Economy

Warning comes as 400 million barrels of oil are being released from global reserves during waterway’s closure.

Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) says it will not allow “a litre of oil” through the Strait of Hormuz as the closure of the key Gulf waterway continues to roil global energy markets during the US-Israeli war on Iran.

A spokesperson for the IRGC’s Khatam al-Anbiya Headquarters said on Wednesday that any vessel linked to the United States and Israel or their allies “will be considered a legitimate target”.

“You will not be able to artificially lower the price of oil. Expect oil at $200 per barrel,” the spokesperson said in a statement. “The price of oil depends on regional security, and you are the main source of insecurity in the region.”

Global oil prices have fluctuated wildly this week during continued US-Israeli attacks against Iran, which has retaliated by firing missiles and drones at targets across the wider Middle East.

The closure of the Strait of Hormuz, through which about one-fifth of the world’s oil supplies transit, and production slowdowns in some Gulf countries have raised concerns of further disruptions.

Concerns around the duration of the war, which began on February 28 and has shown no sign of abating, are also adding to uncertainty, sending oil prices soaring.

On Wednesday, three ships were hit by projectiles in the Strait of Hormuz, maritime security and risk firms said, including a Thai-flagged cargo vessel that came under attack about 11 nautical miles (18km) north of Oman.

Release of oil reserves

World leaders, including members of the Group of Seven (G7) and the European Union, have been mulling what action to take in response to the war’s impact on global economies.

Christian Bueger, a professor of international relations at the University of Copenhagen and an expert in maritime security, said Europe will be facing “a major energy supply crisis” if the Strait of Hormuz is not reopened.

“For the shipping industry right now, it’s impossible to go through the Strait of Hormuz,” Bueger told Al Jazeera. “And if there are not stronger signals in the near future that they can at least try to go through the strait, then we are looking at a major shipping crisis, which can last weeks if not months.”

On Wednesday, the International Energy Agency (IEA) announced that its 32 member countries had unanimously agreed to release 400 million barrels of oil from their emergency reserves to try to lower prices.

“This is a major action aiming to alleviate the immediate impacts of the disruption in markets,” IEA Executive Director Fatih Birol said during an address from the agency’s headquarters in Paris.

“But to be clear, the most important thing for a return to stable flows of oil and gas is the resumption of transit through the Strait of Hormuz,” he added.

The reserve supplies will be made available “over a timeframe that is appropriate” for each member state, the IEA said in a statement without providing details.

German Economy and Energy Minister Katherina Reiche said earlier in the day that the country would comply with the release while Austria also said it would make part of its emergency oil reserve available and extend its national strategic gas reserve.

Meanwhile, Japan’s Ministry of Economy, Trade and Industry said it would release about 80 million barrels from its private and national oil reserves.

Japanese Prime Minister Sanae Takaichi said the country, which gets about 70 percent of its oil imports through the Strait of Hormuz, would begin releasing the reserves on Monday.

International Energy Agency chief says talks aim to assess conditions as US-Israel war on Iran fuels global uncertainty.

The International Energy Agency (IEA) is set to hold an emergency meeting to assess the situation in the Middle East as the US-Israeli war on Iran continues to roil global energy markets.

Fatih Birol, the agency’s executive director, said representatives of IEA member states would meet on Tuesday to assess “the current security of supply and market conditions” amid the conflict.

“I have convened an extraordinary meeting of IEA member governments, which will take place later today to assess the current security of supply and market conditions to inform a subsequent decision on whether to make emergency stocks of IEA countries available to the market,” Birol said.

This week, oil prices hit their highest levels since mid‑2022 amid concerns of prolonged shipping disruptions linked to the war and reduced output from some key producers in countries that have been targeted by retaliatory Iranian strikes.

While the market reversed late in the day on Monday, with benchmarks falling below $90 a barrel, uncertainty persists around how long the United States-Israel war will drag on.

The Strait of Hormuz, a critical Gulf waterway through which about one-fifth of the world’s oil supplies passes, has effectively been shut down as a result of the war.

“If this drags on, it is not just going to be energy prices” that are affected, Al Jazeera’s Osama Bin Javaid explained. “It is going to have an impact on global economies.”

Bin Javaid noted that the extraordinary IEA meeting comes after Group of Seven (G7) countries met to discuss possible actions to help stabilise global energy markets.

European governments have been on edge about the prospect of a repeat of the energy crisis they faced in 2022, when prices surged to record peaks after Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine.

“The IEA will ⁠be presenting an ⁠in-depth analysis of the pros and ⁠cons of releasing stocks ⁠now,” the European Union’s Energy Commissioner ‌Dan Jorgensen said before the agency’s meeting.

Earlier on Tuesday, G7 energy ministers stopped short of deciding on the release of strategic oil reserves in a call, instead asking the IEA to assess the situation before acting.

“Everyone is willing to take measures to stabilise the market, including the United States,” French Finance Minister Roland Lescure told reporters after the latest talks.

“We have asked the IEA to elaborate scenarios for a potential oil stock release; we need to be ready to act at any moment,” he added.

EU leaders also will discuss competitiveness, including energy prices, on a call later in the day with German Chancellor Friedrich Merz, Italian Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni, Belgian Prime Minister Bart De Wever, and others.

The United States and Israel’s war on Iran has caused the largest energy supply shock in decades.

The Strait of Hormuz is in effect closed, and attacks are being carried out on energy facilities in the Middle East, rattling oil markets.

From Americans filling their tanks at the pump to European factories and Asian economies, the impact is already being felt.

US President Donald Trump says the rise in oil prices is a “very small price to pay” for “safety and peace”. But investors warn that if the conflict drags on, there’s danger of stagflation.

Surging energy prices caused by the US-Israel war on Iran could ripple across the United States economy, heaping further strain on consumers at a time when cost-of-living issues are already a primary concern.

The price of crude oil increased from about $67 per barrel before the war began on February 28 to nearly $97 on Monday, as the conflict snarls production and transport in one of the most energy-rich regions on earth. Oil temporarily passed $100 per barrel on Sunday before slightly easing back.

The price tracker GasBuddy reported on Monday that the average price of gas in the US has risen by 51 cents per gallon over the last week.

“Yes, yes, definitely,” said 52-year-old Alma Newell when asked if she was worried about price increases at a gas station in the coastal city of Goleta, California.

Newell said she is out of work with a shoulder injury and worried that rising costs could stretch her already limited budget.

“The prices have a big impact because I’m not working right now,” she said. “Food and rent are already very expensive.”

“It’s crazy,” she added. “Because the war is so unnecessary.”

Cost of living issues

Rising prices could deepen frustration with the administration of US President Donald Trump and put greater political pressure on the White House, already struggling to address cost-of-living issues with the crucial midterm elections set to take place later this year.

“I think the current price increase in oil suggests the US will see $3.50 to $4 gasoline by next week, and $5 diesel this week,” said Gregory Brew, a senior analyst on Iran and oil at the Eurasia Group.

The highest recorded average for gas prices at the pump was in June 2022, when prices soared to $5.034, months after the Russian war on Ukraine started, according to Gas Buddy, which tracks fuel prices going back to 2008.

“The impact 1773123967 is more political than economic, as high gasoline prices generate negative press and can add to the perception that the government is not properly handling the economy. That means Trump will feel more political pressure to end this war quickly.”

A Pew Research Center poll in early February suggested widespread anxiety about the rising cost-of-living before the US and Israel launched attacks on Iran, with 68 percent of respondents saying they were very or somewhat concerned about gas prices.

“I’m not too worried myself because I have a hybrid car and ride my bike,” said 72-year-old Bjorn Birmir at the gas station in Goleta, California. “But for people in general, it will make life more expensive. Prices are already high, and it will make them even higher.”

Ongoing disruptions

The disruptions caused by the war include the shuttering of the Strait of Hormuz, a key node in global transit and shipping. Iran has long said that it could close down the strait in the event of a showdown with the US and Israel.

About 20 percent of global oil and a significant portion of natural gas pass through the strait, predominantly to Asia, supplies that are now stranded as traffic through the narrow waterway has ground to a halt. Iranian attacks on energy infrastructure in countries across the region have also led some countries to scale back production.

Other economic sectors are also feeling the squeeze.

Goods such as fertiliser, vital for agricultural production, are seeing price increases just ahead of the spring planting season in the Northern Hemisphere. About one-third of the global fertiliser trade passes through the Strait of Hormuz.

Effects of the war could ripple throughout the global economy, with poor countries especially hard-hit. Pakistan announced a series of austerity measures and cuts to fuel subsidies on Monday, while Bangladesh shuttered universities and announced restrictions on fuel use as a result of the war.

US officials and countries around the world have already discussed measures to help ease the shock of rising energy prices, including the potential release of strategic oil reserves in a bid to temporarily boost global supply.

The G7 said on Monday that it would take “necessary measures” to support energy supplies, but held off on announcing the release of strategic reserves, with energy ministers set to meet on Tuesday to discuss the matter further.

The US has a strategic oil reserve of more than 415 million barrels, one of the largest in the world, that it could release in coordination with allied countries.

But it is unclear when these measures would kick in and how long such steps could help fill the gaps created by the war.

Rachel Ziemba, adjunct senior fellow at the Center for a New American Security, says that much depends on whether the war is brought to a speedy conclusion or continues on for weeks or even months, with the possibility of further escalation.

Thus far, neither the US and Israel nor Iran has suggested it are willing to stop the war anytime soon, although Trump told CBS News on Monday that “the war is very complete, pretty much”, comments that helped ease some of the price swings in oil and stocks.

“If the war continues, we would see oil prices not only remain elevated, but perhaps rally further as markets price in a more protracted outage,” said Ziemba. “There’s also the question of, when it does end, how much damage will be done to infrastructure and just how quickly supplies could come back online.”

Initial polling has suggested that the war is unpopular in the US, with a Quinnipiac University poll released on Monday finding that 53 percent of voters who responded oppose Trump’s military action in Iran, including 60 percent of political independents.

That lack of popular support could present a political headache for Trump and his Republican Party if voters connect the war to increasing prices. Thus far, Trump has largely dismissed concerns about the war’s possible impact on the rising cost of living.

“Short term oil prices, which will drop rapidly when the destruction of the Iran nuclear threat is over, is a very small price to pay for USA, and World, Safety and Peace,” Trump said in a Truth Social post on Sunday. “ONLY FOOLS WOULD THINK DIFFERENTLY!”

French President Emmanuel Macron has said France and its allies are preparing a “purely defensive” mission to escort vessels through the Strait of Hormuz once the “most intense phase” of the US-Israeli war on Iran ends.

