Business and Economy

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The incident marks the second time in recent weeks that the US has seized an oil tanker near Venezuela.

The United States has seized an oil tanker off the coast of Venezuela in international waters, according to officials quoted by international news agencies.

The incident comes just days after US President Donald Trump announced a “blockade” of all sanctioned oil tankers entering and leaving Venezuela.

This also marks the second time in recent weeks that the US has seized a tanker near Venezuela and comes amid a large US military build-up in the region as President Donald Trump continues to ramp up pressure on Venezuelan President Nicolas Maduro.

Three officials, who were speaking to the Reuters news agency on the condition of anonymity, did not say where the operation was taking place but added the Coast Guard was in the lead.

Two officials, speaking to The Associated Press news agency, also confirmed the operations. The action was described as a “consented boarding”, with the tanker stopping voluntarily and allowing US forces to board it, one official said.

Al Jazeera’s Heide Zhou-Castro said that there was no official confirmation from the US authorities on the operation.

“We are still waiting for confirmation from the White House and Pentagon on the details, including which ship, where it was located, and whether or not this ship was beneath the US sanctions,” she said.

More soon…

European farmers are protesting against the EU-Mercosur deal.

That is as signing has been postponed until January, due to disagreements in Europe.

The European-South American deal, planned for more than 25 years, would create the world’s largest free-trade zone.

So, why is there division?

Presenter: Folly Bah Thibault

Guests:

Pieter Cleppe – Editor-in-chief at BrusselsReport.eu
Ciaran Mullooly – Member of the European Parliament for the Independent Ireland group
Gustavo Ribeiro – Founder and editor-in-chief of the Brazilian Report online newspaper

The Delaware Supreme Court rules in favour of Musk and his $56bn compensation package.

Elon Musk’s 2018 pay package from Tesla, once worth $56bn, has been restored by the Delaware Supreme Court, in the United States, two years after a lower court struck down the compensation deal as “unfathomable”.

Friday’s ruling overturns a decision that had prompted a furious backlash from Musk and damaged Delaware’s business-friendly reputation.

The pay package was by far the largest ever, until Tesla shareholders approved a new, even larger pay plan of nearly $1 trillion in November.

The ruling means that Musk can finally get paid for his work since 2018, when he transformed Tesla from a struggling startup to one of the world’s most valuable companies.

The 2018 pay deal provided Musk options to acquire about 304 million Tesla shares at a deeply discounted price if the company hit various milestones, which it did.

Tesla estimated in 2018 that the plan was potentially worth $56bn, although given the rise in the stock price, the value ballooned to about $120bn by early November. The options represent approximately 9 percent of Tesla’s outstanding stock.

Musk never collected his stock options because, soon after shareholders approved the 2018 compensation, the board was sued by Richard Tornetta, an investor with just nine Tesla shares.

In 2024, after a five-day trial, Delaware Judge Kathaleen McCormick concluded that Tesla’s directors were conflicted and key facts were hidden from shareholders when they voted to approve the plan. She ordered that the 2018 plan be rescinded.

Musk accused Delaware judges of being activists, hostile to tech founders, and he urged businesses to follow Tesla and reincorporate elsewhere.

Dropbox, Roblox, The Trade Desk and Coinbase were among the handful of large companies that moved their legal homes to Nevada or Texas. However, Delaware remains by far the most popular legal home for US public companies.

Tesla’s board has warned that Musk, the world’s richest person who also leads the SpaceX rocket venture and the artificial intelligence startup xAI, could leave the electric car company if he does not get the pay he wants and an increase in his voting power.

In November, shareholders approved a new pay package that could be worth $878bn if Tesla meets targets for self-driving vehicles, a robotaxi network and sales of humanoid robots.

Tesla has taken steps to reduce the risk that a shareholder could tie up the 2025 package in the courts.

The Austin-based company is now incorporated in Texas, which allows Tesla to require that any investor or group of investors must own 3 percent of the company stock before suing for an alleged corporate law violation. A stake of that size would be worth about $30bn, and Musk is the only individual with that much stock.

United States President Donald Trump announced new agreements aimed at lowering prescription drug prices.

On Friday, alongside leaders from Bristol Myers Squibb, Gilead Sciences, and Merck, among other leading pharma giants, the president announced deals that would cut prices on their medications to match that of the developed nation with the lowest price.

“Starting next year, American drug prices will come down fast and furious and will soon be some of the lowest in the developed world,” Trump said.

“This is the biggest thing having to do with drugs in the history of the purchase of drugs.”

Under the deals, each drugmaker will cut prices on some of the drugs sold to the Medicaid programme for low-income people, senior administration officials said, promising “massive savings” on widely used medicines without giving specific figures.

“We were subsidising the entire world. We’re not doing it anymore,” Trump said at a White House news conference, flanked by nine pharma executives.

Mehmet Oz, the director of the Centres for Medicare and Medicaid Service, said Regeneron, Johnson & Johnson, and AbbVie would visit the White House after the holidays for the launch of the government’s TrumpRx website.

US patients currently pay by far the most for prescription medicines, often nearly three times more than in other developed nations, and Trump has been pressuring drugmakers to lower their prices to what patients pay elsewhere.

The details of each deal were not immediately available, but officials said they included agreements to cut cash-pay direct-to-consumer prices of select drugs sold potentially through the TrumpRx.gov website, to launch drugs in the US at prices equal to – not lower than – those in other wealthy nations and to increase manufacturing. In return, companies can receive a three-year exemption from any tariffs.

Drug prices fall

Merck said it will sell its diabetes drugs Januvia, Janumet and Janumet XR – set to face generic competition next year – directly to US consumers at about 70 percent off list prices. If approved, its experimental cholesterol drug enlicitide will also be offered through direct-to-consumer channels.

Enlicitide is one of two Merck drugs expected to receive a speedy review under the FDA’s new, fast-track pathway, the Reuters news agency has previously reported.

Amgen said it will expand its direct-to-patient programme to include migraine drug Aimovig and rheumatoid arthritis medicine Amjevita, offering both at $299 a month – nearly 60 percent and 80 percent below current US list prices.

In July, Trump sent letters to leaders of 17 major pharmaceutical companies, outlining how they should provide so-called most-favoured -nation prices to the US government’s Medicaid health programme for low-income people, and guarantee that new drugs will not be launched at prices above those in other high-income countries.

So far, five companies have struck deals with the administration to rein in prices. They are Pfizer, Eli Lilly, AstraZeneca, Novo Nordisk and EMD Serono, the US division of Germany’s Merck.

A portion of revenues from each company’s foreign sales will also be remitted to the US to offset costs, officials said.

The companies pledged together to invest more than $150bn in the US for R&D and manufacturing, according to officials, although it was unclear whether that included earlier commitments. Several also agreed to donate drug ingredients to the US strategic reserve.

Trump has long focused on the disparity between drug prices in the US and other wealthy countries, which have government-run health systems that negotiate price discounts.

The spectre of tighter price controls by the US government initially spooked investors, but the terms of the deals announced so far have calmed many of those fears.

Analysts have noted that Medicaid, which accounts for only approximately 10 percent of US drug spending, already benefits from substantial price discounts, exceeding 80 percent in some cases.

The FTC had accused the grocery delivery giant of charging fees to consumers after promising ‘free delivery’.

Instacart has agreed to pay $60m in refunds to settle allegations brought by the United States Federal Trade Commission (FTC) that the online grocery delivery platform deceived consumers about its membership programme and free delivery offers.

According to court documents filed in San Francisco on Thursday, Instacart’s offer of “free delivery” for first orders was illusory because shoppers were charged other fees, the FTC alleged.

The agency also accused Instacart of failing to adequately notify shoppers that their free trials of its Instacart+ subscription service would convert to paid memberships and of misleading consumers about its refund policy.

“The FTC is focused on monitoring online delivery services to ensure that competitors are transparently competing on price and delivery terms,” said Christopher Mufarrige, who leads the FTC’s consumer protection work.

An Instacart spokesperson said the company flatly denies any allegations of wrongdoing, but that the settlement allows the company to focus on shoppers and retailers.

“We provide straightforward marketing, transparent pricing and fees, clear terms, easy cancellation, and generous refund policies — all in full compliance with the law and exceeding industry norms,” the spokesperson said.

The shopping platform is currently under scrutiny after a recent study by nonprofit groups found that individual shoppers simultaneously received different prices for the same items at the same stores.

The FTC is investigating the company and has demanded information about Instacart’s Eversight pricing tool, the news agency Reuters reported on Wednesday.

Instacart has said that retailers are responsible for setting prices, and that pricing tests run through Eversight are random and not based on user data.

Lindsay Owens, the executive director of the Groundwork Collaborative, an economic think tank, criticised the grocery platform for using artificial intelligence (AI) to tweak its prices.

“At a time when families are being squeezed by the highest grocery costs in a generation, Instacart chose to run AI experiments that are quietly driving prices higher,” Owens said in written remarks provided to Al Jazeera.

She also called on the administration of US President Donald Trump to take action to prevent such price manipulation from continuing into the future.

“While the FTC’s investigation is welcome news, it must be followed with meaningful action that ends these exploitative pricing schemes and protects consumers,” Owens said. “Instacart must face consequences for their algorithmic price gouging, not just a slap on the wrist.”

