Flagship

China orders halt to Boeing deliveries

Boeing shares fell Tuesday after China reportedly ordered the country’s airlines to halt deliveries from the US jetmaker, as part of Beijing’s tit-for-tat trade war with Washington. China also told carriers to stop purchasing aircraft parts from US companies, Bloomberg reported. The order puts Boeing, the US’ largest exporter by dollar value, in the middle of the trade conflict, and further imperils its declining Chinese market share. But analysts suggested the move could be temporary, offering Beijing a bargaining chip for trade negotiations by adding to growing private-sector pressure on US President Donald Trump to deescalate his tariff regime.“We do see this as unsustainable,” a Bank of America strategist argued. “The Trump Administration can’t ignore Boeing.”

Xi pitches free trade in SE Asia

Chinese leader Xi Jinping made a pitch for free trade on his tour through Southeast Asia, looking to win over countries hit hard by US President Donald Trump’s tariffs. While there’s “no small amount of chutzpah in China’s claim as a free-trading nation,” given its own history of protectionism, “that’s the opening the Trump trade shock is presenting,” The Wall Street Journal editorial board wrote. Xi’s trip to Vietnam, Malaysia, and Cambodia was aimed at keeping them from striking US trade deals that could hurt China. Southeast Asian nations have long hedged between the two superpowers, but if Trump’s economic coercion forces them to pick sides, the US “might not like their answers,” a Brookings expert argued in Foreign Affairs.

India’s trade war obstacles

India is primed to benefit from US President Donald Trump’s trade war with China, but analysts say structural challenges could keep the country from becoming a manufacturing powerhouse. India has been spared the worst of Trump’s tariffs, and its massive workforce coupled with a leader who Trump likes makes it attractive for companies seeking an alternative to China. But India’s manufacturing sector is not ready to compete with China’s, The New York Times wrote, owing to a shortage of skilled workers and a reliance on foreign supply chains. New Delhi is instead “banking on short-term tariff gains as a policy approach,” The Core wrote, arguing it’s too early to celebrate duty reprieves from Washington.

Tariffs could hurt US manufacturing

While President Donald Trump has cast his tariff regime as a boon for American manufacturers, many aren’t sold. A recent survey of New York manufacturers found “a level of pessimism that has only occurred a handful of times in the history of the survey,” with firms expecting employment and orders to decline, while a majority of workers polled by The Washington Post said tariffs would hurt them. US firms with global customer bases could even relocate overseas to avoid retaliatory duties, an expert wrote in The Wall Street Journal. “My orders have certainly slowed. Why would someone in Japan or Australia or Canada order an American bike if things could change dramatically again next week?” one bike-maker said.

Trump-Harvard clash escalates

US President Donald Trump on Tuesday threatened to revoke Harvard University’s tax-exempt status, after the country’s oldest — and richest — college rejected his demands to make a slate of policy changes. Harvard’s defiance already prompted Trump to freeze more than $2 billion in federal funding to the Ivy League school. The president’s musing to tax Harvard as if it were a political entity would deal “a tremendous blow” to the university, The Boston Globe wrote. It also poses a “huge threat to the current financial setup of most universities,” an expert at nearby Tufts University argued, as Trump ratchets up his crackdown on higher education: “They rely on their tax exempt status to make their books balance.”

Concerns over Trump court compliance

US commentators across the ideological spectrum are sounding the alarm over the White House’s reluctance to comply with court orders over its immigration agenda. Despite the US Supreme Court ordering the government to facilitate the return of a wrongly deported Salvadoran migrant, the Trump administration left the matter up to El Salvador — a “bad faith” reading of the ruling, one conservative legal analyst told The New York Times. The Atlantic’s Adam Serwer similarly argued that the White House is “pretending it is complying while refusing to do so,” a worrying precedent for future orders the administration doesn’t like. Donald Trump’s compliance with court orders “has now arrived at the cusp of outright defiance,” The Times’ Supreme Court correspondent wrote.

