FirstFT: Ron DeSantis drops out of 2024 presidential race and endorses Trump

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Good morning. Ron DeSantis has suspended his campaign for president and endorsed Donald Trump as the Republican nominee for the White House in 2024.

DeSantis announced his decision in a video posted to social media yesterday, saying he and his wife, Casey, had “prayed and deliberated on the way forward” after his second-place finish in last week’s Iowa caucuses.

The Florida governor said it was “clear . . . that a majority of Republican primary voters want to give Donald Trump another chance.”

DeSantis’s departure from the race comes just two days before the New Hampshire primary, which will now be a clear two-person race between Trump and Nikki Haley, the former South Carolina governor who later served as Trump’s ambassador to the UN.

Haley responded to DeSantis’s announcement at a campaign stop in New Hampshire, saying: “He ran a great race. He has been a good governor, and we wish him well. Having said that, it’s now one fella and one lady left . . . may the best woman win.” Here’s how DeSantis’s departure could affect the New Hampshire primary.

• More on the US election: Donald Trump has unleashed a volley of smears at Nikki Haley as he tries to quash any lingering Republican opposition to his White House run and score a decisive victory in the New Hampshire primary on Tuesday.

And here’s what else I’m watching today:

• Monetary policy: The People’s Bank of China makes its loan prime rate announcement, while the Bank of Japan begins a two-day monetary policy meeting.

• India: Three decades after Hindu zealots tore down a mosque at Ayodhya, Prime Minister Narendra Modi will attend the consecration of a massive Hindu temple on the same site.

Five more top stories

1. Exclusive: The EU has urged member states to impose “consequences” on Israel if its Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu continues to oppose Palestinian statehood. The proposed threat, to be discussed at a meeting of EU foreign ministers today, underscores rising unease at Israel’s stance among many of its western allies. Read the full story.

2. Operations have been suspended at a major gas terminal outside St Petersburg after a large fire broke out, which the Russian operator said had been caused by “external action”. Novatek, Russia’s second-largest natural gas producer, said it had halted operations at the Ust-Luga terminal on the Baltic Sea following the incident, with local officials reporting “explosions” at the plant.

3. Assets managed by the Chinese operations of Bridgewater and Two Sigma surged as the US hedge funds outperformed their local peers during the market turbulence of last year. Here’s what that means for asset managers navigating the Chinese market.

4. McKinsey boss Bob Sternfels is facing a tougher than expected bid for re-election after a backlash to his restructuring of the consulting firm and a slowdown in growth. Sternfels failed to clinch a second term on the first round of voting for global managing partner after more than half of McKinsey’s 750 senior partners selected other candidates as their first choice to run the firm, according to people familiar with the outcome.

5. A scion of one of Pakistan’s leading political families has warned that the country cannot afford further delay to an election set for next month as it struggles with a protracted economic crisis and increasingly volatile security situation. “Pakistan is dealing with the perfect storm of crises,” Bilawal Bhutto Zardari told the FT, adding that elections were needed “yesterday”.

News in-depth

Fujitsu’s 1990 announcement that it was taking over International Computers Limited, then the UK’s largest computer maker, shocked the technology industry and was seen as a “daringly ambitious” attempt to take on IBM. For decades, the deal was seen as a crucial gateway into Europe for the Japanese conglomerate. But now there are fears that its ambitions for the continent could be thwarted if it fails to stem the financial and reputational fallout from Britain’s Post Office Horizon scandal.

We’re also reading . . . 

Chart of the day

Official data showing a surprising fall in Chinese steel output demonstrates the difficulty of pinning down the state of the world’s second-biggest economy. The fall “did not tie in with anything else”, said Colin Hamilton, a London-based analyst at BMO Capital Markets, noting discrepancies across the data. “It is fair to say that we don’t believe these numbers.” Here’s how economists are managing scepticism of China’s data.

Take a break from the news

. . . and go on a (mostly unscientific) mission with Snigdha Poonam to discover how Turkish barber shops became so ubiquitous in Britain.

Correction: Last Friday’s FirstFT misidentified the fund manager in this FT Magazine story as Lars Windhorst. It was Bruno Crastes. We apologise for the error.