Philippa Kaur

In 1881 American customs officials stopped a suspicious shipment of sugar, believing its colour had been altered. Under the prevailing tariff code, the darker the colour, the lower the grade and the lighter the levy. A chemical test confirmed the officials were correct. The case went all the way to America’s Supreme Court, which determined that the importer could in fact alter merchandise so as to lower the duty rate, and therefore had done nothing wrong. More

If red tape could be said to have a spiritual home, it would be the corridors of the European Commission in Brussels. The beating heart of the “regulatory superpower” that is the EU, it is there that the rules which guide how business is done in the 27 member states are made. The EU produced nearly 14,000 legal acts between 2019 and 2024. Perhaps not coincidentally the bloc’s economy has stalled. Bosses gripe about spending more time filling forms than filing patents. A plan to lessen their burden is expected to be released on February 26th. Hopes for radical deregulation, however, will have to wait. More

Donald Trump’s election marked a “cultural tipping point”, Mark Zuckerberg declared as he hastily reorganised his company last month. After abolishing fact-checking and promising to move staff from California to Texas, Meta’s boss donned a gold chain and went on Joe Rogan’s podcast to talk about his love of martial arts. Meta is not the only Silicon Valley firm to have undergone a MAGA-friendly makeover. Elon Musk, who says he adores Mr Trump “as much as a straight man can love another man”, has rewired liberal Twitter as right-wing X. TikTok, whose users skew young and Democratic, thanked Mr Trump for postponing its national-security ban and sent its chief executive to his inauguration. Nearly every big-tech boss showed up; several made a personal donation to the festivities. More

The arc of management bends towards sitting on your arse. You may intend to get away from your desk, but it holds you there nonetheless. There are always more emails to clear; there is always more work to get done. When you do leave your desk you are probably off to sit down somewhere else, in a meeting room. And you will probably share that room with your closest colleagues, people who sit behind desks that are located extremely near to yours. Domestic cats have larger territories than some bosses. More

It should be a management consultant’s dream. The organisation is immense. The bloat is obvious. And the new boss is eager to shake things up. President Donald Trump and his disrupter-in-chief, Elon Musk, have already begun hacking away at America’s federal bureaucracy. Mr Musk’s Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE) has set itself the target of cutting government spending by a colossal $2trn. More

China’s Communist Party has a history of purging then welcoming back senior officials. Deng Xiaoping was purged three times before leading the country out of Maoism in the late 1970s. Some cadres are welcomed back years after their death. Jack Ma, Alibaba’s founder, received the modern version of a purge in 2020. The initial public offering (ipo) of his fintech company, Ant Group, was cancelled. Alibaba was probed and handed a record fine. Mr Ma withdrew from public life. More

China’s Communist Party has a history of purging then welcoming back senior officials. Deng Xiaoping was purged three times before leading the country out of Maoism in the late 1970s. Some cadres are welcomed back years after their death. Jack Ma, Alibaba’s founder, received the modern version of a purge in 2020. The initial public offering (ipo) of his fintech company, Ant Group, was cancelled. Alibaba was probed and handed a record fine. Mr Ma withdrew from public life. More

Keytruda, a cancer-immunotherapy medicine, ranks among the most lucrative drugs ever sold. Since its launch in 2014 it has raked in over $130bn in sales for Merck, its American maker, including $29.5bn last year. In September last year an experimental drug did what none had done before. In late-stage trials for non-small-cell lung cancer, it nearly doubled the time patients lived without the disease worsening—to 11.1 months, compared with 5.8 months for Keytruda. More