Trump Tells Aides to Prepare for Extended Blockade of Iran The president prefers decisive victories, but none of the available options provides him with a swift exit from the conflict
President Trump has instructed aides to prepare for an extended blockade of Iran, U.S. officials said, targeting the regime’s coffers in a high-risk bid to compel a nuclear capitulation Tehran has long refused.
In recent meetings, including a Monday discussion in the Situation Room, Trump opted to continue squeezing Iran’s economy and oil exports by preventing shipping to and from its ports. He assessed that his other options—resume bombing or walk away from the conflict—carried more risk than maintaining the blockade, officials said.
Yet continuing the blockade also prolongs a conflict that has driven up gas prices, hurt Trump’s poll numbers and further darkened Republicans’ prospects in the midterm elections. It has also caused the lowest number of transits through the Strait of Hormuz since the war began. (…)
On Monday, Trump told aides that Iran’s three-step offer to reopen the Strait of Hormuz and save nuclear talks for the final phase proved Tehran wasn’t negotiating in good faith, The Wall Street Journal reported.
For now, Trump is comfortable with an indefinite blockade, which he wrote Tuesday on Truth Social is pushing Iran toward a “State of Collapse.” A senior U.S. official said the blockade is demonstrably crushing Iran’s economy—it is straining to store its unsold oil—and sparked fresh outreach by the regime to Washington.
Trump’s decision represents a new phase of sorts of the war and highlights the fact that the president, who always seeks a quick and salable victory, is devoid of a silver bullet. (…)
Restarting hostilities, meanwhile, would further weaken a battered Iran, but it would likely react by wreaking more havoc on Gulf energy infrastructure, bolstering the costs of the war. The blockade shrinks the Islamic Republic’s funds but commits U.S. forces to a longer deployment in the Middle East—with no guarantee the regime capitulates. (…)
The lack of a clear, decisive pathway has some U.S. officials saying the eight-week conflict will likely end with neither a nuclear deal nor a resumption of the war, a sentiment first reported by Axios. (…)
Officials say Trump isn’t currently willing to drop his demand that Iran, at a minimum, vows to suspend its nuclear enrichment for 20 years and accepts restrictions after that point. (…)
On Monday, Iran told mediators it would need a few days to consult with Supreme Leader Mojtaba Khamenei before presenting a modified proposal that could advance the peace talks with the U.S., people familiar with the matter said.
Regional mediators, however, remain skeptical that Iran’s updated offer would catalyze a breakthrough. Iranian officials continue to say that Washington must drop what they deem maximalist demands while maintaining its own blockade on the Strait of Hormuz.
“Both sides seem to believe that they have calculated this right and that time is on their side,” said Nico Lange, director of Germany’s Institute for Risk Analysis and International Security and a former chief of staff at the German defense ministry.
Trump administration officials realize Tehran could try to disrupt efforts to maintain the current no-deal, no-war situation over a long period.
As the blockade bites, Iran might seek to force Washington into choosing between escalating the conflict or backing down and cutting a deal. Tehran could resume its attacks on regional energy production or target U.S. naval assets enforcing the blockade. Despite the destruction of its conventional navy, Iran can still spark flare-ups with U.S. forces. (…)
From Windward:
The U.S. blockade has more than halved Iranian crude shipments reaching Asia over the past 10 days, with further declines expected into May. This is one of the clearest indicators to date of pressure on Iran’s shipping logistics chain, which supports oil flows worth billions of dollars to the Iranian regime. (…)
Windward intelligence shows that Iranian crude exports reaching Asia via the Strait averaged 1.3 million barrels per day during the first 28 days of April. That is well below the 1.9 million barrels per day loaded from Kharg Island in March, and broadly aligned with the 1.2 million barrels per day seen loading so far in April, according to Vortexa. In February, before the war began, Vortexa recorded Iranian loadings at 2.2 million barrels per day.
At the same time, approximately 153 million barrels of Iranian oil remain on the water. Much of this volume is held in floating storage west of Hormuz or on vessels that sailed to the Riau Archipelago, in Malaysia’s EEZ.
