Category: Semafor

European carmakers are losing their premium brand status in China, as younger consumers opt for cars from domestic brands, further eroding Western firms’ prospects in a cutthroat global market. Chinese carmakers are increasingly dominant around the world, but European automakers had long controlled the premium sector of the world’s biggest ...

China’s robotaxi fleet may almost triple this year compared to 2025, though customer resistance could hinder its rollout, analysts said. Goldman Sachs predicted that China will have almost 15,000 robotaxis by the end of the year, putting the country ahead of the US in the race “to automate roads and ...

Alaa’s view Riyadh doesn’t feel like a city bracing for crisis. Stuck in rush-hour traffic this week, it was easy to forget that the Gulf is in the middle of a conflict that has upended the world economy and the region’s own prospects. Malls are relatively busy. At one restaurant, ...

Matthew’s view If I had one takeaway for the Middle East from last week’s meetings at Semafor World Economy, it is that it is impossible to overstate how much Gulf trade will be reshaped by the crisis in the Strait of Hormuz. The narrow waterway has served as the region’s ...

The downstream impacts of the blockade of the Strait of Hormuz expanded across the global economy. European jet fuel prices have roughly doubled, and airfares are up 24% year-on-year; Lufthansa canceled 20,000 short-haul flights, other European carriers have announced similar measures, and Air France-KLM introduced a €100 surcharge on long-haul ...

Senate Republicans released their budget and began voting on it Tuesday afternoon. They will use it to set up an immigration enforcement budget reconciliation bill of roughly $75 billion. Senators hope that movement will prompt the House to pass the Senate bill funding the rest of the Department of Homeland ...

US President Donald Trump’s nominee for the Federal Reserve chair insisted to lawmakers Tuesday that he would uphold the central bank’s independence. During his congressional confirmation hearing, Kevin Warsh responded “absolutely not” when asked if he would be the president’s “sock puppet,” adding that Trump had not asked him to ...

Beijing enacted new rules that threaten stiff punishments for foreign and domestic companies that shift supply chains out of China, with penalties including “exit bans” on staff and asset seizures. The move reflects anxiety among policymakers as growing numbers of manufacturers shift production to places like India and Vietnam amid ...

Global clean power production outpaced electricity demand last year, leading to a decline in fossil fuel generation for the first time since the pandemic. India and China largely drove the fall in fossil fuel generation thanks to solar power, which saw a roughly 30% increase in global capacity last year. ...

More than 100 former US astronauts launched a nonprofit to address an issue closer to home — the future of US democracy. Astronauts for America, which includes Democrats, Republicans and independents, plans to issue scores for political candidates and to hold officials accountable if they ignore the rule of law, ...