The White Lotus finale was a violent end to a bad season

So The White Lotus’s divisive third season went out with a bang. Then another one. And then a few dozen more. If the show’s first two years treated their end-of-season deaths as cosmic jokes, methods to wipe the grin off a delusional hotel manager’s face, or to have Jennifer Coolidge plunge into the depths of the ocean, this closer presented death as pure tragedy: no one in their right mind wants to see the wonderful Aimee Lou Wood, with her giant, hopeful eyes and toothy radiance, bleeding to death with a bullet hole in her chest. But I suppose it’s appropriate for a season that everyone – even those who, like The Independent’s Nick Hilton, praised it as yet another “exceptional” batch of episodes – can surely agree was The White Lotus at its most un-fun.

This was, after all, an often unpleasant eight episodes of television. At its best, it has brimmed with a sticky, slightly suffocating unease, its characters complex, strange and fascinatingly loathsome. At its worst, it has felt like being stuck in a traffic jam on the hottest day of the year. It remains unclear whether the show’s sole writer and director, Mike White, intended for this season to be quite so narratively repetitive, with his players cycling through the same conversations for episodes on end. Perhaps that was the (agonising) point? But there’s been enough suggestions in recent weeks of a fraught production – with confirmation of cast fallouts and creative clashes – that I’m convinced this season went a bit awry behind the scenes.

Why hire Zone of Interest’s Christian Friedel or the South Korean pop star Lisa and give them so little to do? How is it that Patrick Schwarzenegger’s manosphere pin-up was such a significant part of the early season, yet he has his two subplots peter out abruptly here? And considering how important Rick and Chelsea proved to be to the show’s final moments, why keep them separated for so much of this year’s run? Certainly, a documentary about the making of season three would be more juicy than much of what was served up to us on a week-by-week basis.

Frustratingly, after eight long episodes, there was a sense here of the season’s themes finally converging. White has been writing about man’s search for spiritual meaning since his brilliant yet short-lived Laura Dern dramedy Enlightened in 2011, and I’m curious if he now believes it’s largely doomed. Based on the evidence, he may think it’s a waste of time. Piper’s quest for religious salvation proves entirely vapid, as she confesses to her parents that she actually adores her riches and wants to head home with them rather than stay in Thailand. Rick tries desperately to avoid violence in his second interaction with the man he believed killed his father (and who, in a howler of a Darth Vader twist, turned out to actually be his father), but to no avail – it’s Rick, we learn, who initiated the shootout teased in the season’s opening scene. Chelsea, meanwhile, convinces herself that Rick is her soulmate, but where does that get her? She’s caught in the crossfire of the shooting and dies in her lover’s arms. Gaitok gets the girl and the professional respect he’s always wanted, but only after shooting Rick dead to prove himself. Was it really worth it?

Carrie Coon’s spectacular monologue towards the end of the episode suggests it’s probably safer to abandon all of this faith malarkey entirely: she tells Jaclyn and Kate that she’s never found happiness or purpose in work, or love, or motherhood, but that “time gives her meaning”, that simply existing is on some level enough. It certainly comes off as the least stressful solution to life’s ills. It also made for a strong resolution to the women’s plot. There was no fatal blow-up, no pledge by each party to go their separate ways. They leave the island a trio, most likely forever entwined as passive-aggressive nightmares who, whether it’s healthy or not, desperately need one another.

The credibility of their ending, though, only exposed the strain of the Ratliff plot. Can we now admit that this set of characters has been a misfire from day one? Their personalities haven’t given way to interesting social critique, the brothers’ incestuous entanglement felt oddly timid despite appearances that it could go further, and the circumstances of Timothy’s financial fraud were always so vague that absolutely everything he’s done in the aftermath has strained believability. Here we see him attempting to murder his wife, daughter and eldest son via poisoned pina coladas, and it’s so sloppily executed that it feels as if White tossed it together in a rush. Everything remotely interesting about the Ratliffs – from their impending poverty to the ramifications of the brothers’ night together – is mostly left to be dealt with off-camera. What a phenomenal failure this storyline has been.