The Riau area has long been used for ship-to-ship transfers of Iranian crude, enabling onward movement to China, Iran’s largest buyer. Many Iran-linked tankers that transit the Strait of Malacca move to this area, switch off AIS while transferring cargo to another tanker, and reappear only when sailing outbound through the Strait. (…)
- Iranians Feel the Pain as Their Economy Descends Into a Death Spiral Businesses are closing, unemployment is soaring and food is increasingly unaffordable
(…) To contain the economic fallout, the Iranian government has raised wages, subsidized basic goods and handed out cash to the poor. But authorities are confronting a level of hardship not seen in decades, according to residents. (…)
The war has thrown around one million people out of work directly and another million indirectly, according to early estimates cited by Gholamhossein Mohammadi, an official at Iran’s Labor and Social-Affairs ministry. That is a significant portion of the roughly 25 million people who are normally employed in Iran.
The cost of living has soared, with the annual inflation rate reaching 67% in the month through mid-April from the same period a year earlier, according to Iran’s central bank. The subsidized price of red meat, which was mostly imported through sea routes, has gone up to the equivalent of around $3.60 a pound, beyond the reach of most in a country where the minimum wage is around $130 a month. (…)
Businesses across the country—from manufacturers to retailers—are closing, residents said. The lack of steel and other raw materials is hampering production in various industries. Electronic goods, which are mostly imported, are in short supply and expensive. (…)
Iranian state media estimates that postwar reconstruction could cost around $270 billion, a crippling sum for a country with an annual gross domestic product last year of $341 billion. (…)
As recently as March, Iran exported 1.85 million barrels of crude oil a day, worth $191 million at international prices. There is no evidence any Iranian oil cargo has breached the U.S. blockade and reached Chinese customers or other buyers, said Homayoun Falakshahi, a senior oil analyst at the commodities-data company Kpler. (…)
The Iranian government has taken steps to contain the economic fallout. It has increased the minimum wage and raised the salary of government employees and continued to subsidize the price of bread, fuel and other essential goods. It is giving cash handouts to the poor and issuing coupons for the purchase of rice, chicken, cooking oil and other goods. It drew from strategic reserves of household staples to soften the economic blow for regular people.
The government has appealed to Iranians to do their part by limiting their consumption of water, electricity and gas. Tehran residents were encouraged to drive less and use public transportation instead. (…)
Iran is trying to bypass the U.S. blockade by relying on alternative trade routes. It is using rail and road connections with Turkey, Armenia and Azerbaijan as well as the Caspian Sea to the north to import goods, Ebrahim Najafi, an Iranian lawmaker, said recently in the country’s Parliament.
At least 11 vessels loaded with grain, corn and sunflower oil have arrived in Iran’s Caspian ports since the U.S. blockade started, according to Kpler. They had departed from Russia, Kazakhstan and Turkmenistan.
Over the weekend Pakistan announced that it has designated six corridors—both ports and land borders—through which Iranian goods could transit without restriction. Those routes will also be used to import rice and meat.
“Iranians will suffer hardship,” said Mohamed Amersi, an Iran expert and member of the Global Advisory Council of the Wilson Center, a Washington think tank. “But their pain tolerance threshold is higher.”
No, the Iranian Oil Industry Isn’t About to ‘Explode’
If US President Donald Trump is right, the Iranian oil industry should be imploding by now. On April 26, he predicted the country’s wells would “explode” in a “very powerful” destructive process starting in three days. That’s today. Considering oil is central to the war, one would hope Trump has his facts right. Unfortunately, he doesn’t. (…)
Kpler, a commodity-intelligence firm, reckons that Iran probably has another 12 to 22 days of storage available, far more than the US administration anticipated when it started the blockade. If Trump was right, Iran would have run out of storage today.
The Islamic Republic won’t wait until the last minute, however. Instead, it will pre-emptively slow production well before it runs out of storage; engineers prefer to gradually throttle down wells rather than shut them suddenly. The process appears to be already ongoing, with visible oil and gas flaring in Khuzestan, the heart of the country’s petroleum industry (the extra flaring signals all of a well’s output can’t be evacuated). By mid-May, Iranian oil production will need to halve from pre-war levels as storage reaches its limit, with only domestic demand, and some residual trade via trucks, rail and coastal ships in the Caspian Sea, acting as relief valves.
