A container ship Gunde Maersk sits docked at the Port of Oakland in California.

Leaders

Tariffs will harm America, not induce a manufacturing rebirth

Donald Trump’s pursuit of tariffs will make the world poorer—and America, too 

A Chevrolet Silverado 1500 on the assembly line at the General Motors assembly plant in Fort Wayne, Indiana, US.

Business

No one gains from American tariffs on cars from Mexico and Canada

Donald Trump’s levy will hit his country’s carmakers hardest


Asia

Is Cambodia slipping out of China’s orbit?

A new generation of leaders could be more receptive to the West




The world in brief

Donald Trump repeated his threat to impose tariffs on goods from Canada, Mexico and China from Saturday, and added that he would also tax goods from the European Union...

Hamas released three more Israeli hostages as the fragile ceasefire signed on January 15th continued to hold...

Germany’s Bundestag voted against a draft law to curb irregular immigration proposed by the opposition Christian Democrats (CDU)...

Eighteen Pakistani soldiers were killed during fighting with rebels in Balochistan, a province in the south-west...


An illustration shows a carpenter, a surgeon and a business person—representing the infrastructure, health-care and finance sectors—cutting through red tape.

Many governments talk about cutting regulation but few manage to

Yet radical deregulation is often a big boost to growth

Illustration of a mine forming the letters AI.

Free exchange: Tech tycoons have got the economics of AI wrong

Following DeepSeek’s breakthrough, the Jevons paradox provides less comfort than they imagine

What Israel and Hamas can learn from past ceasefires

Evidence from more than 2,000 truces reveals their effectiveness   

Timothée Chalamet in A Complete Unknown

Performing in a cinema near you: Bob Dylan and Maria Callas

Back Story looks behind the boom in musical biopics

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The second Trump presidency

Cartoon of Donald Trump, wearing a feathered headdress, a cowboy hat, and a police hat, holding a globe with pins and a needle

Lexington: Donald Trump’s defining decade

Will America’s president overcome the 1970s, or just refight its battles?

A rubbish skip full of office chairs

Donald Trump goes to war with his employees

The president wants to shrink and remake the civil service


Kash Patel speaks to reporters at the Capitol in Washington.

Kash Patel is a crackpot

Is he also a menace?


1843 magazine | How Tulsi Gabbard became a crusader against the Deep State

Her strange journey from a yoga commune to Trump’s intelligence chief


DeepSeek and Chinese AI

This illustration symbolises the technological competition between China and the United States. It features elements of both nations' flags, with an upward green arrow on China's and a downward red arrow on America’s.

The real meaning of the DeepSeek drama

The Chinese model-maker has panicked investors. But it is good for the users of AI

A collage showing Liang Wenfeng surrounded by some Deepseek visuals like the logo and some messages from the app

DeepSeek poses a challenge to Beijing as much as to Silicon Valley

The story of Liang Wenfeng, the model-maker’s mysterious founder


Deepseek logo creating havoc amongst  digital and tech symbols on a bold red background.

DeepSeek sends a shockwave through markets

A cheap Chinese language model has investors in Silicon Valley asking questions



World news

Officials from USAID and WFP inspect food aid in Harare, Zimbabwe

By cutting off assistance to foreigners, America hurts itself

Donald Trump’s chaotic aid freeze makes his country weaker

Deportation flights have begun.

Donald Trump turns an angry gaze south

Relations with Central America are likely to worsen


Friedrich Merz, leader of Germany's conservative Christian Democratic Union (CDU) party, speaks during a session at the Bundestag, on January 29, 2025 in Berlin

A day of drama in the Bundestag

Friedrich Merz, Germany’s probable next chancellor, takes a huge bet and triggers uproar


Backing Heathrow expansion suggests Labour is serious about boosting growth

It is the surest sign yet that the government is up for the fight


Latest videos

Business, finance and economics

The federal reserve represented as a slot machine with bitcoin tokens at its base.

Will America’s crypto frenzy end in disaster?

Donald Trump’s team is about to bring digital finance into the mainstream

The illustration shows a man and a woman standing on separate stacks of coins.

Bartleby: Knowing what your colleagues earn

The pros and cons of greater pay transparency



The Arctic: climate change’s great economic opportunity

An enormous prize is on offer. When might it be grasped?


Russia and Ukraine

Russia says it captured 2 settlements in Ukraine's eastern Donetsk region

Amid talk of a ceasefire, Ukraine’s front line is crumbling

An ominous defeat in the eastern town of Velyka Novosilka

A destroyed Russian tank sits on a roadside near the town of Sudzha, Ukraine

How will mines dropped by drones change warfare?

They make attacks on tanks more precise and troops easier to trap


The Russian Army Attacked Kherson With Guided Bombs

Russian pilots appear to be hunting Ukrainian civilians

Residents of Kherson are dodging murderous drones


Ukrainian scientists are studying downed Russian missiles

And learning a lot about sanctions-busting



Read more on the war in Ukraine

More highlights

Drainage canals (linear features that drain into a small meandering river) seen from above.

A sophisticated civilisation once flourished in the Amazon basin

How the Casarabe died out remains a mystery


Packages of tofu move along conveyor belts on a production line in Japan

Tofu: never judge a food by its political reputation

Think outside the white plastic box. Here is a carnivore’s guide to tofu


1843 magazine | The warlord, the oligarch and the unravelling of Russia’s Amazon.com

Before the Ukraine war, Wildberries was a giant of e-commerce. Now it’s caught up in a medieval blood feud


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Edition: February 1st 2025

The revolt against regulation


Read full edition

Special reports: January 11th 2025

The Africa gap

The economic gap between Africa and the rest of the world is getting wider, says John McDermott


Read full report

The US elections of 2024

  • Matt Gaetz withdraws from consideration as America’s attorney-general