23 h. ago The Guardian view on Donald Trump’s industrial policy: inward turn by ultimatum | Editorial

The US is retreating behind chokepoints and tariffs. It remains determined to invent the future but is struggling to ensure its control Globalisation is out; reshoring is the new realism. Intel’s half-built Ohio campus and Nvidia’s US supercomputer plan demonstrate the very different routes taken by Joe Biden and Donald Trump in the search for homegrown tech dominance. Mr Biden relied on institutions: grants, land and investment incentives. That approach has stalled after last year’s election, rendering Intel’s plant idle. Mr Trump prefers court politics: flattery, pressure and tariff threats. Nvidia’s move seems driven less by design than executive ultimatum. Industrial strategy lives on – but, and this is a concern, increasingly through presidential menace, not policy.There’s another important message in the Nvidia announcement. In an era where ideas spread freely, power lies not in invention but in chokepoints, such as artificial intelligence supercomputer fabrication, that deter...

Events

47 h. ago The Guardian view on Friedrich Merz’s grand coalition: gambling on a new centre ground | Editorial

The deal signed last week between the centre-right CDU and centre-left SPD paves the way for vital investment in Europe’s biggest economySome years ago, hundreds of German finance ministry staff dressed in black and formed a giant zero to salute their boss, Wolfgang Schäuble, as he left office. It was a tribute to Mr Schäuble’s extreme fiscal conservatism, which had delivered Germany’s first balanced budget in the postwar period. Amid resurgent prosperity in the Angela Merkel years, the so-called black zero – symbolising a constitutional prohibition on public debt – had gradually acquired cult status.As a new administration prepares to take power in Berlin, it seems unlikely that human euro signs will welcome the latest politician to take on Mr Schäuble’s former role. But in dramatic fashion, the spending taps are set to be turned on. Via a swiftly staged March vote in the outgoing Bundestag, “debt brake” dogma was consigned to history by the chancellor‑elec...

Politics

3 d. ago The Guardian view on Donald Trump’s Congo deal: mineral riches for protection | Editorial

Faced with regional chaos and shrinking options, Kinshasa seeks terms of trade that echo the old extractive order in modern disguise“The vilest scramble for loot that has ever disfigured the history of human conscience” is how Joseph Conrad described colonial-era concessions granted to private companies for Congo’s natural resources in Heart of Darkness. Under Donald Trump, that scramble may be back. If news reports are right, the Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC) is offering the US a blunt deal: minerals for military help – a slice of sovereignty traded for a shot at stability.The concern is this isn’t a return, it’s a sequel. For three decades, Washington supported Joseph-Désiré Mobutu, a cold war ally and brutal dictator who looted the Congo until his 1997 fall. That history of power politics still casts a long shadow. The Trump administration openly favours muscle over diplomacy. Fadhel Kaboub, an associate professor of economics at Denison University, notes that Biden-era ...

Politics

5 d. ago The Guardian view on the tariff war pause: the Trump trade shambles is not over | Editorial

The US president blinked first, but this is just a time-out. The threat to the global economy remains real.It was Donald Trump who blinked first. Never forget that. China is unlikely to overlook its importance. A week after launching an all-out global trade war, the US president paused significant parts of it for 90 days. Having insisted that he would stick with the random tariffs he imposed on most trading nations, Mr Trump suddenly decreed that he would reduce most of them to 10%. It was a major humiliation.Yet 10% is still a significant tariff to bear for nations exporting to the US. This is also only a pause until July, not a withdrawal, so the uncertainty remains. And huge tariffs still remain on China (now hiked to 145%), Canada and Mexico (both 25%), as well as on all US imports of steel, aluminium and cars (also 25%). Mr Trump is now substituting a US-world conflict with a US-China one. The two largest economies in the world – which between them have generated around ha...

Politics

6 d. ago The Guardian view on Trump’s trade war: no one will win, but China is taking the long view | Editorial

Beijing is braced for turbulence due to swingeing tariffs. But it sees a bigger, more promising story of US hegemonic declineNo one, least of all consumers and workers, will win the ferocious trade war that Donald Trump has unleashed. This is “a game of who can bear more pain”, in the words of one analyst. And because trade is at the heart of US ties with its biggest tariff target, China, the rest of the bilateral relationship is likely to deteriorate. That too is concerning.Yet China, despite the economic struggles of recent years, may see a longer-term opportunity in the current crisis. Beijing’s response to the initial US tariff announcements was measured. Now it vows to “fight to the end” and has imposed an additional 50% tariff on US goods – taking the total to 84% – in retaliation for tariffs that Mr Trump now says will hit 125%.Do you have an opinion on the issues raised in this article? If you would like to submit a response of up to 300 words by email to be considered for p...