The economic blow would be immense as the country loses crucial oil revenue. But I don’t buy the argument that its oil wells would suffer irremediable damage — and neither do most experts with on-the-ground experience in the petroleum sector. (…)
Importantly, petroleum engineers can take mitigating action to avoid damage. As well as throttling production, they can rotate shutdowns between oilfields. The key is keeping the wells flowing for as long as possible, avoiding problems, such as water intrusion, that accompany long-lasting closures.
Back in 2019-2020, during the first Trump administration, Iran had to cut production significantly but was able to restart its wells without significant problems over the next few months, eventually lifting total petroleum output in 2025 to a 46-year high. That recovery is the best indication that talk about permanent damage is wishful thinking. The 2020 experience is invaluable now, as the country’s engineers will have learned from previous mistakes. In some ways, the maximum pressure campaign of five years ago means that Tehran is better placed today to survive the blockade.
For sure, Iran is likely to incur extra costs as a result of the disruption to output, and the amount of oil it can eventually recover from its reservoirs may be lower than otherwise — but that’s a problem for 2035, 2040 or even 2050, not 2026.
Iran is under pressure economically, but the blockade is unlikely to deliver the silver bullet that Trump yearns for. For some hawkish policymakers and analysts, the economic damage is good enough, but it’s important to remember that the blockade is a means to force Iran to negotiate, not an end in it self. Viewed through that lens, it hasn’t delivered what the White House wants. And it probably won’t.
BTW, many Gulf countries are also cutting production they cannot ship out.
Meanwhile… only today:
- Spanish Inflation Rises Further as Iran War Drives Energy Prices Higher
- Australia’s Consumer Inflation Jumps on Oil Shock
- U.K. to See Slowdown in Growth, Higher Inflation Due to Mideast Conflict
- Middle East Conflict to Weaken Growth as Commodity Prices Surge, World Bank Says
The World Bank just published its Commodity Market Outlook, reminding us that it’s more than oil:
Prior to the conflict, vessels passing the Strait accounted for close to 35 and 20 percent, respectively, of global seaborne trade in crude oil and refined petroleum products, as well as 20 percent of trade in liquefied natural gas. In addition, the Gulf region is a critical source of fertilizers—especially urea—as well as chemical inputs for many industries, such as helium and sulfur, and a large contributor to global aluminum supplies.
Ken Griffin suggests retail investors do not understand private credit
(…) “The real issue here is the liquidity mismatch between the retail investor and the duration of the investments,” Griffin said in an interview with the FT. “We live in a world where retail investors have become accustomed to having immediate liquidity for their investments . . . investing in private credit is a different story.”
- FYI: JPMorgan’s Dimon Expects Credit Downturn To Be ‘Worse Than People Think’ – Says He Doesn’t Worry About US Economy – Worse Case That He Worries About Is Stagflation
U.A.E.’s OPEC Exit Deals Major Blow to Cartel Amid Middle East Oil Squeeze Sudden departure threatens an organization hobbled by internal disunity and the rise of American output
(…) The war in Iran has piled on more pressure by exacerbating rifts among the Arab countries at the core of the group and by closing the Strait of Hormuz, through which the group’s biggest producers export most of their oil, making it impossible for the group to influence the market during its biggest supply shock.
The U.A.E. is in a relatively privileged position with the ability to circumvent the blockade in the strait by routing more than half of its oil exports across the country. Withdrawing from OPEC will give it more freedom to make investments to expand its output and adjust to the uncertain future of the waterway.