Speaking in Cyprus on Monday, Macron said the “purely escort mission” must be prepared by both European and non-European countries.

Its purpose “is to enable, as soon as possible after the most intense phase of the conflict has ended, the escort of container ships and tankers to gradually reopen the Strait of Hormuz”, the French president said, without providing further details.

Macron’s comments come as global oil prices have surged amid continued attacks by the United States and Israel against Iran, as well as retaliatory Iranian missile and drone strikes across the wider region.

The war has effectively shut down the Strait of Hormuz, a strategic Gulf waterway through which about 20 percent of the world’s oil supplies pass, while Iranian attacks on energy infrastructure in the Middle East also have raised concerns.

Responding to Macron’s comments, top Iranian security official Ali Larijani said, “It is unlikely that any security will be achieved in the Strait of Hormuz amid the fires of the war ignited by the United States and Israel in the region.”

Larijani added in a social media post that security is also unlikely to be restored as a result of plans designed by “parties that were not far removed from supporting this war and contributing to its fanning”.

While European countries have been largely sidelined as the war escalates, several – including France, the United Kingdom and Greece – have sent military assets to Cyprus following an Iranian-made drone attack on a British base on the island.

Greece has dispatched four F-16 fighter planes to the Paphos airbase and its two state-of-the-art frigates Kimon and Psara are patrolling offshore Cyprus, tasked with intercepting any missiles or drones.

Last week, Macron ordered the French frigate Languedoc to waters off Cyprus to bolster the country’s anti-drone and anti-missile defences.

“When Cyprus is attacked, then Europe is attacked,” Macron said after meeting with Cypriot President Nikos Christodoulides and Greek Prime Minister Kyriakos Mitsotakis in Paphos on Monday.

The French president said he would also deploy a total of eight warships, two helicopter carriers and the nuclear-powered aircraft carrier Charles de Gaulle to the Eastern Mediterranean and the wider Middle East region, calling the move “unprecedented”.

France’s objective “is to maintain a strictly defensive stance, standing alongside all countries attacked by Iran in its retaliation, to ensure our credibility, and to contribute to regional de-escalation”, Macron said.

“Ultimately, we aim to guarantee freedom of navigation and maritime security.”

With the closure of the Strait of Hormuz sending oil prices soaring, finance ministers from the Group of Seven (G7) countries met in Brussels on Monday to discuss how to respond.

Crude oil prices have increased by about 50 percent since the US and Israel launched the war last month, with international benchmark Brent crude prices surpassing $100 a barrel on Monday.

French Finance Minister Roland Lescure told reporters that the G7 ministers did not make a decision on the potential release of emergency oil stocks amid the war. “What we’ve agreed upon is to use any necessary tools if need be to stabilise the market, including the potential release of necessary stockpiles,” Lescure said.

Paul Hickin, editor-in-chief and chief economist at Petroleum Economist, said getting the Strait of Hormuz reopened is the main priority. “That’s not going to happen in any shape or form until there’s a resolution to the conflict,” Hickin told Al Jazeera.

He explained that several countries in the Middle East, such as Kuwait and Iraq, are dependent on the strait to get their energy supplies to market.

“Kuwait and Iraq and those producers, they are really having a shut-in, and it will take a little bit of time to get back up and running,” said Hickin.

“That is the big risk, the knock-on effect … Getting those ships back, getting that infrastructure back up and running, it’s a slow process. So prices won’t come back down as quickly as many may think.”

DEVELOPING STORYDEVELOPING STORY,

Crude oil prices rise by as much 20 percent as sprawling regional conflict threatens global energy supplies.

Oil prices have surged past $100 a barrel for the first time since Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, amid the widening fallout of the United States and Israel’s war on Iran.

Brent crude, the global benchmark, rose by as much as 20 percent on Sunday, topping $111 a barrel, as fears grew of prolonged disruption to global energy supplies.

US President Donald Trump, who campaigned heavily on cost-of-living concerns in the 2024 election, brushed off the surge.

“Short term oil prices, which will drop rapidly when the destruction of the Iran nuclear threat is over, is a very small price to pay for U.S.A., and World, Safety and Peace,” Trump said in a post on Truth Social.

“ONLY FOOLS WOULD THINK DIFFERENTLY!”

Crude oil prices have surged by about 50 percent since the US and Israel launched joint strikes on Iran on February 28.

Iranian threats and attacks in response have brought an effective halt to shipping in the Strait of Hormuz, a conduit for about one-fifth of the global oil supply.

Iraq, the United Arab Emirates and Kuwait, three of the biggest producers in The Organization of the Petroleum Exporting Countries (OPEC), have been forced to cut production amid dwindling crude storage capacity due to the collapse of shipping through the waterway.

Iran and Israel have also launched strikes on key energy facilities in Iran amid the sprawling regional conflict.

Stocks in Asia fell sharply on Monday morning, as investors braced for the fallout of rising energy prices.

Japan’s Nikkei 225 plunged about 6 percent in early trading, while South Korea’s KOSPI tumbled nearly 7 percent.

US stock futures, which are traded outside regular market hours, also saw substantial losses.

Futures tied to Wall Street’s benchmark S&P 500 were down by 1.7 percent, while those for the tech-heavy Nasdaq Composite fell by 1.90 percent.

WASHINGTON — President Trump promised that 2026 would be a bumper year for economic growth, but instead it has kicked off with job losses, rising gasoline prices and more uncertainty about America’s future.

In his State of the Union address less than two weeks ago, the Republican president confidently told the country: “The roaring economy is roaring like never before.” The latest batch of data on jobs, pump prices and the stock market suggests that Trump’s roar has started to sound far more like a whimper.

There is a gap between the boom that Trump has predicted and the volatile results he has produced — one that could set the tone in this year’s midterm elections as he tries to defend his party’s majorities in the House and Senate. With Trump’s tariffs uncertainty ongoing, the war in Iran has suddenly created inflationary concerns regarding oil and natural gas.

The White House says it is still early in the year and stronger growth is coming.

No signs of a jobs boom

“WOW! The Golden Age of America is upon us!!!” Trump posted on social media Feb. 11 after the monthly jobs report showed gains of 130,000 jobs in January.

Since then, the job market has evaporated in worrisome ways.

Friday’s employment report showed job losses of 92,000 in February. The January and December figures were revised downward, with December swinging to a loss of 17,000 jobs. Monthly data can be rocky, but a trend has emerged that shows an enduring weakness. Without the healthcare sector, the economy would have shed roughly 202,000 jobs since Trump became president in January 2025. His administration notes construction job gains outside of the housing sector, which it says point to future hiring growth.

Trump often claims that jobs are going to people born in the United States, rather than to immigrants. But the latest report punctured some of that argument.

The unemployment rate for people born in the U.S. has climbed over the last 12 months to 4.7% from 4.4%. This means a greater share of the people who Trump said would get jobs because of his immigration crackdown are, in fact, searching for work.

Prices at the pump are going up

“Slashing energy costs is among the most important actions we can take to bring down prices for American consumers,” Trump said in a February speech in Texas just before the U.S. and Israel attacked Iran. “Because when you cut the cost of energy, you really cut — you just cut the cost of everything.”

The president has repeatedly told Americans that keeping gas costs low would be key to defeating inflation. He has talked up the decline, citing figures that were far below the national average to persuade the public that driving was getting cheaper.

But the strikes against Iran that began Feb. 28 have, for the moment, crushed that narrative. Prices at the pump have jumped 19% over the last month to a national average of $3.45, according to AAA. The investment bank Goldman Sachs warned in an analyst note that, if higher oil prices persist, inflation could rise from its 2.4% reading in January to 3% by the end of the year.

The administration is banking on plans to contain any energy price increases, essentially betting that either the conflict will end shortly or the administration can succeed in getting more tankers through the Strait of Hormuz. Trump advisors on Sunday sought to assure anxious Americans that surging fuel prices are a short-term problem.

“We never know exactly the timeframe of this,” Energy Secretary Chris Wright said on CNN’s “State of the Union. “But in the worst case, this is a weeks, this is not a months thing.”

Stocks are off their highs

“You know, we set the all-time record in history with the Dow going to 50,000,” Trump said Thursday at the White House.

This frequently repeated talking point has grown stale. The Dow Jones industrial average, one of Trump’s preferred measures of success, has dropped 5% over the last month. Stocks are up during his presidency, just as they were when Democrat Joe Biden was president. The recent decline could be reversed if the war with Iran ends and companies see solid profits over the next year and beyond. The recent dip, however, should be a warning sign as the administration has stressed the importance of more people investing in the stock market through vehicles such as “Trump accounts” for children.

The stock market has become a barometer of how people feel about the economy, with stock investors tending to have more confidence and those without money in the markets being more pessimistic.

Joanna Hsu, the director of the University of Michigan’s surveys of consumers, noted that in February a “sizable” increase in sentiment among people owning stocks “was fully offset by a decline among consumers without stock holdings.”

Productivity is up, but workers aren’t benefiting

Trump can point to a win in that the economy has become more productive — generating more value for each hour of work. That is a positive sign for long-term growth in the U.S. and a reflection of its strong tech sector.

Business sector labor productivity climbed 2.8% in the fourth quarter of last year, the Labor Department reported Thursday. But the challenge is that the gains might not be spread to workers in the form of higher pay as labor’s share of income last year fell to the lowest level on record, noted Mike Konczal, senior director of policy and research at the Economic Security Project, a nonprofit aligned with liberal economic issues.

Economy grew at a faster pace under Biden

“Under the Biden administration, America was plagued by the nightmare of stagflation, meaning low growth and high inflation — a recipe for misery, failure and decline,” Trump said at the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland, in January.

The scoreboard tells a far different story, one that makes Biden’s track record in 2024 look better than Trump’s performance last year. The U.S. economy grew at a 2.8% pace during Biden’s last year, compared with 2.2% under Trump in 2025.

As for inflation, the primary measure used by the Federal Reserve is the personal consumption expenditures price index. It was 2.6% in both 2024 and 2025.

Trump has staked his economic argument on doing better than Biden. But while he has avoided the inflation spikes that haunted Biden’s presidency — amid the height of the COVID-19 pandemic — Trump has not delivered stronger growth or more hiring.

Boak writes for the Associated Press.

The United States-Israeli war on Iran could leave consumers and businesses worldwide facing weeks or months of higher fuel prices even if the conflict, which is now in its eighth day, ends quickly, as suppliers grapple with damaged facilities, disrupted logistics, and elevated risks to shipping.