On Wall Street, Instacart’s stock is taking a hit on the heels of the settlement, finishing out the day down 1.5 percent.

BP has tapped Woodside Energy’s Meg O’Neill as its next CEO, its first external hire for the post in more than a century and the first woman to lead a top-five oil major as the firm pivots back to fossil fuels.

O’Neill, an Exxon veteran, will take over in April following the abrupt departure of Murray Auchincloss, the second CEO change in just over two years as the British oil major strives to improve its profitability and share performance, which for years has lagged competitors like Exxon.

The company embarked on a major strategy shift earlier this year, slashing billions in planned renewable energy initiatives and shifting its focus back to traditional oil and gas. BP has pledged to divest $20bn in assets by 2027, including its Castrol lubricants unit, and reduce debt and costs.

“Progress has been made in recent years, but increased rigour and diligence are required to make the necessary transformative changes to maximise value for our shareholders,” new BP Chair Albert Manifold said in a statement.

When Manifold took up his post in October, he emphasised the need for a deeper reshaping of BP’s portfolio to increase profitability and faced pressure from activist investor Elliott Investment Management, one of BP’s largest shareholders, which called for him to urgently address the company’s shortcomings.

Elliott saw the change of CEO as a sign of BP’s willingness to act swiftly to deliver cost cuts and divestments, a person familiar with the situation said.

An external change

O’Neill, a 55-year-old American from Boulder, Colorado, and the first openly gay woman to helm a FTSE 100 company, headed Woodside since 2021, having previously spent 23 years at Exxon.

Under O’Neill’s leadership, Woodside merged with BHP Group’s petroleum arm to create a top 10 global independent oil and gas producer valued at $40bn and doubled Woodside’s oil and gas production.

The acquisition took the company to the US, where it embarked on a major Louisiana liquefied natural gas project, which it is progressing in an LNG market braced for oversupply.

BP spent more than 40 percent of its $16.2bn investment budget in the United States last year and plans to boost its US output to 1 million barrels of oil equivalent per day by the end of the decade.

Markets react

Woodside shares fell as much as 2.9 percent after news of O’Neill’s departure. At BP, shares were up 0.3 percent, compared with a broader index of European energy companies.

Like BP, Woodside shares have underperformed rivals. In absolute terms, though, the stock has risen about 10 percent during O’Neill’s tenure.

BP’s executive vice president, Carol Howle, will serve as interim CEO. Auchincloss, 55, will step down on Thursday and serve in an advisory role until December 2026.

BP said O’Neill’s appointment was part of its long-term succession planning, though it had not publicly announced a search process.

Auchincloss became CEO in 2024, taking over from Bernard Looney, who was fired after lying to the board about personal relationships with colleagues.

After an ill-fated foray into renewables under Looney, BP has promised to increase profitability and cut costs while re-routing spending to focus on oil and gas, launching a review in August of how best to develop and monetise oil and gas production assets.

During BP’s third-quarter earnings call last month, the company did not give an update on the closely watched sale process for its Castrol lubricants unit, the centrepiece of its $20bn asset-sale drive to slash its debt pile.

“We question whether this is set to change BP’s thinking once again on key strategic initiatives – should they defer the sale of Castrol? We think yes. Should they cut the buyback to zero and repair the balance sheet further? We think yes,” said RBC analyst Biraj Borkhataria.

Woodside said in a separate statement that O’Neill was leaving immediately, and it had appointed executive Liz Westcott as acting CEO, while intending to announce a permanent appointment in the first quarter of 2026.

Two words that largely define the economy right now: Global reordering.

President Donald Trump’s Tariffs have landed as a shock to global trade. This is 2025.

Major economies are rewriting their playbooks, and alliances are being redrawn.

From Africa’s minerals boom to the global AI race, countries are scrambling for influence – even as debt piles up.

They are spending more, borrowing more and making tough choices from defence to climate policy and labour shortages.

And through it all, people are bearing high costs.

In October, a small electronics manufacturer in the western Indian state of Gujarat shipped its first batch of chip modules to a client in California.

Kaynes Semicon, together with Japanese and Malaysian technology partners, assembled the chips in a new factory funded with incentives under Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s $10bn semiconductor push announced in 2021.

Modi has been trying to position India as an additional manufacturing hub for global companies that may be looking to expand their production beyond China, with limited success.

One sign of that is India’s first commercial foundry for mature chips that is currently under construction, also in Gujarat. The $11bn project is supported by technology transfer from a Taiwanese chipmaker and has onboarded the United States chip giant Intel as a potential customer.

With companies the world over hungering for chips, India’s entry into that business could boost its role in global supply chains. But experts caution that India still has a long way to go in attracting more foreign investment and catching up in cutting-edge technology.

Unprecedented momentum

Semiconductor chips are designed, fabricated in foundries, and then assembled and packaged for commercial use. The US leads in chip design, Taiwan in fabrication, and China, increasingly, in packaging.

The upcoming foundry in Gujarat is a collaboration between India’s Tata Group, one of the largest conglomerates in the country, and Taiwan’s Powerchip Semiconductor Manufacturing Corporation (PSMC), which is assisting with the plant’s construction and technology transfer.

On December 8, Tata Electronics also signed an agreement with Intel to explore the manufacturing and packaging of its products in Tata’s upcoming facilities, including the foundry. The partnership will address the growing domestic demand.

Last year, Tata was approved for a 50 percent subsidy from the Modi government for the foundry, along with additional state-level incentives, and could come online as early as December 2026.

Even if delayed, the project marks a pivotal moment for India, which has seen multiple attempts to build a commercial fab stall in the past.

The foundry will focus on fabricating chips ranging from 28 nanometres (nm) to 110nm, typically referred to as mature chips because they are comparatively easier to produce than smaller 7nm or 3nm chips.

Mature chips are used in most consumer and power electronics, while the smaller chips are in high demand for AI data centres and high-performance computing. Globally, the technology for mature chips is more widely available and distributed. Taiwan leads production of these chips, with China fast catching up, though Taiwan’s TSMC dominates production for cutting-edge nodes below 7nm.

“India has long been strong in chip design, but the challenge has been converting that strength into semiconductor manufacturing,” said Stephen Ezell, vice president for global innovation policy at the Washington, DC-based Information Technology and Innovation Foundation (ITIF).

“In the past two to three years, there’s been more progress on that front than in the previous decade – driven by stronger political will at both the central and state levels, and a more coordinated push from the private sector to commit to these investments,” Ezell told Al Jazeera.

Easy entry point

More than half of the Modi government’s $10bn in semiconductor incentives is earmarked for the Tata-PSMC venture, with the remainder supporting nine other projects focused mainly on the assembly, testing and packaging (ATP) stage of the supply chain.

These are India’s first such projects – one by Idaho-based Micron Technology, also in Gujarat, and another by the Tata Group in the northeastern Assam state. Both will use in-house technologies and have drawn investments of $2.7bn and $3.3bn, respectively.

The remaining projects are smaller, with cumulative investments of about $2bn, and are backed by technology partners such as Taiwan’s Foxconn, Japan’s Renesas Electronics, and Thailand’s Stars Microelectronics.

“ATP units offer a lower path of resistance compared to a large foundry, requiring smaller investments – typically between $50m and $1bn. They also carry less risk, and the necessary technology know-how is widely available globally,” Ashok Chandak, president of the India Electronics and Semiconductor Association (IESA), told Al Jazeera.

Still, most of the projects are behind schedule.

Micron’s facility, approved for incentives in June 2023, was initially expected to begin production by late 2024. However, the company noted in its fiscal 2025 report that the Gujarat facility will “address demand in the latter half of this decade”.

Approved in February 2024, the Tata facility was initially slated to be operational by mid-2025, but the timeline has now been pushed to April 2026.

When asked for reasons behind the delays, both Micron and Tata declined to comment.

One exception is a smaller ATP unit by Kaynes Semicon, which in October exported a consignment of sample chip modules to an anchor client in California – a first for India.

Another project by CG Semi, part of India’s Murugappa Group, is in trial runs, with commercial production expected in the coming months.

The semiconductor projects under the Tata Group and the Murugappa Group have drawn public scrutiny after Indian online news outlet Scroll.in reported that both companies made massive political donations after they were picked for the projects.

As per Scroll.in, the Tata Group donated 7.5 billion rupees ($91m) and 1.25 billion rupees ($15m), respectively, to Modi’s Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) just weeks after securing government subsidies in February 2024 and ahead of national elections. Neither group had made such large donations to the party before. Such donations are not prohibited by law. Both the Tata Group and the Murugappa Group declined to comment to Al Jazeera regarding the reports.

Meeting domestic demand a key priority

The upcoming projects in India – both the foundry and the ATP units – will primarily focus on legacy, or mature, chips sized between 28nm and 110nm. While these chips are not at the cutting-edge of semiconductor technology, they account for the bulk of global demand, with applications across cars, industrial equipment and consumer electronics.

China dominates the ATP segment globally with a 30 percent share and accounted for 42 percent of semiconductor equipment spending in 2024, according to DBS Group Research.

India has long positioned itself as a “China Plus One” destination amid global supply chain diversification, with some progress evident in Apple’s expansion of its manufacturing base in the country. The company assembles all its latest iPhone models in India, in partnership with Foxconn and Tata Electronics, and has emerged as a key supplier to the US market this year following tariff-related uncertainties over Chinese shipments.

