Economy

Africa’s first-ever Group of 20 (G20) summit – and the first boycotted by a prominent member – has wrapped up.

Host South Africa hailed it as a success, as a declaration was agreed covering a wide range of issues.

But what’s next for the G20?

Presenter: Imran Khan

Guests:

Thembisa Fakude – Director of Africa Asia Dialogues (Afrasid) in Johannesburg

Richard Weitz – Senior non-resident associate fellow at the NATO Defense College in Washington, DC

Omar Ashour – Professor of strategic studies and international security at the Doha Institute for Graduate Studies

Transport Secretary Heidi Alexander has denied leaks ahead of the Budget have damaged the economy, following criticism the speculation has “caused paralysis among businesses and consumers”.

Recent months have been dominated by media reports about which taxes could increase, with multiple potential measures floated by the government.

Former Bank of England chief economist Andy Haldane told the BBC’s Sunday with Laura Kuenssberg programme this was “the single biggest reason why [economic] growth has flatlined”.

In response, Alexander said there was always speculation in the run-up to Budgets but the chancellor had been clear about her priorities.

Chancellor Rachel Reeves is widely expected to increase taxes in her Budget on Wednesday to help fill a multibillion-pound gap in her spending plans.

Ministers had given strong indications the government was planning to increase income tax rates.

Anonymous briefings to the media from government sources had also suggested Reeves was considering the move – which would have been a clear breach of Labour’s election promise not to raise “the basic, higher or additional rates of income tax”.

However, last week government sources said Reeves had decided against this after better-than-expected economic forecasts.

Governments sometimes choose to leak aspects of their Budget plans to the media, either to test public reaction or prepare the ground for measures so they do not come as a shock to financial markets or voters.

Haldane branded the months of speculation about potential Budget measures a “fiscal fandango”.

“That’s been costly for the economy,” he told the programme.

“It’s caused paralysis among businesses and consumers.”

He said the Budget process was “too lengthy, too leaky, with real costs”.

Haldane acknowledged this “pantomime” had also happened under previous governments, adding that the “budgetary process has been degraded over many years”.

Challenged over whether the leaks had damaged the economy, Alexander told the programme: “People always speculate in advance of a Budget and we have always said ‘wait until the Budget’.”

Defending the government’s approach, she said the Budget process had taken place “on shifting sands”, with a downgrade to productivity forecasts and “a very challenging global economic environment”.

The Conservatives have called for an investigation into pre-Budget leaks, saying they have “real world consequences including for financial markets”.

In a letter to the Treasury’s most senior civil servant, shadow chancellor Mel Stride said: “Either ministers have approved the widespread briefing of confidential information surrounding the Budget, or serious unauthorised leaks have occurred within your department.”

The chancellor is expected to set out a range of smaller tax rises in her Budget, after backing away from increasing income tax rates.

However, the government has not ruled out extending the freeze on income tax thresholds – the level people start paying tax or have to pay higher rates.

The freeze means any pay rise would see people paying more tax, with more people dragged into a higher tax band, or having to pay tax on their income for the first time.

Reeves has also said there will be a focus on cutting the cost-of-living, with the government announcing that rail fares in England will be frozen next year for the first time in decades.

Other priorities set out by the chancellor include reducing NHS waiting lists and the national debt.

Meanwhile, she is also expected to scrap the two-child benefit cap, a limit that means parents can only claim universal credit or tax credits for their first two children.

There has been pressure from Labour MPs to remove the cap, which was introduced under the Conservatives – a move that could cost more than £3bn, according to estimates by the Institute for Fiscal Studies think tank.

While she refused to confirm the cap would be scrapped, Alexander said tackling child poverty was “in the DNA of the Labour Party”.

“One of the defining elements of this government for me is about what we can do to ensure that children’s chances in life aren’t determined by the size of their parents’ bank balance,” she added.

The Conservatives have argued against removing the cap, with Stride telling the BBC it was “a matter of fairness” that parents who are on benefits should have to make the same choices about whether they can afford a bigger family as those who are not.

The shadow chancellor told Kuenssberg: “The big choice at this Budget now is does the chancellor have the backbone to control government spending, particularly in the area of welfare where some of those costs are spiralling out of control, take those tough choices and therefore not have to start putting up taxes again in areas that are going to damage the economy.”

However, Green Party leader Zack Polanski said scrapping the cap would be a “victory” and it was “outrageous that it’s taken the Labour government so long to do it”.

He called for the government to “tax the rich”, rather than hit “people out of work or working people who are working really hard while their wages aren’t going up”.

John McDonnell, the former Labour Shadow Chancellor, said he hoped Reeves would announce a “redistributive Budget”.

“That does mean that the heaviest weight should fall on the broadest shoulders,” he told The Westminster Hour on BBC Radio 4.

“That means tax rises for the wealthiest and for the corporations, and for those who are making massive profits at the moment.”

Asked about divisions within Labour, McDonnell said: “What people want is, they want a sense of direction.”

He said Labour has a “massive majority”.

“We can do what we want in terms of getting stuff through Parliament,” he said.

“Yet we seem to be hindered by a lack of direction and some elements of competence as well.”

The unions demand the laws be withdrawn before nationwide protests they plan to hold on Wednesday.

Ten large Indian trade unions have condemned the government’s rollout on Friday of new labour codes, the biggest such overhaul in decades, as a “deceptive fraud” against workers.

The unions, aligned with parties opposing Prime Minister Narendra Modi, demanded in a statement late on Friday that the laws be withdrawn before nationwide protests they plan to hold on Wednesday.

One of the trade unions, Centre of Indian Trade Unions, organised protest marches on Saturday in the eastern city Bhubaneswar, where hundreds of workers gathered and burned copies of the new labour codes.

Modi’s government implemented the four labour codes, approved by parliament five years ago, as it seeks to simplify work rules, some dating to British colonial rule, and liberalise conditions for investment.

It says the changes improve worker protections. While the new rules offer social security and minimum-wage benefits, they also allow companies to hire and fire workers more easily.

Unions have strongly opposed the changes, organising multiple nationwide protests over the past five years.

The Labour Ministry did not immediately respond on Saturday to a Reuters news agency request for comment on the union demands. The government has held over a dozen consultations with unions since June 2024, an internal ministry document on the labour codes shows.

The rules allow longer factory shifts and night work for women, while raising the threshold for firms that need prior approval for layoffs to 300 workers from 100, giving companies greater flexibility in workforce management.

Businesses have long criticised India’s work rules as a drag on manufacturing, which contributes less than a fifth to the country’s nearly $4 trillion economy.

But the Association of Indian Entrepreneurs expressed concern that the new rules would significantly increase operating costs for small and midsize enterprises and disrupt business continuity across key sectors.

It asked the government for transitional support and flexible implementation mechanisms. Not all unions oppose the overhaul.

The right-wing Bharatiya Mazdoor Sangh, aligned with Modi’s party, called on states to implement them after consultations on some of the codes. Indian states are expected to craft rules aligning with the new federal codes covering wages, industrial relations, social security and occupational safety.

China on Friday took its feud with Tokyo over Japanese Prime Minister Sanae Taikachi’s recent comments on Taiwan to the United Nations, as tensions between the East Asian neighbours deepened and ties plunged to their lowest since 2023.

“If Japan dares to attempt an armed intervention in the cross-Strait situation, it would be an act of aggression,” China’s permanent representative to the UN, Fu Cong, wrote in a letter on Friday to the global body’s Secretary-General Antonio Guterres, referring to the strait that separates mainland China from self-governing Taiwan, which Beijing insists belongs to China. Beijing has not ruled out the possibility of forcibly taking Taiwan.

The diplomatic spat began earlier in November when Taikachi, who took office only in October, made remarks about how Japan would respond to a hypothetical Chinese attack on Taiwan. Those remarks angered Beijing, which has demanded retractions, although the Japanese PM has not made one.

However, the spat has now rapidly escalated into a trade war involving businesses on both sides, and has deepened security tensions over a contested territory that has long been a flashpoint for the two countries.

Here’s what we know about the dispute:

What did Japan’s PM say about Taiwan?

While speaking to parliament on November 7, Taikachi, a longtime Taiwan supporter, said a Chinese naval blockade or other action against Taiwan could prompt a Japanese military response. The response was not typical, and Taikachi appeared to go several steps further than her predecessors, who had only in the past expressed concern about the Chinese threat to Taiwan, but had never mentioned a response.

“If it involves the use of warships and military actions, it could by all means become a survival-threatening situation,” Taikachi told parliament, responding to an opposition politician’s queries in her first parliamentary grilling.

That statement immediately raised protests from China’s foreign and defence ministries, which demanded retractions. China’s consul general in Osaka, Xue Jian, a day after, criticised the comments and appeared to make threats in a now deleted post on X, saying: “We have no choice but to cut off that dirty neck that has been lunged at us without hesitation. Are you ready?”