The outlook poses a global economic threat and a political vulnerability for US President Donald Trump leading into the midterm elections, with voters sensitive to energy bills and unfavourable to foreign entanglements.

Global oil prices have surged by more than 25 percent since the start of the war, driving up fuel prices for consumers worldwide.

The national average petrol price reached $3.41 per gallon ($0.9 a litre) on Saturday, according to the American Automobile Association (AAA), rising by $0.43 over the past week. Goldman Sachs warned oil prices could climb above $100 per barrel if shipping disruptions continue.

The US crude oil settled at just below $91 per barrel on Friday – its largest weekly gain on record in data dating back to 1983, indicating prices could continue to rise.

“The market is shifting from pricing pure geopolitical risk to grappling with tangible operational disruption, as refinery shutdowns and export constraints begin to impair crude processing and regional supply flows,” JP Morgan analysts said earlier this week, according to the Reuters news agency.

The conflict has already led to the suspension of about a fifth of global crude and natural gas supply, as Tehran targets ships in the vital Strait of Hormuz between its shores and Oman, and attacks energy infrastructure across the region.

A nearly complete shutdown of the strait means the region’s top oil producers – Saudi Arabia, the United Arab Emirates, Iraq and Kuwait – have had to suspend shipments of as much as 140 million barrels of oil – equal to about 1.4 days of global demand – to global refiners.

More than 80 percent of global trade moves by sea, according to the World Bank, meaning disruptions in the waterway could increase freight costs and delay deliveries of goods.

Storages in the Gulf filling

As a result, oil and gas storage at facilities in the Gulf is rapidly filling, forcing oilfields in Iraq and Kuwait to cut oil production, with the UAE likely to cut next, analysts, traders and sources told Reuters.

“At some point soon, everyone will also shut in if vessels do not come,” a ⁠source with a state oil company in the region, who asked not to be named, told Reuters.

Oilfields forced to shut in across the Middle East as a result of the shipping disruptions could take a while to return to normal, said Amir Zaman, head of the Americas commercial team at Rystad Energy.

“The conflict could be ended, but it could take days or weeks or months, depending on the types of fields, age of the field, the type of shut-in that they’ve had to do before you can get production back up to what it once was,” he said.

Iranian forces, meanwhile, are targeting regional energy infrastructure, including refineries and terminals, forcing them to shut down too, with some of those operations badly damaged by attacks and in need of repairs.

Qatar declared force majeure on its huge volumes of gas exports on Wednesday after Iranian drone attacks, and it may take at least a month to return to normal production ‌levels, sources told Reuters. Qatar supplies 20 percent of global liquefied natural gas (LNG).

Saudi Aramco’s mammoth Ras Tanura refinery and crude export terminal, meanwhile, has also closed due to attacks, with no details on damage.

Economists warn that the situation could create a combination of higher prices and slower growth.

A year ago, engineers at Snowflake, the American cloud-based data platform, still spent part of their day on routine tasks – such as scanning dashboards to ensure systems were running smoothly and chasing colleagues for data to complete trend analyses.

Now, says Qaiser Habib, the company’s Toronto-based head of Canada engineering, AI agents handle much of that groundwork, allowing engineers to focus on higher-level decisions.

Habib spends 20 to 30 hours a week interacting with five AI agents. Snowflake has built agents to review product design or to help on-call engineers to help during an outage or an incident, among other uses. He estimates the average engineer works with three or four agents daily, using them to carry out coding projects under human supervision.

“You don’t have to bother a human for basic questions any more,” Habib said, noting that he still collaborates with colleagues on more complex work, such as troubleshooting coding problems.

As companies experiment with AI agents – systems designed to plan, reason and carry out multistep tasks – the technology is beginning to reshape office hierarchies across the United States and Canada. Unlike chatbots, which respond to prompts, AI agents can adapt to changing contexts such as business goals and draw on reference tools including calendars, meeting transcripts and internal databases, to complete work with limited human oversight.

In some workplaces, AI systems are not just completing tasks but also assigning them to human workers. As the technology improves, AI agents are also beginning to manage each other. One agent might generate code, for example, while another reviews it for errors and fixes bugs before a human signs off on the final version.

These agent-to-agent workflows can help companies scale faster. But they also intensify concerns that AI is moving beyond assistance into supervision – and potentially, job replacement.

The leaner office

Anthropic recently expanded access to its cowork agents, allowing users without technical expertise to grant Claude – its AI assistant – permission to specific folders on their computers so it can read, edit, create and organise files autonomously.

The growing use of AI agents is transforming how organisations function around the world, even in companies that aren’t focused on building technology products. For example, some companies are using AI tools to track performance, recommend promotions, role changes, and even identify roles for elimination.

The shift comes as white-collar jobs continue to disappear, particularly in the US. A slew of US employers have announced mass layoffs, mostly affecting entry-level and middle-management workers, and executives have pointed to automation and AI-driven efficiency as part of the rationale. When Amazon said in October that it planned to eliminate about 14,000 jobs, executives cited AI’s potential to help the company operate with fewer layers and greater efficiency. UPS, Target and General Motors also announced deep cuts last year, and this January saw more layoffs than any January in the US since 2009. Several more companies, including Pinterest and HP, continued to cite AI initiatives as part of the reason.

Goldman Sachs has estimated that 6 to 7 percent of US workers could lose their jobs due to AI adoption, with higher risks for computer programmers, accountants, auditors, legal and administrative assistants, and customer service representatives. Overall employment effects, the bank said in August, may be “relatively temporary” as new roles emerge.

Middle management squeezed

Early predictions suggested AI would mainly replace entry-level technical jobs, and some experts tie recent high unemployment rates for new graduates to AI adoption. But the bigger disruption, said Roger Kirkness, founder of AI software firm Convictional in Toronto, is occurring in middle management.

His company’s tools translate executive strategy into operational tasks – a role once handled by supervisors – delivering daily assignments and feedback to employees through a user-friendly inbox interface.

In companies of more than 50 people, “where CEOs can’t speak with each manager, our platform continually surfaces the context that the organisation has that is relevant to leadership decision-making”, Kirkness told Al Jazeera.

This doesn’t mean humans have become irrelevant. But there is growing pressure to reskill, and those who thrive in strategic thinking are better-positioned to adapt to AI-integrated work environments, Kirkness said.

“People are basically becoming managers of their prior jobs,” he said, because AI is now able to perform many of the tasks that previously fell within their roles. Instead of completing tasks such as coding or designing marketing assets, humans are focusing on higher-level strategy while monitoring AI systems, he added.

However, recent research indicates that job cuts reflect companies’ anticipation of AI’s potential, rather than its current ability to replace human workers fully.

A December Harvard Business Review survey of 1,006 global executives found that while AI has played little direct role in replacing workers so far, many companies have already cut jobs or slowed hiring in anticipation of its promised impact.

Most CEOs say they’re still waiting on AI’s payoff: 56 percent report no revenue or cost benefits so far, according to consulting firm PwC’s latest Global CEO Survey of 4,454 executives across 95 countries and territories.

Trust and control

Stefano Puntoni, a behavioural scientist at the University of Pennsylvania’s Wharton School, has found that AI usage is also already affecting workplace communication habits. His research shows employees are often more willing to delegate tasks to AI than to colleagues, which can help to reduce burnout. “There’s no social cost,” he said. “You don’t worry about burdening an AI.”

Still, Puntoni argues the biggest barrier to adoption is psychological, not technical. Even effective systems can fail if workers do not trust them. Generative AI, he said, can threaten employees’ sense of competence, autonomy and connection.

“If workers feel threatened, they may want the system to fail,” Puntoni said. “At scale, that guarantees failure.”

In other words, deploying AI primarily as a cost-cutting tool can backfire. Layoffs framed as efficiency gains may reduce cooperation and limit the productivity benefits companies hope to unlock with technology, Puntoni said.

Trust, Kirkness agreed, is the real constraint. To build staff confidence in the tools it sells – and to avoid layoffs – Convictional adopted a four-day workweek, framing it as a way to share AI-driven productivity gains with employees.

“Mass layoffs in the name of automation destroy trust,” he said.

The human premium

In the US, lawsuits have begun to challenge AI-driven corporate decisions, particularly in areas such as insurance claim denials and alleged AI-enabled hiring discrimination.

Some experts warn that as AI systems become more autonomous, humans risk losing meaningful oversight – and that these agents themselves could become targets for cyberattacks. Yet regulation has struggled to keep pace with innovation. Neither the US nor Canada has clearly defined rules governing AI agents.

Business leaders are testing which functions can be automated and which still require sustained human involvement. For some workers, that uncertainty has become a source of unease.

One employee at a multinational firm, who is based in Vancouver, said she sometimes wonders whether the online “coach” used to support employee development is an AI system or a human relying so heavily on AI tools that the distinction has blurred. She requested anonymity because of concerns about professional repercussions.

Some organisations are setting boundaries. New Ground Wellness, a Canadian clinical counselling and wellness firm, uses AI tools such as chatbots in its daily operations, but recently declined a 20,000 Canadian dollar ($14,600) proposal for an agentic AI intake system that would match therapists with clients.

After receiving feedback from callers, the company concluded that the efficiency gains would not outweigh potential damage to trust. Their decision also reflects multiple surveys showing a strong preference among Western consumers for human customer service workers.

“We are open to revisiting AI systems in the future,” said New Ground Wellness cofounder Lucinda Bibbs, “but at this stage, preserving human connections remains our highest priority.”

Introduction

In 1974, Muhammad Yunus began experimenting with an initiative to give small loans to impoverished rural women to foster a sense of empowerment through entrepreneurial start-ups – an initiative that was institutionalised through the famous Grameen Bank. In just a couple of years, this initiative had snowballed into the United Nations declaring 2005 the International Year of Microcredit, with Yunus winning the Nobel Peace Prize for economic development.

In an age of international globalisation and neoliberal theories, microcredit seemed to be the solution to the ills of the developing world. Economists, development theorists, and journalists began to discuss the multiple success stories from the Grameen Bank and the vast impact small loans were having on people.

But a much darker reality came to take place. Although Yunus said that credit is a human right, he failed to address the fact that debt follows. Stories like Razia’s became far too frequent.

The Feminisation of Debt: Razia’s Story

Razia had taken out an initial microcredit loan of around $50 from Grameen Bank to put food on the table and pay for her children’s education; to her, this money was a lifeline to meet her family’s immediate needs. She was offered an interest rate of 20%, which she did not initially realise due to her limited fiscal literacy, and she could not pay.

Loan sharks targeted her family with violent threats when they were unable to meet payment deadlines; she had to sell her heirloom jewellery, her belongings, and eventually her home to make the payment – and even now, she continues to face threats from the loan sharks.