Its push in the ATP segment, however, is driven largely by the need to meet the growing domestic demand for chips, anticipated to surge from $50bn today to $100bn by 2030.

“Globally, too, the market will expand from around $650bn to $1 trillion. So, we’re not looking at shifting manufacturing from China to elsewhere. We’re looking at capturing the incremental demand emerging both in India and abroad,” Chandak said.

India’s import of chips – both integrated circuits and microassemblies – has jumped in recent years, rising 36 percent in 2024 to nearly $24bn from the previous year. An integrated circuit (IC) is a chip serving logic, memory or processing functions, whereas a microassembly is a broader package of multiple chips performing combined functions.

The momentum has continued this year, with imports up 20 percent year-on-year, accounting for about 3 percent of India’s total import bill, according to official trade data. China remains the leading supplier with a 30 percent share, followed by Hong Kong (19 percent), South Korea (11 percent), Taiwan (10 percent), and Singapore (10 percent).

“Even if it’s a 28 nm chip, from a trade balance perspective, India would rather produce and package it domestically than import it,” Ezell of ITIF said, adding that domestic capability would enhance the competitiveness of chip-dependent industries.

Better incentives needed

The Modi government’s support for the chip sector, while unprecedented for India, is still dwarfed by the $48bn committed by China and the $53bn provisioned under the US’s CHIPS Act.

To achieve scale in the ATP segment for meaningful import substitution – and to advance towards producing chips smaller than 28nm – India will need continued government support, and there is a second round of incentives already in the works.

“The reality is, if India wants to compete at the leading edge of semiconductors, it will need to attract a foreign partner – American or Asian – since only a handful of companies globally operate at that level. It’s highly unlikely that a domestic firm will be competitive at 7nm or 3nm anytime soon,” Ezell said.

According to him, India needs to continue focusing on improving its overall business environment – from ensuring reliable power and infrastructure to streamlining regulations, customs and tariff policies.

India’s engineers make up about a fifth of the global chip design workforce, but rising competition from China and Malaysia to attract multinational design firms could erode that edge.

In its latest incentive round, the Indian government limited benefits to domestic firms to promote local intellectual property – a move that, according to Alpa Sood, legal director at the India operations of California-based Marvell Technology, risks driving multinational design work elsewhere.

“India already has a thriving chip design ecosystem strengthened by early-stage incentives from the government. What we need, to further accelerate and build stronger R&D muscle – is incentives that mirror competing countries like China [220 percent tax incentives] and Malaysia [200 percent tax incentives]. This will ensure we don’t lose the advantage we’ve built over the years,” Sood told Al Jazeera.

Marvell’s India operations are its largest outside the US.

The Trump effect

India’s upcoming chip facilities, while aimed at meeting domestic demand, will also export to clients in the US, Japan, and Taiwan. Though US President Donald Trump has threatened 100 percent tariffs on semiconductors made outside the US, none have yet been imposed.

A bigger concern for India-US engagement – so far limited to education and training – is Washington’s 50 percent tariff on India over its Russian crude imports. Semiconductors remain exempt, but the broader trade climate has turned uncertain.

“Over half the global semiconductor market is controlled by US-headquartered firms, making engagement with them crucial,” Chandak said. “Any alignment with these firms, either through joint ventures or technology partnerships – is a preferred option.”

The global chip race is accelerating, and India’s policies will need to keep pace to become a serious player amid growing geo-economic fragmentation.

“These new 1.7nm fabs are so advanced they even factor in the moon’s gravitational pull – it’s literally a moonshot,” Ezell said. “Semiconductor manufacturing is the most complex engineering task humanity undertakes – and the policymaking behind it must be just as precise.”

An expanded federal healthcare subsidy that grew out of the pandemic looks all but certain to expire on December 31, as Republican leaders in the United States faced a rebellion from within their own ranks.

On Wednesday, four centrist Republicans in the House of Representatives broke with their party’s leadership to support a Democratic-backed extension for the healthcare subsidies under the Affordable Care Act (ACA), sometimes called “Obamacare”.

By a vote of 204 to 203, the House voted to stop the last-minute move by Democrats, aided by four Republicans, to force quick votes on a three-year extension of the Affordable Care Act subsidy.

Democrats loudly protested, accusing Republican leadership of gavelling an end to the vote prematurely while some members were still trying to vote.

“That’s outrageous,” Democratic Representative Jim McGovern of Massachusetts yelled at Republican leadership.

Some of the 24 million Americans who buy their health insurance through the ACA programme could face sharply higher costs beginning on January 1 without action by Congress.

Twenty-six House members had not yet voted – and some were actively trying to do so – when the House Republican leadership gavelled the vote closed on Wednesday. It is rare but not unprecedented for House leadership to cut a contested vote short.

Democratic Representative Rosa DeLauro of Connecticut said the decision prevented some Democrats from voting.

“Listen, it’s playing games when people’s lives are at stake,” DeLauro said. “They jettisoned it.”

It was the latest episode of congressional discord over the subsidies, which are slated to expire at the end of the year.

The vote also offered another key test to the Republican leadership of House Speaker Mike Johnson. Normally, Johnson determines which bills to bring to a House vote, but recently, his power has been circumvented by a series of “discharge petitions”, wherein a majority of representatives sign a petition to force a vote.

In a series of quickfire manoeuvres on Wednesday, Democrats resorted to one such discharge petition to force a vote on the healthcare subsidies in the new year.

They were joined by the four centrist Republicans: Mike Lawler of New York and Brian Fitzpatrick, Robert Bresnahan and Ryan MacKenzie of Pennsylvania.

The Democratic proposal would see the subsidies extended for three years.

But Republicans have largely rallied around their own proposal, a bill called the Lower Health Care Premiums for All Americans Act. It would reduce some insurance premiums, though critics argue it would raise others, and it would also reduce healthcare subsidies overall.

The nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office (CBO) on Tuesday said the legislation would decrease the number of people with health insurance by an average of 100,000 per year through 2035.

Its money-saving provisions would reduce federal deficits by $35.6bn, the CBO said.

Republicans have a narrow 220-seat majority in the 435-seat House of Representatives, and Democrats are hoping to flip the chamber to their control in the 2026 midterm elections.

Three of the four Republicans who sided with the Democrats over the discharge petition are from the swing state of Pennsylvania, where voters could lean right or left.

Affordability has emerged as a central question ahead of the 2026 midterms.

Even if the Republican-controlled House manages to pass a healthcare bill this week, it is unlikely to be taken up by the Senate before Congress begins a looming end-of-year recess that would stop legislative action until January 5.

By then, millions of Americans will be looking at significantly more expensive health insurance premiums that could prompt some to go without coverage.

Wednesday’s House floor battle could embolden Democrats and some Republicans to revisit the issue in January, even though higher premiums will already be in the pipeline.

Referring to the House debate, moderate Republican Senator Lisa Murkowski told reporters: “I think that that will help prompt a response here in the Senate after the first of the new year, and I’m looking forward to that.”

The ACA subsidies were a major point of friction earlier this year as well, during the historic 43-day government shutdown.

Democrats had hoped to extend the subsidies during the debate over government spending, but Republican leaders refused to take up the issue until a continuing budget resolution was passed first.

Brazilian president says it is now or never after Italy joins France in saying it is not ready to sign trade deal.

Brazilian President Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva has warned he may abandon a long-awaited trade deal between members of the South American bloc Mercosur and the European Union after key countries sought a delay.

The Brazilian leader issued the threat on Wednesday after Italy joined fellow heavyweight France in saying it was not ready to commit to the pact to create the world’s biggest free-trade area.

The EU had expected its 27 member states to approve the deal in time for European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen to fly to Brazil to sign an agreement with the host, along with Mercosur partners Argentina, Paraguay and Uruguay, on Saturday.

“I’ve already warned them: If we don’t do it now, Brazil won’t make any more agreements while I’m president,” Lula told a cabinet meeting.

“We have given in on everything that diplomacy could reasonably concede.”

‘Premature’ to sign: Meloni

The deal, more than two decades in the making, has been keenly backed by economic powerhouse Germany, along with Spain and the Nordic countries, amid rising Chinese competition and recent United States tariffs, which have increased the incentive to diversify trade.

It would allow the EU to export more vehicles, machinery, spirits and wine to Latin America, and more beef, sugar, rice, honey and soya beans to flow in the opposite direction.

France, eager to protect its agriculture industry, had already called for a delay on a vote to approve the deal, and gained the support necessary to potentially block the agreement when Italian Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni said on Wednesday that Rome was also not ready.

“It would be premature to sign the deal in the coming days,” she told parliament, saying that some of the safeguards Italy is seeking on behalf of farmers were yet to be finalised.

She said Italy did not seek to block the deal altogether, and was “very confident” that her government’s concerns would have been addressed to allow it to be signed early next year,

French President Emmanuel Macron told a cabinet meeting on Wednesday that his government would “firmly oppose” any attempts to force through the deal.

Hungary and Poland are also lukewarm on the agreement.

By contrast, German Chancellor Friedrich Merz said Wednesday he would push “intensively” for the bloc to approve the deal by the year’s end, in what he described as a test of the EU’s “ability to act”.

