Economy

As Donald Trump launched his trade war on April 2, billionaire Republican donor Ken Langone knew it would decimate Home Depot, the company he helped build into America’s best-known DIY store. His gloom deepened as Trump followed up his “liberation day” with a tariff regime on China so steep that many experts said it would amount to a de facto embargo on goods from the world’s biggest exporter. The reaction was twofold. First, capital markets delivered a withering verdict, with a sharp sell-off in US Treasuries, the dollar, and global equities wiping out trillions of dollars of market value and raising fears of a financial crisis. The bond market moves alarmed Trump, who appeared to be on the cusp of a crisis like the one that toppled Liz Truss after a month-and-a-half as UK prime minister. Then corporate America swung into action. From Silicon Valley to the shale oilfields, from JPMorgan’s boss Jamie Dimon to Apple’s Tim Cook, some of the world’s most powerful business leaders launched an urgent campaign — sometimes in public, but mostly in private — to pull Trump back from the brink. It worked — in part. In recent weeks, Trump has caved in on some reciprocal tariffs, exempted most of Canada’s and Mexico’s goods from duties, offered huge carve-outs for carmakers, and signalled that he would bail out America’s agricultural producers. Equity markets have recouped their losses.Brian Ballard, a top GOP lobbyist, described a “whirlwind” in the US capital as companies rushed to influence the right people close to Trump. Some executives played on the personal relationship they struck with Trump after his election win, during trips to Mar-a-Lago or to his lavish Washington inauguration in January — which many of them personally funded.“A lot of the tariff carve-outs, like the one for electronics, didn’t come from broad industry lobbying campaigns. It seemed more like Trump was hearing directly from executives, like Tim Cook,” said a Washington corporate adviser.Langone suggested Trump’s tariff war had awoken some of corporate America powerful beasts, who now had demands.“He’s rattled cages,” Langone told the Financial Times last month. “Now he’s got to go feed the gorilla.”Among the lessons of that lobbying campaign is that private persuasion is more effective than public coercion — and the president cares what Main Street thinks. Global auto executives learned quickly. “Liberation day” hit their sector hard, as Trump hammered tariffs not just on adversaries such as China, but also key allies including Germany and Britain.Even after Trump announced a 90-day reprieve for most countries — China excluded — foreign-made car imports to the US still faced a 25 per cent levy. Export powerhouses BMW, Mercedes and VW decided they could no longer rely on German diplomats or European politicians and needed to take matters into their own hands.On April 18, senior executives from the three German automakers met Trump at the White House in a private meeting to seek relief. Bosses at the Big Three — Ford, Stellantis, and GM — also stepped up their own lobbying efforts. Stellantis chair John Elkann warned that “American and European car industries are being put at risk” by Trump’s trade policy — a rare public intervention. On Tuesday, Trump granted some relief to the automakers, sparing car parts from multiple tariffs and offering rebates to offset the cost of some of the levies that remained. It was a partial victory — but it also allowed Trump to visit Michigan last week to tout his rescue package for the auto sector, even though some tariffs remain. “We give them a little time before we slaughter them if they don’t do this right,” Trump told supporters.Other Trump allies from corporate America, meanwhile, were also urging him to step back from the brink, warning of a catastrophic impact on sectors the president had vowed to defend. Harold Hamm: ‘I did talk to Trump about what it would do to [oil] prices, particularly in different parts of the country’ More

