China has raised tariffs on US goods to 125% in the latest escalation of the trade war between the world’s two largest economies. The dollar slumped to a three-year low against the euro, helping drive gold prices to a record high of more than $3,200 an ounce as investors turn to safe-haven assets. The UK economy surpassed expectations to grow 0.5% in February, providing a boost to Chancellor Rachel Reeves as she contends with Donald Trump’s tariffs. It’s the highest monthly rate of growth since last March. A breakthrough pill that slows the spread of advanced breast cancer has been approved for routine NHS use. British-made Capivasertib, taken twice daily, has been shown to double the time patients can live without their tumours growing by blocking the protein that drives cancer cells to multiply.

The worrying silence of Trump’s opponents

At what point do we “call off the search for a grand Trump strategy”, asks Janan Ganesh in the FT. It’s not just his topsy-turvy take on tariffs. The US president simultaneously regards China as a “ruthless force” the West has indulged for too long, and Viktor Orbán, “China’s one-man bridge to Europe”, as a “great guy”. And what about exotic attempts to rationalise Trump’s fondness for Russia as a “reverse Nixon”, charming Vladimir Putin out of his embrace with Xi Jinping? (Why this would hurt China is not specified.) Seeking “shape and pattern in the chaos” is understandable – in scary times, it’s soothing to believe in secret plans. But liberal societies, with their nice ideas about universal reason, always struggle to understand irrational actors. Confronted with zealots, our reflex is to impose logic on their behaviour. “There is none of that here.”

What’s worrying me is not Trump’s behaviour, says Ed West on Substack, but the “silence of his critics”. During his first term, everyone in the American establishment seemed to be calling him the next Hitler. And not just the usual too-online academics and journalists, but many major corporations too: firms like Nike, Heineken and Airbnb were at the forefront of the #Resistance. This was obviously “self-interested and performative”, but it was also something of a relief. If everyone in your country is calling the leader a fascist dictator, “you probably don’t live in a fascist dictatorship”. Things are different now. Trump isn’t a Nazi or a white supremacist, but that’s not the point: the danger isn’t that he’s a Führer, it’s that he’s a Caesar. He is “authoritarian by nature”, vengeful, surrounded by yes men, and now the elite has stopped criticising him for fear of retribution. “Those things are all bad.”