EU reaches agreement on agricultural safeguards

In an effort to allay some of the concerns, the EU struck a provisional deal on Wednesday to set tighter controls on imports of farm products, amid a background of farmer protests against the deal.

It determined the trigger for launching an investigation into such imports if import volumes rose by more than 8 percent per year or prices fell by that amount in one or more EU members.

EU leaders will discuss the matter at a Brussels summit on Thursday, a commission spokesman said.

The US economy gains jobs in healthcare and construction as other sectors stagnate, shrink.

The United States economy lost 41,000 jobs in October and November, and the unemployment rate has ticked up to its highest level since 2021 as the labour market cools amid ongoing economic uncertainty driven by tariffs and immigration policies.

In November, the US economy added 64,000 jobs after shedding 105,000 in October, according to a report released on Tuesday by the Department of Labor’s Bureau of Labor Statistics.

The unemployment rate rose to 4.6 percent, up from 4.4 percent in September. Because of the government shutdown in October and November, the US government was unable to gather key data used to gauge the state of the economy, including the unemployment rate for October.

October’s job losses reflected the 162,000 federal workers who lost their posts, a result of deferred buyouts of their contracts,  which expired at the end of September.

In November, there was a loss of another 6,000 government jobs. Gains were seen in the healthcare, social assistance and construction sectors. Healthcare added 46,000 jobs – higher than the 39,000 jobs gained in the sector on average each month over the past 12 months.

Construction added 28,000, consistent with average gains over the past year. The social assistance sector added 18,000 jobs.

Transportation and warehousing lost 18,000. Manufacturing jobs are also on the decline. The sector shed 5,000 jobs in November after cutting 9,000 jobs in October following a 5,000-job loss in September.

White House economic adviser Kevin Hassett told reporters on Tuesday to expect to see more manufacturing jobs in the next six months.

His assessment was driven by growth in construction jobs and manufacturing investments, which signal job growth is on the way.

People working part time for economic reasons also rose to 5.5 million, which is up 909,000 from September.

“Today’s long-awaited jobs report confirms what we already suspected: [President Donald] Trump’s economy is stalling out and American workers are paying the price,” Alex Jacquez, chief of policy and advocacy at the economic think tank Groundwork Collaborative, said in a statement.

“Far from sparking a manufacturing renaissance, Trump’s reckless trade agenda is bleeding working-class jobs, forcing layoffs, and raising prices for businesses and consumers alike.”

The data was released after the Federal Reserve cut its benchmark interest rate by 25 basis points to 3.5-3.75 percent as labour conditions cool.

“The labour market has continued to cool gradually, … a touch more gradually than we thought,” Fed Chairman Jerome Powell said after the rate cut decision last week.

On Wall Street, markets fell slightly after the jobs report. In midday trading, the Nasdaq was down 0.4 percent, the S&P 500 was down 0.5 percent and the Dow Jones Industrial Average was 0.4 percent below its market open.

Paris says EU member states cannot vote on the trade agreement in its current state.

France has urged the European Union to postpone a vote on a trade deal with the South American bloc Mercosur, saying conditions are not yet in place for an agreement.

In a statement from Prime Minister Sebastien Lecornu’s office on Sunday, Paris said that EU member states cannot vote on the trade agreement in its current state.

“France asks that the deadlines be pushed back to continue work on getting the legitimate measures of protection for our European agriculture,” the statement added.

European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen is due to visit Brazil on Monday to finalise the landmark trade pact, which the 27-member union has been negotiating with the Mercosur trade bloc for more than 20 years. The agreement is being negotiated with four Mercosur members: Argentina, Brazil, Paraguay and Uruguay.

But the Commission first has to get the approval of the EU member states before signing any trade deal, and Paris has made its objection to the deal with the Mercosur countries clear.

“Given a Mercosur summit is announced for December 20, it is clear in this context that the conditions have not been met for any vote [by states] on authorising the signing of the agreement,” the statement from Paris said.

Earlier on Sunday, in an interview with the German financial daily Handelsblatt, French Minister of the Economy and Finance Roland Lescure also said that the treaty as it stands, “is simply not acceptable”.

He added that securing robust and effective safeguard clauses was one of the three key conditions France set before giving its blessing to the agreement.

He said the other key points were ensuring that the same production standards that EU farmers face are implemented and proper “import controls” are established.

Farmers in France and some other European countries say the deal will create unfair competition due to less stringent standards, which they fear could destabilise already fragile European food sectors.

“Until we have obtained assurances on these three points, France will not accept the agreement,” said Lescure.

European nations are expected to vote on the trade pact between Tuesday and Friday, according to EU sources.

The European Parliament will also vote on Tuesday on safeguards to reassure farmers, particularly those in France, who are fiercely opposed to the treaty.

The EU is Mercosur’s second-largest trading partner in goods, with exports of 57 billion euros ($67bn) in 2024, according to the European Commission.

The EU is also the biggest foreign investor in Mercosur, with a stock of 390 billion euros ($458bn) in 2023.

If a trade deal is approved later this month, the EU-Mercosur agreement could create a common market of 722 million people.

A New York Times reporter told Jeffrey Epstein that he could write an article that would define the financier on his own terms as he faced allegations of sexually abusing minors in the months leading up to his 2008 conviction, newly uncovered emails reveal.

After a negative article about Epstein was published in September 2007, then-New York Times journalist Landon Thomas Jr advised Epstein to “get ahead” of more bad publicity by doing an interview that would define the story “on your terms”.

“I Just read the Post. Now the floodgates will open — you can expect Vanity Fair and NYMag to pile on,” Thomas wrote to Epstein in an email dated September 20, 2007, referring to the magazines Vanity Fair and New York Magazine.

“My view is that the quicker you get out ahead of this and define the story and who you are on your terms in the NYT, the better it will be for you.”

Thomas, who left the Times in 2019, urged Epstein to quickly do an interview to prevent the “popular tabloid perception” about him from hardening, and expressed sympathy over his legal troubles.

“I know this is tough and hard for you, but remember jail may [be] bad, but it is not forever,” Thomas wrote.

As part of his pitch to Epstein, Thomas recalled a 2002 profile he wrote about the financier for New York Magazine, titled Jeffrey Epstein: International Moneyman of Mystery.

Written before Epstein’s first arrest in 2006, the profile portrayed the financier as an enigmatic but highly successful businessman with the appearance of a “taller, younger Ralph Lauren” and a “relentless brain that challenges Nobel Prize-winning scientists”.

The piece contained glowing appraisals from Epstein’s many high-profile associates, whose praise-filled descriptions included that he was “very smart”, “amazing”, “extraordinary”, and “talented”.

“Remember how for a while my NY Mag piece was the defining piece on you? That is no longer the case after all this,” Thomas wrote to Epstein.

“But I think if we did a piece for the Times, with the documents and evidence that you mention, plus you speaking for the record, we can again have a story that becomes the last public word on Jeffrey Epstein.”

A little more than a week later, on September 28, Thomas sent Epstein an email reiterating the importance of “getting out ahead” of other publications.

Thomas suggested that he begin reaching out to associates of Epstein who could talk about the financier’s business activities and scientific and philanthropic work, including former Harvard President Larry Summers and Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Barak.

“Before I get a glimpse of the legal material, I was thinking that I should at least start calling around to people who know you. Again to focus on the business and scientific/philanthropic aspect of the piece,” Thomas wrote.

“Could I start to do that — call people like Larry Summers, Jess Staley, George Mitchell, Ehud Barak, Bill Richardson and others?” Thomas finished the email expressing his hope that Epstein was “holding up okay” and stating his view that “we need to move on this.”

It is not clear how Epstein responded to Thomas’s emails, which were included in a trove of emails from Epstein’s personal accounts that were made available to Al Jazeera by the whistleblower website Distributed Denial of Secrets.

Thomas did not respond to a request for comment.

Following Thomas’s correspondence with Epstein, the Times went on to publish an article by the journalist detailing the financier’s downfall the following year.

The article, published a day after Epstein’s guilty plea on June 30, 2008, drew from in-person and phone interviews that Thomas had conducted with the financier, including during a visit to Epstein’s island of Little St James several months earlier.

In the article, Thomas described the financier sitting on the patio of his island mansion as he likened himself to the eponymous character of the satirical novel Gulliver’s Travels.

“Gulliver’s playfulness had unintended consequences,” Epstein was quoted as saying.

“That is what happens with wealth. There are unexpected burdens as well as benefits.”

A 2019 report by NPR said colleagues of Thomas at the Times had been “appalled” by the article when they reviewed it years later, following the journalist’s admission that he had solicited a $30,000 donation from Epstein for a cultural centre.

The emails obtained by Al Jazeera also show that Epstein emailed an error-strewn Word document to himself in which Thomas is described discussing the legal case against Epstein with then-Florida prosecutor David Weinstein.

The purpose and origin of the document, which describes Thomas and Weinstein discussing technical aspects of the charges facing Epstein, is unclear. Weinstein said he spoke to Thomas in January 2008, but that the document did not contain an accurate description of their conversation.

Weinstein said they had spoken about the “criminal justice process and general state and federal statutes”, but not Epstein’s case specifically.