Razia’s story is not uncommon and illustrates how a linear model of microcredit has led to the feminisation of debt: women took out these loans to cover basic needs and fulfil their societal roles as caretakers, only to be uniquely burdened and targeted because they were unable to meet deadlines. This led women to be prone to economic vulnerability, social shame due to the procurement of debt, and violence from debt collectors.

Questioning the Efficacy of Microfinance

In addition to Razia’s story, the reality of the Grameen Bank’s efficacy is also up for debate. More and more economists became wary of the narrative that microfinance helps start income-generating enterprises, and recognised that this led many to feed their families or afford education. Another fundamental assumption was that microfinance would empower the poor, especially women, through microenterprises, given their financial bargaining power within the community. The neoliberal social policies used to model microenterprises for poor rural women to sell their labour or to ‘sub-contract’ their services were broadly not adopted, and forced women into disempowering roles in the informal sector.

Dr. Lamia Karim conducted research on the particular claims on gender empowerment by microcredit programmes and ended up creating a ‘local economy of shame’; repayment of these loans was tied to a woman’s standing and honour within the community, and these norms created environments of disempowerment, subjugation, and stress to repay the loans.

Theoretical Frameworks: From WID to GAD

Yunus’s microcredit initiative followed the theoretical prescriptions of Women in Development (WID), which sought to address gender-based economic disparities and integrate women into existing economic systems. The Grameen Bank was able to meet these goals; however, the linear model of empowerment used and the integration of women within the neoliberal economic market failed to meet the overall goals of empowerment.

As organisations, advocates, and economists saw the initial model struggling to meet the holistic goals of empowerment, they integrated theoretical prescriptions from Gender and Development (GAD), which sought to confront the root causes of gender inequality and to meet both the practical and strategic needs of women. This empowers women not only to meet economic goals to ensure survival, but also to develop collective action skills to confront power structures that lead to their subjugation.

Proshika: A New Model for Empowerment

Proshika was formed in 1979 under the WID model and focused on targeting rural communities, but realigned its goals with a GAD model in 2009. Their mission statement was revised to reflect the integration of collective-action training into their microcredit initiatives. As an organisation, they planned to “develop their capacity, so they can claim their due rights from the government” and “ensure life security” – a revolutionary shift within the broader conversation about microcredit.

Proshika had a model very similar to the Grameen Bank microcredit programmes; however, they added organisational spaces for women to meet and discuss community issues, embedding collective action within the programme. When a woman signed up for a loan, she was connected with other women in her community and asked to discuss pressing issues. Proshika organised a total of 42,809 groups; these various groups looked into important societal issues, such as the prevention of child marriage, the prevention of violence against women, and the abolition of dowry practices.

These trainings connected women with existing government systems and taught them how to access the judicial system, enabling them to pursue institutional avenues of change.

Building Social Capital and Political Agency

These spaces within the community allow women to build social credit, serving as places where information flows and as essential spaces for building trust and relationships. They increase social awareness, social interaction outside of one’s family unit, and increase domestic power and civic participation.

Dr Paromita Sanyal studies the role of microfinance agencies in Bangladesh, and credits NGOs such as Proshika for building both vertical and horizontal lines of social credit. Vertical social credit enables women to build essential connections within their own communities, and horizontal social credit allows them to connect with NGOs, politicians, and governing bodies. This axis of power builds political agency within communities and empowers women to challenge restrictive gender norms.

Proshika operates in 8,784 villages, 1,639 unions, 266 sub-districts, 42 districts, and 7 divisions within Bangladesh – they have organised 33,982 female groups across the nation. Through their collective action programmes, they were able to see a statistically significant decrease in child marriages, dowries, and gender-based violence within rural villages.

Towards True Empowerment

Proshika’s microfinance initiative not only enabled income-generating activities in rural villages but also empowered women to make a difference in their communities. Proshika’s success story should serve as a model for reforming existing microfinance institutions and incorporating collective action mechanisms into programmes.

Unlike the Grameen Bank, which focused solely on women’s practical needs, Proshika made an effort to address women’s and community members’ strategic needs. This led to statistically significant decreases in domestic violence and child marriages, as well as increased awareness of government systems and the justice system as a whole, with civic engagement opening accessible avenues for change.

Dr. Andrea Cornwall’s critical feminist analysis of women’s empowerment suggests that true empowerment is about changing asymmetrical power relations and requires building critical consciousness to help people recognise fundamental inequalities. Empowerment is relational and involves the interplay between personal and political to create a process, rather than focusing on an outcome.

Unlike the Grameen Bank, Proshika focused more on the various aspects of empowerment, without adopting a linear view of tangible results. This led to successful grassroots movements that brought attention to women’s structural needs and raised awareness of women’s value to community spaces.

Empowerment comes from changing power relations within the community, and Proshika met both women’s practical and strategic needs. It is essential to address the extreme poverty that women face, but also to build avenues for them to challenge the institutions they participate in.

As the United States and Israel’s war on Iran unfolds over the coming days and weeks, the scale of the fallout for the global economy will be measured at the petrol pump.

The biggest threat the conflict poses to global economic health lies in rising energy prices.

Iran’s effective closure of the Strait of Hormuz and Iranian attacks on key energy production facilities in Qatar and Saudi Arabia have paralysed a substantial chunk of the world’s energy supply.

For a global economy already rattled by US President Donald Trump’s tariffs and what many see as his unravelling of the post-World War II order, much now depends on how long the disruption lasts.

A sustained surge in energy prices would drive up the cost of everyday goods.

Central banks would then likely raise borrowing costs to curb inflation, dampening consumer spending and dragging down economic growth.

“It’s really a question on how long the disruption of flows through the Strait of Hormuz lasts and whether there will be destruction of physical assets,” said Anne-Sophie Corbeau, an analyst at Columbia University’s Center on Global Energy Policy.

“For the moment, the market is pricing a short disruption and no destruction. But that may change in the future. We simply do not know right now how this whole crisis ends.”

While Iran’s threats to shipping have halted traffic through the Strait of Hormuz, the conduit for one-fifth of the world’s oil, crude prices have seen relatively modest gains so far.

Brent crude hovered about $84 a barrel on Friday morning, US time, up about 15 percent compared with pre-conflict prices.

That gain pales in comparison with past crises.

During the 1973-74 oil embargo led by OPEC’s Arab members, prices quadrupled in just three months.

Since then, the world’s dependence on Middle Eastern oil has declined substantially.

Today, the US is the biggest producer globally, producing some 13 million barrels a day, more than Iran, Iraq and the UAE combined, according to the US Energy Information Administration.

But if supply disruptions extend beyond a few weeks, oil prices could rise precipitously.

Storage capacity constraints

The seven oil-producing Gulf nations – Bahrain, Kuwait, Oman, Qatar, Saudi Arabia and the UAE – are likely to run out of crude oil storage capacity in less than a month if the Strait of Hormuz remains closed, according to an analysis by JPMorgan Chase.

With storage capacity depleted, producers would be forced to cut production.

“While there will be some capacities elsewhere, and some options to use pipelines rather than shipping, it is incredibly difficult to replace the sheer volume as we are talking about an average of 20 million barrels of oil per day that usually cross the Strait of Hormuz,” said Sarah Schiffling, a supply chains expert at the Hanken School of Economics in Helsinki.

“This important maritime chokepoint provides very significant leverage in the global economy.”

This week, Goldman Sachs analysts estimated that global oil prices will likely hit $100 a barrel – a threshold not seen since Russia’s 2022 invasion of Ukraine – if shipping through the waterway stays at the current reduced levels for five weeks.

In an interview published by The Financial Times on Friday, Qatar’s energy minister Saad al-Kaabi warned that producers in the region could halt production within days and that oil could soar as high as $150 a barrel.

Such increases would reverberate through the global economy.

The International Monetary Fund has estimated that global economic growth is reduced by 0.15 percent for every 10 percent rise in oil prices.

The pain would not be spread evenly.

About 80 percent of the oil shipped through the strait goes to Asia.

India, Japan, South Korea and the Philippines, which are all highly dependent on foreign energy imports, would be among the economies most vulnerable to spikes in the cost of necessities such as food and fuel.

“The effect would be felt in Asia and Europe in particular,” said Lutz Kilian, an economist at the Federal Reserve Bank of Dallas.

“Some countries, such as China, have ample oil reserves to help weather a temporary outage, while others do not.”

Liquefied natural gas (LNG), which is also shipped through the strait and has fewer alternative suppliers outside the region than crude oil, has already seen much steeper price rises.

European prices of LNG surged by as much as 50 percent on Monday after state-run QatarEnergy, which ships about one-fifth of global supply through the waterway, announced a halt to production following drone attacks blamed on Iran.

“Gas will be more impacted because the market was still relatively tight and stocks are low in Europe as we are at the end of winter; also, there is no replacement for the LNG lost,” Corbeau said.

Prolonged uncertainty

With US President Donald Trump signalling that he intends to continue the assault on Iran for at least several more weeks, the extent to which Tehran is willing – or able – to keep the strait closed will be critical to the global economy.

At least nine commercial vessels have been targeted in attacks in or near the strait since the start of the conflict, prompting multiple insurance firms to cancel coverage for vessels in the Gulf.

While traffic through the strait has not halted, it is down about 90 percent compared with normal levels, according to ship tracker MarineTraffic.

“The uncertainty itself is probably the most dangerous part. Supply chains hate uncertainty,” Schiffling said.

“It is possible to plan for almost anything, but not knowing what will happen makes it really challenging to adapt operations.”

On Wednesday, Trump said he had ordered the US International Development Finance Corporation to start insuring shipping lines in the region in order to keep trade flowing.

Trump also said the US Navy could begin escorting vessels through the strait if necessary.

“As long as Israel and the US are able to suppress Iranian drone and missile attacks in the strait to the point that the bulk of the oil tankers gets through, and as long as the United States provides back-up insurance for shippers and their cargo, the global economy may make it through this war without a recession,” Kilian said.

“On the other hand, if there is a severe disruption of oil traffic, the economic costs will grow the longer the disruption lasts.”

The licence follows a push from US President Donald Trump to open Venezuela’s resource sector to international investment.

The United States government has authorised a limited licence for the export of Venezuelan gold, following a high-level meeting to expand mining in the country.

On Friday, a notice appeared on the US Department of the Treasury’s website announcing the licence.

It allows Venezuela’s state-run mining company Minerven and its subsidiaries to export, transport and sell Venezuelan gold to the US, within the parameters set out under US law.

