conservative agrarian Polish People’s Party

(PSL). Liberals want the new government to relax PiS’s draconian

anti-abortion laws, but face opposition, mostly from PSL. Ukraine

policy, too, has become hostage to electoral concerns. Mr Tusk has

opposed sending peacekeepers in the event of a truce, and has

conditioned Ukraine’s EU membership on its handling of historical

disputes over massacres of Poles by Ukrainian partisans during the

second world war. Mr Trzaskowski has pledged to restrict benefits for

some Ukrainian refugees. “They’ve become more PiS than PiS,”

snipes Jacek Czaputowicz, a former foreign minister under PiS. A

victory by Mr Trzaskowski would give Mr Tusk room for manoeuvre,

says Piotr Buras of the European Council on Foreign Relations.

The two contenders both back Ukraine against Russia and the

beefing up of Poland’s defences. But Mr Trzaskowski is much closer

to Brussels than to MAGA-world. Mr Nawrocki has positioned himself

as a Trump whisperer. This paid off in early May, when the American

president hosted him at the White House. If Mr Nawrocki wins, Mr

Trump will probably do business with him rather than with Mr Tusk,

widening the chasm between the government and the presidency.

But the stakes are highest at home. As president, Mr Nawrocki

would seek to undermine the coalition at every step, so as to

position PiS for parliamentary elections scheduled for 2027—or to

bring down the government even earlier. Some of Mr Tusk’s

conservative allies might defect. A new hard-right government would

mean a ruthless round of score-settling.

On June 1st much will depend on Mr Mentzen’s mostly young

electorate. Mr Nawrocki will not get all of them. They like free

markets; PiS is statist. Mr Trzaskowski’s supporters hope leftists and

centrists will be galvanised by the threat of PiS’s return. But the

Warsaw mayor is getting contradictory advice: some urge him to be

true to himself and show independence from Mr Tusk, while others

want him to pander to conservatives.

Messrs Trzaskowski and Nawrocki are now battling for voters, more

than half the electorate, who backed neither of them. The two big-

party candidates’ cumulative share of the vote in the first round was

lower than in any presidential election since the 1990s. The rise of

Konfederacja and Mr Braun may augur the end of an era that has

characterised Polish politics for 20 years, though not in the way

some had hoped. “We thought the end of our duopoly would yield a

really nice centre,” says a senior government official. Instead, it has

yielded a far right poised to play kingmaker. ■

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European elections

MAGA misses the mark in

Romania

A liberal wins the presidential race

5月 22, 2025 03:17 上午

NICUSOR DAN’S victory in Romania’s presidential election on May

18th afforded the country’s liberals a rare moment of joy. Mr Dan,

the mayor of Bucharest, is a French-trained mathematician known

for fighting corruption. His rival, George Simion, a MAGA-friendly

nationalist, had been favoured to win after taking 41% of the vote in

the election’s first round to Mr Dan’s 21%. Mr Simion had cosied up

to Hungary’s Viktor Orban; denounced Ursula von der Leyen,

president of the European Commission; and pledged to end aid to

Ukraine. Romania seemed poised to join the club of countries that

are driving a populist wedge into the European Union.

Yet in the two weeks between the first and second rounds, the

Bucharest mayor ran the better campaign. He was widely agreed to

have won the sole head-to-head debate, demanding that Mr Simion,

who had vaguely promised to cut half a mil ion state employees,

explain whom he would fire. Mr Simion unwisely skipped several

other debates. Romania’s diaspora of over 4m citizens (compared

with 19m inside the country), which overwhelmingly backed Mr

Simion in the first round, split more evenly in the second. Overall

turnout hit a record for a presidential election. The second round’s

new voters favoured Mr Dan, who won by a solid 54% to 46%.

That will make a huge difference. Since the previous prime minister

resigned after Mr Simion’s first-round victory, the new president gets

to choose a new one. Had Mr Simion won, his hard-right Alliance for

the Union of Romanians (AUR) would have formed a government.

Instead, whoever Mr Dan picks will form a coalition including the

Save Romania Union (USR), an anti-corruption party he once

headed, and the centre-right National Liberals (PNL), one of two

main parties of power. The other, the centre-left Social Democrats

(PSD), could join too.

The presence in government of one or both of the big parties wil

complicate one of Mr Dan’s tasks: convincing Romanians that he

does not represent more of the same. Both Mr Simion and Mr Dan

were seen as anti-system candidates, appealing to citizens

exhausted by corruption. In the 2010s Romania carried out one of

Europe’s most aggressive anti-corruption campaigns, jailing

thousands of officials. But by the time of the pandemic the

momentum had run out; investigations were weaponised to

undermine political opponents. Since 2021 the PNL and PSD have

run the country in grand coalitions that were seen as denying voters

a choice.

That no presidential candidate from either party made it into the

second round showed how deep the disaffection runs. Indeed, that

was clear after Romania’s initial attempt to choose a president last

November. The country’s constitutional court annulled that election

after it was unexpectedly won by Calin Georgescu, an eccentric far-

right conspiracy theorist. Mr Georgescu had implausibly declared

zero campaign expenditures, and there was evidence of social-media

manipulation; some alleged Russia was involved.

The cancellation undermined many Romanians’ trust in the electoral

system. Mr Simion has now undermined it further. After first

accepting Mr Dan’s win, he reversed himself on May 20th, alleging

interference by France and Moldova. Mr Simion has long campaigned

for Romania to absorb Moldova, where most citizens speak

Romanian, and is banned from that country as a result, but its

alleged interference was vague. As for the other charge, Pavel

Durov, the founder of Telegram, a social-media app, stated that a

French intelligence official had asked him to suppress some

messaging that favoured Mr Simion. He said he had refused, which

seemed to render interference on that platform moot. Romania’s

electoral authority quickly waved off Mr Simion’s challenge.

The new government will face a harsh economic picture. Romania’s

budget deficit was the highest in the EU last year, at 9% of GDP.

Inflation is at 5.1%, driven up by the previous government, which

raised pensions and state salaries in failed efforts to court popularity.

The country’s credit rating is BBB-, just above junk status. To keep it

from falling further the government will need to cut spending and
raise taxes.

Liberals across Europe are now looking to Romania for lessons on

how to beat populists. But Mr Simion made gratuitous errors. His

courting of Mr Orban, aimed at winning over ethnic Hungarians, was

quixotic: he has a firm reputation as an anti-Hungarian chauvinist.

Mr Orban’s endorsement prompted a denunciation from Romania’s

ethnic-Hungarian party, and probably did more harm than good.

Mr Dan’s powers as president are limited. He is already trying to

broker a deal to cut the budget deficit, and will do what he can to

reinvigorate the fight against corruption. “He is extremely

competent,” says Alina Mungiu-Pippidi, a corruption expert at Luiss

University in Rome who has worked with him. But he will have his

work cut out for him. ■

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After the call

Donald Trump dashes any

hope that he will get tough

with Russia

He has nothing but kind words for Vladimir Putin

5月 22, 2025 05:56 上午 | KYIV, VASYLKIV AND WASHINGTON, DC

IN THE HOURS before Donald Trump picked up the phone on May

19th to speak to Vladimir Putin, European diplomats believed that

they were inching closer to alignment with the Americans on

Ukraine. The American president had advertised the call as “turkey

time”, a last-chance call for the Kremlin to end the war or face pain
in the form of tough new sanctions. By the time the two-hour call

ended, and European leaders joined a debrief with Mr Trump, it

became clear that no threat had been issued to the Russian leader.

Mr Trump hinted he would instead simply walk away from the

negotiating process if he could not get the two sides to agree

quickly, which in the absence of new pressure now appears likely. “I

think something’s going to happen,” Mr Trump told reporters, though

without providing a shred of justification for this optimism. “And if it

doesn’t, I’ll just back away and they’re going to have to keep going.”

Many close to Volodymyr Zelensky, the Ukrainian president, have

long believed that Mr Trump would be difficult to win over. But ever

since the disastrous first February meeting in the Oval office, they

have adopted a strategy of placating Mr Trump, while moving strictly

in lockstep with European advisers. They have made several

concessions in pursuing the goal of a ceasefire followed by

meaningful negotiations. This includes dropping their demands for

security guarantees before talks could start; imposing no conditions

on a suggested ceasefire; signing a minerals and economic

partnership deal; and flying to Turkey for talks that were less talks

than a Russian declaration of a “forever war”.

Read more of our recent coverage of the Ukraine war

The call appeared to vindicate the most sceptical in Mr Zelensky’s

team. Despite promises to act tough, Mr Trump smothered Mr Putin

with flattery and affection. “No one wanted to put down the receiver

first,” is how one Kremlin adviser, Yury Ushakov, described an

exchange that was light on detail and heavy on pledges of future

economic co-operation. Mr Trump insisted that his call had achieved

a new Russian agreement to work on a “memorandum” for peace,

and on “immediate” talks. There was also the promise of new

mediation by the Vatican. “Maybe that will be helpful. There’s lots of

bitterness,” said Mr Trump. But a source close to Mr Zelensky says

that Mr Trump sounded more as though he was crafting an exit

strategy after understanding that he would struggle to achieve a

breakthrough.
The Vatican has already confirmed that it is ready to host any new

negotiation. A working group has been established with the

Ukrainians, and there is an offer to do the same with the Russians.

Mr Putin may well be attracted by the opportunity to validate himself

by talking peace in Europe even while charges of war crimes hang

over him. But he must surely know there is a downside to presenting

heavily belligerent policies in such a holy setting. At the time of

printing, the Russians had not agreed to the venue, or to anything

as straightforward as a date or a format.

Describing Mr Trump’s U-turn on sanctions as a “bump in a very bad

road”, one Western diplomat insisted that Mr Trump had yet to come

to a final decision about his future involvement. What an exit could

mean in practice is also hard to say: temporary or permanent; a

partial exit or a full betrayal? Many other demands make calls upon

Mr Trump’s time: the various crises in the Middle East, his “big

beautiful” tax-cuts bill and his continuing tariff battles with much of

the world. Prioritising these things does not necessarily mean he wil

cut off the flow of intelligence to Ukraine, or halt the supply of

military equipment that is scheduled to keep flowing until at least

the summer.

Ukraine’s backers hope Mr Trump may once again defy expectations.

Perhaps in “withdrawing” from the process, he will allow Congress to

vote through a sanctions package that would target Russian energy

exports by hitting those who buy them with tariffs of up to 500%.

Insiders say that the package already has enough signatures in the

Senate to be passed; but it would still require Mr Trump’s approval.

It is not impossible. But it is also hard to imagine it from a man who,

whenever faced with Russian intransigence, has so far responded by

tightening the screws on Ukraine. ■

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Independence on pause

American threats push

Greenland closer to Denmark

The fear of invasion is undermining the anti-colonial movement

5月 22, 2025 05:57 上午

AMERICAN SPOOKS boast formidable intelligence-gathering tools.

On any given day they might be hoovering up the phone records of

suspected terrorists or tracking Russian troops in Ukraine. These

days, however, spies can be found snooping on a target much closer

to home: Greenland. According to a recent report in the Wall Street

Journal, the Trump administration directed its intelligence agencies,

including the CIA and National Security Agency, to step up

surveillance of Greenland’s independence movement and identify

locals sympathetic to American designs on the Arctic island.

It is the latest twist in President Donald Trump’s stated desire to buy

or conquer the self-governing territory of 56,000 people, which is

part of the kingdom of Denmark. A visit in March by the vice-

president, J.D. Vance, in which he claimed Denmark had “not done a

good job by the people of Greenland”, had already upped the ante.

But allegations of spying have sparked widespread outrage among

Greenlanders and Danes. “Espionage against an ally and partner [is]

completely unacceptable” thundered Jens-Frederik Nielsen,

Greenland’s prime minister. The Danish government swiftly

summoned America’s ambassador for a dressing-down. Lawmakers

are considering closing the American consulate in Nuuk, the capital.

Mr Trump’s initial interest in Greenland, and the ensuing media

frenzy, helped rekindle Greenland’s independence debate. But his continued

predations now seem to be having the opposite effect:

Greenland and Denmark are closing ranks. Elections to Greenland’s

31-member parliament in March handed the opposition Democrats,

who have favoured closer ties with Denmark and a slower path to

independence, a plurality. The new governing coalition stated it

would “tread carefully” with regards to independence (read: not any

time soon).

Relations between Greenland and Denmark are growing noticeably

warmer. On a visit to Copenhagen in late April, Mr Nielsen agreed

with Mette Frederiksen, Denmark’s prime minister, to band together

amidst “disrespectful” American threats. Mr Nielsen flew back to

Greenland alongside the Danish king, Frederik X, for a visit designed

to project solidarity. Donning a warm coat emblazoned with the

Danish and Greenlandic flags, the king met hundreds of locals over

coffee at Nuuk’s cultural centre. The Danish government has agreed

to boost its puny spending on Arctic defence. Pipaluk Lynge, the

head of the Greenland parliament’s foreign-affairs committee,

welcomed co-operation with Denmark to head off American threats.

“We can’t get through this without them.”

Backers of independence sense a loss of momentum. Kuno Fencker,

a fire-brand MP, bemoans the dwindling enthusiasm. “Greenlanders

have become very scared about an American invasion,” he sighs,

blaming the Danish and international press for whipping up

paranoia. The island’s usually sedate politics have grown more

venomous, too. Mr Fencker, who travelled to Mr Trump’s

inauguration in January, filed a defamation suit against Aaja

Chemnitz, a fellow Greenlander in the Danish parliament, after she

labelled his jaunt to Washington a threat to the national interest.

For now, Mr Trump’s repeated threats have papered over some

Greenlanders’ frustrations with the legacy of Danish colonial rule.

But old wounds run deep. One neuralgic issue remains the 4,500

Inuit girls and women who were forcibly fitted with contraceptive

coils by Danish doctors during the 1960s and 1970s. Many

Greenlanders argue it constituted a form of genocide. The Danish

government is yet to issue an official apology. Results of a joint

investigation are due in September, which could yet engender

another surge in support for independence. “We lost a battle,”

concedes Mr Fencker. “But the war is not over.” ■

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Charlemagne

Europe’s mayors are islands

of liberalism in a sea of

populists

City bosses are the functioning bits of increasingly dysfunctional

polities

5月 22, 2025 03:17 上午

EVERY ELECTION in Europe these days seems to pit a moderate

politician advocating mostly sensible ideas against a rabble-rousing

populist with a bombastic dislike of migrants, gays and the European

Union. The centrist usually wins, but the margins are dwindling. Is
Europe thus destined to drift into reactionary dysfunction, one

electoral setback at a time? Not so fast. Powerful as they may seem,

Europe’s firebrand nationalists—even when they seize high office—

are merely the meat in a liberal sandwich. Above them are EU

wallahs, always on hand to police budget deficits and adhesion to

the rule of law. Below the populists is a layer of pragmatic politicos

who keep the day-to-day machinery of government on the road (and

the roads free of potholes). Europe’s mayors, particularly those of

big cities, are the unsung moderating force of the continent’s

politics. Free of patriotic bombast and focused on getting buses

running on time, they are the bulwark of moderate governance in a

continent that needs it badly.

This quiet layer of mayoral technocracy has seen rapid promotions of

late. On May 18th Nicusor Dan, the centrist mayor of Bucharest,

unexpectedly trounced George Simion to win the presidency of

Romania. The campaign highlighted their different approaches to

government. The hard-right Mr Simion pontificated on foreign policy,

boasted of being “almost perfectly aligned ideologically with the

MAGA movement” and spent part of the final week of his campaign

in Brussels, a place not actually in Romania. In contrast Mr Dan once

admitted that what really kept him up at night was the traffic in the

capital. Voters plumped for the traffic guy. Another centrist mayor

may be propelled to higher office on June 1st when Rafal

Trzaskowski, the centrist Warsaw mayor who narrowly won the first

round last week, faces off against a candidate backed by the il iberal

Law and Justice party.

At confabs in Brussels Mr Dan will meet fellow EU leaders familiar

with cycle lanes, waste-water treatment and other unglamorous bits

of the state. Bart De Wever, Belgium’s newish prime minister, was

himself once perceived as a hard-right firebrand (his cause is the

independence of Dutch-speaking Flanders), so much so that political

rivals refused to include his party in ruling coalitions. A 12-year stint

as mayor of Antwerp from 2013 was just the thing to show the

electorate he was capable of more than soundbites. Giorgia Meloni

once ran for mayor of Rome before settling for the Italian

premiership; Ulf Kristersson, prime minister of Sweden, is an

erstwhile vice-mayor of Stockholm. Meetings of EU leaders are

chaired by António Costa, the president of the European Council who

ran Lisbon for eight years before becoming Portugal’s prime minister.

Across Europe mayors are often cut from a different political cloth to
the rest of the governing class. Lefties do notably well locally even

when their parties are out of favour nationally—perhaps

unsurprisingly, given the cosmopolitan types who choose to make

cities their home. Parties of the hard right, which lack the

organisational nous to put up candidates for dull city jobs, are

notably absent. The municipal discourse thus has a gentler feel to it

(at least until the building of cycle lanes is discussed). Amsterdam’s

mayor, Femke Halsema, who is appointed by central government

rather than elected, is a progressive woman in a Dutch political

system dominated by progressive-bashing men. Socialists and their

left-leaning allies have been routed in France, losing out on all the

top jobs at national level—but they still run Paris, Marseille and most

other big French cities. Ms Meloni and her right-wing acolytes

dominate Italian politics, but the mayors of Rome and Milan come

from the moribund left. (The same is true in America, where most

big cities are run by Democrats.)

In central Europe, the spiritual home of continental il iberalism, local

pols stand proudly as open-minded counterweights to majoritarian

regimes. Fed up with the region being associated with the likes of

Viktor Orban, the limelight-hogging Hungarian prime minister, the

mayors of Prague, Bratislava, Warsaw and Budapest in 2019 set up a

“Pact of Free Cities” where dynamic, hipsterish mayors showed

another way was possible. The quartet travelled to Kyiv together to

support Ukraine when some of their national leaders refused to do

so. Another member of the club might have been Istanbul, whose

mayor, Ekrem Imamoglu, proved such a threat to Turkey’s president,

Recep Tayyip Erdogan, that he was simply put in prison. The Pact

now includes 32 European cities focused on “protecting democracy

and open society”, not to mention sharing tips on handling thorny

zoning issues.

From city council to European Council

Town halls are obvious places to find capable managers.

Demagogues rise by making promises; mayors stay in power by

keeping them. Not all politicians who have thrived as mayor do well

on the national stage. Olaf Scholz will be remembered more fondly

for his seven years as mayor of Hamburg than for his three as

German chancellor. Anne Hidalgo, now in her second decade as

mayor of Paris, managed a risible 1.8% of the vote in her bid for the

French presidency in 2022, behind no fewer than nine other

candidates.
Cities may seem easy to manage in comparison to countries. Often

capitals are the richest part of the nation. Delivering public services

is easier in densely populated places with a fat tax-base. But

shortcomings are also easier to spot. Managerial ineptitude that

exposes the shortcomings of populist national leaders can take years

to emerge: underfunded public services degrade only slowly, and

few voters follow the intricacies of foreign policy. In contrast,

everyone swiftly notices when potholes go unfilled and buses run

late. Blowhard politicians often talk about taking back control. Voters

should pay more attention to those with a good record of taking care

of the rubbish bins. ■

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Britain

The UK-EU deal is just a start

Keir Starmer’s EU reset :: The process of rejigging the relationship will be a

long one

Britain has sacrificed its fishermen again

Fishing rights :: How wise

The improbable rise of chessboxing

Queen’s gambit, plus a punch :: A contest of mind and body

Does Britain need migrant workers?

Taking back control :: Employers think so

An eccentric set of one-offs has knocked

inflation up in Britain

Deflated hopes :: Troublingly, the public no longer thinks inflation will keep
falling

London has become a cycling city

Two wheels good :: It shows how dockless-electric bikes could transform

cities

Bring back Boris

Bagehot :: A return of Boris Johnson would provide something for everyone

to enjoy

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Keir Starmer’s EU reset

The UK-EU deal is just a start

The process of rejigging the relationship will be a long one

5月 22, 2025 04:56 上午 | Berlin and London

SIR KEIR STARMER chose the gilt-edged splendour of Lancaster

House in central London to stage the first post-Brexit EU-UK summit

on May 19th. He, Ursula von der Leyen (the European Commission’s

president) and António Costa (the European Council’s president) duly

talked up a historic “reset” of relations. In fact what was agreed

were some relatively small changes to eliminate the worst trade

frictions, plus a new defence deal. But this may presage the start of
longer negotiations that in time may bring the two sides significantly

closer together.

The defence-and-security agreement matters most, given the

background of Russia’s war in Ukraine and Donald Trump’s demand

that Europe must spend more on its own defence. Britain will now

be able to take part in the EU’s planned €150bn ($169bn) defence

fund (though it will have to pay its own fair share). Both sides have

recognised that rebooting European defence without one of its strongest

powers would not be sensible. The efforts by some

countries to restrict such spending to EU members alone were seen

off.

On trade, the main agreement was for Britain to align with most EU

food standards. That will facilitate trade in food and fish products,

exports of which have suffered since Brexit. It will also reduce

border checks between Great Britain and Northern Ireland, which

was already subject to EU standards under the 2023 Windsor

Framework negotiated by Rishi Sunak. As part of the deal, Sir Keir

agreed to extend the current fisheries agreement for 12 years, to

2038. And the two sides are to link their carbon-adjustment

mechanisms and aim for a joint electricity market.

The third component of the deal was to work towards a youth-

mobility (or “youth-experience”) agreement. This should make it

easier for young people to move, study and work across borders.