That post by Xue also raised anger in Japan, and some officials began calling for the diplomat’s expulsion. Japan’s Chief Cabinet Secretary Minoru Kihara protested to Beijing over Xue’s X message, saying it was “extremely inappropriate,” while urging China to explain. Japan’s Foreign Ministry also demanded the post be deleted. Chinese officials, meanwhile, defended the comments as coming from a personal standpoint.

On November 14, China’s Foreign Ministry summoned the Japanese ambassador and warned of a “crushing defeat” if Japan interfered with Taiwan. The following day, Japan’s Foreign Ministry also summoned the Chinese ambassador to complain about the consul’s post.

Although Taikachi told parliament three days after her controversial statement that she would avoid talking about specific scenarios going forward, she has refused to retract her comments.

How have tensions increased since?

The matter has deteriorated into a trade war of sorts. On November 14, China issued a no-travel advisory for Japan, an apparent attempt to target the country’s tourism sector, which welcomed some 7.5 million Chinese tourists between January and September this year. On November 15, three Chinese airlines offered refunds or free changes for flights planned on Japan-bound routes.

The Chinese Education Ministry also took aim at Japan’s education sector, warning Chinese students there or those planning to study in Japan about recent crimes against Chinese. Both China and Japan have recorded attacks against each other’s nationals in recent months that have prompted fears of xenophobia, but it is unclear if the attacks are linked.

Tensions are also rising around territorial disputes. Last Sunday, the Chinese coastguard announced it was patrolling areas in the East China Sea, in the waters around a group of uninhabited islands that both countries claim. Japan calls the islands the Senkaku Islands, while Beijing calls them the Diaoyu Islands. Japan, in response, condemned the brief “violation” of Japanese territorial waters by a fleet of four Chinese coastguard ships.

Over the last week, Chinese authorities have suspended the screening of at least two Japanese films and banned Japanese seafood.

Then, on Thursday, China postponed a three-way meeting with culture ministers from Japan and South Korea that was scheduled to be held in late November.

‘Symbol of defiance’

On November 18, diplomats from both sides met in Beijing for talks where the grievances were aired.

Senior Chinese official Liu Jinsong chose to wear a five-buttoned collarless suit associated with the rebellion of Chinese students against Japanese imperialism in 1919.

Japanese media have called the choice of the suit a “symbol of defiance.” They also point to videos and images from the meeting showing Liu with his hands in his pockets after the talks, saying the gesture is typically viewed as disrespectful in formal settings.

The Beijing meeting did not appear to ease the tensions, and there seems to be no sign of the impasse breaking: Chinese representatives asked for a retraction, but Japanese diplomats said Taikachi’s remarks were in line with Japan’s stance.

What is the history of Sino-Japanese tensions?

It’s a long and – especially for China – painful story. Imperial Japan occupied significant portions of China after the First Sino-Japanese War (1894-95), when it gained control of Taiwan and forcefully annexed Korea. In 1937, Japan launched a full-scale invasion of China during the Second Sino-Japanese War. Amid strong Chinese resistance, Japan occupied parts of eastern and southern China, where it created and controlled puppet governments. The Japanese Empire’s defeat in World War II in 1945 ended its expansion bid.

The Chinese Communist Party emerged victorious in 1949 in the civil war that followed with the Kuomintang, which, along with the leader Chiang Kai-shek, fled to Taiwan to set up a parallel government. But until 1972, Japan formally recognised Taiwan as “China”.

In 1972, it finally recognised the People’s Republic of China and agreed to the “one China principle”, in effect severing formal diplomatic ties with Taiwan. However, Japan has maintained firm unofficial ties with Taiwan, including through trade.

Japan has also maintained a policy of so-called “strategic ambiguity” over how Tokyo would respond if China were to attack Taiwan — a policy of deliberate ambivalence, aimed at leaving Beijing and the rest of the world guessing over whether it would intervene militarily. The stance is similar to that of the United States, Taiwan’s most powerful ally.

How important is trade between China and Japan?

He Yongqian, a spokesperson for China’s commerce ministry, said at a regular news conference this week that trade relations between the two countries had been “severely damaged” by PM Takaichi’s comments.

China is Japan’s second-largest export market after the US, with Tokyo selling mainly industrial equipment, semiconductors and automobiles to Beijing. In 2024, China bought about $125bn worth of Japanese goods, according to the United Nations’ Comtrade database. South Korea, Japan’s third-largest export market, bought goods worth $46bn in 2024.

China is also a major buyer of Japan’s sea cucumbers and its top scallop buyer. Japanese firms, particularly seafood exporters, are worried about the effects of the spat on their businesses, according to reporting by Reuters.

Beijing is not as reliant on Japan’s economy, but Tokyo is China’s third-largest trading partner. China mainly exports electrical equipment, machinery, apparel and vehicles to Japan. Tokyo bought $152bn worth of goods from China in 2024, according to financial data website Trading Economics.

It’s not the first time Beijing has retaliated with trade. In 2023, China imposed a ban on all Japanese food imports after Tokyo released radioactive water from the Fukushima nuclear plant into the Pacific. Beijing was against the move, although the UN atomic energy agency had deemed the discharge safe. That ban was lifted just on November 7, the same day Taikachi made the controversial comments.

In 2010, China also halted the exports of rare earth minerals to Japan for seven weeks after a Chinese fishing captain was detained near the disputed Senkaku/Diaoyu islands.

The United States Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS) has announced it will not release inflation information for the month of October, citing the consequences of the recent government shutdown.

On Friday, the bureau updated its website to say that certain October data would not be available, even now that government funding has been restored and normal operations have resumed.

“BLS could not collect October 2025 reference period survey data due to a lapse in appropriations,” it wrote in a statement. “BLS is unable to retroactively collect these data.”

The cancelled data includes the Consumer Price Index (CPI) — a report that is commonly used to calculate inflation by measuring the changing costs of retail items — and the Real Earnings summary, which tracks wages among US workers.

For some of the reports, including the Consumer Price Index, the bureau said it would use “nonsurvey data sources” to make calculations that would be included in a future report for the month of November.

The November Consumer Price Index will also be published later than anticipated, on December 18.

The most recent government shutdown was the longest in US history, spanning nearly 43 days.

It began on October 1, after the US Congress missed a September 30 deadline to pass legislation to keep the government funded.

Republicans had hoped to push through a continuing resolution that made no changes to current spending levels. But Democrats had baulked at the prospect, arguing that recent restrictions to government programmes had put healthcare out of reach for some US citizens.

They also warned that insurance subsidies under the Affordable Care Act are set to expire by the end of the year. Without an extension to those subsidies, they said that insurance premiums for many Americans will spike.

Republicans rejected the prospect of negotiating the issue until after their continuing resolution was passed. Democrats, meanwhile, feared that, if they passed the continuing resolution without changes, there would be no further opportunity to address healthcare spending before the end of the year.

The two parties hit an impasse as a result. Non-essential government functions were halted during the shutdown, and many federal employees were furloughed.

Only on November 10 did a breakthrough begin to emerge. Late that night, seven Democrats and one independent broke from their caucus to side with Republicans and pass a budget bill to fund the government through January 30.

The bill was then approved by the House of Representatives on November 12, by a vote of 222 to 209. President Donald Trump signed the legislation into law that very same day.

Trump had openly sought to leverage the shutdown to eliminate federal programmes he saw as benefitting Democratic strongholds.

He also attempted to blame the political left for the lapse in government services, though he acknowledged public frustration with Republicans after Democrats won key elections in November.

“If you read the pollsters, the shutdown was a big factor, negative for the Republicans,” he told a breakfast for Republican senators on November 5. “That was a big factor.”

The Trump administration had warned as early as October that the month’s consumer price data would be negatively affected as a result of the shutdown.

In a White House statement, Trump officials touted Trump’s economic record while slamming a potential lapse in the government’s collection of data. Once again, they angled the blame for any slowed economic growth at the Democrats.

“Unfortunately, the Democrat Shutdown risks grinding that progress to a halt,” the statement said.

“Because surveyors cannot deploy to the field, the White House has learned there will likely NOT be an inflation release next month for the first time in history — depriving policymakers and markets of critical data and risking economic calamity.”

September’s Consumer Price Index, the most recent available, showed that inflation across all retail items rose about 3 percent over the previous 12-month period.

For food alone, inflation for that period was estimated at 3.1 percent.

Four new labour codes come into force as India seeks to attract investment and strengthen manufacturing.

India has announced a sweeping set of labour reforms, saying it will implement four long-delayed labour codes that the government says will modernise outdated regulations and extend stronger protections to millions of workers.

Prime Minister Narendra Modi said on X on Friday that the overhaul would provide “a strong foundation for universal social security, minimum and timely payment of wages, safe workplaces and remunerative opportunities”.

