FirstFT: Venezuelans protest disputed election result

Good morning. Today we’re covering:

But first, protests erupted in Venezuela yesterday against authoritarian President Nicolás Maduro’s re-election, after the opposition claimed it had evidence that the vote count was fraudulent.

Edmundo González, the opposition candidate, had been leading Maduro in independent polls by at least 20 points before polling day. The government-controlled election authority yesterday proclaimed Maduro the winner without yet having counted all of the votes.

Russia, China, Iran and Cuba hailed his victory while the US, the EU and the UK have demanded to see a detailed breakdown of the count. Despondent Venezuelans have taken to the streets across the country, having tear gas and live ammunition from pistols fired at them by the police in some cases. 

The oil-rich nation faced a 75 per cent contraction in GDP between 2013 (when Maduro was elected) and 2021. Hyperinflation, regular power outages, a chronic food and medicine shortage and a mass population exodus have blighted the country.

“How long is this going to go on for?” asked one of the marchers. “Maduro isn’t our president any more,” they told the FT’s reporters on the ground.

Here’s what else I’m keeping tabs on today:

• Economic data: Mexico publishes preliminary second-quarter GDP figures.

• Federal Reserve: The US central bank’s monetary policy-setting committee begins its two-day meeting.

• Results: Merck & Co, Pfizer, Airbus, BP, Diageo, PayPal, Procter & Gamble, Standard Chartered, Western Union, L’Oréal, Microsoft and Nomura report.

Five more top stories

1. Governor Roy Cooper of North Carolina has withdrawn his name from consideration to be Kamala Harris’s running mate, winnowing the field of prominent Democrats vying to be her pick for vice-president.

• The Fed’s Trump dilemma: The US central bank will not want to look as if it is prejudging policies as inflationary during election season, writes Krishna Guha, formerly of the New York Fed.

For more, sign up for the US Election Countdown newsletter, the FT’s essential guide to the twists and turns of the 2024 presidential election.

2. Donald Trump has promised to make the US “the bitcoin superpower of the world”, as he seeks to court an industry frustrated with the fierce oversight leveraged against it by the Biden administration.

3. McDonald’s has suffered its first global drop in sales since 2020 as higher prices deter consumers around the world, fuelling concerns that post-Covid consumer strength has peaked.

4. Mid-sized US accounting firms are rethinking their global operations to meet the needs of increasingly multinational clients, while better leveraging their global networks to spread the cost of technology and staff.

5. BHP, the world’s biggest miner, and Canada’s Lundin have agreed to acquire South American copper miner Filo in a $3bn deal, giving them full control of the Filo del Sol prospect, which straddles the Argentine and Chilean border near the copper-rich Atacama Desert.

The Big Read

The Biden administration has depended heavily on Mexico’s President Andrés Manuel López Obrador to stem migration across the border. López Obrador has used this as a bargaining chip to push through leftwing nationalist reforms, which critics say have weakened the economy and democracy in Mexico — and Washington has turned a blind eye.

We’re also reading . . . 

• ‘Super shoes’: To understand what makes certain shoes so fast, the FT worked with experts to dissect the technology behind record-breaking footwear.

• AI battle lines: The global chip war could turn into a cloud computing war, as governments see AI-capable data centres as a strategic resource, writes economic historian Chris Miller.

• Paris Olympics: Star Olympian Simone Biles has billed her performance at the Games as a “redemption tour”, three years after her shock withdrawal from most of her events in Tokyo.

Chart of the day

Starbucks’ chief executive Laxman Narasimhan has been facing criticism from many sides: the chain’s former boss, a barista union and aggressive activist investor Elliott Management. Inflation, mass boycotts over its perceived position on the war in Gaza and flagging performance in China have stalled sales. Is there a way back for the coffee house chain?

Take a break from the news

Alex Robertson-Texter found himself on the inaugural flight between Nuuk, Greenland and Nunavut, Canada, uniting two remote locations that share an Inuit identity. Not only is the route commercially viable for the first time, it is challenging former colonial ligatures and “feels like family coming home”, in the words of Nunavut’s premier. Read his dispatch here.

Additional contributions from Benjamin Wilhelm and Camille De Guzman

Source: Economy - ft.com