Britain is to explore how and when it might rejoin the Erasmus+

student-exchange programme. An agreement is to be made to co-

operate in fighting organised crime through data-sharing and

working through Europol, the EU’s police agency. And in a gesture to

please grumpy tourists, Britons are to be allowed to use border e-

gates at most EU airports, reducing annoying queues at passport

control. Like other parts of the deal, the details will take some

months to negotiate: use of e-gates may not happen before the

summer.

Critics from the Conservative Party and Reform UK, amplified by

outrage in parts of the press, were quick to denounce the entire deal

as a betrayal. The Daily Telegraph headlined its report “Kiss goodbye

to Brexit”. The biggest grumbles were about the fisheries deal, which

was said to mean handing over Britain’s fishing waters to French and

other fishermen for more than a decade. There were also complaints

about Britain choosing to align with EU rules when it has no say in

how they are drawn up, thereby submitting itself to the jurisdiction

of the European Court of Justice. And the youth-experience

agreement was attacked as merely presaging more immigration. The

Tories vowed to reverse all these changes once back in power.

Yet this narrative of Brexit betrayal is absurd. Sir Keir has stuck

firmly to his red lines of not joining the single market or customs

union and not accepting free movement of people. Even after his

“reset”, this is what was once termed a hard (not a soft) Brexit. It is,

for instance, harder than the Brexit deal that Theresa May tried

vainly to get through Parliament in 2019. The betrayal story is also

increasingly out of line with shifting public opinion. A clear majority

of voters now say that Brexit was a mistake, and an even bigger

majority wants closer relations with the EU (this is true even of those

who voted Reform in the last general election).

It is true that Sir Keir has conceded more than he may have wished

on fisheries, prompting the Scottish Fishermen’s Federation to talk of

a “horror show”. Yet there was never much chance of taking back

full control of British waters, not least because British fishermen

export most of what they catch to the EU. As for being a rule-taker

subject to the European Court of Justice, that is the price that any

country wishing to sell into the much larger EU market inevitably has

to pay. After all, the EU takes over 40% of British exports, twice as
much as America and 20 times as much as India (the two other

countries with which Sir Keir has recently struck deals). And a limited

youth-experience deal is a long way from the old system of free

movement of people across Europe.

The agreement has hugely improved the mood music between the

two sides. Bigger EU members have responded not by crowing over

their negotiating triumphs (though France is pleased with the

extension of fishing rights), but by welcoming the UK back to the

table as a grown-up. The new German government under Friedrich

Merz seems particularly pleased to have Britain back as a partner.

This is clearest in defence and security, in which Britain is now set to

play a significant role. But the food-standards and youth-mobility

agreements are also seen as drawing the UK some way back into the

European club, even as it continues to stand aside from the single

market, the customs union and free movement of people.

In all, given the constraints of his red lines and the EU’s own

principles, Sir Keir has got about as good a deal as he could have

done. It may not have a large economic impact (Sir Keir talks of it

boosting GDP in 2040 by around £9bn, or 0.3%), but it will remove

some of the worst irritations created by Brexit. The EU has remained

determined not to give a country that is outside its single market a

similar degree of access as a full member. The two sides will now

initiate a process of continuous negotiation, overseen by annual

summits with working parties set up to implement any agreements.

Indeed, this recognition that the reset is not a single event but the

start of a process may be what is most significant about the entire

deal. It took almost four years of negotiation before Boris Johnson

was able to sign the trade and co-operation agreement in December

2020. More than four years on, Sir Keir has managed to soften some

of its more egregious features. He is now setting a course for further

lengthy negotiations in future. That is what living alongside the EU

elephant as a smaller party entails. Switzerland has been negotiating

deals with the EU almost continuously for 30 years—and it recently

agreed on yet another treaty that has still to be ratified.■

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Fishing rights

Britain has sacrificed its

fishermen again

How wise

5月 22, 2025 03:17 上午

A tide in the affairs of fishermen

THE DEAL reached by Britain and the European Union on May 19th

says nothing about the manufacture of locks and hinges. Nor does it

say anything about the condiments-and-seasonings industry, or

about carpets and rugs. But it does deal with an industry that, with a

turnover in 2023 of £892m ($1.13bn) according to the Office for

National Statistics, is smaller than those: fishing.

EU fishing boats will be allowed to operate in British waters until

2038. Catch quotas will be frozen, so British and continental crews

will divide the seas’ bounty roughly as they do at present. To British

fishermen, this looks like a victory for the EU. They wanted Britain to

insist on annual negotiations over access and quotas—something

that would have turned continental fishermen into perpetual

supplicants, since they catch much more fish in British waters than

Britons catch in EU waters.

“Surrender”, spluttered Harriet Cross, a Conservative MP. “Utter

betrayal”, said the Scottish White Fish Association. But Britain’s

fishing industry is so tiny that no responsible government would

privilege its interests over the goal of freer trade overall. Like other

industries, fishing will benefit from the scrapping of checks and other

non-tariff barriers—perhaps even more so, since fish go off while

forms are being filled in. About 70% of British fish exports go to the

EU.

Annual negotiations over fishing rights would probably have been

fraught, especially since the British industry also desires to change

the way that quotas are allocated. Instead of following history and

precedent, as they do at the moment, Britain and the EU would

consider “zonal attachment”, meaning where the fish live. Good luck

working that out for dozens of species every year. “Fish are difficult

to count. They move around,” says Bryce Stewart of the Marine

Biological Association.

If negotiations between Britain and the EU had ever broken down,

all fishermen would have suffered in the long run. With no

agreement on how many fish ought to be caught, countries would

have been incentivised to haul in far too many, as a tragedy of the

commons unfolded. Something like that has happened to mackerel

in the north-east Atlantic. A once-plentiful (and very tasty) fish is

being over-exploited because of a dispute involving Britain, the EU,

the Faroe Islands, Norway, Iceland and Greenland. Better a stable,

shoddy deal than a fish war. ■

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Queen’s gambit, plus a punch

The improbable rise of

chessboxing
A contest of mind and body

5月 22, 2025 03:17 上午 | Islington

Knockout or checkmate?

IT’S 9PM ON a sweaty May evening at London’s Scala nightclub and

Hamza Buhari must knock out his opponent in the next three

minutes or lose his king. The 28-year-old pharmacist from London is

taking on Lithuania’s Tadas Ceponis at chessboxing, a mash-up of

two sports, in which competitors win by checkmate on the board or

knockout in the ring. The bell ends the third round and Mr Buhari is

just a few moves from defeat, forcing him to go for broke with his

fists. As Mr Ceponis takes a rain of blows, the referee stops the fight,

awarding victory to Mr Buhari.

“He’s a much better boxer, I felt that today,” Mr Ceponis tells the

baying crowd of around 500 as he embraces his opponent. “He’s a

much better chess player,” replies an equally sporting Mr

Buhari. Regulars in the crowd say they find watching chessboxing

(between men or women) much more fun than either sport alone.

The first chessboxing bout took place in Berlin in 2003, organised by

a Dutch performance artist, Iepe Rubingh. Five years later a

breakaway British faction got going. Chessboxing’s popularity has

steadily risen despite this split, helped by a surge in online chess

during the covid-19 pandemic and a hit TV show, “The Queen’s

Gambit”.

Britain has hosted the most bouts and is home to some 200 regular

chessboxers, estimates Gavin Paterson, a promoter. Britain was also

first to introduce a grading system, similar to the belts awarded in

judo or karate. “British chessboxing has been much more successful

[than its contintenal counterpart] because it took lessons from

boxing and wrestling in the way it presents the sport,” says Mr

Paterson.

On the Saturday morning before the Scala fight a dozen chessboxers

gather at Islington Boxing Club, the British home of chessboxing, to

exert both their minds and bodies. Four boards are set up beside a

boxing ring. Training consists of rounds of chess alternating with

intense exercise or sparring. The challenge comes from attempting a

cerebral activity while fighting for breath. A pounding heart, let alone

a few punches to the head, can leave you disoriented. The training

session features tips like ensuring you take your turn in chess just as

the next boxing round begins, so your opponent’s clock is running

when you return to the board, where some 80% of matches are

decided. “The boxing impacts the chess and vice versa,” Mr Paterson

says.

This seems to attract those who want to be seen as Renaissance

Men, and to help nerdy types gain confidence. Samy Shoker, an

Egyptian grandmaster ranked in the world’s top 1,000 active chess

players, beat Germany’s André Glenzer at the Scala to take the

WCBA European middleweight title. Preparing for his chessboxing

debut improved his physical condition, says Mr Shoker, a lean 37-

year-old who entered the ring wearing a pharaoh headdress.

The fighters risking their big brains in the ring are not doing it for

the money. None was on offer at the Scala, in contrast to the

€500,000 ($565,000) purse at the FIDE World Rapid and Blitz Team
Championships, a chess contest due to take place weeks later a few

miles away. As one of the volunteers at the Scala event puts it,

chessboxing runs on “pride and idiocy”. ■

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Taking back control

Does Britain need migrant

workers?
Employers think so

5月 22, 2025 03:18 上午

SINCE 2020 BRITAIN’S non-EU foreign workforce has grown to 3.2m

—more than double its pre-pandemic size. That has fuelled anti-

immigrant sentiment. The upside is a more productive and richer

economy. More than one in five working-age Britons are neither

employed nor seeking work; foreigners have filled the gaps. In 2022

the average migrant on a skilled-worker visa contributed a net

£16,300 ($20,150) to the public purse, compared with £800 for the

average Brit. The Centre for Economics and Business Research, a

consultancy, reckons zero net migration that year would have

resulted in a 0.94% drop in GDP in 2025.

More than half of all skilled-worker visas issued since 2021 have

gone to medical professionals, nurses and care staff. It follows the

introduction by the Conservative government in 2020 of a fast-track

visa for health and social-care workers. Around 9% of visas went to

those in scientific and technical jobs; financial services and IT

professionals accounted for 6% each; for hospitality workers it was

4%.
Now the experiment is over. The government is, in the words of Sir

Keir Starmer, “shutting down the lab”. The prime minister has

announced plans to tighten access to work visas; care workers wil

no longer be eligible. The duration of graduate visas will be reduced

from two years to 18 months. Rather than “importing cheap labour”,

employers will be required to prioritise training home-grown

workers. With a few exceptions migrants will face a longer wait—ten

years instead of five—for permanent settlement and citizenship.

Employers are sounding the alarm. Scientific groups such as the

Institute of Physics, the Royal Society and Cancer Research UK

(CRUK) fear the changes will undermine Britain’s global

competitiveness. The sector has relied heavily on international

talent. Just under two-thirds of the scientific staff at the Francis Crick

Institute, one of Europe’s biggest biomedical labs, are from

overseas.

Tech firms are apprehensive, too. Some occupations that were

previously eligible for a skilled-worker visa—particularly those in data

centres—will now fall below the threshold. One large tech firm plans

to close its graduate scheme to international applicants as a result of

proposals to shorten graduate visas, according to Nimmi Patel of

techUK, a trade body. The firm says recruits will struggle to meet

higher salary thresholds within the reduced time frame.

Businesses also face higher visa fees. The charge employers pay to

sponsor skilled workers will rise by a third to £1,320 for the largest

employers. Britain’s immigration system was already one of the

priciest globally. CRUK says its institutes spent nearly £690,000 on

recruiting international researchers last year, over two-thirds of what

it spent on cervical-cancer research.

Skills gaps won’t be plugged overnight. The Construction Industry

Training Board estimates it will need more than 250,000 new

workers by 2028 to build homes, fix the grid or construct roads and

bridges. “We simply do not have enough UK workers to achieve

that,” says Richard Beresford, chief executive of the National

Federation of Builders.

The effects of tighter immigration rules are already evident in

hospitality, where more than half of all visas go to chefs. Higher

salary thresholds for skilled-worker visas introduced by the previous

government in April 2024 have put pressure on employers. Overseas

workers now make up less than 15% of the hospitality workforce,

down from 25% before covid. But vacancies have soared to 84,000.

In manufacturing, where companies were already struggling to fil

more than 50,000 vacancies for welders, toolmakers and other

trades, higher thresholds will make it “practically impossible” to

recruit overseas, says Jamie Cater of Make UK, a trade body.

Rather than training workers, many firms are turning to automation.

From robot-run warehouses to AI store monitors, retailers such as

Next and Primark have been investing in automation in anticipation

of rising labour costs. But in the state-funded health and social-care

sectors, where foreigners make up around a third of doctors and

care workers in England, robots will have limited use. Unison,

Britain’s largest union, is calling for higher wages to attract domestic

workers, a cost that would be passed on to taxpayers. Taking back

control may bring nasty shocks. ■

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Deflated hopes

An eccentric set of one-offs

has knocked inflation up in

Britain

Troublingly, the public no longer thinks inflation will keep falling

5月 22, 2025 03:17 上午

A CERTAIN WHITE-KNUCKLE angst accompanied Britain’s early-

morning inflation releases in 2022 and 2023, when prices were rising

at a pace not seen in decades. Lately, the mood has been calmer.

But new figures for April, published on May 21st, brought

unwelcome flashbacks to the economists, traders and mandarins

watching the data.

Annual headline inflation rose from 2.6% in March to 3.5%, blowing

past forecasters’ expectations of a 3.3% rise. Core inflation, which

strips out food and energy, rose to 3.8%. Rather than reflecting a

broad surge, though, these increases had a more prosaic cause:

changes to a few regulated prices, which reset at the start of the

financial year in April.

Water and energy bills, as well as vehicle-excise duty, a car tax,

explain nearly all of the increase. Water bills rose 26% in April after

Ofwat, the regulator, allowed firms to charge more to fund

investment. Previously announced rises in national insurance (a

payroll tax) and the minimum wage both bit as well, and may have

pushed up prices in shops. Air fares were lifted by the holidays.

Strip out regulated prices (water bills and the like), and a sunnier

picture emerges. The Economist calculates that annual core inflation

excluding regulated prices was 2.7%, about the same as in March

(see chart 1). That remains higher than the Bank of England’s 2%

target, but not by much.

Still, Britain cannot afford to relax entirely. However easy it is to slice

misbehaving prices out of charts, ordinary Britons still notice when

their bills keep rising. And, four years on from the initial surge,

surveys suggest that households don’t expect inflation to fall much

at all over the next year or so.

More troublingly, many Britons now also believe it will stay above

2% for several more years, and possibly indefinitely (see chart 2).

That belief, if it sticks and spreads, could seriously dent the

credibility of Britain’s inflation target. One reason why inflation has

declined by so much in Britain and across the rich world over the
past two years is that households expected it to fall—and so didn’t

push for the sorts of wage increases that could have set off a self-

reinforcing spiral of higher prices. That faith has now been shaken.

As a result, some rate-setters at the Bank of England, including the

chief economist, Huw Pill, are now fretting publicly about a possible

regime shift in price-setting. For decades, Britons were able to

blithely ignore inflation. Now that households and businesses are

paying attention, so the theory goes, they are less wil ing to simply

trust that any inflationary shocks will soon pass. Too many more

months like April, then, even if the causes are genuine one-offs,

could add up to a real problem.

Across the Atlantic, April also marked Donald Trump’s escalation in

tariffs. Worries about moderately above-target inflation may well

look quaint, if American protectionism begins to choke global

growth. A cruel month for central bankers—and consumers.■

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Two wheels good

London has become a cycling

city

It shows how dockless-electric bikes could transform cities

5月 22, 2025 03:17 上午

A green revolution

FOR THE PAST quarter of a century the City of London Corporation,

a local authority, has conducted a giant traffic survey. Stationed

around central London, more than a hundred observers stand and

count what goes by. The latest exercise, conducted last autumn and
published in April, contained the most remarkable result yet.

Compared with the previous one two years before, the number of

cyclists was up by 57%.

London has become a cycling city. For years that dream—of

Amsterdam- or Copenhagen-on-Thames—seemed unattainable,

owing to long commutes, dangerous roads and a cycling culture

dominated by macho MAMILs (middle-aged men in lycra) that

would-be riders seemed to find, curiously, unappealing. Even as the

city’s mayors installed hundreds of miles of cycleways, particularly

since 2016, there was only a slow conversion from seat to saddle.

Until now. In central London, the survey shows, bikes have

overtaken cars to become the most common vehicle. On current

trends, they will outnumber all motor vehicles—cars, buses,

motorbikes, vans and lorries—within two years (see chart). Wil

Norman, the cycling commissioner, reckons the city has reached a

tipping-point, with much of the surge coming from people who had

not previously been persuaded to pedal.

What changed? Most riders still use personal bikes, which account

for 60% of the increase since 2022 (helped by all those cycle lanes).

But in the past two years the use of rental-electric bikes has

increased four-fold. So ubiquitous are a whizzy white-and-green

variety that the fruit they are named after has become a verb: “Shall
we Lime?” Londoners ask. The Californian company behind them has

more than 200,000 bikes in 280 cities, from Paris to San Francisco.

But London’s is by far its most extensive service, with some 30,000

bikes across 480 square kilometres and 17 boroughs. (Forest, a

British company and Lime’s main competitor, operates in 14.)

London’s bike boom offers several lessons. The first is that while

many people enjoy the thrill and convenience of cycling, some dislike

the effort. London introduced docked bikes in 2010. It has had

electric bikes for hire since 2011. But usage took off with the

introduction of Lime’s powerful Gen4 bike in 2022. All rental-electric

bikes have a top speed of 25kph. But Limes have rapid acceleration,

enabling riders to zip around with little exertion.

If one secret is making the bikes really electric, the other seems to

be making them really dockless. Previously, bike-hire schemes

offered a patchy service: it was often hard to find a bike and it could

take ages to find a designated parking space. Today, London’s

operators have more bikes. But critically they have negotiated

relaxed parking rules, including on residential streets, meaning their

fleets fan out widely. Lime claims that 97% of Londoners in its

service area live within a two-minute walk of one of their bikes. As

with Uber, it thinks users open the app if they know convenience is

only a few minutes away.

There have been teething problems. It is hard to ensure that riders

park considerately, not in the middle of the pavement. In the city

centre, there are now tightly enforced parking zones, though this

can lead to bikes clustered like a shoal. In the rest of the city,

operators try to enforce good behaviour by making riders take

photos. With more investment in cycle parking, cities should be able

to solve this (around ten bikes fit into each car space).

A second concern is safety. With large electric motors and a sturdy

vandal-proof design, Limes are around four times the weight of an

average bike. That makes them easy to tip over. Electric-bike riders

tend not to wear helmets and seem especially likely to run traffic

lights, perhaps because they are paying by the minute. London’s

orthopaedic surgeons complain about a spurt of broken bones. Some

critics are calling for tighter regulation.

Still, moving people from cars onto bikes helps make cities more

liveable. And a truly city-spanning bike-hire scheme—of which

London is now perhaps the leading example—offers extra benefits. It

is a highly efficient way of fil ing gaps in an urban-transport system,

connecting areas poorly served by buses and trains. City

administrators lose some fare revenue, but they benefit from less

pressure at peak times, and they can charge bike operators a service

fee for their licence.

In commuting hours, Lime’s data show that many riders use the

bikes for first- or last-mile trips: getting to the nearest Tube or from

a railway station to the office. For many, this shaves a third or more

off their commute. Not only does that give people time back, it

expands the pool of workers a company might be able to hire.

Economists have not yet properly studied these benefits, but they

could well be large. Previous research found that installing docking

points raised rents in nearby houses.

Regulation will have to make sure there are sensible parking rules

and bikes are well maintained. Cities will also want to foster

competition. At around £7 ($6.40) an hour Liming is quite pricey.

This month Voi, a Swedish operator, launched a lower-priced scheme

in west London. Regulators will need to get the balance right. With a

higher usage rate, operators can invest in maintaining their fleet and

moving bikes around. Three or four city-wide operators might be

ideal; too many would probably result in piles of bikes in the city
centre.

Lime, which aims to float on the New York Stock Exchange this year,

is talking up its success in London—and its plans to invest in a safety

campaign and more parking spaces. Operators are keen to grow

elsewhere in Britain, and beyond. As long as they can keep

regulators on side, riders—and cities—will feel the benefits. ■

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Bagehot

Bring back Boris

A return of Boris Johnson would provide something for everyone to

enjoy

5月 22, 2025 03:17 上午

PEOPLE TURN to animals when describing Boris Johnson. To his aides, the
former prime minister was “Big Dog”. One commentator

labelled him a “giant toad”, squatting over British politics. Another

said he was a “bulletproof Gunnersaurus”, after Arsenal’s dinosaur

mascot. When rumour emerged that Mr Johnson was considering a

return to front-line politics, the menagerie expanded. “The big,

blond-maned cat is stalking the leader of the Tory party,” said one

commentator, panting.

Something is afoot. Mr Johnson once sniped at his Tory successors.

Now he offers Kemi Badenoch something far more damaging:

sympathy. Parties can recover from lousy polling, he simpers. The

subtext is clear; the Tories have not been in such a rut since the

summer of 2019, when they were polling in the teens and assailed

by Nigel Farage. The party went on to win a big majority just six

months later. Who led it out of that hole? Me? Cripes!

Big Dog left office in 2022 a wildly unpopular leader, after a tenure

marked by incompetence, cronyism and a contempt for the norms

and rules of British government. His return would be insane. Yet the

strangest bit is that every part of the political spectrum would

welcome it.

Sheer desperation explains why Conservatives outside the court of

the Giant Toad mull the idea. After the Tories were walloped in local

elections at the start of the month, a poll by More In Common

suggested that, among the likely leadership candidates, only Mr

Johnson would trump Mr Farage’s Reform UK. Would it guarantee

victory? Far from it. For a party staring at death, even a hung

parliament would be a triumph.