The U.A.E. in recent years has asked to produce more of its oil under OPEC’s output accords. It has grown less willing to compromise as its relations with OPEC heavyweight Saudi Arabia, a neighbor and sometimes military partner, have frayed amid competition for regional leadership. By withdrawing, the U.A.E. is diminishing its relationship with a longstanding Arab-led bloc and aligning itself more closely with the U.S. (…)
The exit takes away 13% of OPEC’s production capacity, according to figures by the International Energy Agency, damaging the organization’s market management capabilities. (…)
The U.A.E. has taken the brunt of Iran’s retaliatory attacks during the war. Iran has fired more than 2,800 drones and missiles at the country, far more than it fired at any other in the Gulf or even Israel. (…)
The Iran war “is likely to have sharpened the view in Abu Dhabi that existing relationships may not have proven their value in a time of crisis,” Kristian Coates Ulrichsen, a Persian Gulf expert and fellow with Rice University’s Baker Institute. (…)
The U.A.E. has production capacity of 4.8 million barrels a day and is currently allowed around 3.4 million barrels a day under OPEC’s quota system. Once outside the group, it will have both the incentive and the ability to increase production.
By breaking free from OPEC’s rigid quotas, the U.A.E. gains the flexibility to aggressively increase its oil production on its own terms. It is among the world’s lowest-cost oil producers, and its government can balance its budget at a lower oil price than most Gulf peers.
From the FT:
(…) The UAE is not the first country to leave Opec since its creation; in recent years, Indonesia, Qatar, Ecuador and Angola have all departed.
But Raad Alkadiri, a veteran Opec watcher and senior associate at the Center for Strategic and International Studies, said what was “striking” about the UAE’s announcement was the timing.
“This smacks of a political motive far more than an oil market motive,” said Alkadiri. “It speaks to the geopolitical faultlines in the Middle East as much as it does to anything market related in the short- to medium-term.”
Relations between the UAE and Saudi Arabia were already at a low ebb due to alignments with warring factions in Yemen and growing rivalry as competing business hubs in the region. The Iran war exacerbated those differences.
The UAE’s departure would probably not be “fatal” for the group unless it triggered a ripple of other departures. “The end of Opec has been written a whole host of times, and Opec has been able to adapt,” said Alkadiri. But he noted that if Venezuela, Iraq or Iran considered a departure, that would significantly weaken the group.
“Those countries may now have more leverage in Opec decision-making than they did before”.
Nevertheless, the wider Opec+ alliance still accounts for around 40 per cent of global oil output even after the UAE’s departure. Holding this wider group together will be key to Opec’s future, said Alkadiri. “If Saudi leadership holds that more fragile alliance together, the impact of the UAE departure can be managed.”
Some analysts believe the UAE will come to regret the move. “I would not be surprised if in the future the UAE reconsiders its decision,” said Bob McNally, the founder of energy analysts Rapidan, explaining that without careful management of the market, oil prices could become highly volatile, particularly if there is a glut of crude.
“When we next have oversupply, there will be a similar pressure on major producers to collaborate,” he said. “What’s less clear is when we will have oversupply again. It could be near term if we have a massive recession like in 2008, or it could be many years from now.”
CONSUMER WATCH
From Bank of America card data:
(…) a higher proportion of lower-income households appear to make only the minimum payment on their credit card accounts and this share in March 2026 is also above 2019 levels for all income cohorts.
BNPL users in Bank of America data tend to have significantly higher credit card utilization rates. Indeed, lower-income households that are heavier users of BNPL (making more transactions a month) tend to have the highest credit card utilization rates, so their overall credit availability may be fairly limited.
This year’s tax refunds are around 10% higher on average than in 2025 due to the One Big Beautiful Bill Act (OBBA). While some of these refunds are being spent, it appears that some are being saved, too – the increase in savings is, so far, in line with that seen in 2025.
This boost will likely be a significant support to households if the ongoing gasoline shock endures: in the April Consumer Checkpoint, we suggested that even for lower-income households, higher refunds could cover rising gasoline bills for at least five months.
In our view, the biggest risk to consumers likely comes if the current increase in gasoline prices leads to a broader uptick in prices of other core necessities such as utilities and food, as these make up larger shares of household budgets. Groceries in particular are a bigger slice of households’ monthly spend.
Trump’s $1.5 Trillion Defense Plan Draws Rare Republican Pushback
Key congressional Republicans are poised to break with Donald Trump on his proposed 44% raise for the Pentagon, a rare act of defiance that signals the president’s weakening grip on Washington as the midterm elections near and he quickly approaches the back half of his second term.
Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth will head to Congress Wednesday and Thursday to defend Trump’s hoped-for $1.5 trillion defense budget, a number that’s already facing pushback from members of both political parties. (…)
Few any longer dispute that America’s public debt is growing unsustainably and that, sooner or later, the task of reining it in will be unavoidable. Oddly, this presumption of inevitability has bred a kind of complacency. In the end, whether we like it or not, the problem will have to be solved. Therefore, it will be solved. So what’s the hurry?
The answer is that further delay makes an orderly solution harder to envisage. Eventually a point will come where a well-planned remedy is impossible, because the fiscal adjustments would crash the economy. At that point, the only remedy will be default, explicit or by means of high inflation. Americans need to take this disturbing prospect much more seriously. The problem is already so intractable — structurally intractable, you might say — that workable answers have become harder to imagine than outright fiscal collapse.
The headline numbers might be depressingly familiar — but take a look at Jessica Riedl’s new fiscal chartbook, just published by the Brookings Institution, and consider the sheer scale of the task. The main forecasters expect US budget deficits to run at roughly 6% of GDP for the foreseeable future. These estimates postulate full employment, no recessions, no major wars, no pandemics and “current law” (which assumes that some recent tax cuts and spending increases will expire) as opposed to “current policy” (which assumes they won’t). Relax that last assumption and the deficits will be 7% of GDP or more.
Even under implausibly favorable conditions, public debt is on track to surpass its Second World War peak of 106% of GDP in another few years. By 2036, it will exceed that by a margin of 30 percentage points, and after that will keep rising.
Within a decade, so long as interest rates are no higher than now, debt service is set to absorb 30% of what the government collects in taxes; within another 20 years, more than half. If interest rates start to price in fears of fiscal stress, the debt’s upward trajectory will accelerate, adding to those fears, raising interest rates some more and making the debt path steeper still — the classic vicious circle. (…)
As Riedl’s charts explain, to hold federal debt at 100% of GDP, longer-term savings in the form of tax increases and/or spending cuts would have to run between 4% and 5% of GDP — equivalent to more than $2 trillion a year by the middle of the next decade.
Suppose the US raised its income tax rates across the board by 10 percentage points: This would cut only about 3.5% of GDP from projected deficits. A European-style value-added tax of 20% — likewise inconceivable — would cut maybe 3% of GDP from future deficits.
Taxing household incomes above $200,000 (single) and $400,000 (married) at 50% would yield about 1.5% of GDP in savings; a wealth tax like the one proposed by Senator Bernie Sanders another 0.6%.
All these are “static” estimates, by the way, which assume heroically that much higher taxes wouldn’t be partly self-defeating by suppressing growth.
The spending side is no easier. Two programs account for almost all of the actual and projected rise in deficits: Social Security and Medicare. Yet one thing that a supposedly polarized Washington has agreed upon is not to touch either category of spending. To accommodate their growth, other programs have been squeezed over time, but there’s not much left to trim. In some cases, quite the opposite: Spending on defense will surely need to increase because of broken alliances and the deteriorating geopolitical environment.
Once you understand the scale of the problem, you see that an effective solution requires an equally unimaginable political transformation. (…) The country needs another Simpson-Bowles project, only bolder, with a commitment to follow through: Right now, the idea is laughable.
Sad to say, barring an AI miracle or a rebirth of functional politics, the likeliest outcome is therefore default — gradual, with higher inflation eroding the real value of federal debt, or sudden, with outright debt restructurings and all the attendant mayhem. Meantime, more of the same isn’t going to cut it.
How did Hemingway get bankrupt again? “Gradually, then suddenly”.
BTW, Canada’s budget deficit is 2% of GDP.
The U.S. Wants to Ban China’s High-Tech Cars, but They’re Already Here in El Paso
(…) “If they were allowed to be sold in the United States,” Hernandez boasted of the Chinese models, “they would destroy the American car market.”
U.S. automotive executives don’t entirely disagree. Without a clear plan to deal with Chinese competitors, some of them said in interviews, the arrival of affordable, high-tech Chinese cars could upend a U.S. industry that contributes $1.3 trillion to the economy each year.