The global right’s Trump problem

Western right-wing parties have a Donald Trump problem. Conservative leaders who modeled themselves after the US president are now paying the price for being associated with his more unpopular policies. Australia’s Peter Dutton, who emulated Trump’s anti-woke crusade in his presidential campaign, finds himself associated with Trump’s aggressive trade war amid an ongoing cost-of-living crisis. France’s Marine Le Pen has stopped citing Trump as an example for tariffs. And Canada’s Conservatives, once far ahead in the polls, fell behind the Liberals after Trump’s tariff and annexation threats against Canada. In some smaller economies, though, populists are still playing up their ties to Trump: Romania’s MAGA-style candidates are leading in the polls ahead of presidential elections next month.

Carlos Cuerpo, Minister for Economy, Trade and Business, Spain, Valdis Dombrovskis, EU Commissioner for Economy & Productivity; Ken Griffin, Founder & CEO, Citadel; Éric Lombard, Minister of Economy and Finance, France; Ted Sarandos, Co-CEO, Netflix; David Schwimmer, CEO, London Stock Exchange Group, and more will join The Future of Global Finance session at the 2025 World Economy Summit. As private credit expands, consumer perspectives shift, and inflation remains stubborn, this session will examine how leaders are responding to the evolving global financial landscape and its risks and opportunities.

April 23, 2025 | Washington, DC | Learn More

SF mayor off to a fast start

San Francisco’s new mayor is “off to a fast and promising start” in his first 100 days in office, despite never having held elected office before, The San Francisco Standard wrote. Daniel Lurie, a moderate Democrat who campaigned on fighting crime and rising homelessness, has already shown to be effective in leading a city that has long been a punching bag for Republicans, commentators argue. Lurie’s honeymoon period comes as the American left looks to chart its political course under a second Donald Trump term. In nearby Oakland, a mayoral election Tuesday will similarly provide clues into what Democratic voters prioritize, as an infusion of tech money divides the left.

AI jobs are increasing

Artificial intelligence jobs increased in 2024 despite signs that the AI hiring boom had slowed the year before. Stanford’s annual report said 1.8% of US job listings required AI skills, up from 1.4% in 2023. Although there are concerns that AI could take jobs, especially in coding, so far the trend goes the other way: The bulk of executives expect AI to lead to an increase in headcount, and workplaces that adopted GitHub Copilot, an AI coding assistant, tended to hire more software engineers. Coding remains the most widely demanded skill in AI-related jobs, although “uniquely human skills,” such as ethical reasoning and leadership, are increasingly important, one analyst told IEEE Spectrum.

Thieves target Lego kits

The sky-high price of collectible Lego sets is driving a lucrative black market. The Danish company makes some limited-edition models for specific events, which can then fetch large sums at auction. The San Diego Comic-Con 2013 Spider-Man is valued at $18,000. But even regular kits become valuable over time, as they usually leave production after two years, and collectors need them to complete their sets. As a result, thieves are targeting toy stores: One California store had 200 sets stolen. “It’s been a problem for… forever,” one store owner told The New York Times, but it has worsened in the last five years.

April 16:

• China releases its first-quarter GDP figures.
• ASML, Abbott, and Rio Tinto report first-quarter earnings.
• British-American actress Anya Taylor-Joy celebrates her 29th birthday.

The controversial Italian artist Maurizio Cattelan — who once taped a banana to the wall and sold it for a fortune — is back with an apparent commentary on gun violence in the US. The conceptual prankster coated steel panels in 24-carat gold and blasted each of them with a 12-gauge shotgun, in a display that The Guardian called “grotesquely, abhorrently violent” and “ludicrously, grossly opulent” — or, in other words, “classic Cattelan.” While the work is ostensibly a critique of gun culture, Cattelan told The Guardian that “it’s not the main subject,” adding, “I like works that are open to interpretation.”

A godfather of President Donald Trump’s tariffs told Wall Street investors that the US should quickly strike a trade deal with Japan, Semafor’s Rohan Goswami reported.

Robert Lighthizer said Japan would likely link White House support for the sale of US Steel to Tokyo-based Nippon to any trade talks, although he told Semafor he opposes the deal.

Lighthizer was Trump’s first-term trade czar, and his views are a hot commodity as uncertainty dominates in the admin’s trade approach.