British politics happens at pace and nostalgia comes quickly. Failings

become lovable foibles. “At least you knew what you’d got with

Boris,” said one voter from Doncaster, revelation falling from her lips,

during a focus group. “You got a blooming idiot who just said it how

he saw it.” Remember Boris? The people’s buffoon.

Chutzpah explains why Bulletproof Gunnersaurus thinks he could do

it. Errors of Mr Johnson’s era can be blamed on others. High taxes?

Blame Rishi Sunak, his former chancellor, who brought down Mr

Johnson and eventually succeeded him. High immigration? Blame Mr

Sunak for that too. On Treasury spreadsheets, immigrants go in one

end and GDP comes out the other.

A dark, unspoken cynicism lurks beneath such a strategy. Support

for a nativist, right-wing party emerged only when the Conservative

Party was led by a brown man. That same party has embedded itself

in British politics while the right is led by Ms Badenoch, a black

woman. Untangling correlation and causation is tricky. That Reform

has a vanguard of online supporters who are if nothing else honest

about their racism makes it less so. Reform’s political seed capital

came from a nasty place. Thinking all of its voters are racist would

be wrong; thinking none is would be naive.

If a corner of the Conservative Party is enthusiastic about the return

of the big, blond-maned cat, the rest of the political spectrum is

ecstatic. Liberal Democrats cackle at the thought. It was Mr

Johnson’s ineptitude as much as Brexit that turned prosperous

southern England towards the Lib Dems. At one dinner with the

former prime minister, a freshly minted Liberal Democrat MP charged

towards Mr Johnson, exclaiming, “I wanted to thank you for all the

help.”
Labour, meanwhile, is happy to remind voters that the country was a

mess when Mr Johnson ran it. For all Sir Keir’s blunders in office, it is

still preferable to that period. Reformers, who believe immigration is

the be-all of British politics, think voters will snarl at the man whose

policy allowed 1.3m people into the country in a single year. They

call it the Boriswave (as do some Labour staffers). Having the man

himself return would only help.

Is he popular? No. Is he competent? Also no. Nevertheless…

The best argument for Big Dog’s return, however, is catharsis. René

Girard, a French philosopher in vogue, argued that society relies on

scapegoats in order to rub along. A fight of all-against-all becomes a

battle of all-against-one; someone who can personify all their woes

and be removed, whether a teenager dragged to the top of an Aztec

pyramid or Jesus Christ hung on a cross.

In British politics, only Mr Johnson fits the bill. Once almost

worshipped, he became reviled. A wannabe good-time king presided

over a bad time. Britain’s departure from the EU was a miserable

divorce rather than joyful liberation. Lockdown was two years of

pain, exacerbated by Mr Johnson and his team breaking the rules

they themselves set. His exit from Parliament in 2023 was meant to
be a moment of release.

Except the scapegoat process went awry. What should have been an

electoral bloodletting became a bureaucratic one. When Mr

Johnson’s lies over lockdown came to light, a parliamentary

committee suspended him for 90 days. This meant a recall petition

in his constituency and a by-election. Rather than face angry voters,

the former prime minister scarpered. Mr Johnson was not led to the

top of an Aztec pyramid; the cross was bare. A metaphorical lynch

mob assembled in Uxbridge, the London suburb represented by the

former prime minister, but Mr Johnson was nowhere to be found.

And so Britain could not move on. Mr Johnson’s shadow looms over

both his party and the country. British politics is stuck in a world he

built, enduring the same arguments about immigration and Europe.

Backlogs from lockdown still jam Britain’s hospitals; the costs of this

shutdown weigh heavily on the state’s finances. Mr Johnson was

elevated by the British public, but they never had the chance to

destroy him themselves. Come back, Mr Johnson. Perhaps Britain

will herald you again. Or perhaps it will rip you limb-from-limb and

British politics can, finally, start anew. ■

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which brings together the best of our leaders, columns, guest essays

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International

Star wars returns

Astropolitics :: Donald Trump’s quest for orbital dominance

Can China jam your GPS?

Lost signals :: Its huge investment in the rival BeiDou system may give it an
edge

How to fight the next pandemic, without

America

The Telegram :: The world scrambles to save global health policy from
Donald Trump

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Astropolitics

Star wars returns

Donald Trump’s quest for orbital dominance

5月 22, 2025 05:57 上午

“RONALD REAGAN wanted it many years ago,” declared Donald

Trump, “but they didn’t have the technology.” Now, he said, America

could finally build a “cutting-edge missile-defence shield”. Mr Trump’s

Golden Dome—an allusion to Israel’s more modest Iron Dome—is

intended to protect America from attack using, among other things,

hundreds or thousands of satellites that can both track and attack

enemy missiles as they take off.

Mr Trump had promised such a shield on the campaign trail. On May

20th he said his “big, beautiful” tax bill, which has not yet been

approved by Congress, included $25bn in initial funding and that the

project would cost $175bn in total. In practice, Golden Dome wil

probably cost far more—the Congressional Budget Office reckons the

bill could run to more than $500bn over 20 years—and take far

longer than Mr Trump’s wildly optimistic timeline of “two and a half

to three years”.

The plan to protect America by shooting down missiles mid-

air·

Similarly suspect is Mr Trump’s claim that the system will offer “close

to 100% protection”. The success rate is likely to depend on the

scope of the shield. A recent report by the American Physical Society,

a group of physicists, suggested that 16,000 space-based missiles

would be needed to be sure of intercepting a salvo of just ten North

Korean Hwasong-18 missiles. But if American leaders wanted 30

seconds of decision time before acting, they would need 36,000

interceptors. And “many more interceptors” than that would be

required if America was also defending very northerly cities, Alaska

or the Midwest.
Golden Dome is in part a response to the Pentagon’s concern that

America’s adversaries are building huge numbers of new and more

diverse missiles. American radars and defences have historically

focused on missiles travelling over the North Pole. But long-range

hypersonic missiles, which are more manoeuvrable, and “fractional

orbital” systems, which can partly encircle Earth, can take more

unpredictable routes. A recent report by the Defence Intelligence

Agency shows arrows plunging into America from all

directions. Canada, which already has a joint aerospace defence

command with America, is in talks about joining Golden Dome.

The defensive shield also highlights how Earth orbit is becoming a

front line in the new struggle between Russia, China and America. It

is being waged by the likes of Cosmos 2553, a Russian satellite that

America believes is an unarmed prototype of a particularly lurid

space weapon: a nuclear weapon capable of wiping out satellites

across large swathes of low-Earth orbit—such as those that would be

part of Golden Dome. China is also building a range of counter-space

weapons. “They’re moving at jaw-dropping speed,” said General

Stephen Whiting, the head of America’s Space Command, of China’s

expanding anti-satellite arsenal.

Such weapons put far more than just defence infrastructure at risk.

They also threaten the spacecraft that provide communications and,

perhaps more important, the positioning, navigation and timing data

that are essential for modern economies. The vulnerability of

satellite navigation systems has been exposed by a huge increase in

the jamming and spoofing· (counterfeiting) of their signals .

Russia and China have been developing satellites with “advanced

manoeuvring capabilities” that would allow them to interfere with or

destroy American satellites. In May 2024, for instance, Cosmos

2576, another Russian satellite, entered a “coplanar” orbit with USA

314, an American spy satellite, in a manner that “could signal the

positioning of a counterspace weapon”, according to a new report by

the Centre for Strategic and International Studies (CSIS), a think-

tank in Washington. France has become so alarmed that it has

talked about developing “bodyguard” systems for satellites, which

could allow satellites to detect threats and then defend themselves

using a robot or laser.

Other sorts of celestial sparring are also under way. At one point last

year, TJS-4, a Chinese suspected signals-intelligence spacecraft,

manoeuvred to get between an American surveillance satellite and

the Sun. That, says CSIS, would have created shadows preventing

the Americans from taking good photos of the Chinese craft. General

Michael Guetlein, the new head of Golden Dome, earlier this year

accused China of practising “dogfighting in space”.

Yet America is hardly a shrinking violet in this area. Last month USA
324, one of General Whiting’s surveillance satellites, sidled up to

TJS-16 and TJS-17, a Chinese pair of suspected electronic-

intelligence satellites. It passed within 17km of the former and 12km

of the latter, according to COMSPOC, a firm that tracks objects in

space. This was far closer than Cosmos 2576 came to USA 314. This

“buzzing” of the Chinese satellites was, notes Jonathan McDowell of

the Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics, “the sort of thing

that causes DoD officials to issue outraged comments when China

does it to ours”. ■

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Lost signals

Can China jam your GPS?

Its huge investment in the rival BeiDou system may give it an edge

5月 22, 2025 03:18 上午

IN MARCH, WHEN President Donald Trump briefly withheld

intelligence support from Ukraine, the shock waves buffeted

America’s allies, who worried they could no longer take for granted

access to the superpower’s vast space-based resources. This

uncertainty extends beyond defence to equally crucial tools, such as

the Global Positioning System (GPS).

The navigation system has long been an unshakable pillar of

American power, hard and soft. First developed by the Department

of Defence, President Bill Clinton fully opened GPS to civilian use in

2000, transforming it into a free global utility that is now deeply

embedded across industries, from air transport, shipping and

trucking to global finance, where its signals provide the accurate

timestamps needed to synchronise banks and exchanges. If these

navigation signals were to be cut off for 24 hours, the costs to the

British economy alone would come to about £1.4bn ($1.9bn),

according to a government report published in 2023.

Worryingly, years of under-investment have left GPS vulnerable. The

large-scale jamming (blocking the signal) and spoofing (feeding in

false information) of GPS in or near war zones, including Ukraine and

the Middle East, have exposed its fragility (see chart). Kevin

Pollpeter, the head of research at the China Aerospace Studies

Institute, a think-tank, warns that such disruptions will grow more

common, as Russia and China invest in technologies capable of

jamming GPS on a massive scale.

China’s BeiDou has emerged as a formidable alternative to GPS. The

Chinese system is provided by 56 satellites, which is nearly double

the number providing GPS, and is supported by 120 ground stations,

which command the constellation, versus just 11 for GPS. This

resilience is BeiDou’s greatest strength, says Dana Goward, the

president of the Resilient Navigation and Timing Foundation, a non-

profit. Unlike GPS, which relies solely on satellites in medium-Earth

orbit, BeiDou operates across three orbital layers, giving it wider and

more stable coverage.

Beyond its satellite network, China has also built nearly 300 ground-

based backups, fibre-optic networks to transmit accurate timing

information, and an eLoran system, a ground-based alternative to

satellite-based navigation. These ensure that if satellite signals are

lost, essential navigation and timing services can continue. Unlike

satellite signals, which are weak and easily jammed by the time they

reach Earth, eLoran uses powerful transmissions that are more

difficult to interfere with.

This redundancy could give China a strategic edge. In a conflict over

Taiwan, for instance, it could jam or spoof GPS signals across the

Taiwan Strait, disabling navigation for American and Taiwanese

forces, says Mr Pollpeter. Meanwhile, China’s alternative systems

would remain largely unaffected because such powerful signals

would be needed to jam eLoran that in doing so America might

disrupt its own systems, says Sean Gorman, founder of Zephr, a

navigation-resilience firm.

Moreover, China’s ability to spoof GPS signals is growing. Because

BeiDou is designed to be compatible with GPS, owing to an

interoperability agreement signed in 2017, China can easily mimic its

signals. Russia and China are also developing anti-satellite and other

space-based devices· that can destroy or interfere with Western

satellites.

America’s communications regulator said on March 27th that it would

explore alternatives to GPS to strengthen resilience. However, efforts

to modernise America’s ageing GPS satellites have stalled. An

upgrade meant to replace 1990s-era technology offered only modest

improvements in accuracy, leaving GPS lagging far behind BeiDou

and Galileo, a European alternative. In a damning report in 2024 the

Government Accountability Office, a congressional watchdog, noted

that America has taken more than 20 years to deploy M-code, a jam-

resistant military signal that is still not fully operational.

Frustrated by the shortcomings of GPS, some countries are

developing their own navigation systems. Britain briefly flirted with

the idea of launching a satellite system after Brexit reduced its

access to Galileo, but it soon balked at the cost. Instead it is building

a cheaper backup using atomic clocks, fibre-optic cables and eLoran

transmitters and is testing quantum sensors. South Korea and Japan

are continuing to develop their own solutions. Yet since few

countries can afford to create global navigation system, most rely on

GPS, BeiDou, Galileo or Russia’s GLONASS.

Of these BeiDou is making great strides. It is being embedded in

Chinese-built infrastructure, such as phone networks, power grids,

ports and railways built under China’s Belt and Road Initiative.

Pakistan and Saudi Arabia are using it to replace GPS in some

defence applications. Because some devices are locked into using

only BeiDou, that creates new vulnerabilities. “BeiDou gives China an

on-off switch for countries that rely on it,” says Mr Goward. “That’s a

powerful tool for economic and political coercion.” ■

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The Telegram

How to fight the next

pandemic, without America

The world scrambles to save global health policy from Donald Trump

5月 22, 2025 03:35 上午

HEARTFELT APPLAUSE greeted the adoption on May 20th of the

World Health Organisation (WHO) Pandemic Agreement, a treaty

that commits governments to be more responsible and less selfish

when future pandemics emerge. There was doubtless an edge of

relief to the clapping. After three years of fierce argument, an

overwhelming majority of health ministers and officials from over

130 countries—but not America, which is leaving the WHO and boycotting
the treaty—voted to approve the text.

To cheerleaders, this was hopeful applause. The WHO boss, Tedros

Adhanom Ghebreyesus, congratulated governments on a “victory for

public health, science and multilateral action”. Opponents of the new

pandemic agreement, who include the Trump administration but also

populist politicians in Europe and elsewhere, might call those

clapping sinister.

An executive order issued on President Donald Trump’s first day in

office announced America’s withdrawal from the WHO and from

negotiations to craft the new pandemic treaty. The order added that

America would not be bound by amendments to international health

regulations agreed on in 2024. Those changes, which tighten virus-

surveillance and reporting obligations on governments, were

demanded by American negotiators during the Biden administration.

Mr Trump accuses the WHO of mismanaging the covid-19 pandemic

under China’s influence, and of demanding too much money from

America.

The pandemic treaty has sparked wild if vague claims in several

countries. In 2024 a fringe candidate for America’s presidency called

the pandemic agreement a power-grab by “international bureaucrats

and their bosses at the bil ionaire boys’ club in Davos” that tramples

Americans’ constitutional rights. Alas for the WHO, that long-shot

candidate, Robert F. Kennedy junior, is now Mr Trump’s health secretary. In

Britain, a right-wing political leader, Nigel Farage, falsely

charges that the pandemic treaty will allow the WHO to impose

lockdowns “over the heads of our elected national governments”. In

fact, the treaty explicitly reaffirms the sovereign authority of national

governments.

Was the applause in Geneva naive? Several times talks nearly

collapsed, as bold promises made by world leaders during the covid-

19 pandemic ran into long-standing divisions between high- and low-

income countries. A year or two of hard wrangling still lies ahead, as

governments hammer out the details of a political, scientific and

commercial bargain at the heart of the treaty, known as the

Pathogen Access and Benefit Sharing system (PABS). That compact

must balance the interests of very different places: on the one hand,

the developing countries where many new viruses emerge; on the

other, the wealthier nations where advanced vaccines and

treatments are typically discovered.

Success is not a given. For PABS to save lives, some poor or

struggling governments will need to step up surveillance of remote

rural regions where people live among domestic and wild animals,

and which create conditions that favour the spread of viruses into

human hosts. They must report troubling discoveries swiftly and

share pathogen samples with foreign scientists, even at the risk of

suffering travel bans that bring trade and tourism to a halt. In return

for free and rapid access to those same pathogens, some of the

world’s most powerful governments and drug firms must commit to

hand to the WHO, in real time, 20% of the vaccines, therapies and

diagnostic tests they produce.

The politics of inequality nearly derailed the process. With reason,

delegates from the global south accused rich countries of taking

pathogens found among their populations, using them to create life-

saving vaccines and drugs, then hoarding those same miracle cures

for rich-world customers. Some developing countries called for cash

payments for genetic data, following the model of an international

agreement, the Nagoya Protocol, that allows countries to demand

fees from drug and food companies or other entities that profit from

their genetic heritage. Adopting PABS would make the sharing of

pandemic-causing pathogens a public good, keeping Nagoya

Protocol payments at bay.

Other emerging economies, notably those with fast-growing

pharmaceutical industries, called for intellectual-property (IP) rights

to be weakened or suspended during pandemics, and for technology

transfers so that Africans and Asians can make their own vaccines.

European governments said that defending IP was a red line,

arguing that companies need to recoup research costs, or innovation

will suffer. Rich-world pharmaceutical firms called the expansion of

advanced vaccine-manufacture a noble but long-term goal. In the

meantime, they argued, haggling with governments over fees for

pathogens can slow down vital cures, for example, during a Zika-

virus outbreak in Latin America in 2016.

Sometimes, avoiding failure is the big win

China was “very comfortable with the polarised debate” in Geneva,

says an expert on the talks. “They had no interest in eroding IP

protection, they have lots of IP. But they liked seeing a geopolitical

fight between north and south.”

Mr Trump saved the treaty, argues Lawrence Gostin, a professor of

global-health law at Georgetown University: governments

compromised to save the multilateral order from America.

Aalisha Sahukhan heads the Centre for Disease Control on the Pacific
island-state of Fiji and led her country’s delegation in Geneva. There

is no guarantee that governments will keep treaty commitments, she

concedes. Still, the mere act of agreeing on shared principles

reassures small countries like hers. “A standard is set: this is how we

should be behaving.” Much could still go wrong. But if nothing else,

rational self-interest was tested and survived. That is surely worth a

cheer. ■

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Business

Welcome to the AI trough of

disillusionment

An uphill struggle :: Tech giants are spending big, but many other companies
are
growing frustrated

China’s battery giant eyes world

domination

Supercharger :: CATL’s blockbuster listing will power its expansion

Universal wants to steal Disney’s theme-

park magic

Rollercoaster rivals :: It should brace for a bumpy ride

American companies have a new image

problem

Tarnished :: Donald Trump is hurting brands from Coca-Cola to Jack

Daniel’s

The secrets of public speaking

Bartleby :: Lessons from actors on how to give a good presentation

Big box v brands: the battle for consumers’

dollars

Schumpeter :: American retailers are slugging it out with their suppliers

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An uphill struggle

Welcome to the AI trough of

disillusionment

Tech giants are spending big, but many other companies are

growing frustrated

5月 22, 2025 04:56 上午 | SAN FRANCISCO

WHEN THE chief executive of a large tech firm based in San

Francisco shares a drink with the bosses of his Fortune 500 clients,

he often hears a similar message. “They’re frustrated and

disappointed. They say: ‘I don’t know why it’s taking so long. I’ve

spent money on this. It’s not happening’”.

For many companies, excitement over the promise of generative

artificial intelligence (AI) has given way to vexation over the difficulty

of making productive use of the technology. According to S&P

Global, a data provider, the share of companies abandoning most of

their generative-AI pilot projects has risen to 42%, up from 17% last

year. The boss of Klarna, a Swedish buy-now, pay-later provider,

recently admitted that he went too far in using the technology to

slash customer-service jobs, and is now rehiring humans for the

roles.

Consumers, for their part, continue to enthusiastically embrace

generative AI. Sam Altman·, the boss of OpenAI, recently said that

its ChatGPT bot was being used by some 800m people a week, twice

as many as in February. Some already regularly turn to the

technology at work. Yet generative AI’s transformative potential wil

be realised only if a broad swathe of companies systematically

embed it into their products and operations. Faced with sluggish

progress, many bosses are sliding into the “trough of

disillusionment”, says John Lovelock of Gartner, referring to the stage

in the consultancy’s famed “hype cycle” that comes after the

euphoria generated by a new technology.

This poses a problem for the so-called hyperscalers—Alphabet,

Amazon, Microsoft and Meta—that are still pouring vast sums into

building the infrastructure underpinning AI. According to Pierre

Ferragu of New Street Research, their combined capital expenditures

are on course to rise from 12% of revenues a decade ago to 28%

this year. Will they be able to generate healthy enough returns to

justify the splurge?

Companies are struggling to make use of generative AI for many

reasons. Their data troves are often siloed and trapped in archaic IT

systems. Many experience difficulties hiring the technical talent

needed. And however much potential they see in the technology,

bosses know they have brands to protect, which means minimising

the risk that a bot will make a damaging mistake or expose them to

privacy violations or data breaches.

Meanwhile, the tech giants continue to preach AI’s potential. Their

evangelism was on full display this week during the annual

developer conferences of Microsoft and Alphabet’s Google. Satya

Nadella and Sundar Pichai, their respective bosses, talked excitedly

about a “platform shift” and the emergence of an “agentic web”

populated by semi-autonomous AI agents interacting with one

another on behalf of their human masters.

The two tech bosses highlighted how AI models are getting better,

faster, cheaper and more widely available. At one point Elon Musk

announced to Microsoft’s crowd via video link that xAI, his AI lab,

would be making its Grok models available on the tech giant’s Azure

cloud service (shortly after Mr Altman, his nemesis, used the same

medium to tout the benefits of OpenAI’s deep relationship with

Microsoft). Messrs Nadella and Pichai both talked up a new measure

—the number of tokens processed in generative-AI models—to

demonstrate booming usage.

Fuddy-duddy measures of business success, such as sales or profit,

were not in focus. For now, the meagre cloud revenues Alphabet,

Amazon and Microsoft are making from AI, relative to the magnitude

of their investments, come mostly from AI labs and startups, some

of which are bankrolled by the giants themselves.