“I’m telling you, it is very difficult—not to say impossible—to compete,” said Hyundai Motor Chief Executive José Muñoz. “We cannot compete at the same price as the Chinese in the market where we operate. Otherwise, we will be losing money.” (…)
The U.S. has applied sky-high tariffs to vehicles imported from China, and regulations make it nearly impossible for such vehicles purchased in Mexico to be registered in the U.S. A trio of senators has urged the Trump administration this month to ban Chinese vehicles sold and registered in Mexico and Canada from entering the country; several dozen House lawmakers sent a similar letter this week. A Senate bill to prohibit China’s carmakers from building cars in the U.S. is being crafted. (…)
The threat to the U.S. car industry, which notched more than 16 million new-vehicle sales last year, is unlike anything it has faced in decades. Having largely abandoned budget cars years ago, Detroit’s Big Three now rely heavily on expensive SUVs and pickup trucks that deliver fatter profits. At the same time, fewer entry-level models are being offered to car buyers. No new car offered in the U.S. today has a sticker price below $20,000. The Chinese have vehicles ready to fill that market hole.
Auto executives and lawmakers say China has created an unfair playing field, with heavy government subsidies and ultralow labor costs. In addition to applying tariffs, the U.S. government banned Chinese-connected software in new cars.
BYD, Geely and Great Wall Motors are now among the biggest carmakers in the world. They have been gobbling up market share in Europe and other parts of Asia. In Mexico, Chinese vehicles account for a quarter of total sales. Soon, Canada will allow tens of thousands of inexpensive Chinese EVs to be imported.
Sen. Bernie Moreno (R., Ohio) said the bill he plans to introduce would “hermetically seal” the U.S. from Chinese automakers. Chinese cars from Canada or Mexico couldn’t be driven into the country. American car companies couldn’t pursue joint-ventures with Chinese automakers. Chinese car companies that own U.S. brands, such as Geely-controlled Volvo and Polestar, would have to divest themselves of those brands by 2030. (…)
About 30% of American car buyers would be open to buying a vehicle from China, up by 15 percentage points from a decade prior, according to a survey by Strategic Vision, a market-research firm.
Federal regulations allow Mexican residents and those with dual citizenship to drive their cars into the U.S., even if their vehicles aren’t compliant with relevant standards. That is giving Americans along the border a firsthand look at the Chinese competition. (…)
In the 1970s, Toyota and other Japanese car companies began grabbing market share. The subsequent entry of Hyundai and Kia undermined any lingering edge domestic carmakers had in the budget sedan market. The combined market share of General Motors and Ford Motor, once roughly 70%, declined sharply, and Chrysler nearly went bankrupt in the early 1980s. (…)
In a 2011 interview, Tesla Chief Executive Elon Musk burst out laughing when asked about an EV that BYD hoped to bring to the U.S. “Have you seen their car?” Musk said. (…)
Earlier this decade, [Bob Lutz, a former senior executive at Ford, Chrysler, BMW and GM, where he was vice chairman] said, he had an epiphany about how advanced Beijing has become when he bought a China-made Buick Envision crossover, which GM exported to the U.S. It rocked him—the fit and finish, the absence of road noise, the “total silkiness and sweet refinement” of the vehicle, he said. “I thought, ‘Boy, if they know how to make Buicks like this in China, they obviously know how to make great cars.’” (…)
Despite the current barriers keeping Chinese cars out of the U.S., there is resignation in the industry that they will eventually come. In some ways, they are already here. Alphabet’s autonomous driving unit Waymo is currently outfitting purpose-built robotaxis made by Zeekr, a Geely-owned brand, which are imported and worked on at an Arizona plant. Some Chinese-made Volvos have been exported to the U.S. (…)
- Tested: The Geely Galaxy M9 Proves Chinese Cars Could Be Seriously Competitive in America Our exclusive first test of this plug-in hybrid SUV shows just how far Chinese automakers have come
(…) Could the Geely Galaxy M9 work in the U.S.? Yes, absolutely. This could be an incredibly competitive SUV in a class full of strong contenders. (…)
Meanwhile, in Europe:
Volkswagen rolls out cheaper EVs in battle with Chinese carmakers
Volkswagen has unveiled one of its cheapest electric vehicles to date, as it bets on a series of new launches to boost profits from affordable battery-powered models and compete with Chinese rivals.