Under the licence, however, no Venezuelan gold will be permitted to be exchanged with Cuba, North Korea, Iran or Russia.

The licence also requires payments to sanctioned individuals to flow through Treasury accounts known as Foreign Government Deposit Funds, the same system that has been used to store the proceeds from Venezuelan oil sales.

Minerven and other state-owned industries have faced US sanctions for years, as a penalty for the push to nationalise Venezuela’s resources under former President Hugo Chavez.

But the US has been pushing for inroads into Venezuela’s oil and mining sectors since January 3, when it launched an operation to abduct and imprison the country’s then-president, Nicolas Maduro.

The January 3 military operation has been condemned as a violation of international law, and critics argue that US President Donald Trump has since sought to exploit Venezuela’s natural resources for his country’s gain.

Trump and his allies maintain that Venezuela’s oil resources were stolen from the US, citing the expropriation of assets from US businesses in 2007.

But international law guarantees that countries have permanent sovereignty over their own natural resources, which cannot be exploited by foreign powers without consent.

So far, the government of interim Venezuelan President Delcy Rodriguez has complied with Trump’s requests to surrender oil to the US and open the country’s oil and mining sectors to foreign investment.

Just this week, Rodriguez agreed to send a mining reform law to the country’s National Assembly, following a two-day visit from Trump’s Interior Secretary Doug Burgum.

And in late January, Rodriguez signed into law a separate reform that allowed for the expansion of private investment from abroad in Venezuela’s oil sector and lowered taxes on the industry.

Venezuela’s economy has struggled under tightening US sanctions and government mismanagement, forcing millions of citizens from the South American country to flee its borders over the last decade.

Proponents of the reforms say outside investment can help revive Venezuela’s ailing economy and fund upgrades to its outdated mining infrastructure.

On Friday, Venezuela’s central bank released its first inflation statistics since November 2024, showing that inflation skyrocketed to 475 percent in 2025, when the US placed an embargo on Venezuelan oil exports.

Gold production from Venezuela in 2025 amounted to nearly 9.5 tonnes, according to the government, and the country sits on some of the largest oil deposits in the world.

Over the past two decades, China has quietly eclipsed the United States as the dominant trading partner in parts of Latin America.

But since taking office for a second term, United States President Donald Trump has pushed to reverse Beijing’s advance.

That includes through aggressive manoeuvres directed at China’s allies in the region.

Already, the Trump administration has stripped officials in Costa Rica, Panama and Chile of their US visas, reportedly due to their ties to China.

It has also threatened to take back the Panama Canal over allegations that Chinese operatives are running the waterway. And after invading Venezuela and abducting President Nicolas Maduro, the US forced the country to halt oil exports to China.

But on Saturday, Trump is taking a different approach, welcoming Latin American leaders to his Mar-a-Lago estate for an event dubbed the “Shield of the Americas” summit.

How he plans to persuade leaders to distance themselves from one of the region’s largest economic partners remains unclear.

But experts say the high-level meeting could signal that Washington is prepared to put concrete offers on the table.

Securing meaningful commitments from Latin American leaders will take more than a photo op and vague promises, according to Francisco Urdinez, an expert on regional relations with China at Chile’s Pontifical Catholic University.

Even among Trump’s allies, Urdinez believes significant economic incentives are required.

“What they’re really hoping is that Washington backs up the political alignment with tangible economic benefits,” he said.

‘Reinforcing the Donroe Doctrine’

Already, the White House has confirmed that nearly a dozen countries will be represented at the weekend summit.

They include conservative leaders from Argentina, Bolivia, Chile, Costa Rica, Ecuador, El Salvador, the Dominican Republic, Honduras, Panama, Paraguay, and Trinidad and Tobago.

Mexico and Brazil, the region’s largest economies, have been notably left out. Both are currently led by left-leaning governments.

In a post on social media, the Trump administration framed the event as a “historic meeting reinforcing the Donroe Doctrine”, the president’s plan for establishing US dominance over the Western Hemisphere.

Part of that strategy involves assembling a coalition of ideological allies in the region.

But rolling back Chinese influence in a region increasingly reliant on its economy will not be an easy feat, according to Gimena Sanchez, the Andes director at the Washington Office on Latin America (WOLA), a US-based research and advocacy group.

The US “is trying to get countries to agree that they’re not going to have China be one of their primary trading partners, and they really can’t at this point”, Sanchez said.

“For most countries, China is either their top, second or third trading partner.”

China, after all, has the second-largest economy in the world, and it has invested heavily in Latin America, including through infrastructure projects and massive loans.

The Asian giant has emerged as the top trading partner in South America in particular, with bilateral trade reaching $518bn in 2024, a record high for Beijing.

The US, however, remains the biggest outside trade force in Latin America and the Caribbean overall, due in large part to close relations with its neighbour, Mexico.

As of 2024, US imports from Latin America jumped to $661bn, and its exports were valued at $517bn.

Rather than choosing sides, though, many countries in the region are trying to strike a balance between the two powers, Sanchez explained.

Still, she added that the US cannot come empty-handed to this weekend’s negotiations.

“If the US is very boldly telling countries to cut off strengthening ties with China”, Sanchez emphasised that “the US is going to have to offer them something.”

What’s on the table?

Trump has already extended economic lifelines to Latin American governments politically aligned with his own.

In the case of Argentina, for instance, Trump announced in October a $20bn currency swap, meant to increase the value of the country’s peso.

He also increased the volume of Argentinian beef permitted to be imported into the US, shoring up the country’s agricultural sector, despite pushback from US cattle farmers.

Trump has largely tied those economic incentives to the continued leadership of political movements favourable to his own.

The $20bn swap, for instance, came ahead of a key election for Argentinian President Javier Milei’s right-wing party, which Trump supports.

Isolating China from resources in Latin America could also play to Trump’s advantage as he angles for better trade terms with Beijing.

A show of hemispheric solidarity could give Trump extra leverage as he travels to Beijing in early April to meet with Chinese President Xi Jinping, Urdinez pointed out.

Then there’s the regional security angle. The US has expressed particular concern about China’s control of strategic infrastructure in Latin America and the critical minerals it could exploit in the region to bolster its defence and technology capabilities.

Bolivia, Argentina and Chile, for instance, are believed to hold the world’s largest deposits of lithium, a metal necessary for energy storage and rechargeable batteries.

The Trump administration referenced such threats in its national security strategy, published in December.

“Some foreign influence will be hard to reverse,” the strategy document said, blaming the “political alignments between certain Latin American governments and certain foreign actors”.

But Trump’s security platform nevertheless asserted that Latin American leaders were actively seeking alternatives to China.

“Many governments are not ideologically aligned with foreign powers but are instead attracted to doing business with them for other reasons, including low costs and fewer regulatory hurdles,” the document said.

It argued that the US could combat Chinese influence by highlighting the “hidden costs” of close ties to Beijing, including “debt traps” and espionage.

‘More aspiration than reality’

Henrietta Levin, a senior fellow at the Center for Strategic and International Studies in Washington, believes that many Latin American countries would prefer to deepen economic engagement with the US over China.

But in many cases, that hasn’t been an option.

She pointed to Ecuador’s decision to sign a free trade agreement (FTA) with China in 2023 after it failed to negotiate a similar agreement with the US under President Joe Biden.

Some US politicians had opposed the deal as a threat to domestic industries. Others had encouraged Biden to reject it due to alleged corruption in Ecuador’s government.

Critics, though, said the resistance pushed Ecuador into closer relations with China.

“ When Ecuador signed their free trade agreement with China a couple years ago, their leader actually made quite clear that they had wanted an FTA with the US and would’ve preferred that,” said Levin.

“But the US didn’t want to negotiate such an agreement, and China did.”

As a result, Ecuador became the fifth country in Latin America to ink a free trade pact with China, after Chile, Peru, Costa Rica and Nicaragua.

For Levin, the question looming over this weekend’s summit is whether the Trump administration will step up and provide alternatives to the economic engagement China has already delivered.

Options could include trade agreements, financing for new development and investments with attractive terms.

But without such offers, Urdinez, the Chilean professor, warns that Trump will face limits to his ambitions of checking China’s growth in Latin America.

“Until Washington is willing to fill the economic space it’s asking countries to vacate, the rollback strategy will remain more aspiration than reality,” said Urdinez.

Lutnick’s relationship with the late financier and sex offender has come under scrutiny after files revealed closer ties than previously known.

US Secretary of Commerce Howard Lutnick has agreed to give testimony to lawmakers about his ties to Jeffrey Epstein, the head of a committee investigating the late sex offender has said.

Lutnick, who lived next door to Epstein in New York for more than a decade, “proactively agreed” to provide a transcribed interview to the House Committee on Oversight and Government Reform, panel chair James Comer said on Tuesday.

“I commend his demonstrated commitment to transparency and appreciate his willingness to engage with the Committee. I look forward to his testimony,” Comer, a Kentucky Republican, said on X.

Axios, which first reported the commerce secretary’s intention to testify, quoted Lutnick as saying he had done nothing wrong and he wished to “set the record straight”.

Lutnick’s relationship with Epstein, who died in 2019 while awaiting sex trafficking charges, has come under mounting scrutiny after he appeared to misrepresent the extent of his associations with the notorious financier.

In a podcast interview last year, Lutnick said he decided to “never be in the room” with Epstein again following an uncomfortable encounter at the sex offender’s Manhattan penthouse in 2005.

But files released by the Justice Department earlier this year showed that Lutnick met and communicated with Epstein for years after the reported 2005 encounter, and the commerce secretary later acknowledged that he visited the financier’s private island of Little Saint James in 2012.

Comer said on Tuesday that he had also sent letters to seven individuals seeking written testimony about their knowledge of Epstein’s crimes, including Microsoft cofounder Bill Gates, private equity investor Leon Black, and top Goldman Sachs lawyer Kathryn Ruemmler.

Gates, Black and Ruemmler have repeatedly denied wrongdoing in connection with Epstein, or having knowledge of his abuse of women and girls.

The committee’s requests for testimony come after former US President Bill Clinton and his wife, ex-Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, appeared before lawmakers last week to answer questions about their ties to Epstein.

Bill Clinton told the committee he did nothing wrong and “saw nothing that ever gave me pause” while interacting with Epstein.

Hillary Clinton told lawmakers she had no recollection of encountering Epstein and that she never “flew on his plane or visited his island home or offices”.

QatarEnergy has suspended liquefied natural gas (LNG) production following a drone attack, straining the global LNG market.

On Monday, Iranian drones struck two sites, according to Qatar’s Ministry of Defence: a water tank at a power plant in Mesaieed Industrial City and an energy facility in Ras Laffan belonging to QatarEnergy, the world’s largest LNG producer.