Still, as Mr Lovelock of Gartner argues, much of the benefit of the

technology for the hyperscalers will come from applying it to their

own products and operations. At its event, Google announced that it

will launch a more conversational “AI mode” for its search engine,

powered by its Gemini models. It says that the AI summaries that

now appear alongside its search results are already used by more

than 1.5bn people each month. Google has also introduced

generative AI into its ad business, to help companies create content

and manage their campaigns. Meta, which does not sell cloud

computing, has weaved the technology into its ad business using its

open-source Llama models. Microsoft has embedded AI into its suite

of workplace apps and its coding platform, Github. Amazon has

applied the technology in its e-commerce business to improve

product recommendations and optimise logistics. AI may also allow

the tech giants to cut programming jobs. This month Microsoft laid

off 6,000 workers, many of whom were reportedly software

engineers.

These efforts, if successful, may even encourage other companies to

keep experimenting with the technology until they, too, can make it

work. Troughs, after all, have two sides; next in Gartner’s cycle

comes the “slope of enlightenment”, which sounds much more

enjoyable. At that point, companies that have underinvested in AI

may come to regret it. The cost of falling behind is already clear at

Apple, which was slower than its fellow tech giants to embrace

generative AI. It has flubbed the introduction of a souped-up version

of its voice assistant Siri, rebuilt around the technology. The new bot

is so bug-ridden its rollout has been postponed.

Mr Lovelock’s bet is that the trough will last until the end of next

year. In the meantime, the hyperscalers have work to do. Kevin

Scott, Microsoft’s chief technology officer, said this week that for AI

agents to live up to their promise, serious work needs to be done on

memory, so that they can recall past interactions. The web also

needs new protocols to help agents gain access to various data

streams. Microsoft has now signed up to an open-source one called

Model Context Protocol, launched in November by Anthropic,

another AI lab, joining Amazon, Google and OpenAI.

Many companies say that what they need most is not cleverer AI

models, but more ways to make the technology useful. Mr Scott calls

this the “capability overhang.” He and Anthropic’s co-founder Dario

Amodei used the Microsoft conference to urge users to think big and

keep the faith. “Don’t look away,” said Mr Amodei. “Don’t blink.” ■

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disillusionment

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Supercharger

China’s battery giant eyes

world domination

CATL’s blockbuster listing will power its expansion

5月 22, 2025 03:36 上午

Tower of power

SET AMID a backdrop of lush rolling hills and marshy lakes, Ningde

is an unassuming town on the south-eastern coast of China, lined

with low-rise buildings and apartment blocks. One structure stands

out: a gleaming rectangular tower with a gently curving glass

façade, which bears an uncanny resemblance to a giant lithium-ion

battery pack.

This is the headquarters of the planet’s largest battery-maker, CATL.

Its products power a third of the world’s electric vehicles (EVs) and a

similar share of energy-storage systems for grids. The meteoric rise

of the company, founded in 2011, has lifted the economic output of Ningde,
the hometown of its boss, Robin Zeng, above that of Estonia

or Uganda.

On May 20th CATL raised almost $5bn in a secondary listing in Hong

Kong, making it the largest share offering so far this year. Investors

raced to get their hands on the stock, sending its price up by 16%.

The sum is a small fraction of the $160bn market capitalisation of

the firm, which first listed its shares in Shenzhen in 2018. But the

Hong Kong offering is a clear statement of intent: not satisfied with

dominance at home, China’s battery behemoth plans to spread

across the globe.

CATL is already by far the largest firm in its industry. Its production

volume is more than double that of BYD, its closest competitor,

which has the advantage of being the world’s biggest maker of EVs

(see chart 1). CATL’s 11 manufacturing sites across China cover

nearly 20m square metres between them. The company, which

employs over 100,000 people, also owns lithium mines and an

offshore wind farm.

Its scale and vertical integration have driven down costs and lowered

prices. Although revenue fell by 10% last year, to 362bn yuan

($50bn), net profit rose by 16%, to 52bn yuan, delivering a healthy

margin of 14% (see chart 2). Rivals have struggled to keep up. LG

Energy Solution of South Korea, CATL’s biggest competitor outside

China, made a net loss last year.

Now the battery giant is hoping to strengthen its position abroad.

Exclude China, and LG Energy Solution was narrowly ahead last year

on sales volumes, according to UBS, a bank. But CATL is fast

catching up: last year it generated 30% of its revenue abroad, up

from less than 4% in 2018. Its carmaking customers include BMW,

Toyota and Volkswagen. It also powers grid-storage systems in

Nevada and Texas, and recently announced the world’s biggest

energy-storage project in the United Arab Emirates.

In order to be closer to its customers, CATL is expanding its

manufacturing footprint. At present, its production capacity is almost

entirely in China, which makes around 85% of the world’s batteries.

In 2023 CATL opened its first overseas factory, in Germany. About

90% of the proceeds from its Hong Kong listing will be used to fund

the construction of its next plant, in Hungary, which is due to start

production this year. In December it also announced a joint venture

with Stellantis, another carmaker, to build a battery factory in Spain,

which aims to start production by the end of next year. (Exor, the

largest shareholder in Stellantis, owns a stake in The Economist’s

parent company.)

At the same time, CATL is continuing to push the boundaries of

battery technology. It spent $2.6bn on research and development

last year, more than triple the amount invested by LG Energy

Solution. In April it unveiled a battery that can provide 520km (323

miles) of driving with five minutes of charging, stealing the thunder

of BYD, which a month before announced it had developed one that

can do 400km on the same charge-time.

“The PhDs”, as CATL’s research unit is referred to internally, work

across the business. Some focus on fundamental battery chemistry.

Others concentrate on improving the manufacturing process, much

of which is performed by robots, or collaborate with suppliers and

customers to develop new products. The company has more than

40,000 granted or pending patents.

What could short-circuit CATL’s global ambitions? One risk is China-

bashing politicians in America, who have been less welcoming than

their counterparts in Europe. The country accounted for less than

6% of CATL’s sales last year, and represents an important growth

opportunity. In January the company was placed on a blacklist by

America’s defence department over alleged ties to China’s armed

forces, which CATL has described as “a mistake”. Although the

designation has had few immediate consequences for the company,

it may make it harder to lure American customers. Last year CATL

batteries used by Duke Energy, an American utility, to help power a

military base in North Carolina were decommissioned under pressure

from lawmakers. In April American politicians asked banks including

JPMorgan Chase and Bank of America to halt their work on CATL’s

Hong Kong listing. (They ignored the request.)

A second risk is decelerating demand for EVs in the West. Sales

continue to power ahead in China, but are slowing in America and

have stalled in Europe because of weakening consumer sentiment

and a reduction in subsidies.

Still, CATL has plenty of room to grow. It is licensing its technology

to others, including Ford in America. Amid uncertainty in the EV

market, it is expanding its higher-margin energy-storage business.

This accounted for 16% of revenue last year, up from less than 1%

in 2018. Sales volumes have risen with global renewable-energy

capacity. This month it announced a giant battery system designed

for artificial-intelligence data centres; it stacks vertically, to minimise

the space required. CATL is also branching into batteries for trucks

and ships: “We want to electrify whatever can be electrified,” says an

executive. China’s battery giant shows no sign of losing power. ■

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Rollercoaster rivals

Universal wants to steal

Disney’s theme-park magic

It should brace for a bumpy ride

5月 22, 2025 03:17 上午 | Orlando

Hold on tight

IN THE SWAMPY Florida heat, a gaggle of enthusiasts, influencers

and journalists gathered this week for the opening of Epic Universe,

a new theme park in Orlando. The sprawling site, made up of five

themed “worlds”, took Comcast, owner of Universal Pictures, $7bn

and more than five years to build. Only a 20-minute drive from Walt
Disney World, it is a bold bet that the company behind film

franchises including Harry Potter and Super Mario can offer

something just as magical.

Universal opened its first Orlando theme park, Universal Studios

Florida, in 1990, expanding the resort with a second one, Universal

Islands of Adventure, in 1999, and a water park, Volcano Bay, in

2017. By adding Epic Universe, it will be hoping that it can keep its

guests entertained—and away from the Magic Kingdom—for the

duration of their trip.

The new site certainly has plenty to enchant visitors. An animatronic

dragon depicting Toothless, from the film “How to Train Your

Dragon”, purrs convincingly when guests stroke the top of its head.
One boy was so determined to win an augmented-reality Mario Kart

race that he sternly instructed your correspondent not to get in his

way.

Epic Universe is Comcast’s biggest such investment so far, but it is

not the only new site in the works. In August it will open a horror

attraction in Las Vegas. A children’s resort will follow in Texas a year

from now. Last month the company said it would build a big new

theme park in Britain, too, expected to open in 2031. Not to be

outdone, Disney a few weeks later unveiled plans for its first new

park in a decade, in Abu Dhabi.

Theme parks are a lucrative business. Disney’s experiences division

(which includes parks as well as cruises and hotels), generated

$34bn in revenue for the company in its most recent fiscal year,

around a third of its total, and more than twice the profit of its

entertainment division (which houses movies, TV and streaming).

Comcast’s theme-parks business, which brought in less than $9bn in

revenue last year, understandably wants more of the action. It is

already finding ways to squeeze extra from captive visitors: one food

stall at Epic Universe sells buckets of popcorn for $40.

Stealing Disney’s magic will not be easy, though. Epic Universe isn’t

flawless. Some rides are short and disappointing. As paying

customers flood in for the first time, snags may emerge; Universal’s

first site in Orlando was beset by technical glitches when it first

opened.

An even bigger problem is that Universal does not have Disney’s

breadth of intellectual property, which covers everything from Star

Wars and the Marvel universe to Frozen and Mickey Mouse. Guests

are often attracted to visit theme parks by the characters and worlds

they already love, rather than the latest in rollercoaster technology.

When your correspondent asked a boy who was set to visit both

Universal’s and Disney’s Orlando resorts which he was most looking

forward to, the verdict was simply “whichever one has the Hulk”.
JPMorgan Chase, a bank, reckons that the new Universal park wil

reduce footfall at Walt Disney World by just 1% in its current fiscal

year, which ends in September.

Comcast’s timing may also not be fortuitous. The theme-parks

business is highly cyclical. An economic slowdown in America could

thus spell trouble ahead for the industry, points out Laurent Yoon of

Bernstein, a broker. Domestic travellers make up most of the guests

at America’s theme parks. Even those that still buy a ticket may be

less inclined to spend $40 on popcorn during a downturn. Declining

numbers of international visitors, thanks in part to Donald Trump’s

damage to his country’s image abroad, will make matters worse.

Fewer foreign consumers visit than domestic ones, but they spend

more on average.

For now, the industry is all smiles. Analysts have been briefed that

summer booking numbers look healthy. So far, the opening of Epic

Universe has gone off without a hitch. Comcast will be hoping that

the smooth ride continues. ■

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Tarnished

American companies have a

new image problem

Donald Trump is hurting brands from Coca-Cola to Jack Daniel’s

5月 22, 2025 03:17 上午

FOR DECADES America’s soft power put the wind in the sails of its

companies as they ventured abroad. When the Berlin Wall fell, Coca-
Cola sent lorries emblazoned with its logo into East Berlin to hand

out free drinks. Sales soared as consumers in the former communist

state chugged enthusiastically on the sugary icon of American

capitalism.

Peddling Americana abroad, however, is getting trickier. Last month

Carlsberg, a Danish brewer that bottles Coca-Cola in its home

country, noted that consumers there were boycotting the fizzy drink,

opting for local alternatives instead. Coca-Cola can thank Donald

Trump, who has exasperated Danes—and many others—with his talk

of territorial expansion and his trade war. How worried should

America Inc be about its new image problem?

Mr Trump’s damage to America’s reputation is clear to see. In a

survey across 100 countries carried out last month by Nira Data, a

research firm, for the Alliance of Democracies, a Danish non-profit,

the share of respondents with an unfavourable view of America

exceeded those with a favourable opinion by five percentage points,

a sharp deterioration from previous years, and enough to place

America behind China in global esteem (see chart).

The president’s actions are already weighing on American

companies’ sales abroad. The backlash has been strongest in

Canada, whose citizens have railed against the suggestion that their

country should become America’s 51st state, and Denmark, thanks

to Mr Trump’s threats to pinch Greenland. Last month 61% of

Canadians told YouGov, a pollster, that they were boycotting

American products. Earlier this year Ontario and Quebec, Canada’s

two largest provinces, pulled American-made alcohol from the

shelves of government-run liquor stores. Kraft Heinz, an American

food giant, has been reminding Canadians that much of what it sells

in the country is made there from local ingredients. In Denmark, the

country’s largest retailer, Sailing Group, has been labelling European-

owned brands in its shops to make it easier to avoid American

products.

The souring towards American brands has been on display

elsewhere in Europe, too. Tesla, Elon Musk’s carmaker, is the most

prominent example: new registrations of its vehicles in Europe fell by

more than 40% year on year in the first quarter. But it is not the

only one at risk. In a survey conducted in March, the European

Central Bank asked consumers how likely they would be to

substitute away from American goods in a hypothetical scenario in

which the country imposed a blanket tariff that the EU then

matched, where 100 indicated a strong wil ingness to switch. The

median answer was 80. Tellingly, Europeans were more likely to cite

preference, rather than price, as their main reason for switching.

All this will worry American firms, which make more than $8trn in

foreign sales each year. Not all will be equally harmed, though.

Morning Consult, another pollster, has examined the correlation

between consumers’ views of America and their opinion of the

country’s brands. The relationship is strongest for technology

companies, carmakers and food-and-beverage firms, and weakest

for hospitality companies, logistics providers and health-care firms.

Foreign consumers are more likely to forgo a bag of Cheetos in

protest than they are a cancer treatment from Pfizer. A lack of

alternatives may also make it harder for them to abandon services

such as Google or Instagram. Even so, many American firms wil

have to grapple with the fact that their nationality may no longer be

an asset—but a liability. ■

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Bartleby

The secrets of public speaking

Lessons from actors on how to give a good presentation

5月 22, 2025 03:18 上午

PEOPLE WHO enjoy public speaking are luckier than they realise. A

much-publicised survey from the 1970s claimed that Americans

feared it more than death. In 2012 Karen Dwyer and Marlina

Davidson of the University of Nebraska Omaha published a paper

that tried to replicate the result. They found that things were less

dramatic than that—but not by much.

Among the American students they surveyed, speaking in front of a

group was indeed the most common fear, beating out financial

problems, loneliness and death. When respondents were asked to

rank their phobias, death pipped public speaking to the top spot. But

this triumph for perspective ought not to be exaggerated. The grim

reaper most scared one-fifth of students; but almost as many, 18%,

picked having to stand up and talk in public as their principal fear. In

sum, this staple office activity causes very many people to feel

deeply anxious.
There is plenty of homespun advice out there for glossophobes. Just

be yourself (which ignores the fact that the “real you” would rather

be dead than give a presentation). Imagine that your audience is in

their underwear (for reasons that are totally unclear). Speak on

things you properly understand (when getting ahead in many jobs

requires precisely the opposite).

A better source of advice comes from a profession that really knows

how to pretend and perform: acting. Drama schools routinely offer

communication coaching (if you like listening to journalists being

humiliated, you can hear your columnist’s experience at RADA

Business, an offshoot of the famous acting college in London, in the

latest episode of our Boss Class podcast). “Don’t Say Um”, a recent

book by Michael Chad Hoeppner, offers presenting tips from an

actor-turned-coach.

The advice of professional performers can be condensed into three

main messages. First, presenting is a deeply physical activity. Kate

Walker Miles, one of the RADA Business coaches, warns against

standing with legs locked straight; a slight bend in the knees makes

for greater stability. She emphasises the importance of vowel sounds

in communicating emotion, which means opening the jaw more

widely than you might naturally tend to. Her warm-up exercises

include some fairly ferocious massaging of the masseter muscles—

think Edvard Munch and you get the idea—and some theatrical

yawning. To achieve a relaxed posture, she asks clients to imagine

being held up by a “golden thread” of infinite length which rises

from the crown of their heads.

Second, it helps to slow down the pace of delivery—to allow for

pauses, to not rush to fill silences with “ers”, “ums” and other verbal

detritus. Mr Hoeppner recommends a useful technique called finger-

walking, whereby you walk your index and middle fingers across the

table as you speak, and only take a “step” when you know what the

next word or point is going to be. Even doing it once is an

interesting exercise: by forcing you to take time choosing your

words, those filler noises start to disappear and language becomes

more precise.

Third, don’t focus on yourself (or, in Ms Walker Miles’s phrase, turn

“selfie view off”). Too often speakers concentrate on how they are

doing—how many minutes to go? have I gone bright red?—and not

on the experience of their audience. To help evoke the right

emotion, actors have a technique called “actioning”, in which they

assign a transitive verb (“pacify”, “bait”, “entice”, “repel”) to their

lines in order to clarify a character’s goal. The emotional range of a

quarterly update may not match “King Lear”, but executives should

still work out what they want an audience to feel.

Some of these techniques can feel alien. Imagining that a golden

thread is holding you up at the same time that you soften your

knees, elongate your jaw and finger-walk your words is definitely

something to try out at home first. But the value in them is also

clear. Unusual professions often have less to teach managers than

they claim (what does free diving have to teach you about

budgeting? Answer: absolutely nothing). Acting really does have

something to teach about how to communicate. ■

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Schumpeter

Big box v brands: the battle

for consumers’ dollars

American retailers are slugging it out with their suppliers

5月 22, 2025 04:56 上午

DURING WALMART’S latest earnings call on May 15th, Doug

McMillon stated the obvious. “The higher tariffs will result in higher

prices, ” the big-box behemoth’s chief executive told analysts, referring to

Donald Trump’s levies on imports of just about anything

from just about anywhere. Who’d have thought? Two days later the

president weighed in with an alternative idea. Walmart (and China,

where many of those imports come from) should “EAT THE

TARIFFS”, he posted on social media. Mr McMillon did not respond

publicly to the suggestion. But it is likely to be a polite, lower-case

“Thanks, but no thanks.”

Walmart is not the only large American retailer that can afford to

turn down the unhappy meal. Earlier this month Amazon hinted that

prices of goods in its e-emporium could edge up as the levies bite.

Costco, a lean membership-only bulk discounter which reports its

quarterly earnings on May 29th, will probably not be taking up Mr

Trump’s offer, either. This week Home Depot, America’s fourth-most-

valuable retailer behind those three, said that while it was not

planning to raise prices just yet, it expects to maintain its current

operating margin. This implies its suppliers will absorb much of the

cost of tariffs.

Not even the artificial-intelligence revolution seems to whet

investors’ appetite as much as the ability to preserve profits in times

of economic uncertainty. The giant retailers’ shares trade at multiples of

future earnings that put big tech to shame. Home Depot’s is on a

par with Meta’s. Walmart’s beats both Microsoft’s and Nvidia’s.

Costco’s is nearly twice that of Apple. Amazon, with fingers in both

pies, is just behind Walmart. Tasty.

Despite Walmart’s warning about everyday not-so-low prices, it is

not shoppers who bear the brunt of its pricing power. It is, as in

Home Depot’s case, suppliers. Retail firms can increasingly dictate

terms not just to nameless providers of nuts-and-bolts products

(including, at the home-improvement store, actual nuts and bolts)

but also to once-mighty brands, from Nike to Nestlé. Do not be

fooled by their single-digit operating margins, just over half those of

their typical vendor. Their slice of the profits from the $5trn-plus that

American consumers splurge annually on physical products is

growing.

Estimating the retailers’ profit pool is straightforward. Start with the

Census Bureau’s tally of American retail spending (excluding cars

and petrol). This is, by definition, the money that ends up in shop

tills. Multiply it by the industry’s overall operating margin, which can

be approximated by looking at the revenue-weighted average of all

listed retailers. Last year the figures were $5trn and 7.2%, giving

$360bn in retail profits. Calculating vendors’ revenues requires a few

more assumptions, such as that 90% of retailers’ cost of goods sold

ends up with consumer-goods firms. This implies perhaps $3.2trn in

sales and, given the average consumer-goods operating margin of

12.6% last year, a profit pool that is a shade over $400bn.

On this rough reckoning, then, manufacturers grab a little over half

of the two groups’ combined profits. But this is down from three-

fifths in the late 2010s. A narrower but more sophisticated analysis

by Zhihan Ma of Bernstein, a broker, which focuses on food, hygiene

and household products but excludes durable goods, yields a

directionally similar result: over the past 15 years retailers’ profit

share has risen from 34% to 38%. Having lagged behind consumer-

goods stocks between 2000 and 2015, their shares have since

handily outperformed them, too.

The main reason for retailers’ growing clout is competition. For

established brands this is fiercer than ever. On one side they are

squeezed by upstart labels, which can easily outsource production to

contract manufacturers and market their wares on TikTok: think hip

Warby Parker spectacles or hideous Allbirds trainers. When the

economy looked healthy and money was cheap, brand owners could

counteract some of this by snapping up the challengers. With

interest rates, uncertainty and the risk of recession all up,

dealmaking is the last thing on CEOs’ minds.

On the other side brands feel the pinch from retailers’ own private

labels. These are no longer slapped just on low-margin goods like

toilet paper. Best Buy, an electronics retailer, sells fancy own-brand

refrigerators for $1,699. Wayfair flogs $7,800 sofas. Sam’s Club,

Walmart’s Costco-like membership arm, even offers a five-carat

diamond engagement ring for a bargain $144,999.

Even as shoppers enjoy ever more choice of what to buy, their

options of where to buy it are becoming more limited. Although

America’s retail industry remains fragmented compared with the

cosy oligopolies found in many rich countries, it is consolidating fast.