He said the changes would spur job creation and lift productivity across the economy.

The labour ministry echoed that message, saying the reforms place “workers, especially women, youth, unorganised, gig and migrant workers, firmly at the centre of labour governance”, with expanded social security and portable entitlements that apply nationwide.

The government says replacing 29 fragmented laws with four unified codes covering wages, industrial relations, social security and occupational safety will simplify compliance and make India more attractive for investment.

Many of India’s existing labour laws date back to the British colonial era and have long been criticised by businesses as complicated, inconsistent and a barrier to scaling up manufacturing, an industry that still accounts for less than 20 percent of India’s nearly $4-trillion gross domestic product (GDP).

The new rules formalise changes approved by parliament in 2020 but stalled for years due to political resistance and pushback from several states and unions.

The reforms introduce significant shifts in how factories operate. Women can now legally work night shifts, firms have greater room to extend working hours, and the threshold for companies requiring prior approval for layoffs has been raised from 100 to 300 workers.

Union opposition

Officials argue this flexibility will encourage employers to expand operations without fear of lengthy bureaucratic delays.

For the first time, the codes also define gig and platform work, offering legal recognition and expanding social protection to a fast-growing segment of the labour force.

Government estimates suggest the gig economy could reach more than 23.5 million workers by 2030, up sharply from about 10 million in 2024/25.

Economists say the changes may initially strain small and informal firms but could strengthen household incomes over time.

“In the short term, they may hurt small, unorganised firms, but in the long run … with minimum wages and increased social security, it could be positive for both working conditions and consumption,” said Devendra Kumar Pant of India Ratings & Research, speaking to the Reuters news agency.

Trade unions, however, remain fiercely opposed. “The labour codes have been implemented despite strong opposition from the trade unions and it will snatch the workers’ rights, including fixed-term jobs and rights available under the earlier labour laws,” said Amarjeet Kaur of the All India Trade Union Congress.

The company’s stock has zoomed this year, driven by the explosive growth of the weight-loss drug market.

Eli Lilly has hit $1 trillion in market value, making it the first drugmaker to enter the exclusive club dominated by tech giants and underscoring its rise as a weight-loss powerhouse.

A more than 35 percent rally in the company’s stock this year has largely been driven by the explosive growth of the weight-loss drug market and saw it join the $1 trillion club on Friday.

Once seen as a niche category, obesity treatments are now one of the most lucrative segments in healthcare, with steadily rising demand.

Novo Nordisk had the early lead in the space, but Lilly’s drugs – Mounjaro and Zepbound – have surged in popularity and helped eclipse its rival in prescriptions.

The company’s shares were up 1.3 percent at a record high of $1,057.70.

Lilly now trades at one of the richest valuations in big pharma, at about 50 times its expected earnings over the next 12 months, according to LSEG data, reflecting investors’ belief that demand for obesity drugs will remain strong.

Shares have also far outpaced the broader United States equity market. Since the launch of Zepbound in late 2023, Lilly has gained more than 75 percent, compared with a more than 50 percent rise in the S&P 500 over the same period.

In the latest reported quarter, Lilly posted combined revenue of more than $10.09bn from its obesity and diabetes portfolio, accounting for more than half of its total revenue of $17.6bn.

“They are doing so many things outside of obesity, but to suggest anything is driving share price beyond obesity at this point, I don’t know if that would be a factual statement,” said Kevin Gade, chief operating officer at Lilly shareholder Bahl and Gaynor, in advance of the milestone.

‘Sales phenomenon’

Wall Street estimates the weight-loss drug market to be worth $150bn by 2030, with Lilly and Novo together controlling the majority of projected global sales.

Investors are now focused on Lilly’s oral obesity drug, orforglipron, which is expected to be approved early next year.

In a note last week, Citi analysts said the latest generation of GLP-1 drugs have already been a “sales phenomenon”, and orforglipron is poised to benefit from the “inroads made by its injectable predecessors”.

Lilly’s recent deal with the White House to cut prices for its weight-loss drugs, as well as planned investments to expand drug production, augur well for its growth.

Lilly is starting to resemble the “Magnificent Seven” again, said James Shin, director of Biopharma Equity Research at Deutsche Bank, referring to the seven tech heavyweights, including Nvidia and Microsoft, that have powered much of the market’s returns this year.

At one point, investors viewed it as part of that elite group, but after some disappointing headlines and earnings, it slipped out of favour.

Now, however, it seems poised to rejoin that circle, possibly even as an alternative for investors, especially given recent concerns and weakness in some AI stocks, he added.

Still, analysts and investors are watching whether Lilly can sustain its current growth as prices of Mounjaro and Zepbound come under pressure, and whether its scale-up plans, along with its diversified pipeline and dealmaking, will offset margin pressure.

US President Donald Trump’s decision to snub the G20 summit in South Africa this year has handed an opportunity to China, as it seeks to expand its growing influence in the African continent and position itself as an alternative to the dangers of a unilateralist United States.

Washington said it would not attend the two-day summit set to kick off on Saturday over widely discredited claims that the host country, previously ruled by its white minority under an apartheid system until 1994, now mistreats white people.

South Africa’s President Cyril Ramaphosa hit back at Trump’s claim that hosting the summit in Johannesburg was a “total disgrace”. “Boycott politics doesn’t work,” Ramaphosa said, adding that the US was “giving up the very important role that they should be playing as the biggest economy in the world”.

By Friday morning, Trump appeared to have backtracked on his stance somewhat, when speculation that Washington might send a US official to Johannesburg after all circulated.

Regardless, the spat comes as Chinese President Xi Jinping sends Premier Li Qiang to represent him on the world stage. China’s 72-year-old president has dialled back foreign visits, increasingly delegating his top emissary.

“The US is giving China an opportunity to expand its global influence,” Zhiqun Zhu, professor of political science and international relations at Bucknell University, told Al Jazeera. “With the absence of the US, China and EU countries will be the focus of the summit and other countries will look for leadership [from them].”

But observers say that while Trump’s absence will direct heightened attention to Beijing’s statements and behaviour, it does not spell the end of the US-led order altogether.

Jing Gu, a political economist at the United Kingdom-based Institute of Development Studies, said the US’s failure to attend “does not automatically make China the new leader, but it creates visible space for China to present itself as a more stable, reliable partner in governance”.

“It reinforces the perception that the US is stepping back from multilateralism and the shared management of global problems,” she said. “In that context, China can present itself as a more predictable, stable actor and emphasise continuity, support for open trade and engagement with the Global South.”

Expanding influence in the African continent

This year’s G20 will, for the first time, have an African chair and take place on the African continent. The African Union (AU) will also participate fully as a member.

South Africa, which holds the G20 presidency, is expected to push for consensus and action on priority issues for African countries, including debt relief, economic growth, climate change and transition to clean energy.

Zhu, who also serves as editor-in-chief of the academic journal, China and the World, said South Africa’s themes were a “natural fit” for China, Africa’s largest trading partner.

“China aims to become a leader in green energy, and there’s a lot of room for China and African countries to work on that,” he said.

The African continent, with its mineral wealth, booming population and fast-growing economies, offers huge potential for Chinese firms. Li, China’s premier, travelled to Zambia this week, marking the first visit to the country by a Chinese premier in 28 years. The copper-rich nation has Beijing as its largest official creditor for $5.7bn.

Eager to secure access to Zambia’s commodities and expand its exports from resource-rich East Africa, China signed a $1.4bn deal in September to rehabilitate the Tazara Railway, built in the 1970s and connecting Tanzania and Zambia, to improve rail-sea transportation in the region.

“The Chinese economy and African economy are complementary; they both benefit from trade,” Zhu said. The G20 “is a great platform for China to project its global influence and seek opportunities to work with other countries”, he added.

Africa’s growing demand for energy and China’s dominance in manufacturing make the two a good fit, observers say. This is playing out. A report by energy think tank Ember, for instance, found Africa’s imports of solar panels from China rose a whopping 60 percent in the 12 months to June 2025.

According to Gu at the Institute of Development Studies, China will be looking to tap into this growing synergy with Africa and will deliver a three-fold message at this year’s G20.

“First, it will stress stability and the importance of global rules and regulations,” she said. Second, “it will link the G20 to the Global South and highlight issues like development and green transformation”.

Third, “by offering issue-based leadership on topics such as digital economy, artificial intelligence and governance, it will position itself as a problem-solver rather than a disruptor”, the economist added.

China as a bastion of multilateralism

An absence of American officials at this year’s G20 – after skipping the Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation (APEC) meeting in Korea as well as the United Nations Climate Change Conference (COP30) in Brazil – would be “another opportunity for China”, Rosemary Foot, professor of politics and international relations at the University of Oxford, told Al Jazeera.