While no casualties were reported, QatarEnergy suspended the production of LNG and other products at the impacted sites for security reasons.

Why did QatarEnergy suspend operations?

The drone attacks hit the Ras Laffan complex, which is home to processing units for liquefied natural gas set to be exported.

The state-owned energy company was forced to declare what is known as force majeure, when a company is freed from contractual obligations in the event of extraordinary circumstances, such as a drone attack, according to Reuters and Bloomberg News, citing people familiar with the matter.

This comes at a time when intensifying sea battles between Iran and the United States, coupled with missiles flying over the region, have effectively choked the Strait of Hormuz, a strategic trade route. At least 150 vessels have dropped anchor, including those carrying LNG, in the strait and surrounding areas, according to Reuters.

Traffic in the strait for both LNG and oil has declined by 86 percent, with roughly 700 ships sitting idle on either side of the passage, according to the Anadolu news agency.

How will this impact the broader global LNG market?

Qatar’s LNG exports represent 20 percent of the global market. With fewer products reaching the market, LNG supply is down, causing prices to surge.

“Definitely an escalation overnight with pressure on energy infra in the Gulf,” said Rachel Ziemba, a senior fellow at the Center for a New American Security, a think tank.

The countries hit the most directly are Asian markets, particularly Bangladesh, India, and Pakistan.

China is the world’s largest importer of natural gas, but it gets the majority of its imports from Australia, accounting for 34 percent of its imports, according to the US Energy Information Administration.

Maksim Sonin, an energy expert at Stanford University’s Center for Fuels of the Future, however, said that while QatarEnergy’s decision would bring “volatility” to energy markets, he wouldn’t describe the situation as a “crisis” just yet.

“We will see near-term volatility in the LNG market, especially if infrastructure in Qatar and other hubs is damaged,” Sonin told Al Jazeera. However, he added, “I do not expect the 2022 gas crisis to repeat in Europe,” referring to the period following Russia’s full-fledged invasion of Ukraine, when many European nations tried to dramatically scale back their dependence on Russian oil and gas.

Which are the world’s largest LNG exporters?

Until 2022, Russia was the world’s biggest exporter of LNG, but its sales have plummeted since its war on Ukraine began.

Now, the US is the world’s largest exporter of LNG, followed by Qatar and Australia.

Will this add pressure on Europe?

While 82 percent of QatarEnergy’s sales are to Asian countries, the halt puts increased pressure on other markets across the globe, too, particularly in Europe.

In effect, a smaller supply of gas will need to meet the same global demand. As a result, gas prices have already started soaring: Benchmark Dutch and British wholesale gas prices soared by almost 50 percent, while benchmark Asian LNG prices jumped almost 39 percent, on Monday after the QatarEnergy announcement.

“Not good if Qatar stays offline for long, of course,” said Ziemba. The only silver lining for Europe: “At least the worst of the winter in Europe may be behind,” Ziemba pointed out.

The European Union’s gas coordination group will meet on Wednesday to assess the impact of the widening conflict in the Middle East, a European Commission spokesperson told Reuters on Monday. The group includes representatives from member state governments. It monitors gas storage and security of supply in the EU, and coordinates response measures during crises.

FLYING in economy usually makes you think of leg pain thanks to limited space.

But one airline’s economy seats are known for having the opposite.

Japan Airlines is often considered as having one of the best and most spacious economy seats in the world, having won the Skytrax award for ‘Best Economy Class Airline Seat’ for six consecutive years.

For example, Japan Airlines has a seat pitch – that’s the distance between seats – of up to 86cm.

Other airlines usually have up to a maximum of 81cm.

The seats are also wider on a Japan Airlines flight, with the Boeing 787 Dreamliners using a 2-4-2 configuration, rather than 3-3-3.

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This allows each seat to have an extra 5cm of room, reaching up to 48cm in total width.

There’s more room between armrests as well, ranging from 45cm to 48cm.

Seats also have 13-inch 4K entertainment screens, adjustable headrests, power outlets and built-in cup holders.

The food on board is next level too, as Japan Airlines collaborates with leading Japanese restaurants to create their in-flight meals.

And Brits can experience this as well…

Japan Airlines runs long-haul flights from London Heathrow to a number of destinations including Tokyo, Osaka, Hiroshima, Fukuoka, Nagoya and Okinawa.

Japan Airlines flights from the UK usually start from around £700 return.

Last year, travel writer Jacob Lewis tried out the first cabin seats with built-in speakers, which were on Japan Airlines aircraft.

He said: “Settling into my private business class suite, I felt nervous as I queued up The Super Mario Bros Movie on my massive 24-inch 4K monitor.

“But it turns out my fears of disturbing my neighbours‘ peace were unfounded.

“Even with explosions raging at full volume through the headrest speakers, you couldn’t hear a peep from the aisle.

“I thoroughly tested this theory by enthusiastically blasting some aggressively peppy J-pop, but again, the audio seemed to be tuned perfectly to keep it confined to my seat.

“The speakers will truly come into their own if you’re the kind who likes to fall asleep to music or a movie.”

He also added that the rest of the cabin felt futuristic.

He said: “Each seat now comes with fully closing doors featuring translucent panels that feel private without being claustrophobic.

“There’s wireless charging built right into the console (no more wrestling with cables mid-flight) and a handy wardrobe space to store your shoes before you step inside, Japanese style, along with your jacket.

“The seat itself features pressure-dispersing cushions that make you forget you’re in an airplane seat at all, and the cabin crew will fetch a nice squishy memory foam-style mattress when it’s time to sleep.”

In other airline news, British Airways launches £2 flights to two European destinations – with a catch.

Plus, British Airways launches European holiday sale with 25% off flights and £200 off breaks – here are the best deals.

President Donald Trump has repeatedly touted the U.S. economy as “roaring” and declared inflation “defeated” since returning to office in January 2025. In his recent State of the Union address, he called it “the golden age of America,” claiming unprecedented economic prosperity.

However, a new Reuters/Ipsos poll suggests that most Americans across party lines do not share that view. The poll, conducted online with 4,638 adults and a two-point margin of error, finds that 68% of respondents disagree with the statement that “the U.S. economy is booming.” Even among Republicans, who form Trump’s political base, opinion is sharply divided: 56% agree the economy is booming, while 43% disagree.

Cost of Living Remains Top Concern

Americans interviewed cited rising costs as their primary worry. In Tennessee, manufacturing worker Marcus Tripp said: “Even as a two-income household, we are struggling… I am worried more about how much my rent and everything is going up than I am about whether the guy down the street has citizenship documents or not.”

Poll respondents overwhelmingly rejected Trump’s claim that inflation has been defeated. Only 16% agreed with the statement that “there is hardly any inflation in the U.S.,” while 82% of independents and 72% of Republicans disagreed. Democrats were even more skeptical, with a strong majority rejecting the notion of a booming economy.

Awareness of Trump’s Economic Policies

The poll also revealed limited public knowledge of Trump’s specific proposals:

• 44% had never heard of the plan to restrict large investors from buying single-family homes.
• 48% were unaware of the proposed cap on credit card interest rates at 10%.
• By contrast, 78% were aware of tariff increases on imported goods, with many expecting the tariffs to raise the cost of living 54% overall, including 69% of Democrats and 42% of Republicans.

Some voters expressed frustration that policies emphasizing tariffs may not address the issues they feel most acutely. Independent voter Tiffany Ritchie of Corpus Christi said, “We’re not going to tariff our way out of this.”

Political Implications Ahead of Midterms

The poll’s results are a warning for Trump and the Republican Party as they head into the November 3 midterms, defending majorities in both the House and Senate. Cost-of-living concerns are emerging as a decisive factor for voters, potentially outweighing immigration and other campaign issues that Trump has emphasized.

Primaries are already underway in states such as Texas, North Carolina, and Arkansas, with both parties beginning to select candidates for the midterms. Economists predict modest growth this year, but few expect the kind of “booming” economy Trump describes.

Analysis

From my perspective, the poll highlights a growing disconnect between Trump’s rhetoric and the lived experience of many Americans. While the administration touts economic successes, households are still struggling with rising rents, groceries, and energy costs.

The division among Republicans is also notable. While Trump’s base remains partially supportive of his economic claims, nearly half of the party’s voters see little evidence of a boom. This split could weaken the Republican message in key battleground districts, especially where cost-of-living pressures are most acute.

Moreover, the limited public awareness of some Trump policies suggests that policy communication is lagging. Tariffs are well-known, but policies targeting housing and credit remain obscure, potentially limiting their political impact.

In short, while Trump frames the U.S. economy as a “golden age,” the reality for many voters is very different. Rising living costs, skepticism among independents, and division within his own party suggest that economic messaging alone may not be enough to secure midterm victories.

With information from Reuters.

Gaza City – Amid the buzz of customers in the Remal neighbourhood in Gaza City, Samar Abu Harbied stops at a small, makeshift roadside stall to buy groceries to prepare an Iftar meal for her family, to break their fast during the Muslim holy month of Ramadan.

With no cash in her purse, the 45-year-old housewife asks the grocer if she could put the bill on credit, until her husband or son could wire the money to him.

“I have not touched a paper note for months. I don’t even have money to pay for a taxi. Now we walk a lot, for long distances,” Abu Harbied said.

Najlaa Sukkar, 48, was trying to catch her breath at the same stall, which is run by her son Abdallah, after a failed journey on foot to see a doctor for a post-surgery check-up and to buy medication.

Najlaa said she did not have enough money to pay the 30 shekel (US$9.5) check-up fees, and the only banknote she had, a 20-shekel bill, was so worn out that the pharmacist turned it down.

“I returned without receiving medical care,” she told Al Jazeera.

“At the pharmacy, they didn’t accept the banknotes as they were frayed. The taxi driver didn’t accept a banknote, only small change, which I don’t have. It is very difficult to get by. What a mess, we don’t know what to do!”

Palestinians in the Gaza Strip are struggling to conduct their daily lives amid a severe cash flow problem imposed by Israel immediately after it embarked on its genocidal war on Gaza in October 2023.

A US-brokered ceasefire that went into effect in October has brought little reprieve to Palestinians, who are still using worn-out currency they had from before the war, or must rely on a new system of electronic payments conducted through smart telephones amid limited internet coverage.

Palestinians in Gaza use the Israeli currency, the shekel, in their daily transactions, and depend on Israel to supply banks with new banknotes and coins.