He said he did not know where the information in the document came from or who provided it to Epstein.

“I never spoke with him about the specific facts of the late Mr Epstein’s case, nor did I offer any opinion about that matter,” Weinstein told Al Jazeera.

The emergence of the emails between Thomas and Epstein comes after correspondence the two men shared from 2015 to 2018 came to light last month in a batch of documents released by US lawmakers.

Among other revelations, those emails showed that Thomas let Epstein know that the late investigative journalist John Connolly had contacted him for information for Connolly’s 2016 book Filthy Rich: The Jeffrey Epstein Story.

“He seems very interested in your relationship with the news media,” Thomas wrote to Epstein in an email dated June 1, 2016. “I told him you were a hell of a guy :)”.

A spokesperson for the Times said Thomas had not worked for the newspaper since early 2019 “after editors discovered his failure to abide by our ethical standards”.

Monterrey, Mexico – In April, Mexican President Claudia Sheinbaum announced the country’s aerospace industry could see sustained annual growth of as much as 15 percent over the next four years, and attributed the sector’s expansion to a robust local manufacturing workforce, increasing exports, and a strong presence of foreign companies.

But with the review of the United States-Mexico-Canada Agreement (USMCA) coming up – the free-trade treaty between the three countries that helped Mexico’s aerospace sector to grow and flourish – the industry’s future is no longer certain.

Stakeholders warn that ensuring investment stability and strengthening labour standards are essential to protecting the sector’s North American supply chain.

Mexico is striving to become one of the top 10 countries in aerospace production value, a goal outlined in Plan Mexico, the country’s strategic initiative to enhance global competitiveness in key sectors.

As the sixth-largest supplier of aerospace parts to the US, the industry has benefited significantly from the USMCA, which fostered regional supply chain integration, said Monica Lugo, director of institutional relations at the consulting firm PRODENSA.

However, the integration is no guarantee of business continuing to grow as the country is at an “unprecedented moment” with US President Donald Trump and his wide-ranging tariff policies.

Lugo, a former USMCA negotiator, said that recent tariffs on materials like steel and aluminium — critical to the aerospace sector— have eroded trust in the US as a reliable partner. She predicts that if current conditions continue, the sector risks losing capital, investments and jobs.

“Having this great uncertainty – one day it’s on, the next it’s off, who knows tomorrow – and based on no specific criteria, but rather on the president’s mood, creates chaos and severely damages the country and the economy,” she said.

On December 4, Trump suggested the US might let the USMCA expire next year, or negotiate a new deal. This follows comments by US Trade Representative Jamieson Greer to US news outlet Politico that the administration is considering separate deals with Canada and Mexico.

A booming aerospace sector

The Mexican aerospace market is valued at $11.2bn, and is expected to more than double to $22.7bn by 2029, Sheinbaum said, citing data from the Mexican Aerospace Industry Federation (FEMIA). Home to global companies like Bombardier, Safran, Airbus, and Honeywell, Mexico has established itself as a key player in the global aerospace market and is now the world’s twelfth-largest exporter of aerospace components.

Marco Antonio Del Prete, secretary of sustainable development in Queretaro, attributes this success in part to heavy investment in education and training. In 2005, the Queretaro government promised Canada’s Bombardier that it would invest in education and set up the Aeronautical University, which now offers programmes ranging from technical diplomas to master’s degrees in aerospace manufacturing and engineering.

“Since Bombardier’s arrival, an educational and training system was created that allows us to develop talent in a very efficient way, let’s say, fast track,” Del Prete told Al Jazeera.

Bombardier has served as an anchor, propelling Queretaro’s rise as a high-skilled manufacturing hub for parts and components.

While the Bombardier plant in Queretaro originally focused on wiring harnesses, it has evolved to specialise in complex aerostructures, including the rear fuselage for the Global 7500, Bombardier’s ultra-long-range business jet, and key components for the Challenger 3500, the mid-sized business jet.

Marco Antonio Carrillo, a research professor at the Autonomous University of Queretaro (UAQ), pointed out that the area’s wide educational offerings have cultivated a powerful workforce, which has gained significant attention from aeroplane makers, mainly from the US, Canada and France.

“This development [of Queretaro] has been, if you look at it in terms of time, truly explosive,” Carrillo said.

Mexico also aims to join France and the US as the third country capable of fully assembling an engine for Safran.

But the International Association of Machinists and Aerospace Workers (IAM) Union, which represents more than 600,000 workers in Canada and the US, is worried that progress could lead to more advanced manufacturing and assembly work to eventually shift to Mexico, given the local investment in aeronautical universities and training.

“Right now they’re [Mexican workers] doing more entry-level type things, but our concern is that later on, larger pieces of the aerospace operation will go to Mexico,” Peter Greenberg, the IAM’s international affairs director, told Al Jazeera.

High-skilled, low-cost workforce

Of the three countries in the USMCA agreement, Mexico’s biggest attraction has been its low-cost manufacturing.

Edgar Buendia and Mario Duran Bustamante, economics professors at the Rosario Castellanos National University, cite Mexico’s low labour costs and geographical proximity to the US as the country’s key advantages. This is partly why the US has intensified pressure on the Mexican government, including during the initial USMCA negotiations in 2017, to raise wages to level the playing field and reduce unfair competition.

“Most US companies have incentives to move their production here in Mexico, given the [low] wages and the geographic location. So, to prevent that from happening, the United States is pressuring Mexico to raise labour standards, ensure freedom of association, and improve working conditions,” Buendia told Al Jazeera, things that will benefit Mexican workers even as employer-dominated labour groups worry that they may lose their advantage.

The IAM originally opposed the USMCA’s predecessor, NAFTA. Greenberg said that while they acknowledge USMCA will continue, US and Canadian workers “would probably be perfectly happy” if the agreement ended as the NAFTA deal had led to plants being shuttered and workers being laid off as jobs moved from the US and Canada to low-cost Mexico.

“There is a need for stronger incentives to keep work in the United States and Canada. We want to see the wages in Mexico go up so that it doesn’t become automatically a place where companies go to because they know they will have lower wages and workers who do not have any bargaining power or strong units,” Greenberg added.

Under Sheinbaum’s Morena party, Mexico has raised the minimum wage from 88 pesos ($4.82) in 2018 to 278.8 pesos ($15.30) in 2025, with the rate in municipalities bordering the US reaching 419.88 pesos ($23). On December 4, Sheinbaum announced a 13 percent rise in the minimum wage — and 5 percent for the border zone— set to begin in January 2026.

Despite these increases and the competitiveness of wages in the aerospace sector, researchers agree that a significant wage gap persists between Mexican workers and their US and Canadian counterparts.

“The wage gap is definitely abysmal,” said Javier Salinas, a scholar at the UAQ Labor Center, specialising in labour relations in the aerospace industry. “The [aerospace] industry average is between 402 [Mexican pesos] and 606, with the highest daily wage being 815. [But] 815, converted to US dollars, is less than $40 for a single workday.”

By contrast, Salinas estimates that a worker in the US earns an average of about 5,500 pesos, or $300, per day.

‘Protection unions’

The USMCA required Mexico to end “protection unions”, a longstanding practice where companies sign agreements with corrupt union leaders — known as “sindicatos charros” — without the workers’ knowledge. This system has been used to prevent authentic union organising, as these sindicatos often serve the interests of the company and government authorities rather than the workers.

Salinas argues that despite the 2019 labour reform, it remains difficult for independent unions to emerge. Meanwhile, “protection unions” continue to keep wages low to maintain competitiveness.

“But imagine, a competitiveness based on precarious or impoverished working conditions. I don’t think that’s the way forward,” Salinas said.

Even with new labour courts and laws mandating collective bargaining, organising in Mexico remains dangerous. Workers attempting to create independent unions frequently face firing, threats, or being blacklisted by companies.

Humberto Huitron, a lawyer specialising in collective labour law and trade unionism, explains that Mexican workers, including in the aerospace sector, often lack effective representation. “There’s discrimination during hiring or recruitment. They don’t hire workers who are dismissed for union activism,” he said.

Beyond demanding that Mexico enforce its labour reform, the IAM is calling for the expansion and strengthening of the Rapid Response Mechanism (RRM), which allows the US to take action against factories if they fail to uphold freedom of association and collective bargaining rights.

While not in the aerospace sector, the US recently invoked the RRM against a wine producer in Queretaro. Previous such actions in the state had been limited to the automotive sector.

“No one knows exactly what is going on in all of the factories in Mexico,” Greenberg said.

According to FEMIA, there are 386 aerospace companies operating in 19 states. These include 370 specialised plants that generate 50,000 direct jobs and 190,000 indirect jobs.

Del Prete, however, assured Al Jazeera that, in Queretaro, unions are independent and “they have their own organisation.”

Salinas points out that in Queretaro, there has not been a strike in decades, adding, “Imagine the control of the workforce: 29, 30 years without a single strike in the private sector.”

India is hedging between energy security and strategic partnerships.

Despite pressure from the United States, it has continued buying cheap Russian oil and has recently strengthened economic ties with Russia — from trade to weapons and critical minerals.

But this is a delicate balancing act for Prime Minister Narendra Modi: he wants to cut deals with Moscow, while staying friends with Washington, his biggest trading partner.