Between 1990 and 2020 the share of food sales claimed by the four

biggest retailers more than doubled, to some 35%.

Food fight

A federal court’s decision last year to block the $25bn merger of

Kroger and Albertsons, two big supermarkets, is scant comfort to

vendors. They remain beholden to big retailers, especially Walmart,

which accounts for a quarter of Americans’ grocery spending.

Suppliers including Nestlé, PepsiCo and Unilever have set up offices

next door to its headquarters in Bentonville, Arkansas. Walmart has

no similar outposts in that trio’s hometowns of Vevey, Switzerland,

Purchase, New York, and London.

During the last price shock, amid the covid-19 pandemic in 2021,

consumer-goods firms could at least console themselves that stuck-

at-home shoppers flush with stimulus cheques were wil ing to spend

a bit more on branded goods. Their margins duly edged up that

year. Now Mr Trump’s tariffs are about to hit just as consumer

confidence is depressed. If they seek any retail therapy at all, it wil

be from Amazon, Costco and Walmart. ■

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Finance & economics

Will Jamie Dimon build the first trillion-

dollar bank?

American titan :: We interview JPMorgan Chase’s boss, and his lieutenants

Wall Street and Main Street are split on

Trump’s chaos

How to gauge fear :: The president prompted a similar divide last time round

Trump will be unpleasantly surprised by

America’s tariff revenues

Bonanza denied :: He should expect bil ions, not tril ions

What the failure of a superstar student

reveals about economics

Sine laude :: Aidan Toner-Rodgers was enjoying a meteoric rise at MIT.

Then

questions started to be asked about his work

Hong Kong says goodbye to a capitalist

crusader

Buttonwood :: David Webb was an exemplary shareholder

America’s scientific prowess is a huge

global subsidy

Free exchange :: And it is now under threat

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American titan

Will Jamie Dimon build the

first trillion-dollar bank?

We interview JPMorgan Chase’s boss, and his lieutenants

5月 22, 2025 08:11 上午 | New York

“SERENA WILLIAMS, Tom Brady, Stephen Curry.” When it comes to

making sure the world’s biggest bank is a lean operation, Jamie

Dimon takes athletic inspiration. “Look how they train, what they do

to be that good,” says the boss of JPMorgan Chase. “Very often,

senior leadership teams, they lose that. Companies become very

inward-looking, dominated by staff, which is a form of bureaucracy.”

During Mr Dimon’s tenure, JPMorgan has become to banking what

Ms Wil iams was to tennis. In most of the markets in which it

competes, it ranks as America’s leading institution, or a close runner-

up. It boasts a market capitalisation of $730bn, or 30% of the total

among America’s big banks, up from 12% when Mr Dimon took

charge at the start of 2006 (see chart 1). The gap with competitors

has grown larger still since the covid-19 pandemic. JPMorgan has

317,233 staff, nearly twice as many as in 2005. Its share of

American deposits has doubled to 12%.

America has never had a bank of such size. Even when John
Pierpont Morgan, one of Mr Dimon’s predecessors, bailed out the

Treasury at the turn of the 20th century, he could not boast coast-to-

coast operations. In 2021 JPMorgan became the first lender with

branches in every one of America’s 48 contiguous states. The bank’s

combination of scale and market-beating efficiency means that it can

invest far more than its rivals in technology, draw on an immense

hoard of deposits for cheap and sticky funding, and benefit from

flights to safety when smaller banks wobble.

But the institution’s tremendous size, success and prominence pose

risks, too. Banking is not a business that suffers mistakes gladly; the
larger and more unwieldy an institution, the longer the list of

potential slip-ups. Being the biggest bank in a country where small

lenders are sacred makes JPMorgan an obvious political target, from

both the left and right. And then there is the succession question.

How do you replace a man of Mr Dimon’s reputation? And how does

someone without his stature prevent infighting and bureaucracy at

an institution of JPMorgan’s size?

Mr Dimon sat down for an interview with The Economist on May

16th. We also met the four bosses of the bank’s biggest businesses

—the most likely candidates to succeed Mr Dimon—beforehand.

They are Troy Rohrbaugh, co-head of the commercial and

investment bank; Douglas Petno, its other boss; Mary Erdoes, who

runs the wealth-management arm; and Marianne Lake, leader of

retail operations. Each is a loyal lieutenant and JPMorgan veteran.

Mr Rohrbaugh is the most recent hire; he has worked at JPMorgan

for 20 years.

On January 1st next year, Mr Dimon will have been at the helm of

the bank for the same amount of time. On March 13th he wil

celebrate his 70th birthday. His succession has been a subject of

relentless discussion on Wall Street for over a decade, spurred on by

two health scares and the prospect that he might be made treasury

secretary. Mr Dimon says that in the next few years he will step

down but remain the company’s chairman, and stubbornly refuses to

provide a firmer timeline. He does offer some traits for any future

leader of the bank: “There’s a work ethic; there’s people skills.

There’s determination. You better have a little bit of grit. There’s

humility; there’s ability to form teams. There’s having courage.

Constantly observing the world out there and thinking, ‘Well, what

can be done better?’”

Well, what could be? Not much, if you listen to Mike Mayo of Wells

Fargo, the most prominent JPMorgan analyst and an uber-bull.

Indeed, Mr Mayo has asked why Jamie Dimon would want to step

down at all. The bank is, he says, the “Goliath of Goliaths” and the

best he has covered in his career; he expects it to be the first with a

tril ion-dollar valuation. Part of his argument is that advances in

artificial intelligence mean investment in tech has grown in

importance, and JPMorgan, which he also calls the “Nvidia of

banking”, can afford more than any rival. The bank will spend about

$18bn on tech this year, some 40% more than Bank of America.

The heft that JPMorgan has developed under Mr Dimon provides the

bank with a compounding advantage. Wall Street executives moan

about how hard it is to compete across JPMorgan’s full range of

businesses. The bank has an enormous base of $2.5trn in deposits.

Over the past two years it has paid out $190bn in interest on

deposits, while hoovering up $374bn in interest on loans (see chart

2). Yet the bank is not just larger than its rivals—it is also more

streamlined. Its efficiency ratio (non-interest expenses as a share of

total revenue) has dropped from 61% in 2015 to 51%, a figure that

is 15 percentage points lower than any competitor (see chart 3).

Increasingly, JPMorgan’s competition is to be found outside banking.

“I want us to be better than the best in class, which is in many ways

the non-bank trading houses,” says Mr Rohrbaugh. “In other parts of

our business, like in payments, we’re not only competing against the

big banks, we’re competing against fintechs.” Vast trading firms such
as Citadel Securities and Jane Street have seized market-making

activities once dominated by banks, while techy upstarts such as

Stripe eat into payments.

According to clients, JPMorgan has stayed efficient because its

businesses have remained complementary. It has avoided both

becoming a conglomerate made up of unrelated silos and falling into

zero-sum internal competition. “You have to sew all those pieces

together,” says Ms Erdoes, who has run wealth management since

2009, meaning she has been in her current job the longest of the

four bosses. “That’s really easy at our operating-committee level,

because we live with each other. It’s harder when you’ve got the

person in the Milan office who’s trying to find the person in the

Austin, Texas office.”

Mr Dimon’s “fortress” balance-sheet helps. Large reserves, low

leverage and plentiful capital serve JPMorgan well in times of stress,

allowing it to snap up firms. The bank bought Bear Stearns and

Washington Mutual, a pair of banks, as the financial crisis worsened

in 2008. Two years ago, during a smaller crisis, it acquired the lion’s

share of assets from First Republic, America’s 14th-largest bank. “We

did it because the government needed it,” says Mr Dimon. But “we
have to make it financially attractive to ourselves, obviously.”

Manning the fort

The stress in 2023 had lessons for JPMorgan. “When Silicon Valley

Bank failed, we learned a lot about what we didn’t do properly

covering Silicon Valley,” says Mr Dimon. “Even though we’re out

there all the time and we did a lot of stuff. The [lesson of the] deep-

dive was that we didn’t have a consistent, devoted calling on venture

capitalists.” That year JPMorgan hired John China, former president

of SVB Capital, Silicon Valley Bank’s venture-capital arm, to jointly

run its “innovation economy” business. His job is to tie America’s

financial capital to its tech capital.

At the same time as other firms are cutting back in San Francisco, or

abandoning the city altogether, JPMorgan last month announced

plans to increase the size of its offices in the city by 30%. “When

you bank the venture capitalist, you bank them individually, you

bank their firm, you bank their startups and you bank their

founders,” notes Mr Petno. The exercise-obsessed, joke-cracking Mr

Petno is a veteran even among the veterans, having worked at

JPMorgan for 35 years. The firm’s analysts think that his promotion,

in January, to jointly run the investment bank puts him in serious

contention for the top job.

Meanwhile, the bank’s retail operations are spreading across the

country. Ms Lake, their boss, who grew up in Britain and speaks with
a crisp English accent, wants a 15% share of American deposits, a

cautious goal. Over the past six years, JPMorgan has established a

physical presence in 25 states. It takes several years for branches to

reach their potential, and in dozens of cities—Boston, Salt Lake City

and Washington included—the bank still oversees less than 3% of

deposits. JPMorgan is growing overseas, too. Almost four years after

launching a digital consumer bank in Britain, it has 2m customers.

Germany is next. “We have previously said Europe is more difficult,

but that is different today with digital banking,” explains Ms Lake.

Could anything halt JPMorgan’s ascent? Scale is no guarantee of

success. At the turn of the century, another institution accounted for

30% or so of the market capitalisation of American banks. After a

barrage of mergers and acquisitions, Citigroup was a titan. But its

lead was eroded by a series of scandals in the 2000s, and a bad

financial crisis. Today it accounts for less than 6% of the industry’s

market capitalisation. By comparison, JPMorgan has been pretty

scandal-free under Mr Dimon—with the exception of the “London

Whale” farrago, when a rogue trader cost the institution over $6bn.

JPMorgan’s size also makes it a target. In normal circumstances,

American law would not allow it to merge with another lender, owing
to its market share. But the rule does not apply if the lender is

failing, which is what allowed it to buy First Republic. All the same,

JPMorgan was criticised. Elizabeth Warren, a left-wing senator,

paired up with J.D. Vance, now vice-president, to attack the sale. It

made “the nation’s largest bank grow even bigger”.

Mr Dimon is unrepentant, arguing large banks offer America vital

heft. “We move $10trn a day...We have lent $35bn to a company to

get a deal done. You know, we bank the biggest companies around,

we bank countries,” he says. “I don’t think necessarily the people

making those statements understand why you need a big bank that

does business in 100 countries and that market-makes like we do.”

A world of trade wars and geopolitical strife is difficult for any

globetrotting firm. JPMorgan and Bank of America were recently

criticised by members of Congress for underwriting a sale of shares

by CATL on May 20th. The firm is a Chinese battery manufacturer.

Its products are found in electric cars everywhere, but it is also

blacklisted by the Pentagon for links to China’s armed forces. Mr

Dimon notes that CATL does not face American sanctions. And he

still believes in commercial engagement: “It is not my thing to say

we are not going to engage with China anymore...I do not think the

Chinese or the Americans want us to leave. I do not think the

American economy wants to leave. But we are going to have these

issues at the margin...It’s going to be harder.”

The last, and toughest, challenge is succession. During Mr Dimon’s

time as chief executive, more than a dozen supposed candidates

have been and gone. Indeed, he has been in the post for so long

that some have had several jobs since. Bill Winters, the boss of

Standard Chartered, and formerly of JPMorgan’s investment bank,

aspired to take Mr Dimon’s throne. Now he may retire before Mr

Dimon. In 2020 The Economist wrote that no one, even Mr Dimon,

thought that he would remain in his role for another decade. That

was five years ago, and Mr Dimon says he will remain for a few

more. We would no longer bet against him going the distance.

When probed on how they might run the bank, internal candidates

predictably do not step out of line: all are, it turns out, focused on

their jobs, work closely with one another and do not dream of being

the next boss. Each faces a fearsome job interview when the time

comes. And could the bank try to recruit from elsewhere?

Whoever triumphs will lack their predecessor’s stature. No matter

their experience, they will not have built a megabank. Few people

are recognisable by their first name on both Wall Street and Capitol

Hill. In a sign of his influence, Jamie was even credited with

softening President Donald Trump’s tariffs. It was not hearsay. Mr

Trump himself said that he changed his mind after watching an

interview with Mr Dimon on Fox News, during which JPMorgan’s boss

had said a recession was likely because of the wave of

protectionism. “He’s a genius financially, he’s done a fantastic job at

the bank,” the president gushed. Today’s all-conquering JPMorgan

has been built in Mr Dimon’s image.

Mr Dimon recalls the advice that he gave to Charlie Scharf, formerly

head of JPMorgan’s retail bank, when he left the firm to run Visa, a

payments giant. Two things change when an executive moves into a

top job, explains Mr Dimon. “The first one is there is nobody to

complain to.” Second, a chief executive can no longer rely on a

backstop from a higher power. “There is no tacit approval. It is your

decision. It’s just different. Heavy is the head that wears the crown.”

And no Wall Street crown is heavier than JPMorgan’s. ■

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How to gauge fear

Wall Street and Main Street

are split on Trump’s chaos

The president prompted a similar divide last time round

5月 22, 2025 03:18 上午 | New York

NEWSPAPERS ACROSS America are filled with tales of woe. In Texas

fashion designers stay up at night worrying about “economic

uncertainty”. In Maine the boss of a brewery complains about “rapid

and massive fluctuations every single day on the tariffs”. In

Washington state, border levies are “shaking up Skagit Valley

farmers—spiking input costs, stalling sales, and fuelling uncertainty

from fields to food banks”.

The Economic Policy Uncertainty (EPU) Index, developed by

economists at Northwestern and Stanford universities, is a measure

of Main Street’s nerves. It counts instances of the word “uncertainty”

(in the context of economic policy) in over 1,000 mostly local

newspapers. The current average for May would be its highest

monthly level in 35 years. Polls suggest that both Democrats and

Republicans trust their local rags, meaning it should reflect how

people feel.

Wall Street, however, has calmed down. And it was not so panicked

in the first place. During the recent turbulence, the VIX, a fear

gauge, hit only its 24th-highest monthly level in the past 35 years.

The index measures expected volatility for American stocks, based

on the price investors pay for insurance.

This pattern is odd when you consider Donald Trump’s words. In

April he said he was “proud to be the president for the workers, not

the outsourcers—the president who stands up for Main Street, not

Wall Street.” Yet the same split appeared in his last term. Perhaps Mr

Trump distorts the EPU. At times it seems like his raison d’être is

attracting news coverage, ensuring more attention even than his

damaging policies deserve.

As Nicholas Bloom of Stanford notes, last time round Wall Street got

it right: Mr Trump was “all bark and no bite”. Will it be correct once

again? Stockmarkets have recovered, suggesting it might. But there

have been victims, too. The Cortland Standard, a paper in New York
state, was set up in 1867. It closed in March because proposed

tariffs on Canada raised the cost of newsprint.■

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Bonanza denied

Trump will be unpleasantly

surprised by America’s tariff

revenues

He should expect bil ions, not tril ions

5月 22, 2025 03:17 上午

IN THE EARLY 20th century, before America had an income tax,

tariffs paid many of the government’s bills. President Donald Trump

wants to revive that approach. He has repeatedly floated the idea of

an “External Revenue Service”, under which Uncle Sam would scrap income
taxes and instead rely on border levies, with foreigners, at

least in theory, funding the American government. “It will be a

BONANZA,” Mr Trump posted recently on his social-media site,

claiming tariffs could all but eliminate income taxes for people

earning less than $200,000 a year.

There is plenty to dislike about tariffs. Economists bemoan the

distortions they impose on commerce. They are mostly paid not by

“external” firms but by domestic consumers. In 2020 Mary Amiti of

the Federal Reserve Bank of New York and colleagues found that

nearly all of Mr Trump’s first-term levies were ultimately borne by

American companies, in the form of lower margins, and buyers, in

the form of higher prices. Moreover, agreements with Britain and

China have reduced overall tariff levels from recent highs, which wil reduce
the revenue they raise. Levels will continue to fall as America
inks more deals.

Yet Mr Trump’s tariffs will still bring in large sums. Quite how large?

Last year just $100bn of the total $4.9trn that the federal

government collected came from customs duties. Already, though,

that figure is rising. Daily data from the Treasury show a spike. By

May 13th gross tariff collections had reached $47bn since the start

of the year, about $15bn more than last year.

Disentangling how much of this is a consequence of Mr Trump’s

latest levies and how much represents firms rushing to bring in

goods ahead of further hikes is tricky; much is likely to be the latter.

A number of economists have nevertheless attempted to forecast

tariff revenues. Peter Navarro, Mr Trump’s trade guru, claims that

border levies could generate more than $6trn over the next decade,

or $600bn a year. His arithmetic is brazenly simple: take last year’s

$3.3trn in merchandise imports and apply a 20% effective tariff.

Such an approach ignores economic dynamics. Higher tariffs reduce

demand for foreign goods, shrinking the tax base. They also depress

income and payroll-tax receipts, offsetting as much as 25% of the

gains, according to most estimates. Factor in retaliation and levy-

dodging, and anticipated revenue falls further. Mr Navarro’s tril ion-

dollar projections rest on a fantasy of stasis, in which buyers, sellers

and trading partners shrug off price signals.

Independent estimates of tariff revenues are much lower. The Penn

Wharton Budget Model estimates that the full suite of proposed

tariffs, including the “reciprocal” levies currently on pause, would

raise around $290bn a year over the next decade. Its calculations

account for weaker import demand, as well as the effects on

corporate-income- and payroll-tax receipts. Other forecasts are lower

still. The Budget Lab at Yale, a non-partisan research centre,

forecasts annual revenue of $180bn; the Tax Foundation, a think-

tank, puts the number closer to $140bn.

There is an oddity to such calculations, however. The recent

reduction in the levy on Chinese goods—from 145% to 30%—does

not do much to alter their results. At 145% the tariff was on the

wrong side of the peak of the “Laffer curve”, the point at which

higher rates reduce, rather than increase, revenue. It would have

prompted imports from China to plummet, meaning that tax

revenues would have fallen despite the sky-high levy on goods stil

coming into the country. According to estimates by Penn Wharton, a

levy of 145% on Chinese imports would raise only $25bn more a

year than the current rate of 30% will.

Even with this small mercy, the president’s tariffs will not enable the

large tax cuts he so desires. Last year America’s personal-income tax

brought in $2.4trn—an amount forecast to grow to $4.4trn over the

next decade. The Tax Foundation estimates that eliminating income

taxes for people earning less than $200,000 would cost almost

$740bn in 2025, or two to three times what tariffs could conceivably

raise. In theory, a revenue-neutral swap could cover those earning

around $80,000 or less, who account for just 10% of total income-

tax receipts. But eliminating taxes for low earners would, in practice,

mean cutting the lowest marginal rate, which applies to all taxpayers

on their initial income, and so would mostly benefit high earners. A

tax bil proposed by Republicans in the House of Representatives is

stuffed with other giveaways, including raising most tax-bracket

thresholds, which by itself would dwarf tariff income.

Tariffs were able to sustain the federal government in the early 20th

century because its spending came to just 2% or so of GDP, being

largely confined to debt service, defence and infrastructure. Today

that figure is ten times higher. Imports are a narrow and volatile tax

base, making them ill-suited to funding a modern state. The irony is

that tariffs would make American spending reliant on Chinese

production. Most politicians do not try to return to the early 1900s

for a reason. ■

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Sine laude
What the failure of a

superstar student reveals

about economics

Aidan Toner-Rodgers was enjoying a meteoric rise at MIT. Then

questions started to be asked about his work

5月 22, 2025 06:23 上午

WHEN THE economics department at the Massachusetts Institute of

Technology issues a statement, it is often to celebrate a Nobel Prize.

In the past decade, six of its professors have won the award—as

many as the next two universities combined. But on May 16th it

issued a different sort of press release: one disavowing research by

a high-flying graduate student.

Aidan Toner-Rodgers was the author of the paper in question. It

assessed the use of an AI tool by an unnamed materials-science

firm. Even for techno-optimists, the results were striking: “AI-

assisted researchers discover 44% more materials, resulting in a

39% increase in patent filings.” They were widely reported, including

by The Economist. The work was praised lavishly by Daron

Acemoglu and David Autor, two of MIT’s leading economists.

MIT now declares “no confidence in the provenance, reliability or

validity of the data and...in the veracity of the research”. Mr Toner-

Rodgers’s paper has been withdrawn from the pre-print repository

on which it first appeared; his personal website has been taken

down. The lab at the heart of his findings remains unknown.

Academic misconduct often triggers a reckoning. In 2015 political

scientists grappled with the retraction of a well-publicised article that

claimed door-to-door canvassers could lift support for gay marriage.

More recently, behavioural science has come under scrutiny:

Francesca Gino of Harvard University and Dan Ariely of Duke

University have faced investigation over allegedly manipulated data

(both deny wrongdoing). Economics has some protection owing to

its record. The five leading journals have seen just four withdrawals

in their combined 570-year history, according to Retraction Watch, a

database.
But even if economics is not the worst offender, it is no stranger to

social science’s replication crisis. Its biggest recent trend has been

empirical research, with a focus on credible causal designs (see

chart). Statistically significant results are prized, incentivising cherry-

picking and selective presentation of results. Prashant Garg of

Imperial College London and Thiemo Fetzer of the University of

Warwick find that the share of papers reporting “null results” fell

from 15% in 1980 to 9% in 2023. Use of private data doubled.

