6 d. ago Trump will destroy world trade, but democracies can defend themselves – and each other | Anders Fogh Rasmussen

We need a trade block, a D7, that would mirror Nato. An economic attack on one would be an attack on allAnders Fogh Rasmussen is a former prime minister of Denmark and former secretary general of Nato The postwar global economic order, with the United States at its centre, has created more prosperity than any other period in human history. Yet as Donald Trump takes a sledgehammer to that economic order, America’s democratic allies face a choice. We can accept the new cost of doing business with the US. We can follow the US down a path of mutually assured economic destruction with an ever-escalating trade war. Or we can find new avenues to keep free trade alive.My proposition? I believe we need a new platform for economic cooperation between the world’s seven leading democracies. Call it the “Democratic 7”, or “D7”. The EU, the UK, Canada, Australia, New Zealand, Japan, and South Korea represent roughly 25% of global GDP and account for about 35% of global trade volume. Together, the...

Politics

2 w. ago Three ways to help the developing world survive the end of aid | Winnie Byanyima

Wealthy nations are slashing funding for essential services such as the HIV/Aids response, but poorer countries cannot absorb the impact overnightCountries across the world are cutting aid budgets, abandoning the decades-old consensus that supporting health and development is both a moral duty and a strategic interest. But the end of aid cannot mean the end of global solidarity – because our global economy is stacked against low- and middle-income countries to such an extent that they simply cannot afford to respond to global crises alone.Developing countries are drowning in debt, facing interest rates up to 12 times higher than wealthy countries. When interest rates shot up after Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, the global south was worst hit. Low- and middle-income countries now pay $4 (£3) to the richest in the global north for every $1 they receive in aid. Thirty-four of Africa’s 54 countries spend more on debt than on healthcare. Continue reading...

Events

2 w. ago The EU can’t replace the US as a global player until it sheds its own colonial thinking | Shada Islam

Eurocentric assumptions and bullying resource-grabs are justified causes of outrage in the global southDonald Trump has disrupted the global economy with his disastrous tariff wars and appears hell-bent on gutting transatlantic relations. I am hoping he has also unwittingly injected new life into the EU’s struggle to wean itself off overreliance on Washington.A vast network of trade and aid agreements connects the EU with more than 70 countries. The union could become an important standalone global actor and even thrive in a multipolar world. But it must first shed its Eurocentric worldviews, complacent policymaking and double standards.Shada Islam is a Brussels-based commentator on EU affairs. She runs New Horizons Project, a strategy, analysis and advisory company Continue reading...

Sport

3 w. ago The global south has lost its pope. The world has lost its conscience | Nathalie Tocci

He was no liberal, but Francis embodied a spirit of international solidarity that is in alarmingly short supplyPope Francis died hours after meeting the US vice-president, JD Vance. If that wasn’t a bad enough omen, the Republican congresswoman Marjorie Taylor Greene, Donald Trump’s acolyte and self-styled “Christian nationalist”, appeared to welcome the pope’s death as a sign of “evil” being “defeated”.In fact, despite a series of clashes with the Trump White House, Francis was no liberal. While refraining from judging homosexuality, he explicitly disapproved of the liberalising synodal path embarked on by the Catholic church in Germany, which ruled in 2023 that church employees could not be sacked for entering same-sex relationships or remarrying after divorce. On abortion, euthanasia, women and LGBTQ+ rights, Francis betrayed the high hopes that liberals and progressives had bestowed upon him. Continue reading...

Politics

3 w. ago Starmer pays tribute to ‘pope for the poor’ who ‘never lost hope’

The Prime Minister said Pope Francis had shown ‘courageous’ leadership ‘in a complex and challenging time’.

Politics

3 w. ago Emboldened by Trump, the ‘liberal’ UK is giving free rein to its colonial impulses | Kenneth Mohammed

Faced with fading empires’ petulance, the global south must draw a red line under its relationship with them and forge new ties based on mutual respectAs Donald Trump rains chaos down upon the US – dismantling the rule of law trading in rage-fuelled nationalism and bullying the rest of the world – his ideology is now being eagerly imitated not just by the expected rogues of global politics, but by supposed bastions of democracy.These democracies now wear only a mask of civility over that old colonial impulses: control, divide, exploit. Continue reading...

Politics