Unlock the Editor’s Digest for freeRoula Khalaf, Editor of the FT, selects her favourite stories in this weekly newsletter.It has long been an EU aspiration that the euro would rival the US dollar for global dominance, or at least for monetary sovereignty at home. Now, the self-sabotage of Donald Trump’s Washington is a golden opportunity to realise the dream — if European leaders can overcome their political timidity over doing what it takes to grasp it.True, as in many areas of economic policy, it is unclear what the Trump administration’s goals are for the greenback. Some of its members think the dollar’s attraction — the “exorbitant privilege” of guaranteed cheap credit from the rest of the world — is in fact an exorbitant burden that, by driving up the currency, depresses American manufacturing. Others, notably Treasury secretary Scott Bessent, insist the US is committed to a strong dollar policy.There is also a push to corner the nascent market for cross-border payments via dollar stablecoins, creating another captive source of US Treasury holdings.The administration may not have made its mind up, but investors are increasingly making up theirs. Trump’s “liberation day” tariffs were followed by a highly unusual market reaction to a rise in global risk: a sell-off in both US Treasuries and in the dollar more broadly. At least for now, global money managers are no longer treating the greenback as the ultimate haven.Confidence in the dollar has taken a knock from Trump’s tariff policy, but also from his team’s airing of bizarre financial policy ideas. These include forced conversion of Treasury bonds or charging fees for the privilege of lending to the US government. The administration’s aggression against the rule of law makes all legal claims uncertain, including financial ones.Can European leaders hear the markets’ scream for help in the form of an alternative asset? If ever the time was ripe for a “Hamiltonian moment”, in which Eurozone countries issued a large and permanent stock of common debt to gradually replace the fragmented landscape of national sovereign bonds, this is it. Global investors would lap up a large-scale and liquid Eurozone safe asset.The politics for this, needless to say, are not in place. But simpler steps could be taken in short order to exploit US errors as a European opportunity. First, put off the scheduled paying down of pan-EU debt taken out to bankroll the post-pandemic “Next Generation EU” fund. This debt stock, meant to decline over the 30 years to 2058, should be rolled over indefinitely instead.Second, consolidate the various stocks of debt already issued with the joint backing of EU member states. A single issuer and set of bonds could over time replace the jigsaw of national bonds, as well as cover all new ones, such as those for the mooted pooling of €150bn in defence spending.Third, the EU could pre-fund future spending. Over the next two years, member states will negotiate a seven-year budget of well over €1tn. Borrowing ahead of time could be calibrated to maintain a stable, large total EU debt stock. Such initiatives would help satisfy demand for holding large amounts safely in euros and give assurance that the EU was committed to a deep and liquid euro asset market for the long run. That should lower European borrowing costs just as member states gear up for more investment in defence and industrial policy.The change in relative safety of the dollar and euro assets is not the only driver favouring the latter. Historically, global businesses’ choice of invoicing and funding currencies in international trade have preceded countries’ choice of reserves denominations. Ask yourself this: if you stopped trading with the US, would you need to hold its currency? And if Trump eliminates everyone’s bilateral surplus with the US, how would they keep accumulating net claims on US assets? In other words, the global trade outlook matters for currency questions, too. Europe can use its agenda to deepen trade with the rest of the world to boost the euro’s attractiveness. That requires not just taking the agenda seriously — passing the trade deal with the Mercosur bloc, for example. It also demands offering financial tools to encourage trading in euros, from swap lines with trade partners to a digital currency designed to work for cross-border corporate trade. Unifying stock markets and a pan-EU so-called “28th regime” of corporate law should help boost risk capital in euros.These measures are mostly well known, but political impetus has been lacking. What is needed is for leaders to see their connection to the geopolitical goal of autonomy from US caprice, to understand the urgency [email protected] More