More than in other disciplines, success depends on a few high-stakes

events. Job-market candidates are evaluated on a single paper,

rather than a body of work. Because institutional pedigree and

advisers carry lots of weight, young researchers may face pressure

to overstate results.

Bad economics research has real-world consequences. Mr Toner-

Rodgers’s paper was cited by the European Central Bank and in

Congress. It surely led more than one research-and-development lab

to consider its internal processes. Other retracted papers advised

against large debt-to-GDP ratios and on how to price corporate

bonds. All academic red herrings matter. But they matter more when

they have implications for national budgets, financial markets and,

indeed, the future of AI. ■

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Buttonwood

Hong Kong says goodbye to a

capitalist crusader

David Webb was an exemplary shareholder

5月 22, 2025 03:17 上午

DAVID WEBB was quick to get his hands on the ZX Spectrum or

“Speccy”, a computer launched in 1982 with up to 48 kilobytes of

memory and rubber keys. Before he turned 18, he had written a

book, “Supercharge Your Spectrum”, showing how to get the most

out of the contraption with his favourite machine-code tricks and

techniques. What set him apart from other tinkerers was how he

spent the royalties. He would cycle to his bank in Oxford to place an

order in London for some shares. (“Which stock, young man, do you

want to buy?”)

That interest led naturally to a career in investment banking. His

methodical mind mastered what you might call the machine code of

capitalism: the rules, regulations and economic principles that make

markets work, holding firms accountable to their customers and their

owners. In 1991 he applied the same curiosity to Hong Kong, where

he moved for a two-year stint that never ended. “I loved the place,”

he says. By the time the Asian financial crisis rattled the city seven

years later, Mr Webb had made enough money to retire. So in his

early 30s he began trying to debug Hong Kong capitalism, sharing

his favourite tricks and techniques via his website (webb-site.com)

and a newsletter that now attracts over 30,000 subscribers.

At a farewell event hosted by the Foreign Correspondents’ Club in

Hong Kong on May 12th, Mr Webb, who is battling cancer, was

philosophical about his achievements. Sometimes he changed things

for the better; on other occasions he delayed a change for the

worse. “That’s also a win,” he said.

Hong Kong was often celebrated as a bastion of economic liberty.

But when Mr Webb began his crusades, its corporate governance

was “lousy”, he says. Corporate reporting was slow and scanty.

Shareholders had to wait four months for a two-page summary of a

firm’s yearly results and another month for the annual report. At the

same time, shareholder meetings were fast and perfunctory. Even

important motions were often passed on a show of hands, no matter

how many shares each “hand” represented. Big business dominated

the legislature and the listing committee that sets rules for

companies on the stockmarket.

In 2003 he exploited a “wrinkle” in the company law inherited from

Britain, which allowed five shareholders to demand a formal poll on

company resolutions. He bought ten shares in each of the

companies in the Hang Seng index, Hong Kong’s main stockmarket

benchmark, dividing them between himself, his wife and three firms

he owned. With that foothold, he could oblige companies to conduct

polls properly: one share, one vote. He also threatened to publish

the results himself if they did not. His extra five shares allowed him
to appoint proxies to appear at the meeting alongside him. He

offered these five places to the press, which was otherwise barred

from many meetings. “Tickets will be scarcer than the Rolling

Stones,” he joked. Some journalists took up the invitation, mostly

because they wanted to see what he, rather than the company, was

up to.

Listed companies have to disclose “significant investments”, including

shareholdings in other firms. At Mr Webb’s urging, the regulator

began to enforce the rule. That let him map out a web of holdings

among 50 firms he dubbed the Enigma Network. A company might

borrow from another on advantageous terms with no intention to

repay, or dilute the stakes of independent investors by issuing lots of

shares, snapped up at a discount by insiders if minority shareholders

did not fork out for them. An umbrella-maker issued 75bn shares

(“in case everyone on Earth wants ten”, as Mr Webb put it). In 2017,

six weeks after he published his map, the shares of many Enigma

firms crashed.

He also fought a rear-guard action against weighted voting rights,

which allow firms to issue special shares that carry more clout. He

feared this would further entrench tycoons, allowing their control to

exceed their ownership stake. But Hong Kong’s exchange was keen

to attract Chinese tech companies led by celebrity founders, which

are often popular even with minority investors.

Not all sharebuyers take much interest in capitalism’s inner workings.

Many simply want exposure to a stock’s returns, even without the

other rights of ownership. They are happy to free-ride on the efforts

of more careful stewards of capital, such as Mr Webb. Capitalism in

Hong Kong works better thanks to him. And it would work better stil

if more capitalists were like him. ■

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Free exchange

America’s scientific prowess

is a huge global subsidy

And it is now under threat

5月 22, 2025 05:49 上午

ONE OF THE best things about living in Europe is America. Faced

with a moribund domestic stockmarket, European investors can

redirect their savings into the S&P 500. Residents enjoy the

protection of America’s security umbrella without having to foot the

bill. At times of crisis the continent’s central banks rely on swap lines

from the Federal Reserve. All the while they enjoy better food, nicer
cities and superior cultural offerings.

But America, under President Donald Trump, now threatens to

withdraw many of these implicit subsidies. His administration’s

attacks on science, involving deep cuts· to the budgets of

institutions, may damage the biggest subsidy of all. America is a

research powerhouse. It has the best universities. It accounts for

4% of the world’s population, yet produces a third of high-impact

scientific papers. It also accounts for a third of global research-and-

development spending.

The MAGA revolution threatens America’s most innovative

place

MAGA’s assault on science is an act of grievous self-harm

China’s universities are wooing Western scientists·

Americans benefit most of all from their country’s scientific prowess.

The average American medical scientist earns $100,000 a year, for

instance—some 60% more than the average American worker. But

as any economist knows, knowledge is a public good, meaning

science has large “spillover” benefits. In 2004 Wil iam Nordhaus of

Yale University argued that companies only capture 2.2% of the total

returns from their innovations. Patents expire and even before that
competitors copy ideas. Innovation therefore drags up everyone’s

living standards, as lots of companies become more productive and

ordinary people benefit from better goods and services. America’s

average incomes are fantastically high.

Economists have devoted less attention to the question of

international spillovers. Nevertheless, America almost certainly runs

a surplus in science with the rest of the world, providing much more

to foreigners than it receives in return. In recent years, too, the size

of this subsidy has almost certainly grown. Three mechanisms stick

out—all of which are now under threat.

First, people. American scientific institutions are a melting pot. There

are twice as many foreign students today as in the early 2000s.

Many outsiders, having graduated, return home, taking ideas with

them. We estimate that around 15% of the people who have

graduated from MIT, a top American science school, live abroad. On

that basis, the raw material of future scientific progress has already

spilled out from America to elsewhere.

Second, new ideas. When a scientist publishes a paper online,

almost anyone in the world can read it. Traditionally research was a

domestic affair. One bibliometric study found that in 1996 only about
40% of citations of American scientific publications were from

foreign researchers. More recently the globalisation of scientific

knowledge has intensified. By 2019 foreign scientists accounted for

about 60% of America’s citations. Scientists in the rest of the world

thus stand on the shoulders of American giants.

American consumers also subsidise R&D. This is most well-known in

the case of pharmaceuticals. Prescription drugs are more expensive

domestically than abroad. American consumers, in effect, pay for the

research that creates them. And this pattern is apparent elsewhere,

too. National-accounts data suggest that, on average, American

corporations earn returns on domestic capital that are more than

50% higher than abroad. So while Americans may fund corporate

R&D, the world shares the benefit.

The third factor is new technologies. Every other country has long

drawn from the well of American innovations. This was how Europe

rebuilt itself following the second world war. French steel executives

visited American steelworks in order to copy workflow designs.

Britain’s car bosses turned to American executives in an attempt to

improve plant efficiency. Economists struggle to measure the ways in

which American tech spills abroad today. In some cases the

American government explicitly provides it to the world for free, as

in the case of GPS. During the covid-19 pandemic America gave

away vaccines to poor countries. Many American artificial-

intelligence companies release “open source” models. Even when

American firms try to protect their intellectual property, foreign

competitors find workarounds. Many other smartphone companies

have copied Apple’s aesthetic, for instance.

According to Nancy Stokey of the University of Chicago, one

quantitative measure of technological spillovers involves looking at

capital goods, in which new tech is often embodied. From the early

1990s to 2024 America exported nearly $5trn-worth of high-tech

capital goods, more than any other country, spreading the American

way to every corner of the Earth. Another proxy is outward foreign

direct investment. This is when an American buys a controlling stake

in a foreign business or builds a new industrial facility abroad—and

often introduces new tech as part of the bargain. Americans’ direct

investments abroad are worth some $10trn, which is far more than

any other country.

Nutty professor

If Mr Trump follows through with his proposed cuts, and America’s

scientific system stumbles, can another country pick up the mantle?

Many American scientists say they want to leave the country; a few

already have. China, which on some measures of scientific prowess

already surpasses America, may hope to capitalise. Yet few

foreigners want to do their PhD in China. A closed political system

slows down the diffusion of innovations across international borders.

So does the language barrier.

Even if China changed, however, decades of research on economic

clusters shows that they are rarely replicated. Just as you could not

uproot Hollywood and move it elsewhere, scientists leaving Berkeley

and Boston will not carry on as before when they arrive in Beijing or,

indeed, London. If America’s scientific system sneezes, the rest of

the world will catch a cold. ■

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Science & technology

Trump’s attack on science is growing

fiercer and more indiscriminate

Death by a thousand cuts :: It started as a crackdown on DEI. Now all types

of

research are being cancelled

How cuts to science funding will hurt

ordinary Americans

Disaster pending :: Federal agencies are struggling to predict the weather

and

monitor disease

America is in danger of experiencing an

academic brain drain

Your loss :: Other countries may benefit. Science will suffer

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Death by a thousand cuts

Trump’s attack on science is

growing fiercer and more

indiscriminate

It started as a crackdown on DEI. Now all types of research are

being cancelled

5月 22, 2025 07:46 上午 | Boston and Los Angeles

SCIENTISTS IN AMERICA are used to being the best. The country is

home to the world’s foremost universities, hosts the lion’s share of

scientific Nobel laureates and has long been among the top

producers· of influential research papers. Generous funding helps

keep the system running. Counting both taxpayer and industrial

dollars, America spends more on research than any other country.

The federal government doles out around $120bn a year, $50bn or

so of which goes towards tens of thousands of grants and contracts

for higher-education institutions, with the rest going to public

research bodies.

Now, however, many of America’s top scientific minds are troubled.

In the space of a few months the Trump administration has upended

well-established ways of funding and conducting research. Actions

with the stated goal of cutting costs and stamping out diversity,

equity and inclusion (DEI) initiatives are taking a toll on scientific

endeavour. And such actions are broadening. On May 15th it

emerged that the administration had cancelled grants made to

Harvard University for research on everything from Arctic

geochemistry to quantum physics, following a similar move against

Columbia. The consequences of these cuts for America’s scientific

prowess could be profound.

Under the current system, which was established soon after the

second world war, researchers apply to receive federal funding from

grant-making agencies, namely the National Institutes of Health

(NIH) and the National Science Foundation (NSF) as well as the

Departments of Defence (DoD) and Energy (DoE). Once a proposal

has been assessed by a panel of peers and approved by the agency,

the agreed money is paid out for a set period.

This setup is facing tremendous upheaval. Since Mr Trump’s return

to the White House, somewhere in the region of $8bn has been

cancelled or withdrawn from scientists or their institutions,

equivalent to nearly 16% of the yearly federal grant budget for

higher education. A further $12.2bn was rescinded but has since

been reinstated by courts. The NIH and the NSF have cancelled

more than 3,000 already-approved grants, according to Grant Watch,

a tracking website run by academics (see chart 1); an unknown

number have been scrapped by the DoE, the DoD and others. Most

cancellations have hit research that Mr Trump and his team do not

like, including work that appears associated with DEI and research

on climate change, misinformation, covid-19 and vaccines. Other

terminations have targeted work conducted at elite universities.

Much more is under threat. The president hopes to slash the NIH

budget by 38%, or almost $18bn; cut the NSF budget by $4.7bn,

more than 50%; and scrap nearly half of NASA’s Science Mission

Directorate. All told, the proposed cuts to federal research agencies

come to nearly $40bn. Many have already gone under the knife. In

March the Department for Health and Human Services (HHS), which

includes the NIH, announced it would scrap 20,000 jobs, or 25% of

its workforce. According to news reports, about 1,300 jobs, or more

than 10%, have been lost at the National Oceanic and Atmospheric

Administration (NOAA), which carries out environmental and climate

research. Staff cuts were reportedly also due to start at the NSF, but

have been temporarily blocked by courts. To save more money, the

NIH, the NSF, the DoE and the DoD have launched restrictive caps

on so-called indirect grant costs, which help fund facilities and

administration at universities. (These limits have also been partly

blocked by courts.)

The administration says it has a plan. Mr Trump entered office on a

mission to cut government waste, a problem from which the

scientific establishment is not immune. On May 19th Michael

Kratsios, his scientific adviser, stood up in front of the National

Academies of Sciences and defended the administration’s vision. It

wants to improve science by making it better and more efficient, he

said—to “get more bang for America’s research bucks”. To do so,

funding must better match the nation’s priorities, and researchers

should be freed from groupthink, empowered to challenge each

other more freely without fear of convention and dogma.

Shaking things up

He is right that science has a number of stubborn problems that can

hardly be solved by a business-as-usual approach. Scientific papers

are less disruptive and innovative than they used to be, and more

money has not always translated into speedier progress. In the

pharmaceutical sciences, new drug approvals have plateaued in

recent years despite ever larger budgets. Researchers also spend

much too long writing grant proposals and completing similar

administrative tasks, which keeps them away from their laboratories.

Some of Mr Trump’s proposals are, in fact, overdue. Many NASA

watchers, for example, would agree with his plan to find commercial

alternatives for the Space Launch System, a giant rocket being built

to take people to the Moon and beyond but which is years behind

schedule and bil ions of dollars over budget.

It would be hard, if not impossible, to improve the science funding

system without some disruption. The problem, however, is that the

administration’s cuts are broader and deeper than they first appear,

and its methods more chaotic. Take the focus on DEI, which the

administration bemoans as a dangerous left-wing ideology. The

agencies are targeting it because of an executive order banning

them from supporting such work. But DEI is notoriously ill-defined.

Programmes that are being cancelled are not just inclusive education
schemes, but also projects that focus on the health of at-risk groups.

Though it is mostly unclear why specific projects have been

cancelled, Grant Watch keeps track of words that could have landed

researchers in trouble. “Latinx”, for example, is a term for Hispanic

people flagged as a telltale sign of DEI by Ted Cruz, a Republican

senator. The NIH has cancelled a project on anal-cancer risk factors,

the abstract of which uses the word Latinx. Another cancelled

project concerns oral and throat cancer, for which gay men are at

higher risk. Its abstract uses the phrase “sexual and gender

minority”. There are many such examples.

Other cuts may do more damage. Some NIH-funded research on

vaccines has been cancelled, as have $11bn-worth of special funds

from the Centres for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) for

pandemic-related research. In March Ralph Baric, an epidemiologist

at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill who helped test the

Moderna mRNA vaccine for covid-19, had several vaccine grants

terminated. One project aimed to develop broad-spectrum vaccines

for the same family of viruses that SARS-CoV-2 comes from;

scientists fear other strains might cross from animals to humans.

Both the CDC and NIH justified such cuts by saying that the covid-19
pandemic is over. But this is short-sighted, argues Dr Baric, given the

number of worrying viruses. “We’re in for multiple pandemics” in the

future, he says. “I guess we’ll have to buy the drugs from the

Chinese.”

Even for scientists who have not been affected by cuts, other

changes have made conducting research more challenging. For

example, the NIH and NSF have both delayed funding new grants.

Jeremy Berg, a biophysicist at the University of Pittsburgh who is

tracking the delay in grant approvals, wrote in his May report that

the NIH has released about $2.9bn less funding since the start of

the year, relative to 2023 and 2024. According to media reports, the

NSF has stopped approving grants entirely until further notice.

At the NIH itself, the largest biomedical research centre in the

country, lab supplies have become more difficult to procure.

Department credit cards have been cut back and the administrative

staff who would normally place orders and pay invoices have been

fired. Scientists report shortages of reagents, lab animals and basic

equipment like gloves. All these factors are destabilising for

researchers—labs need a steady, predictable flow of cash and other

resources to continue functioning.

If next year’s cuts to federal agencies are approved, more pain could

be coming (see chart 2). The NSF’s budget cuts, for instance, will hit

climate and clean energy research. And, according to leaked

documents, the research arm of NOAA would most probably cease

to exist entirely. That would almost certainly mean defunding the

Geophysical Fluid Dynamics Laboratory at Princeton University, “one

of the best labs in the world for modelling the atmosphere”, says

Adam Sobel, a professor at Columbia University’s Lamont-Doherty

Earth Observatory. NASA’s Earth-observation satellites would likewise

take a beating, potentially damaging the agency’s ability to keep

track of wildfires, sea-level rises, surface-temperature trends and the

health of Earth’s poles. Those effects would be felt by ordinary

people· both in America and abroad.

And as Mr Trump increasingly wields grant terminations as

bludgeons against institutions he dislikes, even projects that his own

administration might otherwise have found worthy of support are

being cancelled. Take his feud with Columbia. His administration has

accused the institution of inaction against antisemitism on campus

after Hamas’s attack on October 7th 2023 and Israel’s subsequent

war in Gaza. On March 10th the NIH announced on X that it had

terminated more than 400 grants to Columbia on orders from the

administration, as a bargaining chip to get the university to take

action. Some $400m of funding has been withheld, despite Columbia

having laid out what it is doing to deal with the administration’s

concerns. Those grants include fundamental research on Alzheimer’s

disease, schizophrenia and HIV—topics that a spokesperson

confirmed to The Economist represent priority areas for the NIH.

Columbia is not alone. The administration is withholding $2.7bn from

Harvard University, which has responded with a lawsuit. Within hours

of Harvard refusing the administration’s demands, scientists at some

of the university’s world-leading labs received stop-work orders. The

administration has since said that Harvard will be awarded no more

federal grants. Letters from the NIH, the NSF, the DoD and the DoE

sent to Harvard around May 12th seem to cancel existing grants as

well.

While it is too soon to say exactly how many grants are involved,

188 newly terminated NSF grants from Harvard appeared in the

Grant Watch database on May 15th, touching all scientific disciplines.

A leaked internal communication from Harvard Medical School, the

highest-ranked in the country, says that nearly all its federal grants

have been cancelled. Cornell University says it too has received 75

stop-work orders for DoD-sponsored research on new materials,

superconductors, robotics and satellites. The administration has also

frozen over $1.7bn destined for Brown, Northwestern and Princeton

universities and the University of Pennsylvania.

As these efforts intensify, scientists are hoping that Congress and

the courts will step in to limit the damage. Swingeing as the budget

plan is, the administration’s proposals are routinely modified by

Congress. During Mr Trump’s first term, similar proposals to squeeze

scientific agencies were dismissed by Congress and he might meet

opposition again.

Susan Collins, the Republican chairwoman of the Senate

appropriations committee, which is responsible for modifying the

president’s budget, has expressed concern that Mr Trump’s cuts wil

hurt America’s competitiveness in biotech and yield ground to China.

Katie Britt, a Trump loyalist and senator for Alabama, has spoken to

Robert F. Kennedy junior, the health secretary, about the the need

for research to continue. (The University of Alabama at Birmingham

is among the top recipients of NIH money.) When on May 14th Mr

Kennedy appeared before lawmakers to defend the restructuring of

the HHS, Bill Cassidy, the Republican chairman of the Senate health

committee, asked him to reassure Americans that the reforms “wil

make their lives easier, not harder”.

Courts will have their say as well. On May 5th 13 universities sued

the administration over the NSF’s new indirect-cost cap, and the

American Association of University Professors has likewise sued Mr

Trump over his treatment of Harvard and Columbia. Harvard’s suit is

ongoing. Dr Baric is one researcher who has had his grant

terminations reversed in this manner. His state of North Carolina,

alongside 22 other states and the District of Columbia, sued the HHS

over the revoked CDC funding for vaccine research. On May 16th the

court ruled that the federal government had overstepped and not

followed due process, and ordered the HHS to reinstate the funding.

Reversing more cuts will take time, however. And the uncertainty

and chaos in the short term could have lasting effects. A country

where approved grants can be terminated before work is finished

and appealing against decisions is difficult becomes a less attractive

place to do science. Some researchers may consider moving

abroad·. American science has long seen itself as the world’s best; today it
faces its gravest moment ever. ■

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more-

indiscriminate

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Disaster pending

How cuts to science funding

will hurt ordinary Americans

Federal agencies are struggling to predict the weather and monitor

disease

5月 22, 2025 03:18 上午 | ATLANTA and LOS ANGELES

FROM LAW firms to universities, Donald Trump’s administration has

taken aim at elites. But the consequences of cuts to research

spending· and reductions in the federal workforce carried out since

Mr Trump returned to the White House will trickle down quickly.

Federally funded science agencies provide all sorts of services, many

of which save lives and generate economic value. The National

Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA), for example,

provides weather forecasts that farmers rely on to determine when

to plant, irrigate and harvest and that authorities use to prepare for

disasters. The Centres for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), in

its role as America’s public-health agency, collects data essential to

the effective treatment of diseases and funds clinics that treat them.

Research on pollution at the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA),

meanwhile, is critical for refining regulations that protect Americans

from contaminants. The cuts to these agencies and others are likely

to hurt ordinary Americans.

