25 h. ago Chris Riddell on Donald ‘Captain America’ Trump wielding his tariff shield – cartoon

Is the president really ready to do battle with China after causing global chaos and undermining the US economy?You can buy a copy of this cartoon Continue reading...

Politics

27 h. ago Make America make again? Trump’s tariffs will only be manufacturing pipe dreams | John Naughton

The president’s gambit to bring the production of goods such as iPhones back to the US ignores huge supply chain complexitiesDonald Trump’s tariff strategy has at least one biblical connection: like the peace of God, it “passeth all understanding” (Philippians 4:7). Rival attempts to extract a rationale from the chaos include the idea that he is trying to devalue the dollar, or that he is seeking to “reshore” the manufacturing capacity that the US lost through decades of globalisation. My own hunch is that he just wants to show who’s the big boss around here – or as British science fiction author Charles Stross puts it, that he “expects individual nations to come to him, hat in hand, like terrified shopkeepers pleading for mercy from a mafia don”.Cue the UK’s very own Trump whisperer, Keir Starmer, who, according to Politico, plans “to put a review of online safety rules on the table in trade talks” with the US. Which, translated, means that things such as the Online Safety Act and ...

Economics

3 d. ago The race to beat Trump's tariffs: How Apple flew cargo planes containing 600 tonnes of iPhones

The details of the push provide an insight into the smartphone company's private strategy to navigate around the Trump tariffs and build up inventory of its popular iPhones in America

Politics

4 d. ago China mocks Trump’s tariffs with AI video of US sweatshop workers: ‘Make America Great Again’

The TikTok video has sparked further debate about the impact the president’s tariffs will have on the U.S.

Economics

4 d. ago China launches AI campaign mocking Donald Trump's tariffs and depicting slave labour in America

Ben Lau's video - which shows a group of overweight Americans looking depressed on the manufacturing line in an attack on the Trump administration - rapidly went viral after being shared on TikTok

Politics

5 d. ago Trump’s very beautiful tariffs will fix America, masculinity and the family. It said so on Fox News | Arwa Mahdawi

Let’s stop all the moaning about stock market crashes and soaring grocery prices. It’s time to focus on the upsides!There’s been a lot of doom-mongering about tariffs recently, hasn’t there? Oh no, my life savings are going to get wiped out and I’m never going to be able to retire! Oh no, grocery prices are going to triple! Oh no, it looks suspiciously as if Donald Trump has used ChatGPT to guide his fiscal policy and now we’re going to see another Great Depression! Moan, moan, moan.While it might be true that much of these predictions are coming from highly credentialed economists and people who tend to know what they’re talking about, I’d like to remind you that there are two sides to every story – and it’s always worth looking at both of them. You’ve already heard from voices who reckon Trump’s tariffs are misguided and dangerous. Now it’s time to focus on the people who support the president’s assessment that tariffs are a “very beautiful thing” that will usher in a new golden a...

Politics

6 d. ago Corporate America won’t stop Trump’s tariffs. Here’s why | Alex Bronzini

Whether among executives, lobbyists or university trustees, an elite backlash to the Trump administration won’t work. It’s up to working people to resistFew historical analogies exist for Donald Trump’s newly announced tariffs. The investment bank Evercore estimates that the so-called “liberation day” announcement has raised the weighted average US tariff to 29% – its highest rate since 1900. To call it a generational action would be an understatement; my grandmother was born in 1939.These tariffs, if they remain in place, will raise prices, eliminate jobs and shrink retirements. No one will pay for them more dearly than American workers. Yet a shock to capitalism inevitably raises the question of whether, and how, capitalists will respond. Faced with Trump’s tariffs, what will the US’s business class do? Continue reading...

Politics

7 d. ago SNL cold open mocks Trump tariffs with ‘Make America Great Depression Again’ line

‘You know, the depression is going to be so great. We'll be the ones eating the cats and the dogs. That's going to be fun’

Politics

8 d. ago Genetic data is an another asset to be exploited – beware who has yours | John Naughton

The bankruptcy of genealogy company 23andMe has resulted in a fire sale of millions of people’s genetic information – and there’s no shortage of eager buyers with questionable motivesEver thought of having your genome sequenced? Me neither. But it seems that at least 15 million souls have gone in for it and are delighted to know that they have Viking ancestry, or discombobulated to find that they have siblings of whom they were hitherto unaware. The corporate vehicle that enabled these revelations is called 23andMe, which describes itself as a “genetics-led consumer healthcare and biotechnology company empowering a healthier future”.Back in the day, 23andMe was one of those vaunted “unicorns” (privately held startups valued at more than $1bn), but is now facing harder times. Its share price had fallen precipitately following a data breach in October 2023 that harvested the profile and ethnicity data of 6.9 million users – including name, profile photo, birth year, location, family s...

