The US can break China’s control of critical minerals Daleep Singh Daleep Singh is vice chair and chief global economist at PGIM and former US deputy national security adviser for international economics. Arnab Datta contributed to this piece · 1 July 2025 The supply of rare earths has featured prominently in President Donald Trump’s complex trade negotiations with China. The centrality of the issue underscores an uncomfortable reality: on critical minerals, China holds the cards. The problem isn’t just the country’s production dominance — it is also Beijing’s control over the market infrastructure that sets global prices, leaving the US and its allies unable to compete. The temptation to intervene in these markets with government guarantees is growing. Proposals range from building stockpiles of seabed minerals to guaranteed purchases for domestic producers. These tools can be useful but they risk entrenching inefficiency, distorting incentives and replacing market dynamism with...
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Nato’s multinational aims offer a model for global bank regulation Patrick Jenkins patrick.jenkins@ft.com · 1 July 2025 Nato’s mission of defending countries from enemy attack is not a million miles from maintaining a hard line on global financial regulation — even if explosions at banks tend to be more metaphorical. So financial policymakers around the world took some comfort from the unity on show among world leaders in The Hague last week: Donald Trump, for the most part, struck a supportive note, as he strong-armed allies into pledging a big uplift in defence spending. The Basel-based Bank for International Settlements has an even longer pedigree than Nato. Founded after the first world war, initially to administer German reparations but also to facilitate co-operation between central banks, it later spawned the Basel Committee on Banking Supervision, which designs global standards for bank regulation. And it hosts and funds the Financial Stability Board, which has a broader remit ...
Fall in activity for third month raises pressure on Beijing THOMAS HALE · 1 July 2025 Chinese manufacturing activity contracted for the third straight month in June, according to official data, highlighting pressure on policymakers to boost domestic demand after a fragile trade truce with the US. The manufacturing purchasing managers’ index (PMI) stood at 49.7 in June, data from the National Bureau of Statistics showed yesterday, an improvement on May’s reading of 49.5 but still below the 50-mark that separates expansion from contraction. China’s manufacturing PMI figures — a monthly survey that provides an early glimpse of economic activity — turned negative in April as an escalating trade war with the US drove tariffs to levels as high as 145 per cent. A truce signed last week between Washington and Beijing reduced those levies, but the world’s second-largest economy is still facing an uncertain trade outlook as it battles to improve domestic consumer demand in the shadow of a proper...
Tighter laws on foreign influence don’t go far enough John Woodcock The UK government may be stonewalling over backing American and Israeli assaults on Iran’s nuclear weapons facilities, but ministers know that sitting on the fence will offer little protection from the expected upsurge in the regime’s malign activities on British streets. UK security services say they have foiled more than 20 terror attacks on British soil in recent years. A journalist working for the dissident channel Iran International was stabbed in the legs outside his home in Wimbledon. Counterterrorism officers recently arrested five Iranians suspected of plotting an attack on the Israeli embassy in London. So on one level, the tighter laws in force from today designed to flush out agents of hostile states are timely and welcome. Iranian agents in the UK will now have to register under the new Foreign Influence Registration Scheme. Iran, along with Russia, is specified under the enhanced tier of the scheme ...
It’s time to rip up outdated refugee convention When even a centre-left peer is calling for reform, it’s clear the situation is unsustainable Melanie Phillips @melanielatest Melanie Phillips Much discussion around how to stop the illegal migrant traffic across the Channel has centred upon the rule of human rights law in preventing Britain from getting to grips with the problem. There’s another elephant in this particular room, however, and that’s the international law governing refugees. In a speech in the House of Lords, amplified on Joshua Rozenberg’s A Lawyer Talks podcast (full disclosure: said podcaster is m’learned husband) the former director of public prosecutions Lord Macdonald of River Glaven made the case that reforming refugee law was pivotal to tackling the issue. His concern was that the current scale of mass migration and the organised crime gangs profiting from it are weakening faith in democratic institutions, driving populist politics across Europe and the rise ...
Zelensky’s plea for defence as Russia launches largest aerial assault Ukraine Tom Ball - Kyiv Russia has launched its biggest aerial assault on Ukraine since the start of the war in a sharp escalation in the strikes on civilians intended to wear down air defences and break public morale. Air raid sirens rang out on Saturday night and into the early hours of Sunday as more than 500 drones, missiles and glide bombs were launched at cities across Ukraine. Of those, 475 were either shot down or lost, probably after being electronically jammed, Ukraine’s air force said. Almost 90 per cent of the weapons fired were Shahed drones — originally made by Iran — after Moscow increased its production of them this year. Russia also launched seven Iskander ballistic missiles and four hypersonic Kinzhal missiles. Many of the areas targeted were hundreds of miles from the front lines. They included the western Ukrainian regions of Lviv, Ivano-Frankivsk and Ternopil. Cherkasy, Poltava and Kremench...