DOGE, Mr Trump’s cost-cutting special force, has already

implemented personnel cuts at NOAA. A leaked memo suggests that

Congress will soon slash its research budget and eliminate more positions.
This will further disrupt operations. In normal

circumstances the agency’s National Weather Service (NWS) offices

launch weather balloons twice a day. These balloons carry

instruments that record atmospheric pressure, temperature and

humidity data, all of which inform predictions of where storms

develop, how they move and how strong they may be.

One current NWS employee, who requested anonymity for fear of

retaliation, says that his office has lost four of 13 forecasters since

the Trump administration took office. He and his remaining

colleagues are now sending balloons up only in the evening, in effect

halving the resolution of their data. Other offices have delayed or

suspended launches. The Mountain West region, which includes

Idaho and Montana, is hardest hit. “That’s where the storm systems

that produce severe weather really get going in the spring months,”

says Chris Vagasky, a meteorologist at the University of Wisconsin-

Madison. The NWS office in Jackson, Kentucky is no longer able to

staff overnight shifts. When tornadoes ripped through the state last

week, kil ing at least 19 people, the agency was hard-pressed to find

cover. Workers stayed overtime and neighbouring offices sent

support staff.

Cuts to data collection are being exacerbated by cuts to the groups

responsible for warning people about dangerous conditions. Kayla

Besong worked at the Pacific Tsunami Warning Centre in Hawaii. Her

team wore pagers, like doctors in hospital, which alerted them to

earthquake activity. Using data about the location, size and

magnitude of a given earthquake, she says, they would have to

calculate the likelihood of a tsunami being generated and decide

whether the public needed to be warned. Two people were on watch

at all times, which made for lengthy work rotas for a small team. Dr

Besong was fired in February when probationary employees across

the federal bureaucracy were sacked by DOGE. She warns about the

toll that long shifts can take on her already thinly stretched

colleagues. Burnout was “a huge concern” even before the cuts, she

says. Overworked employees may make mistakes which, when it

comes to severe weather, could prove deadly.

At the CDC, fewer employees make it harder to prevent the outbreak

of disease. The Medical Monitoring Project, for example, was created

in 2005 to collect and analyse data on people with HIV. Until

recently state and local health departments across the country used

its data—on everything from comorbidities and behaviour that

causes transmission to barriers to receiving medical care—to direct

their services. On April 1st all but one of the 17-person team that

ran it was fired, abruptly ending the 20-year-long project. “The only

source of nationally representative information on people with HIV is

now gone,” says a CDC physician. As much as 45% of the broader

HIV-prevention team was also fired. All HIV research at the agency

has since been paused and many grants for basic medical care were
terminated.

HIV work is in the cross-hairs in part because of its focus on racial

and sexual minorities, who contract the virus at especially high rates.

Such focus is seen by the Trump administration as evidence of

“woke” ideology getting in the way of hard science. Empowerment

Resource Centre, an HIV clinic in downtown Atlanta, Georgia, is one

of many feeling the blow. Its $400,000 CDC grant for serving gay

and transgender patients is in limbo—the funds for May have still not

come through. This week the entire HIV department in Fulton

County (in which Atlanta sits), its only other funder, was sacked.

Jacqueline Brown, the non-profit’s boss, says she is having to make

painful decisions about which kinds of services to cut and how to

reduce the number of clients the clinic serves. “We will try to

continue as long as we can, but inevitably we’ll have to suspend

programmes; there is just no money left,” she says. Leandro Mena, a

professor of medicine at Emory University, in Georgia, reckons that

such cuts mean HIV rates will rise in the next two or three years.

Across the board

Other agencies are also under pressure. In early May Lee Zeldin, the

Trump-appointed administrator of the EPA, announced a

restructuring that will see staffing at the agency return to Reagan-

era levels—equivalent to a 25% reduction—and its dedicated

research unit dissolved. The unit, known as the Office of Research

and Development, collates independent evidence on pollution, which

in turn informs the EPA’s guidelines and regulations. Since the

agency’s creation in 1970, these regulations have led to an almost

80% decrease in common air pollutants, saving hundreds of

thousands of Americans from early death each year. In Mr Trump’s

proposed budget, the EPA also stands to lose almost 55% of its

funding, achieved by scrapping “skewed, overly-precautionary

modelling” that informs regulations as well as “woke climate

research”.

The government may eventually come to understand that warning

people of deadly storms and easing access to medical care helps

many beyond the elites. But for now, at least, there are few signs of

any such policy reversals. ■

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technology/2025/05/21/how-cuts-to-science-funding-will-hurt-ordinary-
americans

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Your loss

America is in danger of

experiencing an academic

brain drain

Other countries may benefit. Science will suffer

5月 22, 2025 09:08 上午

Editor’s update (May 22nd): The Trump administration revoked

Harvard University’s ability to enroll international students.

MATTHIAS DOEPKE was impressed when he moved to America as a

graduate student in the 1990s. Academic pay was better than in his

native Germany and university departments were slick and

organised. But what he appreciated most was the attitude. “You

come to the US and you have this feeling that you are totally

welcome and you’re totally part of the local community,” he says. In

2012 he became a professor of economics at Northwestern

University in Illinois, and in 2014 became a naturalised citizen.

But in April Dr Doepke resigned from Northwestern; he is now a

professor at the London School of Economics. He is clear about why

he and his family left: the election of Donald Trump as president.

“Once the election happened,” he says, “it was clear we weren’t

going to stay.” Mr Trump’s government is taking a chainsaw to

American science, pulling grants, revoking researcher visas, and

planning enormous cuts to the country’s biggest funders of research

(see chart 1). Academics talk of a “war on science”. Few have

followed Dr Doepke’s example and moved overseas just yet. But

plenty of data suggest they soon might. An exodus from the world’s

scientific superpower beckons.

Springer Nature publishes Nature, the world’s most prestigious

scientific journal. It also runs a much-used jobs board for academics.

In the first three months of the year applications by researchers

based in America for jobs in other countries were up by 32%

compared with the same period in 2024. In March Nature itself

conducted a poll of more than 1,200 researchers at American

institutions, of whom 75% said they were thinking of leaving

(though disgruntled academics were probably more likely to respond

to the poll than satisfied ones). And just as American researchers

eye the exit, foreigners are becoming more reluctant to move in.

Springer Nature’s data suggests applications by non-American

candidates for American research jobs have fallen by around 25%

compared with the same period last year.

Attitudes are souring at the bottom of the academic totem pole as

well. Searches for American PhDs on FindAPhD, a website that does

exactly what its name suggests, were down by 40% year on year in

April. Interest from students in Europe has fallen by half. Data from

another website, Studyportals, show less interest in domestic PhDs

among Americans, and a rise in interest in international studentships

compared with 2024 (see chart 2).

Greener pastures

Why is America losing its allure? The most straightforward reason is

money, or the looming lack of it. Mr Trump’s administration has

cancelled thousands of research grants since January, when he took

office. Grant Watch, a website, calculates that at least $2.5bn-worth

have been rescinded so far, leaving researchers without salaries and

unable to pay expenses. Much more could be coming. The White

House’s budget for 2026 aims to slash science spending. The

National Institutes of Health (NIH), the world’s biggest funder of

biomedical research, faces a nearly 40% cut. The National Science

Foundation (NSF), another big federal funder, may lose 52%.

Such cuts must be approved by Congress. But if the budget is

enacted, The Economist calculates that more than 80,000

researchers could lose their jobs. American funding for academic

science would fall significantly behind that of either China or the

European Union, after adjusting for costs.

Funding is not the only issue. Many scientists, especially those who

are citizens of other countries, are beginning to feel intimidated. In

the first four months of 2025 at least 1,800 international students or

recent grads had their visas revoked without explanation, only to

have them restored again in April. Senior scientists report difficulty

obtaining visas for incoming researchers, and have advised junior

colleagues from overseas not to travel home, lest they be detained

on their return.

Others allege that the government is meddling with their research.

Kevin Hall, a researcher at the NIH, quit in April after two such

incidents. First, he says the NIH asked him to edit a section of a

paper that mentioned “health equity”. (“Equity” is an unpopular word

among Mr Trump’s supporters.) Later Dr Hall published a study

showing that ultra-processed foods did not activate the same

addiction pathways in the brain as drugs do—contradicting the views

of administration officials. Dr Hall alleges the NIH edited his

responses to a journalist, without his approval, to downplay his

findings. (The NIH told The Economist that it does not respond to

false allegations by former employees.)

Some other countries spy in all this an opportunity to beef up their

own scientific capabilities. Several Canadian universities, including

the Toronto’s University Health Network and Laval University in

Quebec, have announced funding worth tens of mil ions of dollars

explicitly aimed at diverting researchers from America. On May 5th

Ursula von der Leyen, the president of the European Commission,

gave a speech in Paris urging scientists to “choose Europe”,

highlighting a wodge of new money and the bloc’s social safety-net.

The University of Helsinki has been targeting Americans with adverts

on social media, promising them “freedom to think”.

China is likely to be another beneficiary. According to the South

China Morning Post, the country is redoubling its efforts to lure

Chinese-born scientists from America by offering big salaries.

Between 2019 and 2022 the share of non-native artificial-intelligence

(AI) researchers who left America for China after their PhD doubled,

from 4% to 8%. Springer Nature’s data suggest that in the first

quarter of this year applications for jobs in China from scientists

based in America were up by 20% compared with the same period

last year.

That matters, for much of America’s scientific pre-eminence has

been built by researchers who were not born there. Since 1901,
researchers based in America have won 55% of academic Nobel

prizes, and more than a third of these scientists were foreign-born.

Immigrant inventors produce an outsize share of patents, too. The

Paulson Institute, a think-tank, reckons that in 2022 almost two-

thirds of top-tier AI researchers working in America hailed from

overseas. Losing even some of those would be a blow to American

innovation.

Other countries might gain, but the disruption would harm science

as a whole. At around $40bn, Mr Trump’s planned funding cuts are

too big for other countries to make up by themselves. (The extra

funding promised by Mrs von der Leyen, for instance, is worth only

€500m, or $566m, over three years.) Many researchers will probably

leave science altogether. Everyone would lose—even if America lost

most. ■

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brain-drain

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Culture

Sam Altman is a visionary with a

trustworthiness problem

Prometheus unbound :: Two books tell a similar tale about OpenAI. It is

worrying

In Germany, the Nazis invaded people’s

dreams

No rest from the wicked :: A remarkable work of journalism, newly

translated into

English, shows how authoritarianism warps the subconscious

“The Handmaid’s Tale” reveals the limits of

dystopian television

Goodbye Gilead :: Six seasons of suffering is more than enough

The story of capitalism, told by its

detractors

Musing on Mammon :: An ambitious new history of the idea that forged the
modern

world

How FDR shaped the doctrine of national

security in America
Up in arms :: The New Deal gave rise to the idea, a new book shows

The hottest gadget of the summer? A

portable pizza oven

World in a dish :: The question is why many spend time making a food that is
easily

bought

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Prometheus unbound

Sam Altman is a visionary

with a trustworthiness

problem
Two books tell a similar tale about OpenAI. It is worrying

5月 22, 2025 04:56 上午 | LOS ANGELES

The Optimist. By Keach Hagey. W.W. Norton; 384 pages; $31.99

and £25

Empire of AI. By Karen Hao. Penguin Press; 496 pages; $32 and

£25

IN GREEK MYTHOLOGY Prometheus stole fire from the gods and brought
it to Earth. He paid for that by being bound for eternity to a

rock face, where an eagle tormented him daily by pecking at his

liver. Such was the price of humanity’s first great technology. In the

21st century the story of Sam Altman, the co-founder and chief executive of
OpenAI, has a Promethean ring to it, too. He

spearheaded the creation of ChatGPT, which was launched in late

2022, stunning the world: suddenly the revolutionary capabilities

and risks of generative artificial intelligence (AI) were unleashed. A year

later the capricious gods—that is to say, OpenAI’s non-profit

board—sought to banish him. Unlike Prometheus, however, Mr

Altman emerged unscathed.

This story is the subject of two excellent new books. They explore

the murky mix of missionary zeal, rivalry and mistrust at OpenAI in

the run-up to the birth of ChatGPT. The tensions are even more
apparent in the chaos leading up to the attempt to fire Mr Altman

during the abortive boardroom coup in November 2023.

It is testimony to the skill of the authors, who are journalists, that

they have produced deeply researched, gripping accounts, both

published on May 20th, almost exactly a year and a half after that

event. Better still, they tell the story in different ways.

Keach Hagey’s “The Optimist” is what could be called the authorised

version. She had access to Mr Altman and many of the main

characters in his story, including his family and friends. His

personality is vivid and complicated enough that her story never

flags. It is no hagiography.

Karen Hao got no such access for “Empire of AI”. OpenAI kept her at

arm’s length, which gives her account more bite. Both books reveal

disturbing traits about Mr Altman, OpenAI and the culture of Silicon

Valley that are useful to bear in mind amid the hype about generative AI.

Mr Altman is a beguiling character. As Ms Hagey says, the first things

you notice about him are his slight stature and the intensity of his

gaze, “as though he is speaking to the most important person in the

world”. Brought up in the American Midwest, from a young age he

was a technology whizz who was surprisingly witty. He proved a

natural crusader: at 17 he shocked a school assembly by revealing

his homosexuality in order to promote gay rights.

Throughout his career, he has combined an ambition to create

world-changing technologies with a gift for storytelling that helps

him raise large sums of money to fund his dreams. He started with a

location-tracking phone app called Loopt. Since then, his large bets

have included a cryptocurrency backed by eye scans to certify digital identity

in a world of AI; life extension through cellular-rejuvenation

technology; nuclear fusion; and, of course, the quest for

superintelligence.

Some liken his abilities to Steve Jobs’s “reality distortion field”—the Apple
co-founder could make people believe in what they thought

was impossible. But unlike Jobs, who was often abrasive, Mr Altman

is a sensitive listener who knows how to frame what he offers in

ways that people find alluring.

From early on, his people skills have attracted powerful mentors.

Paul Graham, co-founder of Y Combinator (YC), a startup incubator,

said of Mr Altman: “You could parachute him into an island full of

cannibals and come back in five years and he’d be king.” Indeed Mr

Graham and his partner, Jessica Livingston, handed the reins of YC

to Mr Altman within a few years, elevating him at the age of 28 to a

position of near-unrivalled power in the Silicon Valley startup scene.

Playing with fire

Even then, there were misgivings about his candour. “If Sam smiles,

it’s super deliberate,” a former YC founder tells Ms Hao. “Sam has

smiled uncontrollably only once, when [Mr Graham] told him to take

over YC.” At Loopt, which he sold for $43m in 2012, his colleagues

twice sought to convince the board to sack him as CEO because, as

Ms Hagey says, he pursued his own ideas without informing them.

Their concerns about his trustworthiness are recounted in both

books—even if, in the end, his financial backers remained loyal.

Likewise, at YC, Mr Graham and Ms Livingston grew frustrated with

Mr Altman’s moonlighting at OpenAI, which he started with Elon

Musk and others in 2015, while still running YC. Ms Livingston fired him
but, as Ms Hagey recounts, he left chaos in his wake. Not only

was he overseen by a non-functioning board, he had also used YC

equity to help lure people to OpenAI. She says some YC partners

saw a potential conflict of interest, “or at least an unseemly

leveraging of the YC brand for Altman’s personal projects”.

These details are important. Both accounts suggest that his

ambition, speed and silver-tongued way of telling people only what

they want to hear have come close to unravelling OpenAI.

Paradoxically, some of these same traits helped OpenAI amass the

huge amounts of money and computational power, not to mention

the troves of data scraped from the internet to feed its models, that

helped give the firm the lead in generative AI.

On one occasion, known as “the divorce”, he so alienated some of

OpenAI’s researchers focused on safety that they left the company

and founded one of its main rivals, Anthropic, in 2021. On another,

known as “the blip”, he was sensationally fired after his top

lieutenants and the board lost trust in him because, as both books

say, he told them conflicting stories and failed to give them straight

answers about his and OpenAI’s investment activities. Yet he

returned triumphantly a few days later when they realised that the

company might collapse without him.

Underpinning both these episodes, and running through both books,

is the ideological struggle between those who favour speed over

safety when rolling out generative AI. OpenAI has suffered heavily

from an internecine rift between “doomers” and “boomers”. Many of

the doomers are part of the effective-altruism (EA) movement, a

philanthropic philosophy aimed at finding the most potent way to

help others, which took a keen interest in the possibly catastrophic

risks of AI. The boomers, or “effective accelerationists”, are more

concerned that if America does not win the AI race, China will. In

reality, as Ms Hao points out, they are two sides of the same coin.

Each is striving to push the boundaries of machine superintelligence

as far as is safe or possible—even if one warns of “fire and

brimstone” and the other offers “visions of heaven”.

Equally interesting are the rivalries in a field full of quasi-geniuses

and the technological leaps they perform to keep ahead of each

other. Both books chronicle the falling-out between Mr Musk and Mr

Altman, which is vividly catalogued as part of a lawsuit Mr Musk has

filed against OpenAI, its boss, and Microsoft, the biggest investor in

OpenAI’s for-profit entity.

Throughout, the two books diverge in ways that underscore the

question at the heart of their common story: does the end, the quest

for superintelligent AI, justify the means? Ms Hagey appears to think

so. She explains away some of Mr Altman’s behaviour as aversion to

conflict and a “move fast and break things” mindset common in

Silicon Valley.

Ms Hao, meanwhile, accuses OpenAI of betraying its mission. She is

critical not only of Mr Altman, but of the heads of rival firms, who

she insists are in the same power struggle. She says generative-AI
models are “monstrosities”, consuming too much data, power and

natural resources. She goes too far, however, in likening OpenAI and

other labs to colonial empires.

But taking the evidence from both books, her concerns about Mr

Altman seem valid. In any organisation a CEO who does not seem

fully trustworthy is a problem. This is particularly so at the helm of a

firm like OpenAI, which is building potentially Promethean

technologies. ■

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No rest from the wicked

In Germany, the Nazis

invaded people’s dreams

A remarkable work of journalism, newly translated into English,

shows how authoritarianism warps the subconscious

5月 22, 2025 03:17 上午

A living nightmare

The Third Reich of Dreams. By Charlotte Beradt. Translated by

Damion Searls. Princeton University Press; 152 pages; $24.95 and

£20

IN 1933, AFTER Adolf Hitler had taken power, a German housewife

dreamed that her stove was snooping on her. “It said everything

we’d said against the regime, every joke we’d told” to an

eavesdropping stormtrooper. “God, I thought, what is it going to say

next? All my little comments about Goebbels?” The woman’s fears

about privacy and Hitler’s chief propagandist were recorded by Charlotte

Beradt, a Jewish journalist who collected the dreams of

Germans under fascism.

Three decades earlier Sigmund Freud had posited that dreams

reveal unconscious thoughts. To Beradt, they disclosed truths about

authoritarianism that no one would dare say aloud. Some of her

subjects were nervous to share their stories. Half a dozen dreamed

that it was forbidden to dream. A businessman imagined that

Goebbels visited his factory. “It took me half an hour to get my arm

raised, mil imetre by mil imetre,” he recounted. As he struggled to

salute, his spine snapped.

Beradt collected dreams from more than 300 people over several

years, transcribing them in code. “Party” became “family”; Hitler

became “Uncle Hans”. She concealed the records in bookbindings

and smuggled them abroad. They were published in Germany in

1966; an early English translation went out of print. Newly

translated, the remarkable collection—which is unique in the canon

of Holocaust literature—may now find more readers. It arrives at a

time when people are more interested in the connection between

sleep and well-being than ever before.

Beradt organises the material into types of dreams, interweaving the

accounts with her own trenchant analysis. A man imagines sitting

down to write a formal complaint against the regime, but the page

he sends in is blank—a dream reflecting his inaction. An eye doctor

pictures that he is summoned to treat Hitler because “I was the only

one in the world who could; I was proud of myself for that, and felt

so ashamed of my pride that I started crying”—a dream suffused

with guilt. A young woman envisions having to produce identity

papers and she is desperate to prove that she is not Jewish—a

dream of racial paranoia.

Many of the dreams are eerily prophetic. The doctor dreams about

Nazi militiamen knocking out hospital windows four years before

Kristallnacht, the “night of broken glass” (pictured on previous

page), when stormtroopers destroyed buildings including

synagogues and Jewish-owned businesses. The woman dreams of

hiding under “a big pile of dead bodies”. It was the early 1930s,

years before the world would learn of the mass murder committed in
concentration camps.

The dreams of Germans in the resistance are different. The night before her
execution, Sophie Scholl, a 21-year-old activist, dreamed

that she was carrying a baby up a mountain to be baptised. Before

she could get to the church, a crevasse cracked open on her path;

she was able to set the baby down before she disappeared into the

chasm. Scholl saw this as a metaphor for the fight against fascism.

“The child is our idea, and it will prevail despite all obstacles,” she

explained. “We can prepare the way for it, even though we will have

to die for it before its victory.”

Beradt puts Jewish dreamers in their own section as their dreams,

“sharpened by the acute threat they were under...seem downright

clairvoyant”. In 1935 a housewife dreamed that “We shouldn’t go

back to our homes, something was going to happen.” She wanders

from building to building, seeking refuge and finding none. As Beradt

notes, the dream anticipated events to come—the displacement of

Jews in hiding during the “final solution”.

