Donald Trump used his first speech in Congress since returning to office to stress that his administration is “just getting started”. In the 99-minute address, which was repeatedly heckled by Democrats, the president promised more tariffs on trading partners, and said he “appreciated” Volodymyr Zelensky’s letter last night indicating that Ukraine is ready to sign a minerals deal. Arab states have endorsed a $53bn plan for the reconstruction of Gaza, as an alternative to the Trump proposal for the territory to be emptied of Palestinians and taken over by the US. The Egypt-led plan, which is unlikely to be accepted by Israel or Washington, would allow Gaza’s two million Palestinians to remain in the war-shattered area while it’s being rebuilt. London is the fine wine capital of the world, according to Knight Frank’s annual Wealth Report. A whopping 519 restaurants in the capital offer glasses and bottles from the top 250 wine and champagne houses, ahead of New York (480) and Paris (414).

Rearmament could turbocharge Europe’s economy

Friedrich Merz hasn’t even taken office as Germany’s chancellor, says Thomas Sigmund in Handelsblatt, and he has already gone “all in” for a second time. His first big gamble was siding with the far-right AfD on strengthening Germany’s immigration laws. Now he has said he will do “whatever it takes” – deliberately echoing European Central Bank head Mario Draghi’s vow to save the euro in 2012 – to bolster his country’s defences. The sums he is proposing are “dizzying”: special funds of more than €400bn for defence, with an additional €500bn over 10 years for infrastructure. He’ll have to take the historic step of reforming Germany’s “debt brake”, which sharply limits government borrowing – a move he has previously ruled out. And he wants to do all this at breakneck speed. As Merz knows, “the world is not waiting for Germany”.

This spending, and in particular the retooling of Germany’s struggling auto industry to defence, could be just the economic boost Europe needs, says Ambrose Evans-Pritchard in The Daily Telegraph. If they’re after any inspiration, they should look to the US. In 1939, defence spending accounted for just 2% of America’s GDP, and its “minuscule” army was on a par with Belgium’s. That all changed when the war broke out. William Knudsen of General Motors, the “corporate titan of the age”, joined the US war department for a patriotic salary of $1; Ford built “the biggest factory the world had ever seen”, capable of producing a four-engine B-24 Liberator bomber every hour. By 1945, US defence spending had risen to 41% of GDP, and the economic boost had helped lift America out of the Great Depression. Military revival could do “much the same” for Europe today.

🇺🇸🇪🇺 Many worry that Merz, a “stodgy” conservative and avowed Atlanticist, is the wrong man to secure Europe’s “emancipation” from the US, says Joseph de Weck in The Atlantic. But some shifts are so dramatic that the only people with the credibility to make them are those working against their natural political instincts. Think of staunch anti-communist Richard Nixon establishing US relations with China in 1972, say, or left-wing chancellor Gerhard Schröder slashing Germany’s welfare state in the 2000s.