Events

8 d. ago Corporate America fears wrath of Trump as it mulls tariffs response

Executives unsure how far to go in re-engineering their businesses and hope they can lobby US president to ease policies

Politics

8 d. ago America’s Brexit? Trump’s historic gamble on tariffs has been decades in the making

Trump’s economic assault on the world stunned economists and sent stock markets into a spiral. Who will pay the price?Donald Trump’s vast overhaul of US trade policy this week has called time on an era of globalization, alarming people, governments and investors around the world. No one should have been surprised, the US president said.The announcement of 10% to 50% tariffs on US trading partners tanked stock markets after Trump unveiled a “declaration of economic independence” so drastic it drew comparison with Britain’s exit from the European Union – Brexit. Continue reading...

Politics

9 d. ago The Guardian view on Donald Trump’s tariff ultimatum: tribute for access to America’s empire | Editorial

As the White House retools US imperialism with import duties, others must resist dependency – deepening regional ties and reducing exposure to chokepointsWhen Donald Trump stood before union auto workers in the Rose Garden he declared “Liberation Day”, promising to stand up for Main Street. Whether that pledge will be fulfilled is moot. He will declare victory either way. What the US president offered was not just an economic programme, but an imperial one.Mr Trump’s logic, if it exists, lies in the 397-page report on “foreign trade barriers” he brandished on Wednesday. Its message is brutally simple: you may sell your goods to Walmart shoppers, but only if you let US cloud services hoover up your data, US media flood your screens and US tech monopolies operate on their terms – not yours. TikTok is the test case for Trump’s platform nationalism: only US firms may mine data, reap profits and rule the digital empire. Continue reading...

Politics

1 week ago Stephen Colbert on Trump tariffs: ‘America is finally free from the tyranny of being able to buy stuff from other countries’

Late-night hosts discuss Trump’s ‘liberation day’ of sweeping tariffs and a liberal judge’s victory over an Elon Musk-backed candidate in WisconsinLate-night hosts delve into Donald Trump’s so-called “liberation day” of tariffs and the defeat of an Elon Musk-backed candidate in the Wisconsin supreme court race. Continue reading...

Politics

1 week ago ‘America is a friend’, minister insists despite Trump slapping tariffs on UK

The business secretary stressed the strength of Britain’s relationship with the US, distancing himself from Australian PM Anthony Albanese, who said Donald Trump’s tariffs were ‘not the act of a friend’

Politics

1 week ago Donald Trump unveils global tariffs as he says 'Liberation Day' will 'make America wealthy again'

The UK is among the many nations expected to be hit with tariffs when exporting to the US after Donald Trump unveiled his 'Liberation Day' border taxes in the White House

Economics

2 w. ago When the physicists need burner phones, that’s when you know America’s changed | John Naughton

US academics, fearing persecution by their own government, are becoming ideological refugees. Europe, and Britain, must offer them sanctuaryAt international academic conferences recently, one sees an interesting trend. Some American participants are travelling with “burner” phones or have minimalist laptops running browsers and not much else. In other words, they are equipped with the same kind of kit that security-conscious people used to bring 15 years ago when travelling to China.So what’s up? Well, these academics have a finger on the pulse of Trump’s America, and are concerned about what might happen when they return home. They’ve read on Robert Reich’s Substack about the French scientist who was prevented from entering the country because US Border Patrol agents had found messages from him in which he had expressed his “personal opinion” to colleagues and friends about Trump’s science policies. Continue reading...

Events

3 w. ago Did AI mania rush Apple into making a rare misstep with Siri? | John Naughton

The company that prides itself on announcing products only when they’re ready grossly underestimated the demands of personalising its virtual assistantAfter ChatGPT broke cover in late 2022 and the tech industry embarked on its contemporary rendering of tulip mania, people started to wonder why the biggest tech giant of all – Apple – was keeping its distance from the madness. Eventually, the tech commentariat decided that there could be only two possible interpretations of this corporate standoffishness: either Apple was way behind the game being played by OpenAI et al; or it had cunning plans to unleash upon the world its own world-beating take on the technology.Finally, at its annual World Wide Developers’ Conference (WWDC) on 10 June last year Apple came clean. Or appeared to. For Apple, “AI” would not mean what those vulgar louts at OpenAI, Google, Microsoft and Meta raved about, but something altogether more refined and sophisticated – something called “Apple Intelligence”. It ...

Politics

4 w. ago You don't need code to be a programmer. But you do need expertise | John Naughton

AI is so good at writing software that one father asked it to organise his kids’ school lunches. But that doesn’t mean it’s taking overWay back in 2023, Andrej Karpathy, an eminent AI guru, made waves with a striking claim that “the hottest new programming language is English”. This was because the advent of large language models (LLMs) meant that from now on humans would not have to learn arcane programming languages in order to tell computers what to do. Henceforth, they could speak to machines like the Duke of Devonshire spoke to his gardener, and the machines would do their bidding.Ever since LLMs emerged, programmers have been early adopters, using them as unpaid assistants (or “co-pilots”) and finding them useful up to a point – but always with the proviso that, like interns, they make mistakes, and you need to have real programming expertise to spot those. Continue reading...

Politics