Electronic payments

Palestinians were forced to turn to a digital payment system as a way to get around a severe shortage of Israeli shekel banknotes, a problem that has been exacerbated by the destruction of an estimated 90 percent of bank branches and cash machines.

The Palestinian Monetary Authority, working with internet service providers, has pushed for mobile-based electronic payments, including PalPay and Jawwal Pay, to help Palestinians overcome the liquidity problem.

Abu Harbeid said her son switched to electronic payments after he faced many problems using the 50 shekels per shift he was receiving while working as a night guard.

“My son, Shady, was receiving his daily wage in cash, which was worn and torn. We could hardly break it into smaller change or buy anything, as sellers don’t accept overused paper bills,” she told Al Jazeera.

“Moreover, the seller doesn’t accept it unless I spend it all, as they don’t have change. Now, as he is paid into his bank account, we buy everything through bank apps,” she added.

But digital payments have added another layer of hardship to a large segment of the population.

Most Palestinians still do not receive bank-transferred salaries, many lack access to smartphones, and those who have phones struggle to keep them charged in an area where electricity services are in severe crisis.

To add to that, there is still the problem of finding a good internet connection for the transfer process.

Abu Harbeid said a proper trip to the market requires her to have her husband or son with her to pay for goods. But neither can leave work to join her.

“I prefer cash in my hand; I could buy anything on the go,” Abu Harbied said.

Not only a liquidity shortage issue

Analysts say Gaza’s current economic reality started as a liquidity crisis, but has become an issue of transition from a regulated financial system to a fragmented survival economy shaped by scarcity, informality, and political constraints.

“However, as the months passed, the crisis evolved into something far more structural,” Ahmed Abu Qamar, member of the board of directors of the Palestinian Economists Association, told Al Jazeera.

“The black market now plays a dominant role in determining liquidity conditions. A small group of traders effectively manages cash circulation through high-commission cashing operations.”

He said that when money itself becomes a traded commodity, it signals severe distortion in the monetary system. “Cash, like any commodity, becomes subject to supply and demand dynamics. When it becomes scarce, its value increases beyond its nominal worth. From an economic perspective, this represents a structural disruption of the monetary system.

“The formal banking sector and the Palestinian Monetary Authority were sidelined. What we are seeing is the neutralisation of the formal monetary system,” he said.

Abu Qamar said the deeper issue was confidence – not just in cash, but in the financial system as a whole. “Cash is inherently difficult to track, whereas electronic payments are traceable and can be frozen or restricted. Implementing such a transition abruptly produces severe economic and social distortions,” he warned.

“Widespread selling on credit is not a sign of market stability – it is an indicator of declining incomes and weakened purchasing power. When debt expands rapidly without a parallel increase in income, the result is social fragmentation. Approximately 95 percent of households in Gaza depend on aid,” he added.

Profiteering from Gaza’s woes 

The war has paved the way for middlemen to cash in illegally on the financial woes of Gaza, residents said.

Sukkar said that when her husband or sons needed cash, they were often forced to deal with brokers who charge a hefty commission that could reach 50 percent.

“We lose our money to them for nothing; they steal from us under our full consent,” she said.

Many residents, like Abu Harbeid, also do not trust bank transfers, saying they prefer physical cash in hand.

“I ask my sons, where does that money in the account appear?” said Sukkar.

“Who holds our money in their hands? I used to see money and count it, the banknotes and the change. On some days, when there are technical problems with the bank applications, we get nervous about the possibility of losing the money in their accounts,” she added.

Abdallah Sukkar, whose family ran a well-known family store in the Shujayea area in eastern Gaza before the war, said families who receive direct deposit salaries often buy with bank transfers.

“But I don’t like this method; I prefer cash,” he said.

He said he accepts all banknotes, whether new or worn-out ones, and allows people to buy on credit, but admitted that all of that affects his ability to make improvements to the roadside stall he now runs in place of his family’s old business.

He also complained of unpaid debts, adding that debts had soared by more than 500 percent during the war, while his profits barely reach 2 percent. He said he had given out 20,000 shekels’ worth of goods to new customers, “all of [whom] have become customers during the war”.

“People don’t have money; I can’t turn them away when they come to buy food on credit. It’s already catastrophic in Gaza,” he said.

“From the beginning of Ramadan till now, I haven’t had banknotes and change, which affects the sales. I don’t have small change to give to people who have cash, so they turn to other stalls or shops.

“Yesterday, when the bank application stopped, we were terrified that we might lose our money in the bank,” he said.

The Ecuadorian government has declared that it will significantly raise tariffs on imports from Colombia, increasing the rate from 30 percent to 50 percent starting March 1.

The decision, announced on Thursday, represents a major escalation in the intensifying trade and security dispute between the two neighbouring Andean countries.

Ecuador’s right-wing president, Daniel Noboa, has been pressuring his left-wing counterpart in Colombia, Gustavo Petro, to crack down on border security.

Since the start of the COVID-19 pandemic in 2020, Ecuador has seen a surge in violence linked to the expansion of organised crime in the country.

Noboa, echoing President Donald Trump in the United States, has blamed Petro for not acting aggressively enough to combat narcotics trafficking. Colombia has, for many years, been the world’s largest source of cocaine.

And like Trump, Noboa has increasingly relied on tariffs against Colombia to force adherence to Ecuador’s national security strategy.

His government has accused Petro’s of failing to cooperate with border security measures. The two countries both sit on the Pacific coast, and they share a land border that stretches roughly 586 kilometres, or 364 miles.

Questions about electricity

Thursday’s announcement follows an initial 30 percent tariff imposed by Quito in early February.

Ecuadorian officials have also justified the protectionist measures by citing a growing trade deficit.

According to the Observatory of Economic Complexity, a data analysis firm, nearly 4 percent of Colombian exports go to Ecuador, worth roughly $2.13bn. Ecuador imports significant quantities of medicines and pesticides from Colombia.

Fewer exports go from Ecuador to Colombia, though. Roughly 2.3 percent of Ecuador’s exports abroad go across the shared border, amounting to a value of $863m.

Ecuador’s trade deficit with Colombia sits at roughly $1.03bn through 2025, according to government data, excluding oil.

But in spite of the anticipated tariff hike, it is unclear whether Ecuador will apply the new tariffs to Colombian electricity — a critical resource for the country.

In a retaliatory move following the initial tariffs, Colombia suspended all energy sales to its neighbour.

That suspension risks fuelling tensions in Ecuador against Noboa’s government. Recent droughts have created disruptions to Ecuador’s hydroelectric dams, which provide nearly 70 percent of the country’s power.

Those disruptions have caused widespread power outages in recent years, which in turn have prompted antigovernment protests. In the past, Noboa has responded by buying electricity from Colombia.

Pipeline standoff

The transportation of fossil fuels has also become a flashpoint between Ecuador and Colombia in the aftermath of February’s tariffs.

Noboa’s government has hiked fees for Colombian crude delivered through the Trans-Ecuadorian System Oil Pipeline (SOTE) by 900 percent.

That raises the cost to approximately $30 per barrel. Colombia has responded by halting all oil shipments through the line.

Despite high-level diplomatic efforts, tensions between the neighbouring countries remain at an impasse.

Officials representing foreign policy and security held a meeting this month in Ecuador, but the gathering concluded without a breakthrough.

In announcing the latest tariff hike, Ecuador’s Ministry of Production and Foreign Trade levelled criticism at Colombia for failing to implement “concrete and effective” measures to curb drug trafficking along the border.

Once considered a bastion of stability, Ecuador has seen a spike in homicide and other violent crimes.

According to the Geneva-based Organized Crime Observatory, the Andean nation recorded a homicide rate of approximately one murder every hour last year.

Tariffs: The most beautiful word in the dictionary, as Donald Trump says, or unlawful?
The Supreme Court has ruled that the president cannot use emergency powers to impose them.
It’s a significant check on his power and a major setback to his second-term agenda.
But despite the ruling, Trump has already found new ways to keep his trade barriers in place.
Tariffs remain central to his economic policy, both to boost US manufacturing and generate revenue.
The court may have disarmed one of Trump’s trade weapons, but the turn towards protectionism is far from over.

Monterrey, Mexico – Portraits of the missing cover Guadalajara’s “Roundabout of the Disappeared”, a landmark renamed by families to highlight the state’s disappearance crisis.

On February 22, the streets surrounding the memorial and throughout the city stood empty after the Mexican army killed Ruben Nemesio Oseguera Cervantes, the longtime leader of the Jalisco New Generation Cartel (CJNG).

In retaliation, cartel members set fire to buses and taxis, erecting a series of blockades that spread across 20 states.

The widespread unrest demonstrated the CJNG’s capacity for rapid coordination, fuelled by a ‘franchise’ model that allows smaller cells to operate under the cartel’s brand and vast financial network.

While the group’s economic reach extends into Europe and Asia, its power remains rooted in its paramilitary force. This structure relies on extortion, brutal violence and forced disappearances as its main tools to seize territory and control markets.

Oseguera Cervantes, known as “El Mencho”, consolidated one of Mexico’s most powerful criminal organisations in part due to a unique franchise-based structure.

According to the United States Drug Enforcement Agency (DEA), the CJNG maintains a presence in every state of Mexico, with varying levels of influence, and operates in more than 40 countries across the Americas, Europe, Asia and Africa, and throughout the US. Its primary activity is the trafficking of cocaine, fentanyl and methamphetamine.

Raul Zepeda Gil, a teaching fellow in War Studies at King’s College London, notes that rather than following a “classic organisational pyramid”, the CJNG avoids a centralised financial network.

“Instead, profits can be distributed across many locations and groups simultaneously,” Zepeda told Al Jazeera.

Besides controlling key areas in western Mexico, the CJNG controls the Pacific Coast region, including the strategic ports of Manzanillo and Lazaro Cardenas, crucial for the import of synthetic precursor chemicals.

“Their most important activity is drug trafficking,” Zepeda said. “Chemical precursors that arrive from China reach Mexican ports and are then sent to the United States already in fentanyl form.”

The organisation also generates revenues through fuel theft, illegal mining, extortion, migrant smuggling and money laundering.

On February 19, the US Department of the Treasury’s Office of Foreign Assets Control (OFAC) sanctioned a timeshare fraud network led by the CJNG that targeted elderly Americans.

“Timeshare fraud in Mexico has plagued American victims for decades, costing them hundreds of millions of dollars while enriching criminal organisations such as CJNG,” the Treasury Department stated in a press release.

The CJNG’s extensive reach and rapid growth are made possible by a vast, powerful network that protects drug trafficking operations and ensures impunity, says Carlos Flores, an investigator at the Centre for Research and Higher Education in Social Anthropology (CIESAS). Flores argues that these “hegemonic power networks”, shadow networks of business leaders, politicians, and criminals, have reconfigured state institutions to serve their own interests.