“It can contrast, yet again, its declared commitment to multilateralism and responsible behaviour as a major state versus the dangers of a unilateralist America focusing not on public goods but on benefits to itself only.”

China has been looking to expand its influence in Africa as a counterweight to the US-led world order. In stark contrast to Trump’s decision to end Africa’s duty-free era and slap 15-30 percent tariffs on 22 nations, Xi announced at the APEC summit last month a zero-tariff policy for all African nations with diplomatic ties to Beijing.

On that occasion, Xi emphasised China’s commitment “to joint development and shared prosperity with all countries”, stressing the country’s goal to “support more developing countries in achieving modernisation and opening up new avenues for global development”.

Similarly, Li, China’s premier, marked the United Nations’ 80th anniversary at the General Assembly in September by expressing the need for stronger collective action on climate change and emerging technologies, calling for greater solidarity to “[lift] everyone up, while division drags all down”.

His remarks were in stark contrast to Trump’s, who, in his speech, described climate change as the “greatest con job ever perpetrated” and called renewable sources of energy a “joke” and “pathetic”.

Foot said the spotlight will now be on Beijing as it seeks to strike a similar conciliatory pose – and in doing so, set itself apart from the US – at the G20. “Whether Beijing will have a major impact on the G20 agenda is more difficult to determine,” she said.

The administration of United States President Donald Trump has announced new oil drilling off the California and Florida coasts for the first time in decades, advancing a project that critics say could harm coastal communities and ecosystems, as Trump seeks to expand US oil production.

The White House announced the news on Thursday.

The oil industry has been seeking access to new offshore areas, including Southern California and off the coast of Florida, as a way to boost US energy security and jobs.

What’s in the plan?

The administration’s plan proposes six offshore lease sales through 2030 in areas along the California coast.

It also calls for new drilling off the coast of Florida in areas at least 160km (100 miles) from that state’s shore. The area targeted for leasing is adjacent to an area in the Central Gulf of Mexico that already contains thousands of wells and hundreds of drilling platforms.

The five-year plan also would compel more than 20 lease sales off the coast of Alaska, including a newly designated area known as the High Arctic, more than 320km (200 miles) offshore in the Arctic Ocean.

Interior Secretary Doug Burgum said in announcing the sales that it would take years for the oil from those parcels to get to market.

“By moving forward with the development of a robust, forward-thinking leasing plan, we are ensuring that America’s offshore industry stays strong, our workers stay employed, and our nation remains energy dominant for decades to come,” Burgum said in a statement.

The American Petroleum Institute said in response that the announced plan was a “historic step” towards unleashing vast offshore resources. Industry groups have pointed to California’s history as an oil-producing state and say it already has infrastructure to support more production.

Political pushback

Leaders in both California and Florida have pushed back on the deal.

Last week, Florida Republican Senator Ashley Moody and Rick Scott co-sponsored a bill to maintain a moratorium on offshore drilling in the state that Trump signed in his first term.

“As Floridians, we know how vital our beautiful beaches and coastal waters are to our state’s economy, environment and way of life,” Scott said in a statement. “I will always work to keep Florida’s shores pristine and protect our natural treasures for generations to come.”

A spokesman for California Governor Gavin Newsom said Trump officials had not formally shared the plan, but said “expensive and riskier offshore drilling would put our communities at risk and undermine the economic stability of our coastal economies”.

California has been a leader in restricting offshore oil drilling since the infamous 1969 Santa Barbara spill that helped launch the modern environmental movement. While there have been no new federal leases offered since the mid-1980s, drilling from existing platforms continues.

Newsom expressed support for greater offshore controls after a 2021 spill off Huntington Beach and has backed a congressional effort to ban new offshore drilling on the West Coast.

A Texas-based company, with support from the Trump administration, is seeking to restart production in waters off Santa Barbara damaged by a 2015 oil spill. The administration has hailed the plan by Houston-based Sable Offshore Corp as the kind of project Trump wants to increase US energy production as the federal government removes regulatory barriers.

The announcement comes as Governor Newsom attended the COP30 climate conference in Brazil.

“He [Trump] intentionally aligned that to the opening of COP,” Newsom said.

Even before it was released, the offshore drilling plan met strong opposition from Newsom, a Democrat who is eyeing a 2028 presidential run and has emerged as a leading Trump critic.

Newsom pronounced the idea “dead on arrival” in a social media post. The proposal is also likely to draw bipartisan opposition in Florida. Tourism and access to clean beaches are key parts of the economy in both states.

Democratic lawmakers, including California Senator Alex Padilla and Representative Jared Huffman, the top Democrat on the House Natural Resources Committee, warned that opening vast coastlines to new offshore drilling would hurt coastal economies, jeopardise national security, ravage coastal ecosystems, and put the health and safety of millions of people at risk.

“With this draft plan, Donald Trump and his Administration are trying to destroy one of the most valuable, most protected coastlines in the world and hand it over to the fossil fuel industry,” Padilla and Huffman said in a joint statement.

The federal government has not allowed drilling in federal waters in the eastern Gulf of Mexico, which includes offshore Florida and part of offshore Alabama, since 1995, because of concerns about oil spills. California has some offshore oil rigs, but there has been no new leasing in federal waters since the mid-1980s.

Since taking office for a second time in January, Trump has systematically reversed former President Joe Biden’s focus on slowing climate change to pursue what the Republican calls US “energy dominance” in the global market.

Trump, who recently called climate change “the greatest con job ever perpetrated on the world,” created a National Energy Dominance Council and directed it to move quickly to drive up already record-high US energy production, particularly fossil fuels such as oil, coal and natural gas.

Meanwhile, Trump’s administration has blocked renewable energy sources such as offshore wind and cancelled billions of dollars in grants that supported hundreds of clean energy projects across the country.

United States job growth accelerated in September despite a cooling job market as the unemployment rate rose.

Nonfarm payrolls grew by 119,000 jobs after a downwardly revised 4,000 drop in August, according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS) report released on Thursday.

The unemployment rate rose to 4.4 percent, up from 4.3 percent in August.

The healthcare sector had the most gains, totalling 43,000 jobs in September. Food and beverage services sectors followed, adding 37,000 jobs, and social assistance employment grew by 14,000.

Other sectors saw little change, including construction, wholesale trade, retail services, as well as professional and business services.

The federal workforce saw a decline of 3,000, marking 97,000 jobs cut from the nation’s largest employer since the beginning of the year. Transportation and warehousing, an industry hit hard by tariffs, also saw declines and shed 25,000 jobs in September.

Average wages grew by 0.2 percent, or 9 cents, to $36.67.

Government shutdown hurdles

The September jobs report was initially slated for release on October 3, but was pushed out because of the US government shutdown. The jobs report typically comes out on the first Friday of each month. Because of the 43-day-long shutdown, the US Labor Department was unable to collect the data needed to calculate the unemployment rate for the month of October.

Nonfarm payrolls for the month of October will be released as part of the November employment report, which is slated to be released on December 16.

Heading into the economic data blackout, the BLS had estimated that about 911,000 fewer jobs were created in the 12 months through March than previously reported. A drop in the number of migrant workers coming into the US in search of work – a trend which started during the final year of former US President Joe Biden’s term and accelerated under President Donald Trump’s administration – has depleted labour supply.

“Today’s delayed report shows troubling signs below the topline number: the underlying labour market remains weak, leaving working Americans with shrinking opportunities and rising insecurity. Month after month, the Trump economy is producing fewer jobs, more instability, and fewer pathways for families trying to get ahead,” Alex Jacquez, chief of policy for the economic think tank the Groundwork Collaborative, said in a statement provided to Al Jazeera.

Economists estimate the economy now only needs to create between 30,000 and 50,000 jobs per month to keep up with growth in the working-age population, down from about 150,000 in 2024.

Behind the stalling growth

The rising popularity of artificial intelligence is also eroding demand for labour, with most of the hits landing on entry-level positions in white collar jobs, and locking recent college graduates out of work. Economists said AI was fueling jobless economic growth.

Others blamed the Trump administration’s trade policy for creating an uncertain economic environment that had hamstrung the ability of businesses, especially small enterprises, to hire.

The US Supreme Court earlier this month heard arguments about the legality of Trump’s import duties, with justices raising doubts about his authority to impose tariffs under the 1977 International Emergency Economic Powers Act.

Despite payrolls remaining positive, some sectors and industries are shedding jobs. Some economists believed the September employment report could still influence the Federal Reserve’s December 9-10 policy meeting on interest rate decisions.

US central bank officials will not have November’s report in hand at that meeting, as the release date has been pushed to December 16 from December 5. Minutes of the Fed’s October 28-29 meeting published on Wednesday showed many policymakers cautioned that lowering borrowing costs further could risk undermining the fight to quell inflation.

Analysts expect AI chip demand to remain strong.