But perhaps there’s a bigger problem at hand here. White used to say that the “who ends up dead?” mystery of each White Lotus season was more of a trojan horse plot than an element he felt any real fondness for – something designed to lure in viewers who otherwise wouldn’t watch a satirical character study. But season three seemed more driven by its own mystery than ever before, with too many death fakeouts, too many possible murderers, and more Chekhov’s guns than the show knew what to do with. And it’s ended up making people talk about The White Lotus as if it’s Lost or Severance, or some other puzzle-box series riddled with easter eggs and clues that require our solving. Some of these deep dives make sense, notably the discourse over the significance of the books our characters are reading. Others, including attempts to find hidden messages in the show’s opening credit sequence, have been ludicrous. The White Lotus does leave trails of breadcrumbs here and there – Chelsea, who’s survived a snake bite and an armed robbery and warned that bad luck comes in threes, had more or less been foreshadowing her own demise for weeks – but it’s not the entirety of the show, and I wish that White didn’t feel the need to lean into it so often.

It feels significant that the most compelling moments this season have been rooted in complex human behaviour – of a kind that made The White Lotus so addictive in the first place – rather than outlandish contrivance. Think of the subtle sniping between Laurie, Jaclyn and Kate at the dinner table, or Sam Rockwell’s show-stopping monologue three weeks ago. None of the violence in this gunfire-riddled finale, for instance, packed quite as big a punch as Belinda’s cool dismissal of poor, naive Pornchai once she found the $5m deposited in her bank account by Gary. “Can’t I just be rich for five f****** minutes?” she asks her son when talk turns to future plans. It’s an obvious mirror image to Belinda’s own dismissal by Jennifer Coolidge’s Tanya in the show’s first season, and what a ruthless plot twist to see one of the show’s only truly virtuous characters corrupted with such speed…

When The White Lotus returns – rumours are that it’ll be set in a colder, potentially Scandi climate – it should, for its own sake, go back to basics. White is a master when it comes to interpersonal dynamics and writing about our propensity for cruelty, arrogance and self-involvement. But after these draining eight episodes, he should avoid the mystery trap and stop there.

‘The White Lotus’ is on Sky and Now

Korean Air fires pilots who got into fight over Yoon’s martial law

Korean Air dismissed two pilots who had got into a fist-fight reportedly stemming from a discussion over former South Korean president Yoon Suk Yeol’s impeachment, the airline confirmed.

The “unfortunate incident” occurred on 19 December last year between a pilot and his co-pilot in Brisbane following a flight from Incheon, it said on Monday.

The argument between the two pilots, identified as Captain A and First Officer B, did not take place while the flight was in air, but in a hotel when the two began talking about the martial law imposed by the former president on 3 December.

The arguments escalated to physical assault, resulting in Australian police responding to the scene. Both the men were injured, requiring medical attention, reported the Korea Herald. While the captain was transported to a local hospital, the co-pilot sustained injuries.

The airline’s disciplinary committee later fired both the pilots, citing safety and professionalism, while a third captain was suspended for three months.

“An unfortunate incident occurred at the hotel where they were staying, but it did not affect the operations,” said the airline, according to news outlet Chosun Biz. “We have reiterated company guidelines and conducted internal training to prevent recurrence.”

As they were incapacitated, the airline had to deploy alternative crew for the return flight that was scheduled for two days after.

Meanwhile, the two pilots have moved a complaint to the regional labour commission, reported the Korea JoongAng Daily.

Earlier on Friday South Korea’s constitutional court upheld president Yoon Suk Yeol’s impeachment and removed him from office.

The country will now hold snap elections to replace Mr Yoon in just 60 days from now.

In a unanimous verdict, the court found that Mr Yoon’s decision to impose martial law in December last year – plunging the country into uncertainty and political turmoil – was not justified.

Justice Moon Hyung-bae, acting president of the constitutional court, said the country was not facing a “national emergency” at the time. “It was a situation that could have been solved through means other than military deployment,” he said.