Unlock the Editor’s Digest for freeRoula Khalaf, Editor of the FT, selects her favourite stories in this weekly newsletter.The writer is founder and chief investment officer at Gramercy Funds ManagementTariff disputes, geopolitical tensions and now a potential US recession. It hardly seems the time to seek out investments in emerging markets given the risks of collateral damage to more vulnerable economies. Yet this uncertainty isn’t a reason to flee but one to lean in when the asset class is approached properly. Emerging market credit offers one of the best ways to capitalise on volatility rather than be scuppered by it. The key is not to fall for the “index trap” in public credit markets by eschewing the passive following of benchmarks.For years, emerging markets have frustrated investors. Why? Because conventional index-based strategies are blunt instruments in an era that demands precision. Not all emerging markets — or sectors — are created equal. A bet on Mexico’s auto parts industry carries entirely different risks from a collateralised loan in dollars to a Turkish corporate.Yet indices bundle winners and losers together, often with disastrous timing. Consider the impact of sharp falls in the value of Russian and Ukrainian debt in 2022 after the invasion of the latter. Or Argentina’s nearly 20 per cent weighting in 2001 in the JPMorgan Emerging Market Bond Index prior to the country’s debt default later that year. Argentine bonds dropped almost 70 per cent and resulted in a material loss to investors who were compelled by the index to hold such a large weighting.Such pitfalls can be avoided with a “barbell approach” that focuses on high conviction public credit trades and strongly secured private credit. Private credit is a proven asset class that Morgan Stanley estimates has expanded to about $1.5tn as of 2024. It is now a compelling emerging markets opportunity too, with high yields and collateralised loans with senior levels of security. In many ways, private credit in emerging markets looks as if it is in a similar stage of development to lending in developed markets 15 years ago. This market has subsequently boomed, delivering strong returns.Dollar-denominated, direct lending also avoids the risk of negative currency swings, while hard collateral such as factories, headquarters or personal real estate provide downside protection, mitigating default risk. Collateral drives willingness to pay and proper outcomes, even in duress. (The owner of a family conglomerate, for example, is going to be highly motivated to meet obligations if the family villa, owned for generations, is on the line.) Undoubtedly, there are concerns about a slowdown in global growth. But individual countries and borrowers warrant a deeper look. Despite all the noise around Mexico and tariffs, the peso has held up, signalling continued confidence in the country. It is up about 5.5 per cent against the dollar in the year to date and about 2.6 per cent since US President Donald Trump’s so-called “liberation day” announcement of tariffs. President Claudia Sheinbaum has kept a cool head in negotiations with the Trump administration. This could result in reduced tariffs or expanded “carve-outs” for some industries, allowing the “nearshoring” boom in locating production near the US to continue.Elsewhere, eastern Europe, with Germany increasing defence spending and economic activity, stands to gain from growing capital flows and supply chain diversification. And the Mercosur bloc’s trade agreement with the EU offers economic resilience to Latin American exporters.In addition, consider that international banks in emerging markets never really reversed their retrenchment since the 2008 global financial crisis, leaving small- to mid-size corporates starved for capital. No matter the state of tariffs negotiations, US inflation or stock market volatility, well-structured credit remains in high demand: there will still be Brazilian agriculture companies, for example, which need working capital collateralised by inventories or family conglomerates in eastern Europe willing to pledge assets and cash flows to secure needed working capital. With very tight legal covenants for enforcement of payment, investors can meet these needs and gain exposure to dynamic, fast-growing industries in emerging markets in a secure way.And more generally, by pairing high-quality public and private credit in a barbell investment strategy and using market swings for liquidity, investors cannot just protect themselves in uncertainty, they can also thrive. Big investors are already deploying this hybrid strategy in developed markets. Why not take this better approach to investing in emerging markets, too?Gramercy is an investor in emerging market public and private credit More

Unlock the Editor’s Digest for freeRoula Khalaf, Editor of the FT, selects her favourite stories in this weekly newsletter.The writer is chair of Rockefeller International. His latest book is ‘What Went Wrong With Capitalism’As the mania for “American exceptionalism” fades, Europe and even China have emerged as new destinations for capital. But the best-performing region in the world this year is Latin America, and it is missing from the global conversation. Its stocks are up 21 per cent in dollar terms, well ahead of Europe in second place and the average return of 6 per cent across emerging markets.After fuelling the US market’s meteoric rise in recent years, global investors are looking to reallocate capital to beaten-down markets — including Latin America. Most of the region is low on President Donald Trump’s tariff target list, making it a haven from trade wars. But perhaps the least appreciated reason that its markets are doing well is the shifting politics.Chile’s former president Sebastián Piñera once told me that Latin America turned “left in good times, right in bad times”. After the roaring 2000s, a “pink tide” brought to power many left-leaning populists, who have led the region backwards in the past decade. Productivity growth turned deeply negative — the worst of any region. On cue, the political tide is turning again.Powerful leaders on the left are curbing their leftist instincts, under market pressure. Last year, Brazil’s Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva was promising a giveaway a day; now he’s showing some signs of fiscal discipline. Mexico’s progressive Claudia Sheinbaum is offering “republican austerity” along with a generally more pro-business posture than her predecessor, Andrés Manuel López Obrador.Other nations are turning decisively to the traditional right of limited government and free-market reform. Though often cast as a Latin copy of Trump, Argentina’s Javier Milei is pushing trade deals not tariff increases, downsizing government consistently rather than erratically. The result: a dramatic turnaround in the country’s economy and financial markets.The share of voters who say a “market economy” is the best path forward has risen to an unusual high — 66 per cent. This mood shift to the right comes at a critical moment. This year and next, an extremely busy election schedule is unfolding in Latin America, where nations representing 85 per cent of the region’s GDP are going to the polls.Last month in Ecuador, the rightwing incumbent Daniel Noboa scored an unexpectedly big win, over an opponent who may have been tarnished by close ties to former president Rafael Correa, a progressive legend now living in exile after being convicted of corruption. Next up, Argentina, where expectations are high for Milei to lead his party to victory in October legislative elections.Regionwide, social media is buzzing about the “Milei model”. In Chile, rightwing challengers dominate the pre-election polls. Frontrunner Evelyn Matthei is a fiscal conservative who eschews improvisation, and her closest rival, Johannes Kaiser, is even more hawkish: one of his advisers keeps a little statue of Milei wielding a chainsaw — a symbol of his deep spending cuts.  The front-runners for the elections are all on the right. Colombia has its first leftwing leader since independence in 1810, scandal-plagued Gustavo Petro, and his moves to increase state control over sectors from health to energy have blown out the fiscal deficit and helped turn the petro-rich nation into a gas importer. Petro’s chosen successor is polling behind two rightwing candidates, one a former Bogotá mayor widely praised for responsible public spending.    Peru is a similar scene: a deep field led by challengers on the right and the incumbent Dina Boluarte under even harsher attack. She is accused of corruption and indifference as many Peruvians struggle to buy food, with an approval rating at 3 per cent — possibly the world’s worst ever recorded. The top three contenders all are categorised as “centre right”.In Brazil, Lula’s approval rating recently hit its all-time low. The economy is growing but voters are angry over rising prices and crime. In local elections last October, voters turned against the left, and more sharply to the moderate right than the far right. Lula, 79, has had health problems and seems likely to be replaced by a leader well to his right in next year’s ballot. With the far right ascendant in much of the west, it is notable that Latin America is not turning the same way, to a Trumpian closed economy. It is favouring leaders with more traditional agendas, based on free markets and open economies. This increases the region’s chances of escaping its damaging growth slump and attracting capital in this post-American exceptionalism world. More