Nvidia has forecast fourth-quarter revenue above Wall Street estimates and is betting on booming demand for its AI chips from cloud providers even as widespread concerns of an artificial intelligence bubble grow stronger.

The world’s most valuable company expects fourth-quarter sales of $65bn, plus or minus 2 percent, compared with analysts’ average estimate of $61.66bn, according to data compiled by LSEG.

The results from the AI chip leader mark a defining moment for Wall Street as global markets look to the chip designer to determine whether investing billions of dollars in AI infrastructure expansion has resulted in towering valuations that potentially outpace fundamentals.

“The AI ecosystem is scaling fast with more new foundation model makers, more AI start-ups across more industries and in more countries. AI is going everywhere, doing everything, all at once,” Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang said in a statement.

Before the results, doubts had pushed Nvidia shares down nearly 8 percent in November after a 1,200 percent surge in the past three years.

Sales in the data-centre segment, which accounts for a majority of Nvidia’s revenue, grew to $51.2bn in the quarter that ended on October 26. Analysts had expected sales of $48.62bn, according to LSEG data.

Warning signs

But some analysts noted that factors beyond Nvidia’s control could impede its growth.

“While GPU [graphics processing unit] demand continues to be massive, investors are increasingly focused on whether hyperscalers can actually put this capacity to use fast enough,” said Jacob Bourne, an analyst with eMarketer. “The question is whether physical bottlenecks in power, land and grid access will cap how quickly this demand translates into revenue growth through 2026 and beyond.”

Nvidia’s business also became increasingly concentrated in its fiscal third quarter with four customers accounting for 61 percent of sales. At the same time, it sharply ramped up how much money it spends renting back its own chips from its cloud customers, who otherwise cannot rent them out, with those contracts totalling $26bn – more than double their $12.6bn in the previous quarter.

Still, analysts and investors widely expected the underlying demand for AI chips, which has powered Nvidia results since ChatGPT’s launch in late 2022, to remain strong.

Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang said last month that the company has $500bn in bookings for its advanced chips through 2026.

Big Tech, among Nvidia’s largest customers, has doubled down on spending to expand AI data centres and snatch the most advanced, pricey chips as it commits to multibillion-dollar, multigigawatt build-outs.

Microsoft last month reported a record capital expenditure of nearly $35bn for its fiscal first quarter  with roughly half of it spent primarily on chips.

Nvidia expects an adjusted gross margin of 75 percent, plus or minus 50 basis points in the fourth quarter, compared with market expectation of 74.5 percent.

London, United Kingdom – David Lesperance, a Canadian wealth adviser based in Poland, is working against the clock for one of his British clients.

John*, who requested anonymity, is trying to relocate from London to Dublin, the Irish capital, ahead of November 26, when Chancellor Rachel Reeves will deliver the budget – a statement presenting the Labour government’s plans for public finances for the year ahead.

Having built a company worth around 70 million pounds ($92m) that he plans to sell soon, John wants to avoid a hefty capital gains tax bill.

As his children are in university, upping sticks is possible. He hopes to take advantage of the Republic of Ireland’s non-domiciled, or “non-dom”, tax regime, which would exempt him from Irish taxes as well.

“We’ve been moving fast to organise his immediate departure to Ireland,” said Lesperance, who has been assisting him in shifting his assets abroad. “With higher taxes looming, the costs of leaving early are a rounding error.”

John is not alone.

The footballer Rio Ferdinand has recently moved to Dubai, citing tax as a push factor, while Egyptian billionaire and Aston Villa co-owner Nassef Sawiris, who moved his residency to Italy and the United Arab Emirates from Britain, told the Financial Times earlier this year that everyone in his “circle” is considering moving.

Herman Narula, the 37-year-old British Indian founder of Improbable, a tech company, announced this month that he is fleeing to Dubai. Worth about 700 million pounds ($920m), he is said to be Britain’s richest young entrepreneur. Among his reasons for fleeing were reported plans by the Labour government to impose an exit tax on wealthy people leaving the United Kingdom.

While that proposal appears to have been ditched, the overall business environment for entrepreneurs is increasingly unpredictable, Narula and a few others say.

“There is alarming evidence that some entrepreneurs are leaving the UK,” reads a recent open letter to Reeves, signed by more than a dozen wealthy business owners, including Nick Wheeler, founder and chair of the men’s clothing retailer Charles Tyrwhitt, and Annoushka Ducas, a jewellery designer.

“As the government prepares for this year’s Budget, it must carefully consider the cumulative impact of these policies on entrepreneurs,” the letter warns.

When the budget is delivered, all eyes will be on any changes to taxation – an issue affecting everyone in the UK. In recent months, speculation about tax amendments on property, incomes and pensions has repeatedly made headline news.

Rumours about the superrich abandoning the UK have been swirling for an even longer period, triggered by the mere prospect of a Labour government last year. Since the Keir Starmer-led government was elected last July, a range of media outlets have homed in on case studies suggesting that Labour is driving wealth out.

The first Labour budget last October outraged some high-earning individuals in the UK, who said they were already taxed too much.

“Last year’s Budget measures, including changes to Capital Gains Tax, Entrepreneur’s Relief, and Employer National Insurance, have increased costs for many entrepreneurs and enterprises,” read the recent open letter from wealthy business owners to Reeves.

Those changes came after the Conservatives abolished the non-dom regime, a status that allows for people with a residency abroad to avoid taxes in the UK.

But experts have offered words of caution on the supposed flight of the rich.

There is no official data on the number of wealthy individuals leaving because of Labour’s tax changes.

“The most recent tax data on wealthy individuals with non-dom status from HMRC [His Majesty’s Revenue and Customs, the UK’s tax revenue department] shows that the number of non-doms leaving the UK is in line with or below official forecasts,” said Mark Bou Mansour, an advocate at the Tax Justice Network.

Claims that recent revenue-boosting tax reforms have triggered a massive non-dom exodus are false and part of a wider rhetoric that is detrimental to the UK’s fiscal and economic health, he said.

“Talking about whether the superrich will move if we tax can be a distraction from talking about the harms to economies and democracies that arise from not taxing extreme wealth,” he said.

Mansour pointed to a 2024 study by the London School of Economics that interviewed a number of wealthy individuals. It found the most important factors underpinning their reluctance to migrate were their attachment to the capital’s cultural infrastructure, private health services and schools, and the ability to maintain social ties.

“There’s plenty of strong evidence showing that the superrich don’t choose to relocate just to pay less tax,” said Mansour.

Behind a large number of articles predicting an exodus of wealthy people was a report by the passport advice firm Henley & Partners.

However, the report was found to be based on flawed methodology, and was later amended.

Even so, Lesperance said he has worked with a number of clients who have left the UK since Labour came into power.

He argued that while not necessarily large in number, the group makes up a high percentage of overall tax revenue raised by the government.

“The tax contribution of a non-dom is about 220,000 pounds ($289,000) a year, which is about six or seven times the UK average,” he said, “They’re super contributors” who need to be protected, or else, “You’re going to actually see a drop in annual tax collections because these people have left.”

Some of his clients have chosen to relocate to Milan and Dubai.

“As one of my clients said, ‘London’s nice, but it’s not that nice,’” he said.

But Michelle White, head of private office at UK wealth management firm Rathbones, said that while her clients are internationally mobile and could move away, the majority have stayed put so far.

“Since some of these articles started coming out saying the floodgates are open, we haven’t seen that,” she said.

Britain’s schools, legal system and business environment continue to be pull factors, she argued.

Those who have left usually have ventures or properties abroad and can easily relocate, or are considering selling their business in the next two years or so, and do not want to pay capital gains tax on sales.

Others have big payouts from private equity or hedge funds and want to avoid paying income tax.

“It means that they’ll go and spend more time somewhere else and less time here in order to not pay UK tax on that sale,” said White.

A large extent of her clientele in the end decides to stay in the UK to raise families, and mitigates taxation through smart planning.

“I tell people to look at the next 50 years and plan taxes around that,” she said, “People take a long view.

“Tax is one thing, but quality of life and how you actually want to live as a family often overrides the tax aspect.”

In China, 87 percent of people trust AI, compared with just 32 percent in the US, according to an Edelman poll.

China’s public is far more trusting of artificial intelligence than their peers in the United States and other Western countries, a survey has found.

In China, 87 percent of people said they trusted AI, compared with 67 percent in Brazil, 32 percent in the US, 36 percent in the United Kingdom, and 39 percent in Germany, the Edelman poll released on Tuesday showed.

More than seven in 10 Chinese respondents said they expected AI to play a role in solving a range of societal issues, including climate change, mental illness, poverty and polarisation.

Only one-third of Americans said they expected AI to reduce poverty and polarisation, though half predicted a positive impact on climate-related challenges.

