Opinion Today

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Today’s Agenda

Thieves steal the crown jewels.
Betting on Trump? Here’s some rules.
US-China trade unspools.
Car doors shouldn’t require tools.

The Louvre

Think about all the things you can do in seven minutes. You could whip up a delicious frosting. Or get an under-eye lift. Or complete a physiologist-approved workout. Or you could rob one of the most prestigious museums in the world in broad daylight and humiliate the French.

In the time it takes to listen to You Can’t Always Get What You Want by the Rolling Stones, two thieves managed to break into the Louvre, and along with two accomplices, scooter away with a priceless haul of bejeweled necklaces, tiaras and earrings — precious metals and gems that Lionel Laurent says have soared in value in recent years. “It’s all very different from the epoch-defining theft of the Mona Lisa from the Louvre a century ago, which ended up inflating its legend,” he writes.

It’s a heist that sounds like it came straight out of a movie, though which movie is up for debate. I’ve seen comparisons to Lupin, Pink Panther and the Ocean’s franchise, but John Authers is partial to The Wrong Trousers, a Wallace & Gromit classic. Surely, Netflix, HBO and Hulu executives are already clamoring over who will secure the rights to make a film, but they probably want the authorities to catch the crew first. And the odds of that happening are, well, what are they? Bettors have poured more than $115,000 into Polymarket trying to predict when the suspects might be caught:

Betting on big news events has become a routine hobby in the US, and all that activity has made Polymarket’s 27-year-old founder one of the youngest self-made billionaires in history. But how lucrative are these kinds of wagers for the people on the other side of the screen? Unlike the bounty from the Louvre, it’s a mixed bag.

Zooming in on the White House, Carolyn Silverman and Timothy L. O'Brien say “crowds systematically overestimate the likelihood of many political events – especially when it comes to predicting the president’s next moves.” Turns out, the TACO acronym — “Trump Always Chickens Out” — is pretty spot-on. After examining over 300 markets on Polymarket pertaining to actions directly initiated by President Donald Trump this year, between Inauguration Day and Sept. 30, Carolyn and Tim found that “it pays to bet on Trump doing … absolutely nothing. You would have made a $12 net profit for every $100 you spent if you had followed that path,” they write. If you bet “yes,” you’d be in the red by $20.

“Of course Trump hasn’t just been all talk in his second term. This month, he played a leading role in brokering a ceasefire between Israel and Hamas,” they note. But Trump is about as unreliable as it gets. “You’re better off – financially and emotionally – betting that he won’t do most of the stuff he says.” Read the whole thing.

Trade War Update

Trump’s list of demands for a trade deal with China reads like a grocery list from the Upside Down: soybeans, rare earths, fentanyl and Taiwan. If he doesn’t get what he wants by Nov. 1 , the US president says he’ll slap an additional 100% tariff on Chinese goods, a stance that he reiterated today during a meeting with Australian Prime Minister Anthony Albanese.

While the Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation summit will no doubt produce some flashy headlines and photo ops, Hal Brands says Americans shouldn’t get their hopes up for some grand resolution: “It could bring a momentary respite from the current tensions. But it wouldn’t halt the trend toward aggressive new forms of economic warfare or fix a relationship that is fundamentally competitive at its core,” he writes.

At the heart of that competition lies rare earths. “I don’t want them to play the rare earth game with us,” Trump told reporters on Air Force One on Sunday. But here’s the thing: Can you even call it a game when the chart looks like this?

“You just can’t make much without using something that contains Chinese rare earths,” writes Hal. And the Trump administration is inadvertently reinforcing that status quo. Jian-Ping Wang, a professor at the University of Minnesota, used government funds to discover alternative methods for making permanent magnets that don’t involve rare-earth materials — funds that have since dried up under the Trump administration, Thomas Black explains. At a time when we should be mobilizing rare-earth projects, the president is cutting them.

Bonus Trade War Reading: Even while US-China relations are souring, the global economy has held up well in the face of tariffs. — Daniel Moss

Car Doors

Just because China has a lifetime supply of rare earths doesn’t mean the country is without production headaches. Last week, a deadly crash involving an SU7 electric sedan from Xiaomi became the talk of the nation. When pedestrians sought to rescue the driver from the flames, they ran into an unexpected obstacle: a door that wouldn’t open wouldn’t open after the car lost power.

“EVs comprise more than half of domestic auto sales. Their pervasiveness has led to widespread concern that if power shuts due to an accident or dead battery, passengers may be trapped inside,” writes Juliana Liu. Similar worries keep American drivers up at night, but Juliana says the two nations offer “sharply divergent approaches” to tackling the issue.

“Last month, the US National Highway Traffic Safety Administration announced a probe into the Model Y’s handles following a Bloomberg News investigation that profiled cases of people injured or killed by fire when they couldn’t free themselves. Tesla said later it was re-designing its doors,” she writes. “China is taking a completely different, and welcome, tack. In September, it upped the ante by announcing a proposal, due to be implemented in 2027, dealing with these safety issues. All vehicles must have external handles that leave space for hands to grip, which effectively bans retractable designs.”

Car doors! Who knew we’d still be figuring them out in the year 2025.

Bonus China Reading: The UK’s China spying scandal sounds like a Slow Horses plot. — Matthew Brooker

Telltale Charts

Perhaps you’ve seen the headlines about how the government shutdown might cut SNAP benefits for vulnerable Americans. That would be terrible on its own, but Patricia Lopez says a deeper issue could compound the problem and impact the stability of the food supply itself. “The administration’s ‘shock and awe’ enforcement actions, coupled with mass deportations, have brought border crossings to a standstill. That has left farmers facing a severe shortage of those who pick, pack and process much of the nation’s food supply,” she writes. If the ICE raids continue and nothing changes in the agriculture sector, both grocery and restaurant prices could go even higher, leaving Americans both hungry and disappointed.

This past weekend, 2,600 “No Kings” protests happened across the country and by and large, they were peaceful events. Instead of the anarchic hellscapes that Republicans have long been describing, protesters were seen dancing and singing — some in inflatable costumes — only adding to the irony about these cities needing military intervention. “When the president referred to Portland, Oregon, as ‘war-ravaged,’ it came as news to residents, who have made endless jokes about riots over discontinued granola bars and flannel shortages,” the Bloomberg editorial board writes. That’s not to say that these cities are without flaws. “To the extent those problems are legitimate, they’re better handled by local police departments, in partnership with state and federal law enforcement agencies,” they write.

ICYMI

Amazon Web Services had a bad case of the Mondays.

Think landing a job is hard? Try having “DEI” on your resume.

Activists want to make Idaho’s vaccine mandate ban a national model.

Indiana University has a press freedom problem.

A major rules shake-up for UK landlords.