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As tariffs choke overseas demand, China is pushing exporters to shift sales home — a move that risks deepening deflation in an economy already weighed down by weak consumption and excess capacity.
For the full year of 2025, Goldman Sachs expects China’s retail inflation to fall to 0%, from a 0.2% year-on-year growth in 2024, and wholesale prices to decline by 1.6% from a 2.2% drop last year.
Despite the mounting calls for more robust stimulus, many economists believe Beijing will likely wait to see concrete signs of economic deterioration before it exercises fiscal firepower.

SHENZHEN, CHINA – APRIL 12: A woman checks her smartphone while walking past a busy intersection in front of a Sam’s Club membership store and a McDonald’s restaurant on April 12, 2025 in Shenzhen, China.
Cheng Xin | Getty Images News

As sky-high tariffs kill U.S. orders for Chinese goods, the country has been striving to help exporters divert sales to the domestic market — a move that threatens to drive the world’s second-largest economy into deeper deflation.
Local Chinese governments and major businesses have voiced support to help tariff-hit exporters redirect their products to the domestic market for sale. JD.com, Tencent and Douyin, TikTok’s sister app in China, are among the e-commerce giants promoting sales of these goods to Chinese consumers.

Sheng Qiuping, vice commerce minister, in a statement last month described China’s vast domestic market as a crucial buffer for exporters in weathering external shocks, urging local authorities to coordinate efforts in stabilizing exports and boosting consumption.
“The side effect is a ferocious price war among Chinese firms,” said Yingke Zhou, senior China economist at Barclays Bank.
JD.com, for instance, has pledged 200 billion yuan ($28 billion) to help exporters and has set up a dedicated section on its platform for goods originally intended for U.S. buyers, with discounts of up to 55%.
An influx of discounted goods intended for the U.S. market would also erode companies’ profitability, which in turn would weigh on employment, Zhou said. Uncertain job prospects and worries over income stability have already been contributing to weak consumer demand.
After hovering just above zero in 2023 and 2024, the consumer price index slipped into negative territory, declining for two straight months in February and March. The producer price index fell for a 29th consecutive month in March, down 2.5% from a year earlier, to clock its steepest decline in four months.

As the trade war knocks down export orders, deflation in China’s wholesale prices will likely deepen to 2.8% in April, from 2.5% in March, according to a team of economists at Morgan Stanley. “We believe the tariff impact will be the most acute this quarter, as many exporters have halted their production and shipments to the U.S.”
For the full year, Shan Hui, chief China economist at Goldman Sachs, expects China’s CPI to fall to 0%, from a 0.2% year-on-year growth in 2024, and PPI to decline by 1.6% from a 2.2% drop last year.

“Prices will need to fall for domestic and other foreign buyers to help absorb the excess supply left behind by U.S. importers,” Shan said, adding that manufacturing capacity may not adjust quickly to “sudden tariff increases,” likely worsening the overcapacity issues in some industries. 
Goldman projects China’s real gross domestic product to grow just 4.0% this year, even as Chinese authorities have set the growth target for 2025 at “around 5%.”