Politics

9 d. ago Arsenal news: Teen star identified in striker search as Thierry Henry comparisons played down

Arsenal will return to Champions League action against Real Madrid on Tuesday night after Liverpool's Sunday afternoon defeat offered them a glimmer of hope in the title race

Events

9 d. ago The Guardian view on the return of landmines: a deadly peril resurges | Editorial

Russia’s military threat and the junta’s war in Myanmar have undermined the international treaty against themEleven years ago, members of the Ottawa treaty banning the use, production, stockpiling and transfer of antipersonnel mines agreed a deadline for completing their obligations: 2025.The ambitious timeline reflected the immense progress made since the pact was signed in 1997. Back then, 25,000 people were killed or injured each year by landmines; by 2013, that number had fallen to 3,300. Tens of millions of mines have been destroyed, and by last year, 164 countries had committed themselves to the agreement. Continue reading...

Events

1 week ago Date Liverpool can win title with Fulham defeat handing Arsenal glimmer of hope

Liverpool saw their procession to the Premier League title hit a speedbump with Sunday’s shock defeat to Fulham but it still appears a matter of time before the Reds claim the title

Politics

1 week 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 The Guardian view on Trump’s tariffs: a monstrous and momentous act of folly | Editorial

The US president has expelled his own country from the rules-based global trade system that America itself createdFor the world’s already embattled trading system, it is as though an asteroid has crashed into the planet, devastating everyone and everything that previously existed there. But there is this important difference. If an asteroid struck the Earth, the impact would at least have been caused by ungovernable cosmic forces. The assault on world trade, by contrast, is a completely deliberate act of choice, taken by one man and one nation.Donald Trump’s decision to impose tariffs on every country in the world is a monstrous and momentous act of folly. Unilateral and unjustified, it was expressed on Wednesday in indefensible language in which Mr Trump described US allies as “cheaters” and “scavengers” who “looted”, “raped” and “pillaged” the US. Many of the calculations on which Mr Trump doled out his punishments are perverse, not least the exclusion of Russia from the cond...

Politics

1 week ago The Guardian view on Israel’s killing of paramedics: a new atrocity in an unending conflict | Editorial

Impunity over Palestinian deaths in Gaza will lead to further cases like this massacre of rescue and healthcare workersAfter 18 months of slaughter, it is still possible to be shocked by events in Gaza. More than 50,000 people have been killed, according to Palestinian health authorities. More are starving because Israel has cut off aid. The offensive is intensifying again – with 100 children killed or maimed each day since Israel resumed heavy strikes last month, the UN reports.Even so, Israel’s killing of 15 Palestinian paramedics and rescue workers is particularly chilling. Though they died on 23 March, it took days for Israel to grant access to the site, the UN said. Another man was last seen in Israeli custody. Two grounds for seeing this not only as tragic but as a war crime stand out. The first is that the UN says the men were shot “one by one”, and a forensic expert said that preliminary evidence “suggests they were executed, not from a distant range”, given the “specific an...

Events

2 w. ago Arsenal vs Fulham LIVE: Premier League updates as Saka extends the Gunners’ lead on his return

The Gunners hope to keep the pressure on Liverpool despite being 12 points behind the league leaders

Politics

2 w. ago Arsenal vs Fulham LIVE: Premier League updates as Merino opens the scoring

The Gunners hope to keep the pressure on Liverpool despite being 12 points behind the league leaders

Sport

2 w. ago The Guardian view on Donald Trump’s tariffs: a spectacle of struggle and control | Editorial

The US president wields tariffs not as a policy tool but as an instrument of pressure, rewarding loyalty and punishing defiance – even among alliesDonald Trump has probably not read much Michel Foucault. But he appears to embody the French philosopher’s claim that “politics is the continuation of war by other means”. Nowhere is this more apparent than in his fondness for tariffs. He presents taxing foreign imports as a way to rebuild the American economy in favour of blue-collar workers left behind by free trade and globalisation. Yet he plainly thinks that politics is not about truth or justice. It is about leverage and supremacy.Britain is learning first-hand that Mr Trump, with his us-versus-them framing and taste for spectacle, is an accidental Foucauldian – using tariffs as tools of loyalty and dominance, even against allies. If Mr Trump follows through on his threat to impose a 20% tariff on all imports, UK growth will suffer. The effect depends on the response....

