The return of gunboat capitalism
The world this week
Politics
Business
The weekly cartoon

Leaders

Multinationals and geopolitics
America’s gunboat capitalism will make the world poorer
And Donald Trump’s use of companies as a tool of state will make it no safer

Extraordinarily high stakes
What the collapse of Iran’s regime would mean
Thousands have died and America has threatened to strike back against the horror there
Jerome Powell during the Federal Reserve Board open meeting in Washington, DC, October 24th 2025
Central bankers of the world, unite!
A private memo from central banks to governments
You come at the king (of finance), you best not miss
A Petroleos de Venezuela SA oil pumpjack on Lake Maracaibo in Cabimas, Venezuela
The channel
Without democracy, Donald Trump’s Venezuelan oil quest will fail
Sidelining the democratic opposition and its leader, María Corina Machado, would be a mistake

250th birthday
America has coped with worse things than Donald Trump
Lessons from history for the next three years

Letters
A selection of correspondence
Britain’s relationship with the EU
By Invitation

Devotion to deregulation
Javier Milei: Rein in regulators, not big companies
Briefing
An illustration depicting broken conveyor belts wrapped around the globe, symbolising the fragmentation of global supply chains.
The disfiguring of big business
Geopolitics is warping multinationals’ commercial decisions
Firms are reshaping their operations, at the expense of their profits
Asia
A tangle of electrical wires in the Old City of New Delhi.
Electric dreams
To power up growth, India must be rewired
Fishy business
China is testing South Korea in the Yellow Sea
Forward or back
Will the army hold up Vietnam’s big reforms?
Banyan
Why Go is going nowhere
China
The modified ZQ-2 Y-1 carrier rocket carrying two test satellites blasts off from a commercial space innovation pilot zone in China.
It’s not (just) rocket science
The big ambitions of China’s private space industry
Pollution solution
The battle for blue skies over Beijing leaves farmers cold
In the slow lane
The best way to see Hong Kong is on its trams
Chaguan
China obsesses over America’s “kill line”
United States
Attendees observe the National Anthem during AmericaFest.
Keep out
MAGA wants a moratorium on legal migration, too
Rental illness
Why America’s corporate landlords are not villains
America’s navy
A strategy that needs rethinking
Congress awakens
Pro-science Republicans are fending-off cuts to funding
Uvalde shooting trial
Should America’s police ever be criminally liable for failing to stop crimes?
States and rights
The ICE officer who killed Renee Good may yet be charged
Lexington
Like Donald Trump, Zohran Mamdani promises “a new approach to power”

The Americas
A statue of a hand holding a drilling rig near the headquarters of PDVSA, Venezuela's state oil company, in Caracas, Venezuela
Carrots and sticks
Donald Trump’s Venezuela oil deal is already up and running
After the strike
Venezuelans believe Donald Trump has offered them a better future
On tiptoe to Beijing
Mark Carney is on a mission to trade with the world
Brazil’s back yard
What the Donroe doctrine means for Brazil
Left wobbling
Cuba’s regime is in dire straits
Middle East & Africa
A member of the Iranian police attends a pro-government rally in Tehran, Iran, January 12, 2026
Khamenei or we burn the region
Bereft of legitimacy, the reeling regime in Iran massacres its own people
Reza Pahlavi speaks out
Reza Pahlavi says Iran is undergoing a revolution
Iran’s internet blackout
How Iran’s regime has hidden its brutal crackdown
Our interview with Bibi
Binyamin Netanyahu’s plan to win Israeli—and global—hearts and minds
Energy in Nigeria
Home-grown firms are helping Nigeria’s oil industry to rebound
Europe
Training of Danish Armed Forces Arctic specialists in Greenland, Oct 2025
Out in the cold
Europe has three options for defending Greenland
Judging the judges
Spain’s judiciary is caught up in a bitter political war
A new sort of transatlanticism
Europe and South America seal a trade pact for the Trump era
The Turkish throne
Who might succeed Recep Tayyip Erdogan?
Bankrupt in Berlin
Germany’s economy is so bad even sausage factories are closing
Charlemagne
Europe’s farmers no longer rule the roost unchallenged
Britain
A crewman is conducting winching training over the sea from a helicopter during the UK Carrier Strike Group deployment
Defence spending
Six months after a big review, British defence is still in trouble
Enter the robo-cops
Britain’s high-tech hunt for Russian subs in the North Atlantic
Blurred lines
Nigel Farage would bring uncertainty to Britain’s policy on Putin
Matchless scandal
The trouble with West Midlands Police
Red alert
A weapon that could help red squirrels in their Battle of Britain
Pub crawl-back
Another U-turn from Britain’s government
Pedestrianisation
The case for banning vehicles from Oxford Street in London is weak
Bagehot
Reform UK risks blowing a once-in-a-century moment
International
A man has a solitary glass of red wine in the Brasserie de l'Ile St. Louis. A waiter looks on in the background.
A vintage slump
Falling wine sales reflect a lonelier and more atomised world
The Telegram
Donald Trump used to be risk-averse. Is that changing?
Business
A chinese flag made from a shopping bag
Going global 3.0
A new generation of Chinese companies is expanding around the world
Hard drilling
Who will cash in on Venezuelan oil?
Cover up
Under growing pressure, Elon Musk backs down on nude deepfakes
Unnatural selection
Job applicants are winning the AI arms race against recruiters
Bartleby
The parable of the supermarket self-checkout
What’s mined is mine
The race for copper has brought a wave of mining mega-mergers
Shopped out
How Saks Fifth Avenue’s owner went bust
Schumpeter
Innovations in energy and finance are further inflating the AI bubble
Finance & economics
An illustration of three sledgehammers on top of a smashed layer of glass over an image of a classical building with a pediment and columned portico.
Interference day
It’s not just the Fed. Politics looms over central banks everywhere
A line drawn at the Fed
Jerome Powell punches back
Lender offenders
Donald Trump’s crusade against usury reaches Wall Street
Buttonwood
Is passive investment inflating a stockmarket bubble?
Misery loves company
Pessimism is the world’s main economic problem
Free exchange
The economics of regime change
Science & technology
Students during a training session at a full-time boarding primary and secondary football school.
Lament of the Tiger Mother
Why child prodigies rarely become elite performers
The climate in 2025
Hotter still, and hotter
Pan-sexual
Same-sex sexual behaviour in primates is a survival strategy
Well informed
Do RFK junior’s new dietary guidelines make sense?
Culture
A stylized factory scene where workers assemble a giant rifle inside an industrial workshop, rendered in bold red, black, and white tones.
Boffins v brutes
Did killers make the modern world?
Untying the knot
How well do you know the person lying next to you in bed?
Back Story
Are artists right to boycott the “Trump-Kennedy Centre”?
World in a dish
How bagels conquered the world
The beat goes on
The risky plan to take the “K” out of K-pop
Crime queen
The secret to Agatha Christie’s success
Economic & financial indicators
Indicators
Economic data, commodities and markets
Obituary
Aldrich Ames at Allenwood Prison in Allenwood, Pennsylvania, United States, August 1995
Shopping bags of secrets
Aldrich Ames built a career on betraying trust