Survival game

U.S. President Donald Trump ratcheted up tariffs on imported Chinese goods to 145% this year, the highest level in a century, prompting Beijing to retaliate with additional levies of 125%. Tariffs at such prohibitive levels have severely hit trade between the two countries.
The concerted efforts from Beijing to help exporters offload goods impacted by U.S. tariffs may not be anything more than a stopgap measure, said Shen Meng, director at Beijing-based boutique investment bank Chanson & Co.
The loss of access to the U.S. market has deepened strains on Chinese exporters, piling onto weak domestic demand, intensifying price wars, razor-thin margins, payment delays and high return rates.
“For exporters that were able to charge higher prices from American consumers, selling in China’s domestic market is merely a way to clear unsold inventory and ease short-term cash-flow pressure,” Shen said: “There is little room for profits.”
The squeezed margins may force some exporting companies to close shop, while others might opt to operate at a loss, just to keep factories from sitting idle, Shen said.

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As more firms shut down or scale back operations, the fallout will spill into the labor market. Goldman Sachs’ Shan estimates that 16 million jobs, over 2% of China’s labor force, are involved in the production of U.S.-bound goods.
The Trump administration last week ended the “de minimis” exemptions that had allowed Chinese e-commerce firms like Shein and Temu to ship low-value parcels into the U.S. without paying tariffs.
“The removal of the de minimis rule and declining cashflow are pushing many small and medium-sized enterprises toward insolvency,” said Wang Dan, China director at political risk consultancy firm Eurasia Group, warning that job losses are mounting in export-reliant regions.
She estimates the urban unemployment rate to reach an average 5.7% this year, above the official 5.5% target, Wang said.

Beijing holds stimulus firepower

Surging exports in the past few years have helped China offset the drag from a property slump that has hit investment and consumer spending, strained government finances and the banking sector.
The property-sector ills, coupled with the prohibitive U.S. tariffs, mean “the economy is set to face two major drags simultaneously,” Ting Lu, chief China economist at Nomura, said in a recent note, warning that the risk is a “worse-than-expected demand shock.”

Despite the mounting calls for more robust stimulus, many economists believe Beijing will likely wait to see concrete signs of economic deterioration before it exercises fiscal firepower.
“Authorities do not view deflation as a crisis, instead, [they are] framing low prices as a buffer to support household savings during a period of economic transition,” Eurasia Group’s Wang said.
When asked about the potential impact of increased competition within China’s market, Peking University professor Justin Yifu Lin said Beijing can use fiscal, monetary and other targeted policies to boost purchasing power.
“The challenge the U.S. faces is larger than China’s,” he told reporters on April 21 in Mandarin, translated by CNBC. Lin is dean of the Institute of New Structural Economics.
He expects the current tariff situation would be resolved soon, but did not share a specific timeframe. While China retains production capabilities, Lin said it would take at least a year or two for the U.S. to reshore manufacturing, meaning American consumers would be hit by higher prices in the interim.
— CNBC’s Evelyn Cheng contributed to this story. More

Unlock the White House Watch newsletter for freeYour guide to what Trump’s second term means for Washington, business and the worldDonald Trump has said he will slap a 100 per cent tariff on all films produced abroad, expanding his trade war to the cinema industry in order to thwart what he described as the “very fast death” of Hollywood. The US president made the announcement on his Truth Social platform on Sunday night as he returned to Washington from a weekend at his Mar-a-Lago resort in Florida, though he did not offer further details. “The Movie Industry in America is DYING a very fast death. Other Countries are offering all sorts of incentives to draw our filmmakers and studios away from the United States. Hollywood, and many other areas within the U.S.A., are being devastated,” he wrote. Los Angeles has watched other US states, as well as countries such as Canada and the UK, peel away movie production from California in recent years. Gavin Newsom, the Democratic governor of California, has proposed a tax incentive scheme to support film production in the state, but Trump is looking at tariffs instead to stymie international competition. Trump added that he would be authorising the commerce department and US trade representative “to immediately begin the process of instituting a 100% Tariff on any and all Movies coming into our Country that are produced in Foreign Lands”. He concluded: “WE WANT MOVIES MADE IN AMERICA, AGAIN!”While Trump has paused sweeping tariffs that he had proposed last month on a wide range of imports until July — giving his officials time to try to negotiate trade deals with countries around the world — he has maintained levies affecting specific industries such as cars and pharmaceuticals. It was unclear how levies would be applied to films. The Motion Picture Association declined to comment. Trump’s plan to apply tariffs to foreign films came amid a burst of social media posts in which the US president also called for a reopening of the notorious Alcatraz prison, which has been closed for more than 60 years.The US president said Alcatraz, which is on an island off the coast of San Francisco, needed to be “substantially enlarged and rebuilt” to house “America’s most ruthless and violent Offenders”. “The reopening of ALCATRAZ will serve as a symbol of Law, Order, and JUSTICE,” Trump wrote on Truth Social.The statement drew a fast rebuke from Nancy Pelosi, the former speaker of the House and Democratic representative from California. In a post on X, Pelosi said that the president’s proposal was “not a serious one”. “Alcatraz closed as a federal penitentiary more than sixty years ago. It is now a very popular national park and major tourist attraction,” she added. More