For President Vladimir Putin, it shows Russia still has powerful partners and is not completely isolated despite Western sanctions.

And Syria’s economy one year after the fall of Bashar al-Assad.

Plus, the bidding fight over Warner Bros.

The US has rolled back a series of restrictive economic sanctions put in place during the rule of Bashar al-Assad.

The United States House of Representatives has voted forward a bill that would end the restrictive Caesar Act sanctions on Syria, originally imposed during the rule of former leader Bashar al-Assad.

The bid to repeal the sanctions was passed on Wednesday as part of a larger defence spending package, known as the National Defense Authorization Act, or NDAA.

“With this NDAA, as many know, we are repealing sanctions on Syria that were placed there because of Bashar al-Assad and the torture of his people,” Representative Brian Mast of Florida said. “We’re giving Syria a chance to chart a post-Assad future.”

Mast had previously been opposed to dropping the sanctions. In his statement on the House floor on Wednesday, he warned that, under the bill, the White House could “reimpose sanctions if the president views it necessary”.

The bill now heads to the Senate and is expected to be voted on before the end of the year.

If passed, the NDAA would repeal the 2019 Caesar Act, which sanctioned the Syrian government for war crimes during the country’s 13-year-long civil war.

It would also require the White House to issue frequent reports confirming that Syria’s new government is combating Islamist fighters and upholding the rights of religious and ethnic minorities.

Human rights advocates have welcomed the easing of heavy sanctions that the US and other Western countries imposed on Syria during the war.

They argue that lifting those economic restrictions will aid Syria’s path towards economic recovery after years of devastation.

The Caesar Act was signed into law during President Donald Trump’s first term.

But in December 2024, shortly before Trump returned to office for a second term, rebel forces toppled al-Assad’s government, sending the former leader fleeing to Russia.

Trump has since removed many sanctions on Syria and met with President Ahmed al-Sharaa, who led the push that ousted al-Assad.

But some sanctions can only be removed by Congress, a step that Trump has encouraged lawmakers to take.

This month, Syrians celebrated the one-year anniversary of al-Assad’s overthrow with fireworks, prayer and public displays of pride. But the country continues to face challenges as it recovers from the destruction and damage wrought by the war.

Syrian officials have urged the repeal of remaining sanctions, saying that it is necessary to give the country a fighting chance at economic stability and improvement.

Syrian central bank Governor Abdulkader Husrieh called US sanctions relief a “miracle” in an interview with the news service Reuters last week.

The United Nations Security Council also voted to remove sanctions on al-Sharaa and Interior Minister Anas Khattab, who were previously on a list of individuals linked to ISIL (ISIS) and al-Qaeda.

The central bank cut rates for the third time in 2025 as limited government data clouds economic outlook.

The United States Federal Reserve has cut interest rates by a quarter of a percentage point, marking the last rate cut of the year.

On Wednesday, the Federal Reserve cut its benchmark interest rate by 25 basis points to 3.50 – 3.75 percent as US job growth has appeared to stall.

“Job gains have slowed this year, and the unemployment rate has edged up through September. More recent indicators are consistent with these developments. Inflation has moved up since earlier in the year and remains somewhat elevated,” the central bank said in a statement.

The cut was widely expected with an 89 percent probability of a rate cut, according to the CME Fed Watch, a tracker which monitors the likelihood of monetary policy decisions.

The decision came as the central bank faced gaps in many sets of government data used to assess the state of the US economy. During the record-long 43-day government shutdown, key agencies, including the Department of Labor, were unable to gather information needed for their reports.

Among them were import and export prices, the producer price index report, as well state employment and unemployment. The Bureau of Labor Statistics on Monday said that it would not release numbers from October because the agency did not have enough resources to collect information.

The last top-line data that the central bank had to make its interest rate decision was from September. At the time, the unemployment rate rose slightly to 4.4 percent and the core inflation rose to 2.8 percent.

A new government report on Wednesday showed US labour costs increased 0.8 percent in the third quarter, slightly less than expected.

The central bank might be more cautious about interest rate cuts in the next year as economic data shows a cooling labour market.

“There is considerable uncertainty around the labour market, but some of the weights should begin to lift early next year,” Ryan Sweet, managing director, US Macro Forecasting and Analysis at Oxford Economics, said in a report published ahead of the central bank’s decision.

“The challenge facing the Fed next year is the potential jobless expansion, when GDP increases but employment gains are modest, at best. This leaves the economy vulnerable to shocks because the labour market is the main firewall against a recession.”

Political turmoil

While the Fed has maintained its independence from partisan interference, there has been increased pressure from US President Donald Trump to cut rates further and he has often used hostile rhetoric towards the Fed chair to do it. The first rate cut in Trump’s second term as president came only in September.

The White House has also installed loyalist Stephen Miran to the Fed board where he is on leave from his job as an economic adviser in the White House. Miran has dissented against the 25 basis point rate cut that was undertaken at each of the two meetings he has attended in favour of larger half-percentage-point cuts.

On Wednesday, Miran, again, voted for a more aggressive cut of half a percentage point while governors Austan D Goolsbee and Jeffrey R Schmid voted not to make a rate cut at all. The other governors all voted for a 25 basis point cut.

“Still elevated inflation and a backlog of economic data complicate the picture for the Fed looking into next year — with President Trump’s aggressive push for lower short-term rates potentially complicating the objective of bringing down longer-term borrowing costs,” Daniel Hornung, policy fellow at Stanford Institute of Economic Policy Research, said in remarks provided to Al Jazeera.

Fed Chair Powell’s term is up in mid-May 2026. Trump, in an interview published on Tuesday in news outlet Politico, said support for immediately cutting interest rates would be a requirement for anyone he chose to lead the Federal Reserve.

China’s trade surplus – the difference between the value of goods it imports and exports – has hit $1 trillion for the first time, a significant yardstick in the country’s role as “factory of the world”, making everything from socks and curtains to electric cars.

For the first 11 months of this year, China’s exports rose to $3.4 trillion while its imports declined slightly to $2.3 trillion. That brought the country’s trade surplus to about $1 trillion, China’s General Administration of Customs said on Monday.

Shipments overseas from China have boomed despite US President Donald Trump’s global trade war, largely consisting of sweeping “reciprocal” tariffs on most countries, which were launched earlier this year in a bid to reduce US trade deficits.

But China, which was initially hit with US tariffs of 145 percent before they were lowered to allow for trade talks, has emerged largely unscathed from the standoff by stepping up shipments to markets outside the US.

Following Trump’s 2024 election win, China began diversifying its export market away from the US in exchange for closer ties with Southeast Asia and the European Union. It also established new production hubs, outside of China, for low-tariff access.

Why does China have such a large trade surplus?

China’s exports returned to growth last month following an unexpected dip in October, rising to 5.9 percent more than one year earlier and far outpacing a 1.9 percent rise in imports, according to China’s General Administration of Customs.

China’s goods surplus for the first 11 months of 2025 was up 21.7 percent from the same period last year. Most of the surge was driven by strong growth in high-tech goods, which outpaced the increase in overall exports by 5.4 percent.

Auto exports, especially for electric vehicles, rallied as Chinese firms muscled in on Japanese and German market share. Total car shipments jumped by more than one million to approximately 6.5 million units this year, according to data from China-based consultancy Automobility.

And although China still trails US leaders like Nvidia in advanced chips, it is becoming dominant in the production of semiconductors (used in everything from electric cars to medical devices). Semiconductor exports rose by 24.7 percent over the period.

China’s technological advances have also boosted shipbuilding, where exports rose 26.8 percent compared with the same period in 2024.

So, given the hostile global trade backdrop, how has China achieved this?

Rerouting and diversifying

Though Washington has lowered tariffs on Chinese imports in recent months, they remain high. Average import duties on Chinese goods currently stand at 37 percent. For this reason, Chinese shipments to the US have dropped by 29 percent year-on-year to November.

Some Chinese companies have shifted their production facilities to Southeast Asia, Mexico and Africa, enabling them to bypass Trump’s tariffs on goods arriving directly from China. Despite this, overall trade between the two countries remains down.

In the first eight months of this year, for instance, the US imported roughly $23bn in goods from Indonesia, an increase of nearly one-third on the same period in 2024. It is widely understood that the rise is down to Chinese goods being redirected via Indonesia.

“The role of trade rerouting in offsetting the drag from US tariffs still appears to be increasing,” Zichun Huang, an economist at Capital Economics, wrote in a note to clients on Monday. Huang added that “exports to Vietnam, the top [Chinese] rerouting hub, continued to grow rapidly.”

As trade with the US has slackened, China has doubled down on developing ties with other major trading partners. That includes a 15 percent surge in Chinese shipments to the EU, compared with the year before, and an 8.2 percent rise in exports to countries in Southeast Asia.

Weaker currency

Another reason for China’s trading success is that its currency has been cheap, compared with others, in recent years. A lower renminbi makes exports relatively inexpensive to produce, and imports relatively expensive to consume.

China maintains a “managed float” of the renminbi – meaning the central bank intervenes in foreign exchange markets to maintain its value against other currencies – with the aim of keeping the price stable.

For years, many economists have argued that China’s currency is undervalued. In their view, that gives exporters a competitive edge by boosting the appeal of cheap Chinese products at the expense of other countries, leading to large imbalances in trade.

