Flagship

Escalating US-China trade war

The US will hit China with 104% tariffs Wednesday, the White House confirmed, escalating the trade conflict with Beijing. The Trump government is readying negotiations with other countries, but staying firm on imposing the hiked duties on Beijing in response to the latter’s own tit-for-tat levies. China is also unwilling to back down, leading to an “impasse” that will likely cause long-term economic damage, an expert said. Washington is more likely to succumb to the pain of a trade war, Chinese analysts believe, but to endure a prolonged conflict, Beijing will have to further prop up its beleaguered economy and “bite the apple of decoupling,” The Economist wrote.

Trump keeps investors guessing

Hopes of a Wall Street rally faded as the Wednedsay deadline for higher US reciprocal tariffs neared with no delays or agreements in sight. The US treasury secretary’s suggestion that “some good deals” could be struck with the 70 countries that have sought negotiations wasn’t enough to convince anxious traders. Because tariffs are “an integral part” of Trump’s psyche, as one investor said, “any pain level likely to cause Trump to change course” remains a long way away, Reuters wrote. But even if the president backs down, he “will have succeeded in shifting the debate on tariffs and in building uncertainty, which itself can act like a tariff,” ex-Obama economic adviser Jason Furman wrote in the Financial Times.

Meloni to talk tariffs with Trump

Italian Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni will visit Washington next week to discuss tariffs with US President Donald Trump as the European Union calibrates its response to the higher duties. Meloni is set to propose eliminating tariffs between the EU and US altogether, Bloomberg reported. But Brussels is also pursuing a parallel strategy of potential retaliation: The bloc is voting Wednesday on what US products to hit with duties. “Europe is gambling on time,” The New York Times wrote, betting that Trump’s negotiating position will weaken as the stock market falls. To limit Europe’s economic fallout from Trump’s tariffs, EU officials are seeking closer cooperation with China, proposing a “negotiated resolution.”

Trump’s ‘destructive economic own goal’

US President Donald Trump envisions a more self-sufficient America, but his aggressive tariff push amounts to “an act of deliberate self-harm,” Eurasia Group’s Ian Bremmer argued. By essentially “walling America off from the world” to eliminate trade deficits and raise tariff revenue to fund tax cuts, Trump will only end up eroding Americans’ purchasing power and driving up businesses’ costs, while US protectionism could push Washington’s allies in Europe and Asia to hedge toward China, Bremmer wrote in Project Syndicate: “Trump’s embrace of autarky… is the most destructive economic own goal in recent history, akin to Brexit but on a global scale.”

Kyiv captures Chinese fighters

Ukrainian forces captured two Chinese citizens fighting for Russia, President Volodymyr Zelenskyy said Tuesday, casting it as proof that Moscow is not interested in ending the war. Kyiv said the incident also raised doubts about China’s “declared stance for peace.” Unlike North Korea, which sent troops to fight for Russia, Beijing has presented itself as neutral, despite its “no limits” partnership with Russia. Both Kyiv and Moscow have enlisted the help of foreign fighters, and it’s possible the captured men were recruited to fight for Russia rather than being deployed by China. The accusation comes as Ukraine makes a cross-border push into Russia, which could help Kyiv regain some leverage in peace negotiations. A new round of US-Russia talks is set for Thursday.

India embraces weight-loss drugs

India’s market for weight-loss drugs is growing at a fast clip. Danish pharmaceutical giant Novo Nordisk is reportedly preparing for an early launch of its GLP-1 drug Wegovy in India, after US rival Eli Lilly launched its anti-obesity drug Mounjaro in the country last month. The market has grown more than fourfold in the last five years; India has the world’s third largest number of obese people, and affluent Indians are increasingly willing to pay for weight-loss treatment, The Economic Times wrote. Demand has been so high that some have resorted to black market options. The new arrivals are set to further intensify the international competition among drugmakers in the increasingly lucrative space.