Southampton’s relegation is a disaster that offers a stark warning

A couple of hours after Southampton’s fate was sealed, a manager talked about having the worst season in history. It wasn’t Ivan Juric, either, but Ruben Amorim, with his gift for smiling exaggeration. Although, earlier in the week, candid Croatian Juric had said: “I don’t want it to be that we are the worst team in the history of Premier League.”

If everyone needs an ambition, it is a particularly undignified one. Relegated at record pace, mathematically gone with seven games to go, the drama in Southampton’s season rests on their attempts to equal or better Derby’s historic low of 11 points. It all seems to depend on a trip to Ruud van Nistelrooy’s Leicester. They will go there without Juric, sacked for either hopeless results or an honest appraisal of their demise.

If demotion was sealed by defeat to Tottenham on Sunday, it merely confirmed the inevitable. Perhaps, given the struggles of promoted teams, Southampton were down when they beat Leeds in last season’s play-off final. They almost certainly were after their first nine games produced a lone point. The symbolic moment of their season came at the start: facing Newcastle’s 10 men, dominating possession, goalkeeper Alex McCarthy, ordered to do something he cannot, passed to Alexander Isak and Joelinton scored.

Outside Hampshire, Southampton’s season may be remembered for the failure of an idea, the obvious outcome when misguided idealism collided with brutal reality. When it mattered, before they were cast adrift, before Juric discovered they were beyond rescuing, they were like Vincent Kompany’s Burnley in overdrive.

In 16 games before Russell Martin was sacked, Southampton made 11 errors that directly led to goals (and others that did not). Jurgen Klopp once called gegenpressing the best playmaker: opponents instead realised Southampton could create chances for them. The Premier League is hard enough for the weaker sides without donating goal after goal.

Before promotion, Martin felt his management would be more suited to the Premier League, given fewer games and more time on the training ground. He later concluded his players were not good enough for his style of football. Many another had already worked that out, some with the sense the manager was not either.

With his stubbornness backfiring, Martin became an inadvertent advertisement for pragmatism: idealism without sufficient competence brought a fiasco. Southampton should have either sacked Martin in the glow of promotion, showing the realism to look for someone better equipped for the task and allowing him to go with plenty of sympathy and his reputation at its highest, or forced him to remain in charge all season. Promotion was a fine achievement, the £100m or so from television revenue was invaluable, but he has been the architect of an atrocious campaign.

When Martin was dismissed, it was with five points from 16 games, the direction of travel clear. If Juric’s return of four from 14 was still worse, if he was also in the grip of delusion, he suffered from joining without realising the situation was irretrievable.

Not since Edward Smith boarded the Titanic in 1912 has anyone taken charge of as much of a sinking ship in Southampton; Juric did not notice the size of the holes until it was too late. Having previously accepted the Roma job after crowd favourite Daniele de Rossi was suddenly fired, the Croatian needs to show the capacity to dodge hospital passes in future.

Juric made some odd decisions – such as picking midfielder Joe Aribo in defence – but he constructed fine gameplans at Old Trafford and Anfield. Southampton led at both, albeit in vain; it was part of a pattern where they lost 25 points from winning positions, pointing again to a lack of pragmatism, nerve, defensive solidity and strength in depth. Juric’s departure, even before the season finished, merely brought things forward. He was collateral damage from a calamitous campaign, having suffered so many defeats he could not start next season with a clean slate with either players or fans.

Juric’s bluntness may have ushered him to the exit, but Southampton ought to learn a lesson or two from a direct talker. On Sunday, Juric spoke of “mistakes the club has made in the last three or four years”. Or, to put it another way, under Sport Republic’s ownership, this is their second ignominious, expensive relegation. In one respect, the first was the worst – spending £160m with an established Premier League club.

“Recruitment is everything in football,” said Juric. Southampton spent £100m this season for 10 points. Their squad was unbalanced, with far too many centre-backs, lacking physicality in some areas, particularly midfield, and lacking quality in others. Ben Brereton Diaz will go down as a bad buy, Maxwel Cornet a weird loan. They should not have signed Ryan Fraser, just as Martin should not have kept Jack Stephens as captain.

