Governments aren’t businesses | |
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Welcome to the weekend! If you’re in the US and need weekend plans, consider buying booze. Donald Trump is threatening 200% tariffs on wine, champagne and other alcohol out of the EU, and this week’s stock market suggests now’s no time to risk running out. What pairs well with a lightly hoarded cabernet? The Weekend Edition audio playlist in the Bloomberg app. We’ve got eight great stories, read by humans, to make you smarter in 90 minutes. Don’t miss Sunday’s Forecast email, in which we look at European defense spending. For unlimited access to Bloomberg.com, please subscribe. | |
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Jean Monnet, a founding father of the EU, famously noted that “Europe will be forged in crisis.” Well a crisis is here: Trump trade wars, stalling economies, underserved defense sectors, high taxes, high energy prices and outsized debts. The good news, writes Simon Nixon, is that European leadership appears to have reached a real inflection point on the need for closer cooperation on defense and security. | |
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The US isn’t only backing away from Europe: In Washington foreign policy circles, Trump’s throttling of foreign aid is widely perceived as a blow to American soft power. But those concerns — while directionally accurate — may be misplaced, writes Bobby Ghosh. Foreign aid is first and foremost an instrument of foreign policy. How a country treats its own people, culture and values is more important to its global clout. | |
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If ditching allies and aid are hallmarks of Trump’s foreign policy, “fixing” the government with private-sector thinking is his raison d’être at home. Back in 1960, JFK also tapped a businessman — Ford CEO Robert McNamara — to trim the budget and bureocracy. But readers of David Halberstam’s The Best and the Brightest will remember how poorly it ended, writes Richard Stengel. | |
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Miami To watch Sholto Gilbertson working a room is to see a man seducing the world’s wealthiest car collectors so completely that they will gladly raise a finger to bid another $100,000. Indeed, on Feb. 27 Gilberston seduced his way to $35 million in sales on just nine lots during RM Sotheby’s auction at ModaMiami, where buyers were unfazed by Trump-related uncertainty. Photographer: Source: ModaEvents Warsaw Outside an unassuming building on Wiejska Street, red paint streaks the sidewalk. It’s been a few days since protesters covered the windows with posters, and played the sound of babies crying over loudspeakers outside. The AboTak Abortion Clinic is the first to open in Poland in decades, and its location — directly opposite the entrance to parliament — is meant to keep the battle for reproductive rights front and center. Photographer: SOPA Images/LightRocket/Getty Images | |
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Supply-side solutions. Why Nothing Works by Mark Dunkelman and Abundance by Ezra Klein and Derek Thompson both assess America’s failure to build things, and both lay some blame at the feet of US liberals. -
H Mart. No one in marketing flinched when Japanese Breakfast’s singer titled her memoir Crying in H Mart. What started as a Korean specialty market is now an empire with a huge following. -
Silicon Valley. The economic machine that powers the region is generating more and more dissatisfaction among workers and consumers, a capitalistic dark side explored in Alexis Madrigal’s The Pacific Circuit and Malcolm Harris’s Palo Alto. Illustration: Jing Wei for Bloomberg | |
The Best Defense | “The short-range rocket business has been braindead for the last 30 years.” | Kusti Salm CEO of Frankenburg Technologies | As a top-ranked civil servant in Estonia’s Ministry of Defense, Salm spent years arguing that Europe was unprepared for Russian aggression. Now that the bloc is kicking off a defense spending spree, his decision to leave government and co-found a missile company is looking savvy. He’s not alone: A number of Estonian startups want to deliver the rapid innovation that modern warfare requires. | | |
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What we’re wondering: rent or buy? Homeownership used to be the default move for middle-aged Americans, but how much of that is timeless wisdom versus a nostalgic inheritance from another era? What we’re buying: a Singapore condo. Rising prices in the private housing market have boosted “sub-sales,” where people offload units they bought in new developments before they were even built. What we’re wearing: a black leather jacket, like Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang. No one has benefited more from the AI boom, but Huang is now looking past threats like DeepSeek and tariffs to AI’s next chapter. What we’re checking: the weather. As the US decimates staffing at science agencies, hedge funds are snapping up weather experts to help commodities traders. Top talent can earn up to $1 million a year. | |
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