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MAGA-nomics is working

Donald Trump’s State of the Union address, the longest in history, served as a reminder of the relentless will and unstoppable energy he brings to the office of the presidency. In a coup de grace he humiliated Congressional Democrats, securing footage of them remaining seated en masse as they refused to accept that the role of the government is to prioritise American citizens. He gently chastised the Supreme Court judges, assembled in the front row, for declaring his tariff programme unlawful last Friday. Our political right should take heed: for all its roughness, this agenda isn’t going away The President’s opponents may be celebrating the judgment, but the Donald is

Spotlight

Featured economics news and data.

Cutting Britain’s giant welfare bill would be an act of kindness

Does having money really matter that much? There are those, usually with quite a bit of it, who want us to care less about materialism. But, unequivocally, money really does matter – not because of any status it supposedly brings, but for the freedom it buys: freedom to choose how we live and how we look after others. Considering this, it seems that the deep disillusionment with mainstream politicians in recent years stems from a protracted and ongoing period of stagnant living standards over which they have presided. But the truth is that the average person has not got poorer since the global financial crisis. They have got a little

Musk’s SpaceX is worth every penny

As the hype builds for the reported $1.5 trillion IPO of Elon Musk’s SpaceX later this year, there will be plenty of critics who argue the company’s marketing has more hot air than one of its rockets. It has been claimed by some that the IPO will be worth more than the top seven companies currently listed on the London Stock Exchange – including century-old giants such as Shell, HSBC and AstraZeneca – combined. And yes, sure, there is probably an element of wishful thinking in these reports, as there often is with Musk. But SpaceX also has the potential to become one of the giants of the 21st-century economy

elon musk spaceX

Colombia can’t give Trump the cocaine crackdown he wants

When President Donald Trump hurled abuse at Colombia’s President Gustavo Petro last month, branding him a “sick man who likes making cocaine and selling it to the United States,” it was strikingly audacious. Trump leaned into bombastic provocation: there is no evidence to suggest Petro himself makes cocaine. And yet, Trump’s claim didn’t come as a shock – the two leaders have spent the past year locked in a volley of barbs with one another. Petro, Colombia’s first left-wing leader, likes to fire back with ideological, often sermonizing lectures on imperialism and US hypocrisy. But tangled up in the rancorous exchanges – many of them about drugs – is a

Is time up for Tesla’s cars?

Has Tesla run out of road? The electric car firm put plenty of spin on its annual results, talking bullishly about the new projects that were coming to fruition. Elon Musk’s company plans to go big on robots, pivot to Artificial Intelligence, and develop its self-driving unit. Yet there was no disguising the real message from its figures. With falling revenues, and the decision to scrap its premium S and X models, Musk’s pioneer of EVs is in deep trouble – and it may be too late to rescue the company now. Fourth-quarter revenues slumped 3 percent to $24.9 billion Fourth-quarter revenues slumped three percent to $24.9 billion, Tesla said after US

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Trump’s credible threat at Davos

The headline from Trump’s Davos speech is clear: I won’t use military force to take Greenland. That’s what the President told the world’s leading politicians and business executives at the World Economic Forum. That declaration was very good news for all of them and for US investors, who immediately started buying stocks, erasing about half the losses suffered Tuesday, when the threat of force seemed possible. They all knew that carrying out that military threat would shatter the institutional foundation of Western security: NATO and US-European relations. Instead of military threats, Trump emphasized America’s disproportionate contributions to European defense since World War Two. It was finally time for them to

davos Trump

The golden rule: there’s no reason to stop buying precious metals

Last year might have proved a good time to own shares in the chip-maker Nvidia, along with the booming American tech giants. Or a piece of the defense manufacturers as the world re-arms. Or to hold a position in some of the rapidly growing economies of South America or Asia, or even one of the hyped-up crypto currencies. There were plenty of places investors expected to make money over the past year. As it turned out, however, there was one asset that outpaced them all, even though it generates no income: gold, and to an even greater extent, its junior sibling silver. With government debt soaring out of control, the

Elon Musk would be a great new owner for Ryanair

A Tesla would whisk you to the airport. The planes would be self-flying. And robots would serve the over-priced sandwiches, while, inevitably, every seat is hooked up to a live X feed. A full-scale takeover of Ryanair, Europe’s largest airline, by Elon Musk may still be some way off, but with the billionaire polling his followers on X on whether he should make a bid for the budget airline, it is no longer impossible. Ryanair’s long-suffering passengers should welcome the prospect of a Musk takeover – because, while the airline revolutionized low-cost travel, Ryanair is stuck in a rut. The spat between Elon Musk, and Ryanair’s pugnacious CEO Michael O’Leary

Will US businesses profit from a return to the Russian market?

Rome Will peace in Ukraine also prove to be a great deal for US business? Vladimir Putin would certainly like Donald Trump to think so. Within days of Trump’s election victory last November, the Kremlin ordered major Russian corporations to prepare detailed proposals for economic cooperation with Washington. Coordinating these efforts were Maxim Oreshkin, deputy head of Putin’s presidential administration, and Kirill Dmitriev, the US-educated Harvard, Stanford and Goldman Sachs alumnus who heads Russia’s sovereign investment fund. According to a major US investor in Russia who eyes a postwar return to the market, among the major Russian corporations setting out potential deals for US companies were Russia’s atomic energy agency

Don’t count Bitcoin out

Bitcoin is crashing all over again, and it is taking the smaller crypto currencies down with it. It has fallen by a quarter from its highs, and there is little sign that the relentless selling is going to stop anytime soon. Plenty of people will be reheating arguments about how the digital currency is completely worthless and that the bubble was always going to pop one day. But Bitcoin has been through plenty of bear markets and it has always bounced back – and there is little reason to believe this crash will be any different. It is certainly a substantial fall. From a high of $114,000 a coin at

Bitcoin

Are AI stocks about to crash?

Bitcoin has lost almost a quarter of its value. The tech-heavy NASDAQ index on Wall Street has started to fall. And even leaders of the industry, such as the Google CEO Sundar Pichai, have started to warn about valuations getting out of control. We already knew that AI was driving a boom in investment. But this week there are worrying signs the market is about to crack. The only real question is whether that turns into a full scale crash. Bitcoin, as so often, is leading the market rout. More than $1 trillion has been wiped off the value of the crypto market over the last six weeks, with Bitcoin

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