The ID.Polo, launched on Wednesday, will retail from about €25,000 and is the standard bearer in a new “family” of four entry-level EVs to be released this year across three Volkswagen Group brands — VW, Škoda and Cupra.
The cars were developed jointly, generating savings of about €650mn by avoiding duplicating work across the brands, said Volkswagen, which is seeking to boost the profitability of its EVs and reduce the cost of producing mass-volume models.
“This is how we are making electromobility economically viable in the volume segment and accessible to the masses,” VW brand chief executive Thomas Schäfer said at an event in March.
The vehicles share a common platform, have almost 80 per cent of the same components and will be produced at a single factory in Spain, where labour costs are lower than in Germany. (…)
The ID.Polo’s starting price compares with just under €23,000 for the entry-level version of BYD’s Dolphin Surf, which is in the same segment. (…)
The new ID.Polo will be followed next year by the release of the smaller and even cheaper ID.Every1 with prices starting at €20,000. (…)
In the US of A:
It’s never a good idea to sack the entire National Science Board Donald Trump is spurning the research that makes progress possible
(…) the National Science Board, has set the long-term strategic direction of American research {since 1950]. On Friday, the White House abruptly fired all its 22 members. (…)
The purge comes after the nomination last year of Jim O’Neill, a close associate of Peter Thiel, as the agency’s new head (the tech investor is yet to be confirmed). Separately, Donald Trump has remoulded the usual presidential circle of science advisers to include 12 technology or business figures, including Meta’s Mark Zuckerberg and Nvidia’s Jensen Huang, and just one academic.
These events tell us something important: first, that Trump does not grasp the value of investing in research for the long term; second, that he does not believe in diversifying the national portfolio, and is instead betting heavily on AI; and finally that Bush’s ideas on how nations should best foster scientific enterprise no longer apply in the country that pioneered them.
The 22 dismissed advisers — who include computer scientists, chemists and engineers — received an email saying their posts had been terminated with immediate effect. In a statement, Sudip Parikh, who heads the American Association for the Advancement of Science and was not an adviser, called the firings “the latest in a string of erratic decisions that are destabilizing not only the National Science Foundation, but all of American science”.
The country, Parikh fumed, was “abdicating” its position as a global leader in research.
The advisers were next due to convene on May 5.
According to the journal Nature, the board was preparing a report on how the US is losing scientific ground to China. The Trump administration has a habit of junking advisers with inconvenient opinions.
Last year, the health department, led by vaccine sceptic Robert F Kennedy Jr, ousted members of a committee advising on immunisation policy. The White House Office of Science and Technology Policy did not respond to a request for comment. (…)
King Charles subtly rebukes Donald Trump despite show of unity Flattery and pomp of the occasion fail to conceal strained US-UK relationship
In King Charles’s speech to a joint session of Congress, the first by a member of the British royal family in more than 30 years, he admonished his hosts on Capitol Hill — and down the road at the White House.
“America’s words carry weight and meaning, as they have since independence,” the 77-year-old British monarch said. “The actions of this great nation matter even more.” (…)
Speaking to Congress, King Charles simply alluded to conflicts in Europe and the Middle East posing “immense challenges for the international community and whose impact is felt in communities the length and breadth of our own countries”.
But the King did not pull all his punches. His speech reflected European concerns that the US might be going rogue, turning its back on its traditional allies and losing its democratic bearings.
He touted the importance of Nato and support for Ukraine, which have been called into question by Trump, and value of the “rule of law” and an “independent judiciary” which the administration’s critics fear is fraying in the US.
King Charles also evoked “the principle that executive power is subject to checks and balances” in the face of Trump’s attempts to give himself much broader authority over other branches of government.
But it is unclear if Trump saw those comments as swipes from the King. Following King Charles’s speech to Congress, the White House released a photo of Trump and the British monarch laughing. “TWO KINGS,” said the caption.
Swagel also said that the impact on energy prices from the war in Iran is offsetting the boost to the economy from the tax cuts enacted in 2025.