Ozempic could cut dementia risk

Ozempic and other GLP-1 weight-loss drugs could cut dementia risk. New research aggregated the results of earlier clinical trials, totalling 160,000 subjects, on people with diabetes. It found that taking GLP-1 drugs was associated with a 45% reduction in dementia cases compared to placebo. Diabetes itself is known to increase dementia risk, but the study looked at patients’ blood sugar levels, and found that even taking into account any improvements in diabetes control, the drugs seemed to have a protective effect. The findings add to existing evidence from earlier, observational studies: One researcher told New Scientist that GLP-1 drugs could reduce chronic inflammation, which is linked to dementia risk.

Jan Jambon, Deputy Prime Minister and Minister of Finances and Pensions, Belgium, will join top global leaders at Semafor’s 2025 World Economy Summit, taking place April 23-25, 2025, in Washington, DC. As the first major gathering since the new US administration took office, the summit will feature on-the-record discussions with 100+ CEOs.

Bringing together leaders from both the public and private sectors — including congressional leaders and global finance ministers — the three-day summit will explore the forces shaping the global economy and geopolitics. Across 12 sessions, it will foster transformative, news-making conversations on how the world’s decision-makers are tackling economic growth in increasingly uncertain times.

April 23-25 | Washington, DC | Learn More

Europe’s first rare earth processing plant

Europe inaugurated its first rare earths processing plant Tuesday, but the continent is still heavily reliant on China for the valuable materials. Rare earths are critical to making electric vehicles and wind turbines, and China accounts for 90% of global processing. The new plant in France will be “a way to de-risk sourcing for our European partners,” the company’s CEO said. But the European Union will likely produce only a small fraction of the rare earths it needs by 2030, because it struggles to compete with China’s lower production costs, according to one recent analysis. Of the 50 mining projects outside of China aiming to launch by 2030, only two to five are estimated to be economically viable.

Russia’s waning linguistic sway

Central Asian people are increasingly speaking their native tongues as Russian declines as a lingua franca. Moscow pursued a “Russification” policy during the Soviet era, imposing Russian language and culture. Since the USSR fell, many states have tried to dismantle that system: The Baltics in particular have returned to their native languages. The process has been slower in Central Asia, where Russian was the language of elites during Soviet rule, Foreign Policy reported, and which is still economically reliant on Moscow. But Kyrgyzstan has started requiring Kyrgyz to be spoken in parliament, and Uzbekistan switched from the Cyrillic to the Latin alphabet, as they look more to the West — a process sped up by the 2022 invasion of Ukraine.

UK church embraces wrestling

A British church has started hosting monthly pro wrestling to bring people into the fold. The creator of Wrestling Church at St Peter’s, an Anglican church in Shipley, told The Associated Press that wrestling, like Christianity, is about “good versus evil,” and Bible stories such as Cain and Abel can be told in the ring. Churchgoing is on the decline in the UK, with fewer than half of the country now calling itself Christian and the number of people saying they follow “no religion” rising from 25% to 37% in 10 years. The reverend of St Peter’s said “you’ve got to take a few risks” to get backsides on pews, and that Wrestling Church was bringing in an entirely different community.

April 9:

• Seven & i Holdings and Delta Airlines report earnings.
• The Asian Development Bank releases its annual outlook report.
• David Hockney 25, an exhibition featuring more than 400 of the British artist’s works, opens at the Louis Vuitton Foundation in Paris.

A new exhibition explores French painter Henri Matisse’s fruitful and sometimes fraught relationship with his daughter. Marguerite Matisse modeled for the elusive artist in nearly a hundred portraits and later represented him as an agent and promoter. Opening at Paris’ Musée d’Art Moderne, Henri Matisse: Portraits of Marguerite spotlights the artist’s fixation with his daughter’s face, with his paintings offering a stylistically diverse catalogue of Marguerite’s tumultuous life — from an early bout of diphtheria and emergency tracheotomy to, later on, her imprisonment and torture by the Gestapo. “He portrayed Marguerite so often because he loved her, of course,” Le Monde wrote. “But also because she resisted him and did not allow herself to be easily understood.”

The Trump administration has reportedly made clear that it wants Europe to drop content moderation requirements for US tech giants. Vice President JD Vance offered hints of the approach at the February AI summit in Paris, where he denounced two European laws: the privacy-focused GDPR and the Digital Services Act, and negotiators have followed up.

The big US platforms are likely to win these fights, the German legislator and Big Tech critic Franziska Brantner told Semafor’s Ben Smith.