Indeed, taking into account global inflationary dynamics, the real effective exchange rate – a measure of the competitiveness of Chinese goods – is actually at its weakest level since 2012.

How has China got here?

China’s eye-watering $1 trillion trade surplus – never before recorded in economic history – is the culmination of decades of industrial policies that have enabled China to emerge from a low-income agrarian society in the 1970s to become the world’s second-largest economy today.

China established itself as a dependable producer of low-cost manufactured goods, like T-shirts and shoes, in the 1980s. Since then, it has climbed the industrial ladder to higher-value goods, such as electric vehicles and solar panels.

By far its largest sector in terms of exports is electronics. China exported a total of more than $1 trillion-worth of electronic goods around the world in 2024. This follows the pattern of other industrialised countries by starting with simple, labour-intensive goods and then moving into more complex sectors. However, China has done so with unusual scale and speed to cement its dominance across numerous global supply chains.

It also dominates trade in rare-earth metals, which are crucial for the manufacture of a wide range of goods from smartphones to fighter jets.

Twelve of the 17 rare earth metals on the periodic table can be found in China, and it mines between 60 percent and 70 percent of the world’s rare-earth resources. It also carries out 90 percent of the processing of these metals for commercial use.

For historical context, China’s trade surplus in factory goods is larger as a share of its economy than the US ran in the years after World War II, when most other manufacturing nations were emerging from the ruins of war.

How are other countries responding to China’s expanding dominance?

Many are looking for ways to redress the balance.

French President Emmanuel Macron, who visited China last week, warned the EU may take “strong measures”, including imposing higher tariffs, should Beijing fail to address the imbalance.

The EU already imposes additional tariffs on Chinese-made electric vehicles (EVs), which range from 17 percent to 35.3 percent, for example, on top of its existing 10 percent import duty.
Germany’s foreign minister, Johann Wadephul, arrived in China for a two-day trip on Monday this week, becoming the latest senior European official to visit for talks amid the country’s rapidly expanding goods trade with Europe.

Before his trip, Wadephul said he planned to raise the issue of tariffs with his Chinese counterparts, particularly those involving rare earths, in addition to concerns about industrial “overcapacities”, which he said are distorting global prices for industrial goods.

Will China’s exports continue to grow?

Despite efforts by the US and other wealthy countries to diversify away from China, few economists expect the country’s broad-based trade momentum to slow anytime soon.

Economists at Morgan Stanley predict China’s share of global goods exports will reach 16.5 percent by the end of the decade, up from 15 percent now, reflecting China’s ability to adapt quickly to shifting global demand.

More immediately, China’s strong trade performance means the annual growth target – set by Beijing to guide economic policy and to align regional governments – of about 5 percent is likely to be met.

US President Donald Trump has cleared the way for tech giant Nvidia to sell its advanced H200 chip to China, in a significant easing of Washington’s export controls targeting Chinese tech.

Trump said on Monday that he had informed Chinese President Xi Jinping of the decision to allow the export of the chip under an arrangement that will see 25 percent of sales paid to the US government.

Trump said exports would be allowed to “approved customers” under conditions that protect national security, and that his administration would take the “same approach” in relation to other chipmakers, such as AMD and Intel.

“This policy will support American Jobs, strengthen U.S. Manufacturing, and benefit American Taxpayers,” Trump said on Truth Social.

Nvidia, which is based in Santa Clara, California, said the move struck a “thoughtful balance” and would “support high paying jobs and manufacturing in America”.

Nvidia shares jumped more than 2 percent in after-hours trading on the news.

Trump’s announcement marks a major departure from the policy of former President Joe Biden’s administration, which confined Nvidia and other chipmakers to exporting downgraded versions of their products specifically designed for the Chinese market.

In his Truth Social post, Trump slammed the Biden administration’s approach, claiming it had led to US tech companies spending billions of dollars on downgraded products that “nobody wanted”.

The H200, launched in 2023, is Nvidia’s most powerful chip outside of the latest-generation Blackwell series, which Trump confirmed would continue to be restricted for the Chinese market.

While not Nvidia’s most advanced chip, the H200 is almost six times as powerful as the previous generation H20 chip, according to the Washington-based Institute for Progress, a non-partisan think tank.

Under an agreement with the Trump administration announced in August, Nvidia agreed to pay the US government 15 percent of revenues from its sales of the H20, which was designed to comply with restrictions imposed on the Chinese market.

Tilly Zhang, an expert on Chinese tech at Gavekal Dragonomics, said Trump’s decision reflected “market realities” as well as intense lobbying by Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang.

“The priority is moving away from purely blocking or slowing China’s tech progress, more towards competing for market share and securing the commercial benefits of selling their own tech solutions,” Zhang told Al Jazeera.

As blocking China’s tech advancement becomes increasingly unrealistic, “gaining more market share and revenue is turning into a higher priority”, Zhang said.

“That’s what this US move signals to me.”

Zhang said the race between China and the US to dominate artificial intelligence had shifted from export controls towards market competition.

“That might push chipmakers on both sides towards faster innovation, and bring more market dynamics,” she said.

Trump’s announcement drew a swift rebuke from Democratic lawmakers.

US Senator Elizabeth Warren, who represents Massachusetts, accused the Trump administration of “selling out US security”.

“Trump is letting NVIDIA export cutting-edge AI chips that his own DOJ revealed are being illegally smuggled into China,” Warren said on X, referring to multiple probes into illegal chip shipments carried out by the US Department of Justice.

“His own DOJ called these chips ‘building blocks of AI superiority’.”

Chris McGuire, a senior fellow at the Council on Foreign Relations, said Trump’s move was a blow to US efforts to stay ahead of China in the race to dominate AI.

“Loosening export controls on AI chips will allow Chinese AI firms to close the gap with frontier US AI models, and will allow Chinese cloud computing providers to build ‘good enough’ data centres around the world,” McGuire, who worked on tech policy in Biden’s White House, told Al Jazeera.

“This risks undermining the administration’s efforts to ensure the US AI stack dominates globally.”

Surat, India – In 2018, Alpesh Bhai enrolled his three-year-old daughter in an English-language private school in Surat. This was something he never imagined possible while growing up in his village in the Indian state of Gujarat, where his family survived on small fields of fennel, castor and cumin, with their earnings barely enough to cover basic needs.

He had studied in a public school, where, he recalled, “teachers were a rarity, and English almost didn’t exist”.

“Maybe if I knew English, I would have been some government worker. Who knows?”, he said, referring to the dream of a majority of Indians, as government jobs come with tenure and benefits.

His finances improved once he joined the diamond cutting industry in Surat, a city perched along India’s Arabian Sea coast, where nearly 80 percent of the world’s diamonds are cut and polished. Monthly earnings of 35,000 rupees ($390) for the first time brought Alpesh a sense of stability, and with it, the means to give his children the education he never had.

“I was determined that at least my children would get the kind of private education I was deprived of,” he said.

But that dream did not last. The first disruption to business came with Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine in 2022. The sanctions on Russia hurt supply chains, as India sourced at least a third of its raw diamonds from Russia, leading to layoffs.

Alpesh’s earnings fell to 18,000 rupees ($200) a month, then to 20,000 rupees ($222). Soon, the 25,000 rupees ($280) annual school fee became unmanageable. By the time his older daughter reached grade three, just as his younger child started school, the pressure became impossible.

Earlier this year, he pulled both children out of private school and enrolled them in a nearby public one. A few months later, when new United States tariffs deepened the crisis as demand slumped further, his polishing unit laid off 60 percent of its workers, Alpesh among them.

“Seems like I’ve come back to where I started,” he said.

Surat, India’s diamond hub, employs more than 600,000 workers, and hosts 15 large polishing units with annual sales exceeding $100m. For decades, Surat’s diamond‑polishing industry has offered migrant workers from rural Gujarat, many with little or no education, higher incomes, in some cases up to 100,000 rupees ($1,112) a month, and a path out of agrarian hardship.

But recent shocks have exposed the fragility of that ladder, with close to 400,000 workers having faced layoffs, pay cuts, or reduced hours.

Even before Russia’s war on Ukraine began in February 2022, Surat’s diamond industry faced multiple challenges: disrupted supplies from African mines, weakening demand in key Western markets, and inconsistent exports to China, the second-largest customer. With the onset of the war, India’s exports of cut and polished diamonds in the financial year ending on March 31, 2024, fell by 27.6 percent, with sharp declines in its top markets – the US, China, and the United Arab Emirates.

The 50 percent tariffs imposed by US President Donald Trump have worsened the downturn.

Alpesh now works loading and unloading textile consignments for about 12,000 rupees ($133) a month, barely enough to cover food and rent.

“If I had kept them in the private school, I don’t know how I would have survived,” Alpesh said. “People here have killed themselves over debts and school fees. When you don’t have enough to eat, how will you think of teaching your children well?”

His daughters are still adjusting. “They sometimes tell me, ‘Pupa, the studies aren’t as good now’. I tell them we’ll put them back in the private school soon, but I don’t know when that will happen.”

‘An exodus’

Some workers have returned to their villages, as many migrant families in Surat can no longer afford rent or find alternative work.