“These same networks, which control and administer state institutions – including security institutions – focus their actions primarily against their competitors, while simultaneously allowing these other networks to consolidate their power,” he added.

The rise of a deadly paramilitary force

Forced disappearances and extortion are crucial for the CJNG’s control of the market, seeding fear that silences communities and facilitates forced recruitment. This ensures a steady supply of disposable labour while following the ‘no body, no crime’ logic that minimises the political and legal costs of their operations.

Homicides and forced disappearances have surged in Jalisco since the group emerged in 2010. The CJNG rose from the remnants of the Milenio Cartel, a subordinate partner of the Sinaloa Cartel based in Oseguera Cervantes’s home state of Michoacan. While across Mexico more than 130,000 people are missing, Jalisco currently ranks at the top with at least 16,000 reported cases, and collectives of families continue to uncover mass graves and what they describe as “extermination sites”.

Raul Servin, a member of the Guerreros Buscadores, a collective representing more than 400 families of the disappeared, told Al Jazeera that their searches frequently reveal human remains in varying states of decay and torture. They have found victims who were shot, hanged or killed with bladed weapons that were left inside the bodies, he said.

“It’s a sadness and helplessness we feel when we see each body these people leave behind,” said Servin, who has been searching for his son since 2018.

Beyond its financial power, the CJNG is notorious for its extensive arsenal of military-grade weaponry, including armed drones, rocket-propelled grenades, and firearms.

On February 22, more than 25 National Guard members were killed in Jalisco. In the past, the organisation has also carried out high-profile attacks against public officials.

Last year in February, US President Donald Trump designated the Jalisco New Generation Cartel as a foreign terrorist organisation. In July, US prosecutors in Virginia unsealed an indictment against Petar Dimitrov Mirchev, a Bulgarian national accused of conspiring with East African associates to equip the CJNG with military-grade weaponry. The indictment states that Mirchev brokered these deals “despite knowing that the CJNG inflicts catastrophic suffering” to protect its prolific drug trafficking operations.

The indictment also revealed that the CJNG was attempting to buy surface-to-air missiles and anti-aircraft systems (ZU-23). Overall, Mirchev allegedly created a list of weaponry worth approximately $58m.

The paramilitary profile has allowed the CJNG to expand rapidly into rival territories and monopolise the market. Flores describes this training, deployment, and weaponry as being similar to an army, making them “practically uncontestable”.

“They operate under a different kind of logic,” Flores said. “They provide a kind of licence to [local] groups that associate with them. They fight their enemies and collaborate on trafficking in exchange for using the Jalisco New Generation Cartel as a label.”

The CJNG adopted a level of brutality similar to Los Zetas, whose founders were elite Mexican special forces soldiers trained by the US and Israel. In its early days, the CJNG was known as the “Matazetas”, or Zetas Killers.

Servin and the Guerreros Buscadores have seen the results of this brutality firsthand. Locating the missing becomes more difficult as concealment tactics evolve, Servin said. Disappearances have become a powerful economic tool to control and exploit territory. Collectives often find bodies buried under layers of dirt and animal carcasses to throw off the scent, or even encased in concrete.

“They make us work harder than necessary. If they took his life, why not leave him where we can find him quickly?”

Zepeda says that the CJNG leveraged military-grade tactics to fill the void left by the government’s crackdown on other cartels carried out between 2008 and 2010. In 2009, the Beltran-Leyva Organisation – which had been at war with the Sinaloa Cartel since their 2008 split – was reeling from a series of high-profile arrests and killings.

The death of Ignacio “Nacho” Coronel, a key finance operator for the Sinaloa Cartel, at the hands of the military in 2010 further cleared the way for new criminal players. Oseguera Cervantes was working under Coronel before breaking away to form what would become the CJNG.

“If we could summarise the Jalisco New Generation Cartel, it’s a reinvention of Los Zetas, which took over all the territory that the other cartels defeated by the Mexican government had occupied,” Zepeda added.

This history serves as a warning of what may follow the death of Oseguera Cervantes. Zepeda pointed out that the drug trade is an incredibly dynamic market where “there will always be a group of people willing to take control”.

Flores warns that “decapitating the leadership” is insufficient if power networks, along with the CJNG’s criminal and operational structures, remain intact.

“Without dismantling the power networks, yesterday’s victory will become the cause of new violence tomorrow,” Flores said. “We’ve seen this approach many times before, and we know what it leads to: It solves neither the transnational drug problem nor creates conditions of greater stability for the Mexican population.”

Capitalizing on a grand stage Tuesday night, President Trump delivered a State of the Union speech laced with political broadsides blaming Democrats for the nation’s problems, including on immigration and the economy, and heaping praise on himself and his administration for ushering in “a turnaround for the ages.”

He did not mention that after a year of his holding the White House and his party controlling both chambers of Congress, many Americans remain displeased and financially frustrated, with increasing numbers blaming Trump, according to polling.

The speech was heavy on partisan attacks, but light on any real acknowledgment of — or proposed path out of — the mounting political tensions that are roiling the nation under his leadership and threatening his party’s chances of retaining power in the upcoming midterms.

“President Trump’s State of the Union address was deeply disconnected from the lived reality of most Americans and profoundly insulting to the immigrant communities who strengthen and sustain this country every day,” Angelica Salas, executive director of the Coalition for Humane Immigrant Rights of Los Angeles, said in a statement. “While working families struggle with rising costs, threats to civil liberties, and attacks on fundamental rights, the Trump Administration continues to choose distortion over truth and division over unity.”

Time and again, Trump criticized the Democrats in the room — for not taking his bait and applauding as he waxed on about his immigration agenda, for not agreeing with his pronouncements against transgender athletes, for not being sufficiently adulatory toward members of the U.S. men’s hockey team for winning gold at the recent Winter Olympics.

“These people are crazy,” Trump said of Democrats, after they wouldn’t agree with his comments on transgender athletes. “You should be ashamed of yourself,” he said after they wouldn’t clap for his remarks about “illegal aliens.”

The speech went over well with many Republicans.

“Last Night, President Trump gave the BEST and LONGEST State of the Union speech in history because of ALL the many wins he had to tout,” House Speaker Mike Johnson (R-La.) wrote on X. “In one year, we have REVERSED the damage we inherited from Biden and the Democrats and we are delivering for the American people.”

Democrats watched sedately, or with barely obscured disdain, with brief scoffs and a few vocal rebuttals. But in their remarks afterward, they slammed Trump for ignoring Americans’ mounting displeasure with his agenda.

Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer (D-N.Y.) called the speech “Trump’s state of delusion.”

“For nearly two hours, the president inflated his ego, rewrote reality, and offered zero solutions to the problems American families are struggling with every day,” Schumer said.

House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries (D-N.Y.) said the speech was “riddled with dirty rotten lies.”

Many other Democrats also bristled over Trump’s rose-colored depiction of the nation as thriving, the economy as “roaring.”

Trump repeatedly mentioned his campaign to crack down on illegal immigration and his administration’s success in reducing border crossings. But he made no mention of one of the largest scandals of his first year in office — the killings of U.S. citizens Renee Nicole Good and Alex Pretti by federal immigration agents in Minneapolis — or the cratering public support for his immigration campaign overall.

He mentioned bombing Iran’s nuclear sites last year and said negotiations against future weapons development are ongoing. But he didn’t explain why the Pentagon has led a buildup of U.S. aircraft and warships in the Middle East, or address mounting concerns that he is preparing to take the nation to war.

He spoke of bringing down healthcare costs through several unproven programs, such as his “TrumpRx” prescription platform, but didn’t mention that under his party’s “Big, Beautiful Bill” and its cuts to Obamacare subsidies, millions of Americans are facing increased healthcare costs.

He talked about violent crime declining under his administration, a trend any president would claim as a success. But he skipped over the fact that the declines are a clear continuation of sharp drops under the Biden administration — the same drops he had vociferously denied during his 2024 campaign.

Every president treats the State of the Union as a chance to highlight their wins, less a venue for mulling over controversies or losses. It is a time-honored tradition, but also political theater — a chance for a president to project strength no matter the headwinds they are facing, as Trump did over and over again in his nearly two-hour speech.

But as many Democrats noted, his assessment also conflicted with the sentiments of many Americans, in poll after poll.

“The truth is that the State of our Union does not feel strong for everyone,” said Sen. Alex Padilla (D-Calif.) in his Spanish-language rebuttal to the speech. “Not when the costs of rent, food and electricity keep rising. Not when Republicans raise our medical costs to fund tax cuts for billionaires. And definitely not when federal agents — armed and masked — terrorize our communities by targeting people because of the color of their skin or for speaking Spanish — including immigrants with legal status and citizens.”

Minneapolis and other parts of the nation have been beset by poorly trained federal forces waging immigration round-ups that have left communities in fear and American citizens detained and even dead in the streets. Anger over those tactics has dominated the political discussion for months. In his speech, Trump never addressed the Minneapolis campaign head-on.

For months, Trump has also rattled key U.S. allies, including North Atlantic Treaty Organization partners, by repeatedly demanding that the United States be given Greenland, a territory of Denmark. He couched the stunning breach of diplomatic norms as a necessity given sweeping U.S. security concerns in the region. But in his speech, he made no mention of his demands or those concerns.

And while Trump asserted the “state of the union is strong,” he gave little explanation for why he has repeatedly denigrated and targeted the cornerstones of its federal system.

In the last year, Trump has cast himself and the executive office as all powerful; a substantial swath of the federal judiciary as “radical left” lunatics; the nation’s state-controlled voting system as corrupt and unreliable; and many Democrats and other political opponents as illegitimate or even criminal.

He has repeatedly asserted the power to reject decisions and reallocate federal spending by Congress, rewrite by executive fiat the Constitution and core rights within it such as birthright citizenship, and command or coerce states and a vast swath of civil society — including universities and law firms — to align with him politically or face devastating financial losses, including by demanding unprecedented mid-decade redistricting by red states to better his chances of Republican victory in the midterms.

Trump has tried to assert his will on the Federal Reserve, which is designed to independently lead the nation’s economy, and called Federal Reserve Chair Jerome H. Powell “incompetent” — which can’t be a good sign for the nation’s economy, no matter how you parse it.

As Trump walked out of the room Tuesday night having addressed few of those unprecedented moves, Republicans showered him with praise — with some telling him he’d just delivered the best State of the Union ever.

Many Democrats, meanwhile, wondered which union the president had been describing.