Although the league table suggests otherwise, they might actually have half of a good team. Now, they will lose them. The luckless Aaron Ramsdale’s best saves came in losses, and he needs a safe haven in mid-table to spare him another relegation. Tyler Dibling will not bring them the £100m they are allegedly asking for, but he has talent. The gifted Matheus Fernandes has not really settled in the area, Kyle Walker-Peters is out of contract and Southampton are still lumbered with some of the 2022-23 signings – Kamaldeen Sulemana, for one, seems sure to eye the exit.

Juric’s valedictory words included the warning that there are “huge problems in lots of situations”. But there could also be the conditions to win games next season. In the loaned-out Adam Armstrong and Cameron Archer, they have the genre of player too good for the Championship and not good enough for the Premier League. Maybe promotion specialist Taylor Harwood-Bellis will be ignored by Premier League clubs. Perhaps Flynn Downes will be at a level when he can again excel.

All of which would require the right manager. If Sheffield Wednesday make the former Southampton coach Danny Rohl available, he might be ideal. For now, Saints have a second interim spell under Simon Rusk. The low-profile caretaker secured a 0-0 draw at Fulham in December, simply because no one gave a silly goal away, and that offered a vision of a sliding-doors scenario.

A less self-destructive brand of football could have been more productive. Southampton would probably have always gone down, but not this embarrassingly. Amid relegation and recrimination, the Saints ought to rue the way this has felt so needless, so predictable, the disaster everyone else foresaw.

Paddington Bear statue will return to town that ‘loves him so dearly’

A statue of Paddington bear that was destroyed by vandals is set to be fully repaired.

Officials in Newbury, Berkshire, said the move will bring the bear: “Back to the town that loves him so dearly.”

The statue, a tribute to Paddington author Michael Bond who was born in the town, was damaged on 2 March.

Two Royal Air Force engineers, Daniel Heath and William Lawrence, both 22 and stationed at RAF Odiham, were responsible for the damage.

The pair appeared at Reading Magistrates’ Court following the incident, where they admitted to breaking the statue after a night out, even making off with a piece of it.

The court, acknowledging the cultural significance of the statue to Newbury, ordered Heath and Lawrence to pay £2,725 each towards the repair costs.

They also received 12-month community orders. The restoration will see the beloved bear returned to his rightful place in the town.

Ben Beardmore-Gray, marketing manager at Newbury Business Improvement District (BID), said: “When the damage was caused, it was a bit of a shock to all of us.

“Newbury is quite a quiet town. Crime here is not particularly extreme.

“For something so visible to happen – it caught us all off guard.”

“We’ve been working very hard behind the scenes for five weeks, basically, to bring Paddington back to the town that loves him so dearly, and we’re delighted that we can announce he’s back on Wednesday.”

CCTV footage played to the court showed the men approaching the Paddington Bear statue late at night before ripping the bear off its bench and walking away with it.

District judge Sam Goozee condemned Heath and Lawrence’s actions, calling them “the antithesis of everything Paddington stands for”.

As part of the unveiling, children are being encouraged to write a letter welcoming Paddington back to the town.

The repaired and repainted statue will be unveiled in a ceremony on Wednesday at 11.30am on Northbrook Street, Newbury.

Johnson and Sunak may have to give evidence at Manston inquiry

Former prime ministers, home secretaries and senior civil servants could be called to testify in an ongoing inquiry into unlawful conditions at a migrant processing centre.

A newly-released Home Office brief has revealed the potential scope of the inquiry into the overcrowding crisis at Manston detention centre in the autumn of 2022.

Incidents at Manston included a death in custody, unlawful detention of adults and children, and Home Office officials charged with conspiracy to steal and misconduct in public office, the document outlines.

The briefing document, marked officially sensitive, has been made public after an application by The Independent, The Guardian and the BBC to a High Court Judge.

It was prepared for home secretary Yvette Cooper a few weeks after Labour won the general election in July last year.

Ms Cooper was told that “the investigation of the conditions at Manston will probably be reputationally damaging for the Home Office”.