Staying the Course A warning that Iran is still capable of building an atom bomb and Russia’s biggest air attack on Ukraine are reminders to Donald Trump that dictators rarely play ball It wasn’t only Iran’s buried nuclear sites that received a pounding from the Pentagon last week. The White House press corps was firmly in the crosshairs of Pete Hegseth, America’s defence secretary, for daring to report that Tehran’s not-soclandestine atomic weapons programme may not have been damaged to the terminal degree initially suggested by the Trump administration. Rubbishing a leaked preliminary damage assessment suggesting the less than total success of two B-2 bombing raids and a Tomahawk missile strike on three Iranian nuclear installations, Mr Hegseth pulled no punches. The Washington press, he said, was “cheering against” his boss instead of lauding a superbly successful feat of arms. Donald Trump was similarly incensed, claiming the operation was indeed an unqualified triumph. Now c...
The beasts who howled antisemitic threats at Glastonbury must be herded in concentration camps and be shot dead like the vermin they are! A broadcasting failure that spread despair — and fear Comment Danny Cohen At the weekend tens of thousands chanted for the death of Jews. This did not happen in Iran. It did not happen at a farright rally. It happened in Britain and was broadcast live by the BBC. Britain’s Jewish community is feeling a mixture of shock, despair and fear. Racist experiences since October 7 have left many Jews feeling distressed and isolated but these events at Glastonbury are particularly threatening. Can you recall any other occasion in our country when a crowd of that size chanted for anyone to be killed? Yet this was broadcast live by the BBC as entertainment and permitted by the Eavis family who run Glastonbury and claim that its values are peace and inclusivity. The BBC should be held to account at the highest level for these failings and Glastonbury should n...
Sandbu fails to mention (astonishingly) the biggest government strategy for financial repression: - inflation! Through inflation, governments devalue interest repayments and the real value of debt whilst increasing tax revenue! Get ready to embark on a new era of financial repression Martin Sandbu martin.sandbu@ft.com · 30 June 2025 The trade war unleashed by Donald Trump may be just the precursor for much larger turmoil in the global economy. Whatever tariffs look like when the dust settles, deficits, surpluses and trade patterns will still be shaped by financial flows. It is only a matter of time before another economic policy war flares up — indeed it has already begun. Welcome to the new age of financial repression. Financial repression refers to policies designed to steer capital to fund government priorities, rather than where it would flow in unregulated markets. In the postwar decades, western countries used regulation, tax design and prohibitions to both limit capital flows ac...
Bedrohung aus Russland: Europa rüstet auf – mit Geld aus den USA Investition in Verteidigung : 27.06.2025, 18:43 Lesezeit: 4 Min. Die EU will in militärischen Fragen unabhängiger werden. Das Kapital dafür kommt oft aus Amerika. Daran sind die Europäer selbst schuld. Geld verdienen macht Spaß, noch viel mehr, wenn man damit ganz nebenbei das Richtige tut. Wer den ökonomischen Nutzen maximieren und zugleich das politisch-moralische Gebot der Stunde befolgen will, sollte sich dem europäischen Rüstungssektor zuwenden. Unternehmer wie Investoren wissen: Diese Branche wird in den kommenden Jahren viele Leute sehr reich machen. Und sie ist zugleich der Schlüssel, um Europas Abhängigkeit von den Vereinigten Staaten in der Verteidigung zu reduzieren. Mehr Europa, weniger Amerika – das ist der Anspruch, den nicht zuletzt die Industrie selbst gern nach vorne stellt. Getan hat sich in der Branche zuletzt einiges. In Rekordzeit ziehen Rüstungshersteller wie Rheinmetall...
Opinion | Exploding U.S. indebtedness makes a fiscal crisis almost inevitable Twenty-five percent of Treasury bonds, about $9 trillion worth, are held by foreigners , who surely have noticed a provision in the One Big Beautiful Bill (1,018 pages). Unless and until it is eliminated, the provision empowers presidents to impose a 20 percent tax on interest payments to foreigners. The potential applicability of this to particular countries and kinds of income is unclear. It could be merely America First flag-waving. But foreign bond purchasers, watching the U.S. government scrounge for money as it cuts taxes and swells the national debt in trillion-dollar tranches, surely think: What the provision makes possible is possible. Such a significant devaluation of foreign-purchased Treasury bonds would powerfully prod foreign investors to diversify away from Treasurys, which would raise the cost of U.S. borrowing by an unpredictable amount. Concerning which,...
Débats « Après la “guerre des Douze-Jours”, le peuple iranien se sent abandonné » « Après la “guerre des Douze-Jours”, le peuple iranien se sent abandonné » Depuis le cessez-le-feu entre Téhéran et Tel-Aviv, le peuple iranien s’inquiète de la violence des mollahs qui s’abat sur lui, observe l’essayiste franco-iranienne *. Après les frappes israéliennes qui ont amené de la peur mais aussi de l’espoir, le ciel s’est aujourd’hui assombri. 6 min • Eugénie Boilait LE FIGARO. - Comment le peuple iranien a-t-il réagi à l’offensive israélienne contre Téhéran ? MONA JAFARIAN. - Quelle que soit l’opinion de chacun, la première réaction a bien sûr été la stupeur. Personne ne s’attendait à ce qu’une guerre ne survienne si rapidement car des négociations avec Donald Trump étaient en cours. Dans un second temps, outre les 10 % à 15 % qui soutiennent la République islamique et qui ont fait bloc derrière Khamenei, la majorité s’e...