While 54 percent of Chinese said they embraced greater use of AI, just 17 percent of Americans answered the same, according to the survey.

Trust was highest among young people, though still much lower in Western countries.

Eighty-eight percent of Chinese aged 18-34 said they had faith in the technology, compared with 40 percent of Americans in that age group.

“For businesses and policymakers, this divergence presents a double challenge,” Edelman Senior Vice President Gray Grossman said in a report accompanying the survey.

“In high-trust markets, the task is to sustain optimism through responsible deployment and straightforward evidence of benefit. In low-trust markets, the task is to rebuild confidence in the institutions behind the technology.”

The survey results come as the US and China are locked in a battle for tech supremacy, with firms in both countries rolling out increasingly sophisticated AI models.

While the US is widely seen as still having an edge in producing the most powerful AI, Chinese firms such as Alibaba and DeepSeek have made major inroads in recent months with “open” language models that offer customers much lower costs.

Last month, Airbnb CEO Brian Chesky made headlines when he revealed that the short-term rental platform preferred Alibaba’s Qwen over OpenAI’s ChatGPT.

“It’s very good. It’s also fast and cheap,” Chesky told Bloomberg in an interview.

Paramount Skydance is reportedly preparing a bid to acquire Warner Bros Discovery.

Variety, an entertainment industry trade magazine in the United States, first reported the looming proposal on Tuesday, quoting sources familiar with the talks.

The publication said the company formed an investment consortium with the sovereign wealth funds of Saudi Arabia, Qatar and Abu Dhabi to submit a $71bn bid for Warner Bros Discovery.

The report said Paramount Skydance would contribute about $50bn towards the proposed acquisition with the remainder coming from the wealth funds.

Paramount Skydance has described the involvement of the sovereign wealth funds as “categorically inaccurate”.

Paramount Skydance is now led by David Ellison, the son of Larry Ellison, cofounder of Oracle and a close ally of US President Donald Trump. Warner Bros Discovery previously rejected a bid from the Ellison family, which holds all board voting power at Paramount Skydance.

Neither Paramount nor Warner Bros Discovery responded to Al Jazeera’s request for comment.

Under the proposed structure, the wealth funds would take small minority stakes and each would receive “an IP, a movie premiere, a movie shoot”, the report said.

Warner Bros Discovery – home to the DC film universe and television studios, HBO, CNN, TNT and Warner Bros Games – is on the verge of breaking up, crippled by declines in its television business.

The company said in October that it has been considering a range of options, including a planned separation, a deal for the entire company or separate transactions for its Warner Bros or Discovery Global businesses.

Nonbinding, first-round bids are due on Thursday.

Paramount is the only company currently considering a full buyout according to the US news website Axios. Warner Bros Discovery also wants to have a deal by the end of the year, according to Axios’s reporting.

Political pressures

The looming deal is shaped in part by how the Trump administration views coverage by the news outlets owned by Warner Bros Discovery.

Netflix and Comcast are also reportedly exploring bids, but any Comcast-led effort would need regulatory approval.

Trump has also repeatedly attacked Comcast over its TV news coverage, saying the company “should be forced to pay vast sums of money for the damage they’ve done to our country”.

Comcast owns NBC News and its subsidiary Versant Media, the parent company of MS-Now – formerly MSNBC – and CNBC.

CBS, owned by Paramount Skydance, has taken a more conciliatory posture towards the administration, including hiring a Trump nominee as an ombudsman to investigate bias allegations after settling a Trump lawsuit claiming its flagship programme 60 Minutes deceptively edited an interview with 2024 Democratic presidential nominee Kamala Harris, who lost to Trump.

Paramount Skydance also recently tapped Bari Weiss, a right-leaning opinion journalist with no television background, to lead the CBS broadcast news division.

Any of the deals that are being discussed raise antitrust concerns. But if Paramount Skydance, which already owns CBS, now purchases CNN as part of Warner Bros Discovery, “that would create an added civic risk”, Rodney Benson, professor of media, culture and communication at New York University, told Al Jazeera.

“Such a deal would put two leading news outlets under the roof of the same large, multi-industry conglomerate with avowed close relations to the party in power – and that could lead to more conflicts of interest, less independent watchdog reporting and a narrowing of diverse voices and viewpoints in the public sphere,” Benson said.

Warner Bros Discovery remains the parent company of CNN.

On Wall Street, Paramount Skydance shares were up 1.7 percent in midday trading. Warner Bros Discovery was also up 2.8 percent from the market open. Comcast gained 0.5 percent, and Netflix climbed 3.5 percent.

The dip comes amid doubts about future US interest rate cuts and a risk-averse mood in broader markets.

Bitcoin fell below $90,000 for the first time in seven months in the latest sign that investor appetite for risk is drying up across financial markets.

The cryptocurrency began to rebound as United States markets opened on Tuesday. However, Monday’s steep drop in the risk-sensitive asset had already wiped out all of its gains for the year.

It is now nearly 30 percent below its peak of $126,000 in October.

It was down 0.5 percent at $91,338.47 during European trading hours, after slipping as low as $89,286.75.

About $1.2 trillion has been wiped off the total market value of all cryptocurrencies in the past six weeks, according to market tracker CoinGecko.

Market participants said that a combination of doubts around future interest rate cuts by the US Federal Reserve and the risk-averse mood in broader markets, which have wobbled after a long rally, was dragging down crypto.

“The cascading selloff is amplified by listed companies and institutions exiting their positions after piling in during the rally, compounding contagion risks across the market,” said Joshua Chu, co-chair of the Hong Kong Web3 Association.

“When support thins and macro uncertainty rises, confidence can erode with remarkable speed.”

Speculators who had put money into crypto in the hopes of supportive US regulation have started to pull back, causing steady outflows from exchange traded funds (ETFs) and similar instruments in recent weeks, said Joseph Edwards at Enigma Securities.

“The sell pressure here isn’t extraordinary, but it’s coming at a relative weak point on the buy side … a lot of retail buyers were stung during the flash crash last month,” he said, referring to an October crash in which there were $19bn in liquidations across leveraged positions.

Crypto stockpilers such as Strategy, miners such Riot Platforms and Mara Holdings, and exchange Coinbase have all slid with the souring mood.

‘Underwater’

There has been a boom in public crypto treasury companies this year, with small companies in unrelated sectors becoming crypto proxies by announcing plans to buy and hold cryptocurrencies on their balance sheets.

But Standard Chartered has estimated that a drop below $90,000 for Bitcoin could leave half of these companies’ Bitcoin holdings “underwater” – a term that typically refers to assets worth less than what was paid for them.

Listed companies collectively hold 4 percent of all the Bitcoin in circulation, and 3.1 percent of the ether, Standard Chartered said.

The cryptocurrency Ethereum (ETH) has also been under pressure for months, and has lost nearly 40 percent of its value from an August peak above $4,955.

“All in all, sentiment is pretty low in crypto and has been since the leverage wipeout of October,” said Matthew Dibb, chief investment officer at Astronaut Capital.

The announcement underscores AI industry’s insatiable appetite for computing power as companies race to build systems that can rival or surpass human intelligence.

Microsoft and Nvidia plan to invest in Anthropic under a new tie-up that includes a $30bn commitment by the Claude maker to use Microsoft’s cloud services, the latest high-profile deal binding together major players in the AI industry.

Nvidia will commit up to $10bn to Anthropic and Microsoft up to $5bn, the companies said on Tuesday, without sharing more details.

A person familiar with the matter said both the companies have committed to investing in Anthropic’s next funding round.

The announcement underscores the AI industry’s insatiable appetite for computing power as companies race to build systems that can rival or surpass human intelligence. It also ties major OpenAI-backer Microsoft, as well as key AI chip supplier Nvidia, closer to one of the ChatGPT maker’s biggest rivals.

“We’re increasingly going to be customers of each other. We will use Anthropic models, they will use our infrastructure and we’ll go to market together,” Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella said in a video. He added that OpenAI “remains a critical partner”.

The move comes weeks after OpenAI unveiled a sweeping restructuring that moved it further away from its non-profit roots, giving it greater operational and financial freedom.

The startup has since then announced a $38bn deal to buy cloud services from Amazon.com as it reduces reliance on Microsoft. Its CEO, Sam Altman, has said OpenAI is committed to spending $1.4 trillion to develop 30 gigawatts of computing resources – enough to roughly power 25 million US homes.

Still, three years after ChatGPT’s debut, investors are increasingly uneasy that the AI boom has outrun fundamentals. Some business leaders have noted that circular deals – in which one partner props up another’s revenue – add to the bubble risk.

“The main feature of the partnership is to reduce the AI economy’s reliance on OpenAI,” D A Davidson analyst Gil Luria said of Tuesday’s announcement.

“Microsoft has decided not to rely on one frontier model company. Nvidia was also somewhat dependent on OpenAI’s success and is now helping generating broader demand.