Politics

2 w. ago Mo Salah makes his preference clear with Liverpool and Saudi offers on the table

Liverpool are hanging on to hope that Mohamed Salah could agree a new contract with the club, despite the Egyptian heading for a free transfer as things stand, with the Saudi Pro League interested in signing the forward

Politics

2 w. ago The Guardian view on Trump and reality: from promoting alternative facts to erasing truths | Editorial

The decision to put documents on the assassination of John F Kennedy into the public domain comes alongside a ‘digital book burning’ of dataWhat does the public need to know? The Trump White House boasts of being the most transparent administration in history – though commentators have suggested that the inadvertent leak of military plans to a journalist may have happened because senior figures were using messaging apps such as Signal to avoid oversight. Last week, it released thousands of pages of documents on John F Kennedy’s assassination. Donald Trump has declared that Kennedy’s family and the American people “deserve transparency and truth”.Strikingly, this stated commitment to sharing information comes as his administration defunds data collection and erases existing troves of knowledge from government websites. The main drivers appear to be the desire to remove “woke” content and global heating data, and the slashing of federal spending. Information resources are both the tar...

Politics

2 w. ago Israeli politicians sign letter urging Australian MPs to dump two

Letter from Knesset members addressed to Queensland LNP backbencher Andrew Wallace was distributed at event he hosted, attended by several Coalition MPs and senatorsFollow our Australia news live blog for latest updatesGet our breaking news email, free app or daily news podcastA handful of Israeli politicians, including one within Benjamin Netanyahu’s ruling Likud party, have urged Coalition MPs to dump Australia’s longstanding two-state policy on Israel and Palestine ahead of the upcoming federal election.They claim that maintaining the policy would reward Hamas and destroy Israel.Sign up for Guardian Australia’s breaking news email Continue reading...

Politics

3 w. ago Martin Odegaard sends strong message ahead of Arsenal's clash with former club Real Madrid

Martin Odegaard starred for Norway during the international break, producing a hat-trick of assists as his side beat Israel 4-2 in their World Cup qualifying clash

Politics

3 w. ago The Guardian view on the Signal war plans leak: a US security breach speaks volumes | Editorial

A staggering blunder points to the wider failings of the careless and amateurish Trump administrationIt is jaw-dropping that senior Trump administration figures would accidentally leak war plans to a journalist. But the fundamental issue is that 18 high-ranking individuals were happy discussing extremely sensitive material on a private messaging app, highlighting the administration’s extraordinary amateurishness, recklessness and unaccountability.The visceral hostility to Europe spelt out again by the vice-president, JD Vance, was glaring. So was the indifference to the potential civilian cost of the strikes on Houthi targets in Yemen, designed to curb attacks on Red Sea shipping. The Houthi-run health ministry said that 53 people including five children and two women were killed. The response by the national security adviser, Michael Waltz, to the attacks was to post emojis: a fist, an American flag and fire. The lack of contrition for this security breach is also telling...

Events

3 w. ago The Guardian view on China's EV breakthrough: helped by the kind of strategic state Elon Musk despises | Editorial

BYD, a Chinese carmaker once dismissed by Tesla’s CEO, claims to have outpaced western rivals with charging tech that’s as fast as filling petrol enginesTesla’s boss, Elon Musk, once thought the idea that China’s BYD could compete with his company was laughable. In 2011, he smugly dismissed the Chinese carmaker as unimpressive, its products unattractive and its technology “not very strong”. He’s not laughing now – and not just because Tesla’s stock has plummeted amid a boycott by motorists protesting against his embrace of far-right politics. More pressingly, Mr Musk, like other western carmakers, has been outpaced by BYD.Last week, the Chinese electric vehicle (EV) manufacturer unveiled new charging technology that, it says, is capable of delivering 400km (249 miles) of driving range in just five minutes – as quick as filling up a petrol car. The system, released next month, will be fitted in two EVs, priced from 270,000 yuan (£29,000) – comparable to Tesla’s most affordable model ...

Politics