Robert Ley, a high-ranking Nazi, suggested in 1938 that the only

Germans with any privacy were those sleeping. He under-rated the

regime’s power. Dreams reflect and refract an individual’s

experience, shaped as it is by policy and the public mood. Even in

sleep, the Reich occupied the minds of its subjects. ■

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Goodbye Gilead

“The Handmaid’s Tale”

reveals the limits of dystopian

television

Six seasons of suffering is more than enough

5月 22, 2025 03:18 上午

No freedom to speak of

IN THE SPRING of 2017 a troubling vision of America arrived on

television screens. Based on Margaret Atwood’s novel of 1985, “The

Handmaid’s Tale” depicted a country that had been transformed into

Gilead, a theocratic dictatorship. Women were stripped of their civil

rights. Those who were fertile were enslaved as “handmaids”:

childbearing vessels for the ruling class.

The show had its premiere on Hulu, a streaming service, not long

after Donald Trump’s inauguration, when people feared democratic

backsliding and the creep of religious fundamentalism into politics.

As the president stacked the courts with anti-abortion judges and

called for the defunding of Planned Parenthood, a reproductive-

health organisation, some exclaimed that Ms Atwood had produced

not a work of fiction, but a prophecy.

The handmaids’ costume became a visual metaphor of resistance:

protesters dressed in red robes and white caps stood outside

statehouses across America. Critics breathlessly described the

adaptation as the defining artwork of the Trump era. “The Handmaid’s Tale”
went on to win eight Emmy awards for its first

season and became the first streaming show to win Outstanding

Drama Series.

Six seasons later, it will come to an end on May 27th. The final

season began not long after Mr Trump re-entered the White House.

Yet the fervour around the show has dissipated; after a peak in

2021, viewership has declined. It no longer dominates the public

discussion. Why?

One reason is that “The Handmaid’s Tale” is not, in fact, a mirror of

the Trump era. Though there are parallels—an early episode showed

an attack on the Capitol, three years before the real one—Mr Trump

has not instituted compulsory rape or the death penalty for

dissenters.

Another is that the show has suffered by extending the story beyond

its source material. After using up the plot of Ms Atwood’s slim novel

in the first season, the show’s writers faced the tricky task of

keeping the story compelling and the stakes high. June (Elisabeth

Moss, pictured), the protagonist, has been trapped in a cycle of

capture, escape and recapture that has strained the story’s credibility

and tested viewers’ patience.

Resistance fatigue has also played a role. “The draw of the initial

season was that it was so apocalyptic,” says Karen Ritzenhoff, an

academic. Yet outrage is difficult to sustain, on screen and off it. Mr

Trump remains unpopular, but his second term has not seen protests

on the same scale as in 2017, when some 4m Americans took part in

the Women’s March.

The show’s main problem, however, is that it is unrelentingly bleak.

One critic has called it a “hellhole” of “utter despair and soul-

destroying misery”. Another said she had an anxiety attack after

watching. For those concerned about the future of American

democracy, “The Handmaid’s Tale” offers no respite.

Viewers may prefer the forthcoming adaptation of “The Testaments”,

its sequel, instead. Watching people struggle under a totalitarian

regime does not make for an enjoyable evening. Watching that

regime collapse may be rather more thril ing. ■

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Musing on Mammon
The story of capitalism, told

by its detractors

An ambitious new history of the idea that forged the modern world

5月 22, 2025 03:18 上午

Cogs in the machine

Capitalism and Its Critics. By John Cassidy. Farrar, Straus and

Giroux; 624 pages; $36. Allen Lane; £35

TO THOMAS CARLYLE, it was “one of the shabbiest gospels ever

preached”. Adam Smith was an early fan, but was still suspicious of

those who practised it. Rosa Luxemburg thought it fuelled

imperialism and violence. Karl Marx hated everything about it. Even

John Maynard Keynes believed its survival depended on the whole system
being refashioned.

There are two great challenges to overcome in writing a history of

capitalism, as John Cassidy has in his new book, “Capitalism and Its

Critics”. The main one is that almost anyone, when confronted with

the words “history of capitalism” and a 600-page doorstopper, wil

start wondering what’s on Netflix. The other is pinning down what,

exactly, the subject of that history is. George Orwell wrote in 1946

that “The word fascism has now no meaning except in so far as it

signifies ‘something not desirable’.” Today he might have observed

something similar about the word “capitalism”, seldom used by

politicians on either left or right unless it is to describe an aspect of

the market economy they dislike.

Capitalism has always been a shape-shifter. Does the 18th-century

system, based on colonial monopolies such as the one held by the

East India Company, belong to the same tradition as the industrial, factory-
based capitalism of the 19th century? How about the

“plantation capitalism” that involved enslaving Africans and

transporting them to harvest sugar in the Caribbean? None of it

seems much to resemble the technology-dominated capitalism of

2025. Marx railed against those who owned the means of

production; in today’s knowledge economy, the most important of

these are within educated workers’ heads.

Mr Cassidy wastes little ink agonising over precisely what capitalism

means. Instead, he tells its story in mosaic fashion, using the

criticisms made by its detractors over the centuries. The result is an

intriguing account of how some of the most consequential ideas in

economics developed, and how they forged the modern world.

The author includes thinkers many readers will not have met before.

There is Wil iam Thompson, a contemporary of John Stuart Mill. He

advocated “co-operatives”, in which production was organised by the

community and income was divided equitably. There is Flora Tristan,

who in the 1830s travelled around Britain, wrote a stinging exposé of

the destitution of its working class and campaigned to establish a

universal workers’ union.

Then there are those who knew all too well how British capitalism

extracted value from its colonies while immiserating locals. Starting

in 1929, J.C. Kumarappa, an associate of Mohandas Gandhi,

described how farmers in the poor Indian region of Matar Taluka

were forced to pay land taxes amounting to between 70% and

215% of the value of their annual crop. In the 1930s Eric Wil iams,

Trinidad’s first prime minister, argued that slavery helped set

industrial capitalism in motion by developing new markets for British

manufactured goods and supplying raw materials.

As Keynesian thinking gained popularity after the second world war,

the system drew critiques from the right, too. Milton Friedman

thought public spending had to be cut drastically to tame inflation.

In the 1970s Augusto Pinochet, Chile’s dictator, put Friedman’s

“shock treatment” theory into practice, quelling price rises at the

cost of a deep recession, and murdering thousands to maintain

order. Friedrich Hayek convinced Margaret Thatcher, Britain’s prime
minister in the 1980s, to destroy much of the trade unions’ power.

The book’s focus is capitalism’s critics in the past rather than in the

present. Mr Cassidy notes that, as globalisation advanced from 1980

onwards, hundreds of mil ions of people escaped poverty. Then

comes a hand-wringing discussion over the precise number of

percentage points by which the share of income earned by America’s

richest 1% rose over the same time period. Still, several enjoyable

evenings might be spent with Netflix off and Mr Cassidy’s new book

open. ■

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Up in arms

How FDR shaped the doctrine

of national security in

America

The New Deal gave rise to the idea, a new book shows

5月 22, 2025 03:18 上午

Total Defence. By Andrew Preston. Belknap Press; 336 pages;

$29.95 and £24.95

FRANKLIN DELANO ROOSEVELT (FDR) was in Chicago in October

1937 to open a new bridge. It was a typical example of the

infrastructure projects that were integral to the president’s New

Deal, which had alleviated the Great Depression and given

Americans a sense of economic security. Perhaps 1m people turned

up to hear him speak and enjoy a parade. Roosevelt used the

occasion to deliver what would become one of the most

consequential foreign-policy speeches in history.

In what became known as the “quarantine speech”, he warned his

audience of a spreading “reign of terror”. Nazi Germany was rapidly

rearming and imperial Japan was mercilessly attacking the civilian

population of Shanghai. The world, he said, was now in “a state of

international anarchy and instability from which there is no escape

through mere isolation or neutrality”. FDR argued that belligerent

states must be quarantined before they infected others with the

virus of war.

Roosevelt knew that it would take more than a speech to begin

preparing Americans for the possibility of war. Since the early 19th

century America had essentially enjoyed “free security”. The

country’s geography and continental scale seemed to make it

invulnerable; with its territorial integrity unchallenged, it could forgo

the cost of maintaining a large army. Threats in Asia or Europe

seemed distant. Congress was more interested in fighting battles

over the New Deal than preparing for battles abroad.

When Woodrow Wilson made the decision to take America into the first
world war, some of the arguments he used were to be echoed

by Roosevelt 20 years later. But there were subtle differences.

Wilsonian idealism was about defeating militarism and forming a

new world order based on self-determination and collective security

that would protect America’s own democracy. However, his plan fell

apart when realpolitik won out at Versailles and Congress failed to

vote for America to join the nascent League of Nations (a precursor

to the United Nations). The “Wilsonian moment” was just that—

fleeting. Faced with a new global crisis, it fell to Roosevelt to learn

from Wilson’s mistakes.

Andrew Preston, a professor at Cambridge University, shows in

fascinating detail how Roosevelt used similar language when talking

about the social-protection policies and public-investment

programmes of the New Deal and the emerging concept of national

security. Both required centralised planning and the mobilisation of

vast resources to address the peril confronting Americans.

To be persuasive he had to exaggerate the dangers the country

faced. In September 1940, more than a year before the Japanese

attack on Pearl Harbour, he described a German invasion that would

eradicate the American way of life: “The greatest attack that has

ever been launched against freedom of the individual is nearer the

Americas than ever before. To meet that attack we must prepare

beforehand—for the simple reason that preparing later may and

probably would be too late.”

Roosevelt characterised the rearmament programme, followed by

entry into the second world war in December 1941, as “total

defence”. However, as Mr Preston notes, the search for complete

security proved difficult to call off even after the war had finished.

Roosevelt’s successor, Harry Truman, concluded nearly two months

after Japan’s surrender that “Peace must be built upon [American]

power…never again can we count on the luxury of time with which

to arm ourselves.”

Basic safety, others concluded, could be achieved only if

international law was backed up by “a military position of offensive

readiness…so formidable as to be beyond challenge”. This time,

America had the political will and economic might to make it a

reality. So it was that the American national-security state was born

and with it the aim of containing the new threat to safety, the Soviet

Union: an implacable ideological foe that would soon have the

atomic bomb.

Surprisingly, Mr Preston makes only passing reference to the

existential dread nuclear weapons induced in ordinary Americans.

The top-secret National Security Council report called “NSC-68” gets

just one mention. Completed in 1950, it argued that the Soviet

Union’s expansionist ambitions were a threat that could be

countered only by another build-up of military might. It was in many

ways the document that shaped the cold war.

The author concludes with thoughts about what the second coming

of Donald Trump might mean for a concept of national security that has lasted
for more than 80 years. Since the book went to press, the

answer has become clear. Mr Trump wishes to weaken the

“administrative state” that was created by the New Deal, as well as

its progeny, the national-security state. When bureaucrats resist, he

sees a “deep-state” conspiracy. The wars he has chosen to fight are

on “woke” and trade. FDR would not be impressed. ■

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World in a dish

The hottest gadget of the

summer? A portable pizza

oven

The question is why many spend time making a food that is easily

bought

5月 22, 2025 03:17 上午

IF YOU WANT to get your hands on a pizza, the easiest way is to order one
by phone or app; within the hour it will land on your
doorstep. (So convenient is this method that Americans spent $17bn

on pizza deliveries last year.) Nevertheless, some people prefer a

harder way: making a pie from scratch. Even inexpert bakers wil

manage to ferment flour, water, yeast and salt into a decent dough,

before topping it with pureed tomatoes, mozzarella and some basil.

The problem comes when it is time to cook the thing.

For a long time, you had three choices. First, use a conventional

oven—but, because they rarely get above around 250°C, the pizza

will be flat and dry. Second, buy a giant wood-fired oven: perfect for anyone
with thousands of dollars and an immense amount of space

to spare. Third, anyone with many hundreds, a large garden and a

taste for backbreaking manual labour could build their own.

But in recent years, a fourth option has emerged: portable ovens.

These are just big enough for a single pizza and fuelled by wood,

propane or electricity. They tend to be domed; the shape reflects

heat downwards, as in a professional oven. Crucially, they are

reasonably priced, starting at around $250. Sales of such ovens

began taking off during the pandemic, when restaurants were closed and
people wanted a way of socialising outdoors. Ooni, a Scottish

company, saw sales quadruple in 2020-21. When Gozney, another

British firm, launched an oven called the “Dome” in 2021, it sold out
within hours of release.

The rising cost of living has hampered sales somewhat, but over the

next five years the market for home pizza ovens is still expected to

grow steadily, with outdoor gas-powered versions the most popular

type. The delicious pizza they produce shatters a long-held belief

that cooking with wood or coal was the only way to make one of

restaurant quality.

In fact, different heat sources produce little or no discernible

difference in flavour. A pizza’s cooking time is brief—around 90

seconds—and it is not being smoked by the charcoal. Gas ovens get hot
enough (upwards of 450°C) to produce the puffed, leopard-spotted crust that
defines a first-rate pizza. Portable electric ovens,

now offered by many brands, provide a similar experience without

the annoyance of pellets or propane.

That just leaves the question of why anyone would spend time and

money making perhaps the most easily acquired takeaway food on

Earth. One reason is taste: pizza straight from the oven is much

more delicious than the same pizza 30 minutes later, partly stuck to

a cardboard box. Another is social: with an oven, dough balls,

toppings and some friends, a summer party emerges. Last is pride.

Anyone can pick up a phone, but when a dish hits your eye and it’s
your own pizza pie, that’s amore. ■

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Economic & financial indicators

Economic data, commodities and markets

Indicators ::

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Indicators

Economic data, commodities

and markets

5月 22, 2025 03:41 上午

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Obituary

Ed Smylie knew this stick-fast wonder

could fix anything

Thanks, duct tape! :: The NASA engineer who saved the crew of Apollo 13
died on

April 21st, aged 95

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Thanks, duct tape!

Ed Smylie knew this stick-fast

wonder could fix anything

The NASA engineer who saved the crew of Apollo 13 died on April

21st, aged 95

5月 22, 2025 04:56 上午

IS THERE ANYTHING duct tape can’t do? It can seal up a box, mend

a boot and reinforce a bumper; it can give a book a spine, lag pipes

and stick bunting to a tricky corner. Enthusiasts have proved that it

can also suspend a small car, replace the whole skin of a light

aircraft, be woven into a plausible raft and make a fully functional

trebuchet. And all without the need for scissors. In “A Prairie Home

Companion”, Garrison Keillor’s much-loved radio show, it also

slimmed waists. Each broadcast would include a message from the

American Duct Tape Council, announcing another miracle cure with

the sign-off “Thanks, duct tape!”

Ed Smylie did not invent this wonder. That was the achievement of

Vesta Stoudt from Illinois, a world-war-two ammunition-packer who

worried that the paper seals on the boxes were too unreliable for

soldiers to open under fire. But it made him extremely famous for a

few heart-stopping days in April 1970, winning him and his team the

Presidential Medal of Freedom and a public mention from President

Nixon himself. Twenty-five years later, his dealings with duct tape

were reprised in the film “Apollo 13”. That was all hammed up for

cinema, with a lot of hollering and screaming that didn’t happen in

real life; but the story was a good one. It was Mr Smylie who got his

team to invent a device that saved the crew of a stricken spacecraft

200,000 miles from Earth, and all because he spotted “tape” on the

craft’s stowage list.

He had long been a fan of it. As a southern boy, growing up in rural

Mississippi, he absorbed an immovable principle: if a thing wouldn’t

move when it was supposed to, use WD40; if it moved when it

wasn’t supposed to, use duct tape. The heresy no self-respecting

southern boy would utter was: “I don’t think duct tape will fix it.”

Once he saw the word “tape”, on the stowage list—suggestively, the

113th item listed—he knew they were home free, however big the

problem.

And it was big enough. Fifty-six hours into the mission, on April

13th, an oxygen tank on the spacecraft exploded. It was quickly

empty; then the second one, too, began to leak. It was the first-ever

emergency on a manned spaceflight. The command module had to

be shut down, and the three men on board, Jim Lovell, Jack Swigert

and Fred Haise, moved into the lunar module to breathe the oxygen

there. But there were too many of them, and not enough canisters

of lithium hydroxide (a carbon-dioxide scrubber) to filter three men‘s

exhalations. Unless a way could be found to purify the air in the

lunar module, all of them would die.

Mr Smylie was at home in Houston, relaxing and watching evening

TV, when a message interrupted the programme. It was calm and

not alarmist, but it said—as Mr Lovell famously, and calmly, told

Mission Control—that they had “had a problem here”. Those words

marked the end of Mr Smylie’s sleep, except in brief shifts, for the

next two days. At first he thought he could just siphon in lithium

hydroxide from the command module. But that was shut down; and

the scrubbers were not interchangeable. In the command module,

they were square bricks; in the lunar module they were cylindrical.

Another simple proverb that sprang to his mind was that you

couldn’t put a square peg into a round hole. He and his team had to

find another way.

Working through the stowage list he found plastic bags, a spare suit

hose to connect a square scrubber to a round one, and a piece of

cardboard (the cover of the flight plan) to stop the whole

contraption collapsing as air ran through it. A sock came in handy,

too. Everything was fixed to the square scrubber with an even grid

of duct tape, applied by Swigert as, step by step, he followed the

instructions read out to him by Mission Control. Another virtue of the

stuff was that it stuck every bit as fast in space, in a vacuum, as it

did at home. The whole thing worked; the astronauts came home

safe, splashing down into the South Pacific in a smother of orange-

and-white parachutes.

Nixon called this a jerry-built operation. Mr Smylie had to agree. It

was so straightforward that a college sophomore could have come

up with it. But an engineer’s work at NASA in those days did often

have a sophomore feel about it. President John F. Kennedy had told

them, more or less, to put a man on the Moon, and they rushed to

do it in the tightest time they could. He had rushed too, applying

immediately for a job at NASA in Houston because Douglas Aircraft,

for which he was working in California, had put in no bid for space-

work. He longed to be a part of it all.

The challenges were quite new, however, and the specifications

unknown. He had a lot to do with spacesuits, for example. But what

exactly were men going to do on the Moon? Were they merely going

to look, and leave? Or were they going to walk about and pick things

up? (In which case, they needed less bulky gloves.) How could the

suits be cooled, and rid of condensation, and “burped” of excess

oxygen bubbling into the water, if astronauts were going to spend

several hours there? All these problems he laboured over and largely

solved, earning patents for a few of them. Luckily, in the early days

he could just build a prototype in his workshop, take it over to the

technicians and get it approved at once. Things got much more

drawn-out later.
In all he spent decades at NASA, working on the Mercury, Gemini

and Apollo programmes. He devised the first proper carbon-dioxide

sensor for 24-hour missions and a heat-shield for the Space Station.

When he left, he became an aerospace consultant for various

corporations. His firmest advice, though, was never to take individual

credit for what he had done. America’s space programme was an

immense undertaking involving thousands. The rescue of Apollo 13

had taken 60 guys in the back room, all chipping in their ideas. He

had organised them, true. But his real contribution was simply to

spot, on a list, the word “tape”, and believe it could do anything. ■

This article was downloaded by calibre from

https://www.economist.com/obituary/2025/05/22/ed-smylie-knew-this-stick-
fast-wonder-

could-fix-anything

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Document Outline
The world this week
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universities
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argues Jerzy Pomianowski
Briefing
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Vietnam, squeezed between America and China, looks for new
friends
Asia
How to fix India’s sclerotic justice system
America’s new ship-killer missiles come to the Philippines
Vietnam’s diaspora is shaping the country their parents fled
On its own terms, ASEAN is surprisingly effective
China
How China became cool
A sex scandal in China sparks a nationwide debate
China’s universities are wooing Western scientists
United States
What happens if the Inflation Reduction Act goes away?
 California has got really good at building giant batteries
How much worse could America’s measles outbreak get?
A court resurrects the United States Institute of Peace
The MAGA revolution threatens America’s most innovative place
Joe Biden did not decline alone
The Americas
Mexico battles the MAGA movement over organised crime
Wildfires devastated the Amazon basin in 2024
An election win boosts Javier Milei’s reform project
Middle East & Africa
Meet Africa’s ascendant right
A bitter race to elect the head of Africa’s pivotal bank
Cyril Ramaphosa keeps his cool with Donald Trump
Israel says it is unleashing an “unprecedented attack”
The world’s worst conference
One happy Damascus
Many of Syria’s diaspora are not yet ready to go home
Europe
Poland’s election will cement or ruin its standing in Europe
MAGA misses the mark in Romania
Donald Trump dashes any hope that he will get tough with Russia
American threats push Greenland closer to Denmark
Europe’s mayors are islands of liberalism in a sea of populists
Britain
The UK-EU deal is just a start
Britain has sacrificed its fishermen again
The improbable rise of chessboxing
Does Britain need migrant workers?
An eccentric set of one-offs has knocked inflation up in Britain
London has become a cycling city
Bring back Boris
International
Star wars returns
Can China jam your GPS?
How to fight the next pandemic, without America
Business
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 China’s battery giant eyes world domination
Universal wants to steal Disney’s theme-park magic
American companies have a new image problem
The secrets of public speaking
Big box v brands: the battle for consumers’ dollars
Finance & economics
Will Jamie Dimon build the first trillion-dollar bank?
Wall Street and Main Street are split on Trump’s chaos
Trump will be unpleasantly surprised by America’s tariff revenues
What the failure of a superstar student reveals about economics
Hong Kong says goodbye to a capitalist crusader
America’s scientific prowess is a huge global subsidy
Science & technology
Trump’s attack on science is growing fiercer and more
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How cuts to science funding will hurt ordinary Americans
America is in danger of experiencing an academic brain drain
Culture
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The story of capitalism, told by its detractors
How FDR shaped the doctrine of national security in America
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Economic & financial indicators
Economic data, commodities and markets
Obituary
Ed Smylie knew this stick-fast wonder could fix anything