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I’m not sure people on my side of the Atlantic fully appreciate quite how much better off the average American is than the average European. A car-wash manager in Alabama can now earn $125,000, about 50 per cent more than the head of cyber security at the UK Treasury even after accounting for different living

Donald Trump was a norm-shattering American president during four tumultuous years in the White House. Now, with a Manhattan grand jury handing down a criminal indictment against him on Thursday evening, Trump and the US have once again hurtled into uncharted — possibly dangerous — territory. The news of the grand jury’s vote upended recent

When troubles come, they come not single spies but in battalions. Donald Trump’s criminal indictment — the first in history of a former, and possibly future, US president — has a Shakespearean quality to it. This dramatic moment has been long anticipated and cued by Trump himself, who expected it to take place last week.

Japan is planning to impose export restrictions on 23 types of equipment used to manufacture semiconductors, as the geopolitical tensions between the US and China sharpen, the government said on Friday. The restrictions, which will come into effect in July, will require Japanese companies that feature heavily and critically in the global semiconductor supply chain,

Donald Trump has been indicted following a years-long investigation by Manhattan prosecutors that has led to the first criminal charges against a former US president in the country’s history, according to his lawyers. “President Trump has been indicted. He did not commit any crime. We will vigorously fight this political prosecution in court,” his lawyers

Europe should reject Washington’s demands to curb trade with Beijing, a senior Chinese diplomat said, warning any country that shredded business ties with his nation would do so “at their own peril”. Fu Cong, China’s ambassador to the EU, claimed the US would “stop at nothing” to disrupt normal relations between the bloc and China,

Scotland’s first minister Humza Yousaf is braced for his first electoral challenge after a UK parliamentary committee recommended a 30-day suspension for an ex-Scottish National party MP who broke rules at the peak of the Covid-19 pandemic. The decision by the House of Commons standards committee — which on Thursday ruled that Margaret Ferrier’s actions

A top Federal Reserve official has said she expects the US central bank to implement one more quarter-point rate rise in its battle against high inflation, despite lingering concerns about the stability of the banking system. Susan Collins, president of the Boston Fed, on Thursday said inflation across the country remains too high, arguing there

Wall Street bonuses fell last year by the most since the financial crisis, dropping 26 per cent to an average of $176,000 amid higher rates and a decline in dealmaking, according to a report from the New York state comptroller. The drop in payouts — the biggest since 2008, when year-end incentive payments fell 43

The writer is founder of Sifted, an FT-backed site about European start-ups Ever since the ancient Greeks dreamt up the myth of Prometheus, humanity has been arguing about the dual nature of technology. The fire that Prometheus stole from the gods could warm humans, but also burn us. So it is with the widespread deployment

First things first: in last week’s Free Lunch I unforgivably got my European royal houses mixed up; my apologies. It was of course the Bourbons and not the Habsburgs of whom Talleyrand supposedly said they had learnt nothing and forgotten nothing. It may still be that our financial regulators are worse than the Bourbons, as

Back in 2018, two economists made a £1,000 bet about future child poverty figures for the UK and I had the job of deciding who would win. Jonathan Portes of King’s College London wagered that harsh social security policies would raise the headline poverty rate from 30 per cent of children in 2016-17 to more

Brussels must develop “new defensive tools” for sectors such as quantum computing and artificial intelligence as it updates its security policies in the face of an increasingly assertive China, the European Commission president has said. Ursula von der Leyen said the EU needed to establish a clear line for trade in highly sensitive technologies where

Spain’s inflation almost halved in a month to 3.1 per cent in March as energy costs dropped, in a possible early sign of a sharp fall in European headline inflation this year. The year-on-year rise in Spanish consumer prices compared with the previous month’s rate of 6 per cent and was lower than the 4

European stocks advanced on Thursday while US futures ticked higher following an overnight rally on Wall Street as traders’ concerns about a prolonged banking crisis receded. The region-wide Stoxx 600 added 0.8 per cent to reach its highest level in two weeks in early trading ahead of the latest figures for eurozone consumer, industrial and

The British government has watered down its new mandate for electric vehicles by allowing carmakers to defer a proportion of their production targets for several years, according to a government consultation announced on Thursday. The consultation on electric cars is one of a flurry of announcements published on Thursday morning updating the government’s approach to

The end of historically low interest rates was billed as good news for banks, which make more money as the difference widens between what they charge borrowers and what they pay for funding. But recent crises on both sides of the Atlantic show that the reality is more complex, upending the conventional wisdom. Some banks,

Fox News was meant to be a TV channel for the man on the street. Sure, its primetime anchors might be able to live lives of luxury on their multimillion-dollar salaries, but that didn’t matter: this was a channel that told it straight and reported the real facts that “they” — the metropolitan liberal “ruling

Varya Galkina, a smart and studious 10-year-old, began getting into trouble with her schoolteachers in Moscow last September, a few weeks into the new academic year.  First, they noticed she was regularly skipping the new Russian patriotism classes that had just been added to the national curriculum. Then they spotted that she had set a

Central banks are turning their attention to companies using high inflation as an excuse to boost their profit margins, warning that businesses’ price gouging risks triggering persistent cost pressures. Profit margins of US companies hit their highest level since the aftermath of the second world war in 2022, research by economists at the University of

Centerview Partners has edged out Wall Street giants including Morgan Stanley and Bank of America in deal activity rankings this quarter, taking the highest spot for a boutique advisory firm in decades. Centerview has rocketed up the closely scrutinised league tables to third place, based on the value of mergers and acquisitions so far this