Flagship

Merz fails to get majority

Friedrich Merz fell short in a parliamentary vote to become Germany’s chancellor, throwing his governing plan and coalition into chaos. He had seemed to be a shoo-in, after spending months negotiating with coalition partners and outlining a mammoth fiscal expansion. Parties will now have to regroup, and other lawmakers may throw their hats into the ring: Germany’s stock market extended its losses on the news. Merz pledged swift action on the faltering economy and illegal migration, but has already had to drop campaign pledges to maintain his coalition’s razor-thin majority. Meanwhile, Washington, long Berlin’s most important ally, has been making Merz’s life difficult, Politico reported, with administration figures backing rivals and undermining Merz’s efforts to isolate Russia.

Canada, EU trade talks

Canada’s prime minister and the European Union’s top trade official will face tricky negotiations as they press for lower tariffs in Washington today. US President Donald Trump said he’s “not sure” what Canada’s Mark Carney wants to discuss when the pair meet, pointing to strained ties between the countries over the American leader’s hefty tariffs and repeated calls to annex Canada. The EU, meanwhile, faces challenges because its structure doesn’t allow it to make proactive offers in the way Trump demands, Eurasia Group’s Ian Bremmer warned in a note to clients. Still, its characteristically “legalistic, methodical” negotiating style, while “deadly dull,” is far more effective than Trump’s, the Financial Times’ chief foreign affairs commentator argued.

Execs push for policy stability

Top executives say they could adapt their businesses to the Trump administration’s tariffs — if only they could be sure of them. Finance bosses at a major California conference complained of the whipsaw nature of US trade policy, saying “they can live with tariffs and a reworking of trade,” Bloomberg reported, “just get it settled soon.” Ford issued the latest in a string of broader corporate warnings, projecting a $1.5 billion hit this year, while toymaker Mattel said it would have to hike prices and shift its supply chain. Others are pushing for tariff exemptions, “showing up prepared to flatter, play ball on the Trump agenda and give him something in return for sparing them,” The Wall Street Journal reported.

Where the old right is ascendant

Latin America is the sole region in the world where traditional right-wing economics is on the upswing, a prominent analyst argued. Leftist leaders in Brazil and Mexico are reining in giveaways under market pressure, while Argentina’s right-wing President Javier Milei is among the continent’s most popular leaders thanks to his success slowing inflation and stabilizing the economy through aggressive government cost-cutting. “With the far right ascendant in much of the west, it is notable that Latin America is not turning the same way,” Rockefeller International chair Ruchir Sharma wrote in the Financial Times. “It is favouring leaders with more traditional agendas, based on free markets and open economies.”

EU set for Russia gas phaseout

The European Union will announce plans to end its reliance on Russian gas by the end of 2027, as it renews pressure on Moscow over its war in Ukraine. The proposals will reportedly include banning new gas import deals and may also see the bloc seek to break existing contracts with Russia. European leaders have stepped up efforts to support Kyiv in recent months as US support has waned: Estonia’s foreign minister is in Washington today hoping to convince lawmakers in both parties to work with Europe to push Moscow “to the corner,” he told Semafor, arguing that Russia had shown itself to be unserious about US-sponsored peace talks.

Saudi under oil-price pressure

Plunging oil prices are putting pressure on Saudi Arabia, which remains highly dependent on fossil fuel sales, despite efforts to diversify. The Gulf’s biggest economy saw its budget deficit nearly quadruple year-on-year in the first quarter thanks to oil prices hovering near four-year lows, and while the kingdom is expected to ramp up production as part of wider OPEC+ efforts to expand supply, “the risks… to our macro forecasts are skewed to the downside,” Goldman Sachs economists warned. Though non-oil sectors contributed 51% of Saudi GDP last year, the country is still reliant on fossil fuels: As a result, the IMF recently downgraded its forecast for Saudi economic growth and domestic businesses are bracing for a slowdown.