This article is an on-site version of our FirstFT newsletter. Subscribers can sign up to our Asia, Europe/Africa or Americas edition to get the newsletter delivered every weekday morning. Explore all of our newsletters hereGood morning and welcome back to FirstFT Asia. In today’s newsletter: Australia’s Albanese wins a sweeping mandateThe tricky task for Warren Buffett’s successorCash-strapped Maldives to build $9bn blockchain hubChinese exporters are stepping up efforts to avoid tariffs imposed by US President Donald Trump by shipping their goods via third countries to conceal their true origin. Here’s what to know about the tariff workaround.Origin-washing: Chinese social media platforms are flooded with adverts offering “place-of-origin washing”, while an inflow of goods from China has raised alarm in nearby countries wary of becoming staging posts for trade actually destined for the US. South Korea’s customs agency said last month it had found foreign products worth Won29.5bn ($21mn) with falsified countries of origin in the first quarter of this year, most of them coming from China and almost all destined for the US.How exporters ‘wash’ products: The growing use of the tactic underlines exporters’ fears that new tariffs of up to 145 per cent imposed by Trump on Chinese goods will deprive them of access to one of their most important markets. “The tariff is too high,” said Sarah Ou, a salesperson at Baitai Lighting, an exporter based in the southern Chinese city of Zhongshan. “[But] we can sell the goods to neighbouring countries, and then the neighbouring countries sell them on to the United States, and it will reduce.” Ou said that, like many Chinese manufacturers, Baitai shipped goods as “free on board”, under which buyers took liability for products once they left their departure port, reducing the legal risk for the exporter. “Customers only need to find ports in Guangzhou or Shenzhen, and as long as [the goods] go there, we have completed our mission . . . [after that] It’s none of our business,” she said. Read the full story.Huawei’s semiconductor ambitions: Satellite imagery obtained by the FT shows how the Chinese tech giant is building a production line for advanced chips in Shenzhen, as part of what analysts said was an “unprecedented effort to develop every part of the AI supply chain domestically”.Here’s what else I’m keeping tabs on today:Five more top stories1. Australia’s Prime Minister Anthony Albanese is expected to take a bolder approach to foreign affairs and economic reform after scoring an unexpected landslide victory over the rightwing opposition party in the weekend’s election. It follows a similar result last week in Canada, where voters widely rejected that country’s rightwing party in a rebuke to Trump.2. A Dubai-based family office has announced plans to invest $8.8bn to build a “blockchain and digital assets” financial hub in the Maldives, a scheme the cash-strapped Indian Ocean archipelago hopes will help it through a looming debt crunch. Moosa Zameer, the Maldives’ finance minister, said the country needed to “take the leap” to diversify away from tourism and fisheries.3. Trump said he did not know if people in the US deserved due legal process, which is guaranteed by the American constitution, as he blasted the judiciary for thwarting his plans to deport undocumented immigrants. The comments came in a wide-ranging interview with NBC, in which Trump renewed his push to make Canada the 51st US state and insisted that he would not fire Federal Reserve chair Jay Powell. Read the full story.4. Hard-right leader George Simion has won the first round of Romania’s presidential election, according to exit polls, and will face one of two pro-EU centrists in the run-off on May 18. The vote was rerun after the success of ultranationalist politician Călin Georgescu in the first-round ballot in November was annulled by the constitutional court over allegations of Russian interference. 5. Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said yesterday that Israel would hit back against the Houthis and Iran after a missile fired by the Tehran-backed militants landed near Israel’s main international airport. The attack, which injured four people, came as Israel issued call-ups to thousands of reservists in preparation for ratcheting up its offensive in Gaza.News in-depthGreg Abel. left, and Warren Buffett More