Shyam Patel, 35, was among them. When exports slowed and US tariffs hit in August, the polishing unit where he worked shut down. With no other work available, he returned to his village in the Banaskantha district the following month.

“What other option was there?” he said. “In the city, there’s rent to pay even when there’s no work.”

He now works as a daily-wage labourer in cotton fields in his village. His son, who was in the final year of high school, dropped out after four months of the new academic session.

“We’ll put him back in school next year,” Shyam said. “The government school said they can’t take new students in the middle of the term. Till then, he helps me in the fields.”

Across the city, the disruption is evident in government data. More than 600 students left school mid-session last year as their parents lost work or returned to their villages, mostly in Saurashtra and north Gujarat.

“Most migrants come to Surat to settle – the city has entire [neighbourhoods] and housing clusters built for diamond workers,” said Bhavesh Tank, vice president of the Diamond Workers Union Gujarat. “An exodus in the middle of the year is unprecedented, and the drop in school enrolment suggests many are not coming back soon.”

The union estimates that about 50,000 workers have left Surat over the past 12 to 14 months.

The Vishwa Hindu Parishad (VHP), a Hindu nationalist group allied with Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s governing Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP), has been closely observing the diamond industry crisis in Surat.

“The number of dropouts has reached a point where even government schools are struggling to take in new students, said Purvesh Togadia, a VHP representative in the city. “The poor quality of education is making the transition even more disheartening for families.”

The poor quality of education in public schools is well established. In 2024, only 23.4 percent of grade three students could read at a grade two level, compared with 35.5 percent in private schools. By grade 5, the gap persisted – 44.8 percent in government schools versus 59.3 percent in private ones.

Kishor Bhamre, director at Pratham, an organisation working on children’s rights across education and labour, said the setback is not just academic but psychological.

“Children moving from private to government schools lose the environment they grew up in – their friends, familiar teachers, and a sense of community. For many, it also means shifting from an urban to a rural setting, which makes the adjustment even harder and affects their learning,” he said.

Al Jazeera reached out to the Surat Municipal Corporation and the state’s education minister for comment, but did not receive a response.

Limited help

The Diamond Workers Union has repeatedly appealed to the state government to provide an economic relief package and revise salaries in line with inflation. The union has also urged authorities to address the equally pressing situation of the growing number of school dropouts among workers’ children.

The Gujarat government in May introduced a special assistance package for affected diamond workers – a rare move in the industry.

Under the scheme, the state government committed to paying for one year of school fees for diamond polishers’ children, up to 13,500 rupees ($150) annually. To qualify, workers must have been unemployed for the past year and have at least three years of experience in a diamond factory. The fees will be paid directly to the schools.

The government received nearly 90,000 requests from diamond workers across Gujarat, including about 74,000 from Surat alone.  After a slow start – it had provided assistance to only 170 children by July – officials reported disbursing 82.8 million rupees ($921,000) towards school fees for 6,368 children of jobless diamond workers in Surat by mid-September.

But about 26,000 applicants were rejected, reportedly due to “improper details mentioned” in the forms, leading to frustration and anger among workers. In the past few days, nearly 1,000 diamond polishers have filed applications with the local government, demanding to know who rejected their forms and on what grounds, and alleging opacity in the process.

The scheme’s rigid eligibility criteria have also excluded workers.

“The scheme only covers those who have completely lost their jobs, but it leaves out many who are facing partial cuts or reduced work,” said Tank. “They’re struggling just as much and need support equally.”

Tank added that education remains one of the most common concerns among workers reaching out to the union’s suicide prevention helpline, which was set up by the Diamond Workers Union after Surat had already recorded at least 71 suicides among diamond workers by November 2024. It has received more than 5,000 calls so far.

Divyaben Makwana, 40, lost her 22-year-old son, Kewalbhai, who had been working as a diamond polisher for three years. On June 14, he died by suicide.

Kewalbhai had been under immense mental stress after losing his job in the diamond market, his mother told Al Jazeera.

“He was earning around 20,000 rupees ($220) a month, and when even that collapsed,” he took his life, she said. “We took him to the hospital and did everything we could. I borrowed 500,000 rupees ($5,560) from relatives and friends, but we couldn’t save him. Now, I don’t have a son – only a loan.”

She lives in Surat with her husband, who has been unable to work due to prolonged illness, and their younger son, Karmdeep, 18. With no means to return to their village in Saurashtra, Divyaben has begun working as a domestic worker to make ends meet. Karmdeep dropped out after grade 11, and now attends a local coaching centre, where he is learning diamond faceting while looking for work.

“Education has become so expensive,” Divyaben said. “At least with coaching, he’ll learn a skill. By the time the market recovers, if he’s trained as a craftsman, maybe we’ll be able to repay some of our debts.”

She paused, her voice low. “I don’t know if education, whether taken on loan or given free, can really change our fate. Our only hope is still the diamond.”

If you or someone you know is at risk of suicide, these organisations may be able to help.

You can access the Diamond Workers Union helpline at +91-92395 00009.

Farmers have been dogged by trade wars that have seen reduced purchases and increased prices on seeds and fertiliser.

United States President Donald Trump has announced a $12bn aid package to help farmers harmed by his hardline tariff policies.

Trump announced the package at a White House event on Monday, saying the money would come from funds raised by tariffs.

“What we’re doing is we’re is taking a relatively small portion of that, and we’re going to be giving and providing it to the farmers in economic assistance,” Trump said.

Since taking office, Trump has used emergency powers to pursue a sweeping tariff agenda, including imposing reciprocal tariffs on nearly all US trade and escalating a trade war with China.

While Washington and Beijing have since begun to de-escalate some of their tensions, the tit-for-tat has spelt a challenging year for farmers.

Despite record harvests in the US, China has increasingly turned to South America for agricultural products, notably soya beans and sorghum. They have also faced higher seed and fertiliser prices as a knock-on effect of the tariffs.

The Trump administration has been acutely aware of the impact, given Trump’s staunch support among many farmers during the 2024 election.

Trump referenced that support on Monday, saying, “We love our farmers.”

“And as you know, the farmers like me … because based on, based on voting trends, you could call it voting trends or anything else,” he said.

Before the White House event, a Trump administration official said up to $11bn in the new aid would go to the newly created Farmer Bridge Assistance, a programme for row crop farmers hurt by trade disputes and higher costs.

It was still being determined where the other $1bn would be allocated, the official said.

The Food and Agricultural Policy Research Institute at the University of Missouri has estimated that net farm income could fall by more than $30bn in 2026 due to a decline in government payments and low crop prices.

Soya bean farmers, meanwhile, are expected to see their third consecutive year of losses in 2025, according to the American Soybean Association, a decline that preceded Trump’s tariffs.

The Trump administration has sought to paint a rosier picture, pointing to an agreement between Trump and Chinese President Xi Jinping for Beijing to buy 12 million metric tonnes of US soya beans by the end of the calendar year. Beijing also agreed to buy 25 million metric tonnes per year for the next three years.

While China has since purchased only a fraction of its promised total in 2025, White House officials have said it is on track to meet the target.

US farmers typically receive billions of dollars in federal subsidies each year.

All told, farmers were set to receive a near-record $40bn in government payments this year, fuelled by an array of disaster relief funding and economic aid.

Trump has vowed to unleash AI competitiveness, but removing state oversight riles members of his Republican Party.

United States President Donald Trump has said he will sign an executive order creating “one rulebook” for artificial intelligence (AI) development.

The announcement on Monday via Trump’s Truth Social account represented the US president’s latest effort to remove AI barriers, a priority of his administration that has raised concerns related to oversight of the transformative technology.

Trump said the so-called “one rule executive order” would override state approvals of AI, although the legality of such a presidential action remained unclear.

“There must be only One Rulebook if we are going to continue to lead in AI,” he said. “We are beating ALL COUNTRIES at this point in the race, but that won’t last long if we are going to have 50 States, many of them bad actors, involved in RULES and the APPROVAL PROCESS.”

“THERE CAN BE NO DOUBT ABOUT THIS! AI WILL BE DESTROYED IN ITS INFANCY!” Trump added, employing his typical use of all-capital letters.

The announcement comes as the White House has pushed for provisions creating a federal AI framework to be added to this year’s defence budget.

The initiative has divided members of Trump’s Republican Party, which has traditionally strongly supported the rights of states and a smaller federal government.

Opponents included Representative Marjorie Taylor Greene, formerly a staunch supporter of Trump, who has broken with him on several issues.

“States must retain the right to regulate and make laws on AI and anything else for the benefit of their state,” she wrote in November.

State lawmakers from across the political spectrum have also warned against federal actions that would override state policies.

“In recent years, legislatures across the country have passed AI-related measures to strengthen consumer transparency, guide responsible government procurement, protect patients, and support artists and creators,” they wrote in a letter to Congress in November.

“These laws represent careful, good-faith work to safeguard constituents from clear and immediate AI-related harms. A federal preemption measure on state AI laws risks sweeping these protections aside and leaving communities exposed,” they said.

Trump has maintained close ties with AI and tech leaders since taking office in January.

He has already signed an executive order calling for the removal of “barriers” to AI innovation. He has also published a so-called AI action plan and an AI “Genesis Mission”.

He compared the latter to the Manhattan Project programme, which led to the creation of the world’s first nuclear weapons.