DoorDash makes UK move

US food delivery giant DoorDash bought its UK equivalent Deliveroo in a deal worth $3.9 billion. The British company was founded in 2013 and has come to dominate the country’s fast-food delivery scene: It now operates in nine countries. But it never cracked the US, where DoorDash is the biggest player. Europe’s tech unicorns often flee to the US: The continent’s success stories “pack their bags… to gain access to capital,” a 2022 report said. The takeover is also a blow for the London Stock Exchange, which has seen firms worth hundreds of billions relist in New York in recent years, whether via takeovers or simply leaving.

As AI continues to evolve at a rapid pace, companies are shifting from experimentation to real-world deployment and practical use within their businesses.

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Robotaxi firms step up ambitions

Autonomous vehicle companies are planning to ramp up their operations in the coming months. Alphabet-backed Waymo, the US market leader, plans to greatly increase production of its Jaguar robotaxis at its Arizona factory, adding 2,000 vehicles to its current fleet of 1,500 by the end of 2026. Its rivals are dashing to keep up: Uber announced a partnership with the Chinese firm WeRide to bring a robotaxi service to 15 cities worldwide in the next five years, mainly outside the US and China. Uber has a partnership with Waymo in the US, but works with more than 15 separate autonomous vehicle companies to offer ride-hailing services overseas, TechCrunch reported.

AI ‘sycophant’ raises fears

ChatGPT’s latest release flatters to deceive. OpenAI said in a blog post that the model is “noticeably more sycophantic,” while CEO Sam Altman agreed Friday that it was “too sycophant-y and annoying.” The problem seemed to stem from incorporating thumbs-up and thumbs-down buttons, feedback which rewards it for saying what users want to hear. While OpenAI may patch this issue, it reveals a deeper problem, the tech writer Zvi Mowshowitz reported: OpenAI is “optimizing for engagement,” and putting us on a path to “increasingly misaligned models.” An artificial intelligence trying to fool us doesn’t seem too bad right now, he says, but “we will not stay so fortunate in the future” when they are smarter.

Wildlife smuggling falls

Smuggling of pangolin scales and elephant ivory, two staples of the wildlife trafficking industry, has plummeted since the COVID-19 pandemic. In 2019, “a network of crime syndicates operating at an industrial scale” was still shipping vast quantities of the two products from Africa, a Wildlife Justice Commission report found. But trafficking fell during the pandemic and has remained low since, which the WJC said is thanks to law enforcement efforts and falling prices. Another possible factor is that in 2020, pangolin scales were removed from an important encyclopedia of Chinese medicine over concerns about evidence and pangolin conservation: The scales had been popular in traditional Chinese medicine, despite no evidence that they have medicinal properties.

• The US Treasury secretary and secretary of homeland security testify before separate House of Representative committees.
• More than 4,000 participants from 41 countries take part in cyber-defense exercises in Estonia.
• The Bayesian, the superyacht that sank off Sicily’s coast last year, is expected to be pulled into port.

The percentage of the world’s manufactured goods that are made in China. That’s more than Britain, Germany, Japan, South Korea, and the US combined. The average American home would be unrecognizable without Chinese imports, The New York Times reported: 90% of Americans’ microwaves, 99% of toasters, and 52% of refrigerators were made in China, as were 73% of lamps and 97% of baby strollers. All those goods and many more will become more expensive as tariffs bite, the Times said, and even items manufactured in the US, like some cars, will likely go up in price as many of their components are sourced from China.

Japanese Avant-Garde Pioneers, dir. Amélie Ravalec. This documentary about the countercultural Japanese art scene of the 1960s and 1970s centered around the poet, playwright, novelist, and horse-racing columnist Shuji Terayama, is “a portal into a phantasmagorical world that is grotesque, erotic, dangerous,” according to Nikkei, “yet also comical, exciting and unforgettable.” Find Japanese Avant-Garde Pioneers on your streaming services.

The main deliverable of Trump’s first 100 days has been revenge, wrote Semafor’s David Weigel.

That theme was on full display last week at Karoline Leavitt’s “new media” briefings, where MAGA-friendly influencers and streamers peppered the White House press secretary about which individuals and institutions might be next on the admin’s hit-list.

Trump appeals to voters because he makes lots of promises that he executes or at least tries to, and until he says no, the expectation is that all of the harder, costlier promises will be fulfilled, too, Weigel wrote.