AI industry consolidating

Founded in 2021 by former OpenAI staff, Anthropic was recently valued at $183bn and has become a major rival to the ChatGPT maker, driven by the strong adoption of its services by enterprise customers.

The Reuters news agency reported last month that Anthropic was projecting to more than double and potentially nearly triple its annualised revenue run rate to around $26bn next year. It has more than 300,000 business and enterprise customers.

As part of Tuesday’s move, Anthropic will work with Nvidia on chips and models to improve performance and commit up to 1 gigawatt of compute using Nvidia’s Grace Blackwell and Vera Rubin hardware. Industry executives estimate that one gigawatt of AI computing can cost between $20bn and $25bn.

Microsoft will also give Azure AI Foundry customers access to the latest Claude models, making Claude the only frontier model offered across all three major cloud providers.

“These investments reflect how the AI industry is consolidating around a few key players,” eMarketer analyst Jacob Bourne said.

Despite the looming deal, Microsoft shares are down 3.2 percent in midday trading. Nvidia is also trading 1.9 percent lower than at the market open, and Amazon has fallen 4 percent. Tech stocks remain under pressure after a cloud services outage earlier on Tuesday. Neither OpenAI nor Anthropic is publicly traded.

Brazil’s proposal

The issue is set to come to a head next week, as the Convention on International Trade in Endangered Species of Wild Fauna and Flora (CITES) holds its 20th meeting.

Heightened restrictions on brazilwood are scheduled to be raised for a vote at the conference.

Since 1998, the International Union for Conservation of Nature (IUCN) has classified the tree as endangered.

But a proposal authored by the Brazilian government would increase CITES protections for brazilwood, placing it in the highest tier for trade restrictions.

CITES regulates the international trade of endangered species, and it classifies animals and plants in three appendices.

The third is the least restrictive: If a species is endangered in a given country, then export permits are required from that country.

The Appendix II has tighter standards: Export permits are required from wherever the species is extracted. Most endangered species, including brazilwood, fall into this category.

But Brazil hopes to bump brazilwood up to appendix one, a category for species faced with extinction.

Trade of plants and animals in that appendix is largely banned, except for non-commercial use. But even in that case, both import and export licences are required.

In its proposal, Brazil argues the upgraded restrictions are necessary to fight the plant’s extinction.

Only about 10,000 adult brazilwood trees remain. The population has shrunk by 84 percent over the last three generations, and illegal logging has played a dominant role in that decline, according to the proposal.

“Selective extraction of Brazilwood is still active, both inside and outside protected areas,” the proposal explains.

“In all cases recently detected, the destination of these woods is the bow-making industry for musical instruments.”

It adds that “520 years of intense exploitation” have led to the “complete elimination of the species in several regions”.

One operation launched by Brazilian police in October 2018 resulted in 45 companies and bowmakers being fined.

Nearly 292,000 bows and blanks — the unfinished blocks of wood destined to become bows — were seized.

Another investigation, between 2021 and 2022, led police to conclude that an estimated $46m in profits had come from the illegal brazilwood trade.

“The majority of bows and bow blanks sold by Brazilian companies over the past 25 years probably originated from illegal sources,” Brazil wrote in its proposal.

No one really expects to be defrauded by someone dressed like an army officer.  Ikanyi Stephen certainly didn’t. But last year, at his small point-of-sale (POS) stand in Nyanya Park, Abuja, in North Central Nigeria, a man in military uniform approached him, seemingly with an innocent intention of withdrawing cash. Unknown to Stephen, the uniformed customer had foul play.

“He wanted ₦300,000,” Stephen recalled. “And the day he came, there were two other customers. My [sales assistant] was trying to attend to him,  and since I was with another customer, I couldn’t monitor them. Some customers like to hold the device to see if their transaction is successful, and that’s what I assumed the officer was doing. He slotted his card, entered his PIN, and after returning the machine to her, he urged her to hurry and give him his money so he could leave quickly.”

Stephen initially thought the man was simply in a rush, perhaps due to official duties. But it was only after he had left that the POS agent realised the real reason for his hurried departure. “I checked the transactions, but noticed nothing had come through. He had put the wrong PIN and hadn’t paid one naira, but by the time I noticed, I could not trace where he had gone,” he said. 

The incident cost Stephen more than he could have imagined — a quick trick pulled off by someone who knew how to exploit trust. Though the deceit seemed simple, many POS agents in Nigeria are increasingly falling victim to similar digital scams. 

The POS agent crisis

While scammers have long targeted these agents, the issue became more widespread with the rapid growth of the POS business in early 2023. That was the year the Central Bank of Nigeria (CBN) implemented a cashless policy, which limited the amount of cash that individuals and corporate bodies could withdraw at a time. As the queues in the banking halls grew and ATMs quickly emptied, millions turned to their neighbourhood POS agents for transactions.

By the end of that year, the Nigerian Inter-Bank Settlement System (NIBSS) reported that POS transactions had reached record heights, with a 27.85 per cent increase from 2022 and approximately ₦10.73 trillion transacted. The transactions have continued to rise since then, and as of 2025, NIBSS reported that  POS transfers reached a record-breaking ₦10.75 trillion in the first quarter of the year.

There are thousands of POS agents per square kilometre in the country, who process approximately ₦4.87 billion per hour. These agents are responsible for essential financial services, especially in rural areas where banks are scarce. The POS business provides steady, flexible employment that doesn’t require workers to possess intricate skills.

As favourable as the line of work is to the country, however, fraud, like what Stephen encountered, taints the endeavour. Although what happened to him appears straightforward, more sophisticated means of defrauding POS agents have raised growing concerns among the community, all of which is spurred on by the growing digital age.

Sunday Ohoji, an investigator at the Independent Corrupt Practices and Other Related Offences Commission (ICPC), told HumAngle that far more digital POS scams have occurred in recent years than physical thefts. “The increase in digital trends and information technology has led to an increase in the vices attached to them. POS scams are one such vice,” he said.

A common scam related to POS transactions is reversal fraud. In this scheme, a POS agent receives a transfer via a card or phone transaction. However, the money that initially appears to be deposited in their account is later reversed, leading to a bounce-back of the funds hours after the customer has left. Several agents believe there are malicious intentions behind these reversals. For instance, a union of POS agents at Jabi Park in Abuja recently warned over 100 of its members to stop permitting phone transactions, as this method is suspected to be the most common way for scams to occur, according to a member of the union.

Fake alerts

Yunusa Adamu, a member of the union, explained the reason for their suspicion after a personal experience left him wary.

“I was sitting at my POS machine, three or four people just came to me, wearing good clothes that would make you think they are reasonable people, even though they aren’t. One of them said he needed about ₦30,000 and asked me to transfer it to him so he could receive the cash. It didn’t go through, so his friend quickly stepped in and did the transfer,” he recounted.

“Without even pressing my phone too much, I received an alert stating that the money had entered my account, but it was a fake alert. The men quickly said they wanted ₦20,000 of their money to go and buy something, but that they would come back for the rest. When they left, I checked my bank account and realised the money had never actually entered, as the alert had reversed. I sat there till evening, but the men never returned.”

Yunusa said he had no clue how such a scam was possible. He now knows better, especially after another agent, Munkaila Mohammed, spoke bitterly of a similar experience.

“My daughter, Aminatu, gave ₦120,000 to one customer who had made a digital transfer. As he got his money, the man rushed away. Later, when we checked her transactions, we saw that the money had reversed. Till today, nobody knows how scammers are doing it, but we know it’s not a mistake or network error,” Munkaila narrated.

Munkaila was right in his detection of foul play. The rise of digital hacking has led to scammers creating complex systems to defraud unsuspecting POS agents. 

After years of working as an ICPC’s investigations official, Sunday Ohoji has the mechanics of this scheme laid out: “The people who do these scams already have a cloned system that makes it look like they are actually sending money out to the agents,” he explained.

“So what happens is that they give the agent their card to do a transaction, and because the platform the POS operates on  is also internet based, it’s very, very easy for the scammers to reroute whatever transaction they do on that account and card to a dummy account, which automatically generates an alert sent to the POS agent as if a transaction has occurred, but it is not actually tied to the financial system.”

Many customers don’t wait to take such a complicated route. Some swindlers quickly cancel their PIN to avoid paying; others hold the machine and lower the initial cost inputted by the operators. One POS agent, Alice Omenene, recounted how a customer attempted to pay only 1 per cent of what he had promised through this nefarious method.

“One time, one man requested ₦40,000, and I put that price for him in my POS. But little did I know he secretly changed the amount to ₦400 when he got hold of the machine,” she said. “I’ve been defrauded in the past, but this time I caught him. All he kept saying was, ‘I’m a Muslim, I can’t cheat you,’ but I didn’t hear that one. How would I let him go with my money?”

The cost of scams

The cases of POS fraud continue, with a 31.12 per cent increase in 2024, according to the Report of Fraud and Forgeries in Nigerian Banks. However, this problem doesn’t just appear negative on paper. POS agents typically bear the long-term consequences of one-time thefts.

“When I lost ₦300,000, I was so depressed during that period,” said Stephen, “I really planned the money for something special, but when the theft happened, I was stuck. I tried to go through diabolical means to get it back, but I couldn’t dare to do that.”

The negative effects reach beyond just one person. Many of these agents either work for others or buy back the cash they can no longer track, leading to a ripple effect where the consequences of the theft impact other relationships and businesses.

Somalia Nwadiugwu, whose mother was swindled out of ₦30,000 with a fake alert, told HumAngle that the loss impacted their supplier, the one who had given them the cash. “We needed that money to meet up with payments, budgets, and stuff. The man who sold my mum cash needed some of his profit. It’s just because he was nice that he gave us time to pay it back, but he complained that he also had children to feed, and this was seriously limiting him.”

No way out?

Despite the extensive challenges they face, many POS agents are reluctant to pursue other employment opportunities, claiming that no alternative jobs are available to them. With a striking 86 per cent of Nigeria’s working population engaging in self-employment and non-paid jobs, according to the Nigerian Economic Summit Group, it is evident that the lack of formal job opportunities is a significant issue for many individuals in the country.

David Aliyu*, a POS agent at Kabusa, who regularly loses between ₦5,000 and ₦10,000, sees no viable way to leave the business that has caused him so much financial loss. “No man can stay without doing something,” he told HumAngle. “That’s why some people keep on pushing with this business the way it is. In any business, there is loss, even Dangote [referring to the richest Black man] loses daily, more than POS people, I’m sure.”

Alice expressed a similar sentiment, saying, “This is where I’ve found myself, and it’s all that God has given me to do. Every morning, I pray not to fall for any 419 scam and that no scammer will see me. In this POS business, it’s not about being too wise; this scamming thing is an experience. You bring your head down, calm down, and pray.”

Prayer appears to be a common form of self-protection among those who have been scammed, as many POS agents refuse to seek external help, not trusting the Nigerian system to provide them with adequate assistance. 

When Stephen lost ₦300,000, it seemed natural that his next course of action would be to seek official intervention, but when he tallied the cost of processing it, he decided it was wiser to keep the matter to himself.

“If you have a loss and you want to seek help from the court, they’ll ask you to provide an affidavit. And sometimes, in processing the case, you spend more money. With those two things, you’ll still be spending more money than you lost. So the money you spend on getting help, along with the time lost trying to get that help, is almost equivalent to what you lost. So you just let it go,” he said.

Some members don’t even get to court. The cost of travelling to get help often halts them in their search for aid. Charity Eze*, a POS agent in Kabusa, who lost ₦50,000 after a customer changed the price on her POS from ₦55,000 to ₦ 5,000, explains why she had to make the painful decision to let it go. 

“We didn’t go to court, but because we had the customer’s name, my boss went to the bank. They froze his account and then told my boss he needed to come back again, but the banks are far from us, and the cost of transport is now high. When he calculated everything, he knew he would be at a loss. My boss let it go, but if not for the fact that he was a nice man, I would have had my salary taken away for God knows how long.”

Even without the cost of transport, legal justice still incurs a fee. The Virtual Affidavit Registration System (VARS) allows people to print various Affidavits online. It prices the affidavit of Loss of Documents/Items at ₦5,245. 

This is without going through any other court processes or the issue of extortion with the affidavit system that many complain about. Whether in person or online, expenditures rise higher than many of the losses POS personnel face at once. While some, like Stephen, are unfortunate enough to lose ₦300,000 at a time, most of the POS agents reported petty thefts, ranging from ₦2,000 to ₦10,000. 

While these smaller scams may seem inconsequential enough to let go, over time, these thefts add up, and without proper aid, POS agents may lose more than what they expected, crippling their business in the long run. 

The expensive solution

Ohoji, the ICPC investigator, sees a better way out, saying: “You can report to the police, you can report to the ICPC, you can report to the EFCC, all for free.  A few agents have come forward with genuine reports, and more are expected to follow, as the government is there to support them.

“The government doesn’t just want to help them, but the whole nation, because if they do not handle it immediately, it might become cancerous to the system tomorrow. Therefore, they should address the issue now. So, at every point in time, they should report. When they report, something will be done, even if it’s slow, something will be done,” he said.

He advised POS agents to upgrade their machines to detect cards that are not registered in the financial system. 

“It will go a long way to help curb the issue, because the truth is this: if someone comes and gives you a fake POS transaction and says they’re in a hurry to go, you wouldn’t have time to start checking if it’s genuine, but with an automatic detector, there will be no need to check manually.”

This is a simple solution in theory. In practice, however, few POS agents can afford to upgrade their machines due to their limited earnings. Many of them have reported that on a good day, they make up to ₦5,000, but these occasions are rare. More often than not, they typically make no more than ₦2,000 daily.

One of them, Charity, claimed that sometimes she sits down in the sweltering heat all day and earns only ₦500 for her efforts.

With an average profit of  ₦60,000 monthly, where the market cost of a single POS terminal is  ₦21,500, based on prices gotten from Moniepoint Microfinance Bank, a prominent POS terminal provider, as well as the added expense of buying the cash that will eventually be sold, squeezing in the cost of improvements may not be a viable option for many. 

For now, survival in the minds of many POS agents is a matter of caution and faith, and that seems to be enough for them. With around three million POS terminals existing in Nigeria as of 2024, according to the Central Bank of Nigeria (CBN), and many more popping up daily, it is clear that most POS agents remain unshaken in the face of mounting insecurity. 

*Names marked with an asterisk have been changed to protect the identities of sources. 

A handful of opposition abstentions allowed Carney and minority Liberals to advance a deficit-boosting budget aimed at countering US tariffs.

Prime Minister Mark Carney’s minority government narrowly survived a confidence vote on Monday as Canadian lawmakers endorsed a motion to begin debating his first federal budget – a result that avoids the prospect of a second election in less than a year.

The House of Commons voted 170-168 to advance study of the fiscal plan. While further votes are expected in the coming months, the slim victory signals that the budget is likely to be approved eventually.

Tonight, the House of Commons has voted to pass Budget 2025.

It’s time to work together to deliver on this plan — to protect our communities, empower Canadians with new opportunities, and build Canada strong.

— Mark Carney (@MarkJCarney) November 18, 2025

“It’s time to work together to deliver on this plan – to protect our communities, empower Canadians with new opportunities, and build Canada strong,” Carney said on X, arguing that his spending blueprint would help fortify the economy against escalating United States tariffs.

Carney has repeatedly cast the budget as a “generational” chance to reinforce Canada’s economic resilience and to reduce reliance on trade with the US.

The proposal includes a near doubling of Canada’s deficit to 78.3 billion Canadian dollars ($55.5bn) with major outlays aimed at countering US trade measures and supporting defence and housing initiatives. The prime minister has insisted that higher deficit spending is essential to cushion the impact of US President Donald Trump’s tariffs. While most bilateral trade remains tariff-free under an existing North American trade agreement, US levies on automobiles, steel and aluminium have struck significant sectors of the Canadian economy.

According to Carney, a former central banker, internal forecasts show that “US tariffs and the associated uncertainty will cost Canadians around 1.8 percent of our GDP [gross domestic product]”.

The Liberals, a few seats short of a majority in the 343-seat House of Commons, relied on abstentions from several opposition members who were reluctant to trigger early elections. Recent polling suggested Carney’s Liberals would remain in power if Canadians were sent back to the polls.

Carney was elected to a full term in April after campaigning on a promise to challenge Washington’s protectionist turn. Meanwhile, the Conservative Party, the official opposition, has been wrestling with internal divisions since its defeat, and leader Pierre Poilievre faces a formal review of his performance early next year.

Poilievre has sharply criticised the government’s spending plans, branding the fiscal package a “credit card budget”.

The left-leaning New Democratic Party (NDP) has also expressed concerns, arguing that the proposal fails to adequately address unemployment, the housing crisis and the cost-of-living pressures faced by many Canadian families.

NDP interim leader Don Davies said the party accepted that blocking the budget would push the country back into an unwanted election cycle, explaining why two of its MPs ultimately abstained.

It was “clear that Canadians do not want an election right now … while we still face an existential threat from the Trump administration”, he said.

“Parliamentarians decided to put Canada first”, Finance Minister Francois-Philippe Champagne said.

Polling before Monday’s vote suggested Canadians broadly shared this view. A November survey by the analytics firm Leger found that one in five respondents supported immediate elections while half said they were satisfied with Carney’s leadership.