More than 18,000 people arrived on small boats to the UK between August and November 2022, with almost all of them being detained and held at Manston. People were forced to sleep on damp and mouldy wooden flooring without adequate bedding, denied warm clothing and footwear and unable to access clean clothes, according to separate legal submissions.

The site opened as a processing centre in February 2022, with small-boat migrants meant to be held there for short periods after arriving in the UK to undergo checks.

They would then be moved into Home Office asylum accommodation, most likely a hotel. The site was meant to have capacity for between 1,000 and 1,600 people, with migrants staying there for under 14 hours, but by 31 October 2022 there were around 4,000 people at Manston.

Migrants were held at the site for far too long, an official inspection found, with one family reportedly held for 32 days.

Diphtheria also spread at the base, and one migrant 31-year-old Hussein Haseeb Ahmed died in hospital on 19 November after contracting the disease. The medical cause of death was un-ascertained but an inquest heard that he had been suffering from breathlessness, a fever and drowsiness.

An independent inquiry into the crisis has been set up, chaired by Sophie Cartwright KC, to investigate what went wrong.

The internal brief also lists a number of allegations that were raised with the Home Office about the worrying conditions at Manston, a former military base in Kent, including misfeasance in public office, breaches of the European Convention of Human Rights, breaches of the duty to safeguard children, and breaches of planning permission, safety, fire, and food safety regulations.

Phones were unlawfully seized from residents, and property and money was confiscated and never returned, according to concerns flagged to the Home Office in October and November 2022.

The brief identifies key individuals who will likely be called up to the inquiry, which was launched in March this year. These include three former home secretaries, Priti Patel, Suella Braverman and Grant Shapps, as well as five former immigration ministers, the Home Office’s most senior civil servant Matthew Rycroft at the time, other senior civil servants, and a litany of officials from immigration enforcement, border force, asylum and private offices.

The brief, drawn up by the legal director at the Home Office, also lists Boris Johnson, Rishi Sunak, and Ben Wallace as ministers who will likely be asked to give evidence about how their decision making impacted the crisis at Manston in 2022.

Charlotte Khan, Head of Advocacy and Public Affairs at Care4Calais said: “This is a damning charge list, and speaks to the scale of the scandal that ensued at Manston in late 2022.

“Reputational damage should be the least of the Home Office’s worries. People who were unlawfully held at Manston have long told us about the inhumane conditions they were kept under, but this briefing makes it clear that three senior Conservative politicians are in the dock for overseeing the unlawful detention of people, including children, alleged human rights breaches, and a death in custody.

“This was no way to treat fellow humans, and those in power at the time must be held accountable for the decisions made under their watch. The Inquiry must serve justice for those subjected to this cruelty at Manston.”

A Home Office spokesperson said: “The home secretary acted on the advice she was given to establish an independent inquiry into events at the Manston short-term holding facility between June and November 2022, in line with the commitments made by her predecessors, and on the terms agreed through the subsequent legal process.

“That inquiry will now proceed and we are supporting it fully, but it would be inappropriate to comment further whilst it is ongoing.”

The global event bringing fresh energy to planet-positive solutions

As we navigate significant environmental and social challenges, the return of ChangeNOW, the world’s biggest expo of solutions for the planet, is much needed to reinvigorate climate action. The 2025 edition, which will take place from April 24th to 26th, will host 140 countries, 40,000 attendees, 10,000 companies and 1,200 investors.

Visionary leaders, established businesses and start-ups alike will gather to showcase over 1,000 sustainable solutions and groundbreaking innovations in key sectors such as clean energy, biodiversity, sustainable cities and the circular economy.

The ChangeNOW 2025 summit will be held at the iconic Grand Palais in Paris, a nod to the 10th anniversary of the Paris Agreement. Reuniting for the occasion will be guest speakers Mary Robinson, the former (and first female) president of Ireland, Laurent Fabius, former French prime minister, Patricia Espinosa, former UN climate chief and diplomat and Diána Ürge-Vorsatz, leading climate scientist and professor – all of whom were in the French capital a decade earlier to help shape the Paris Agreement at COP21.

There may have been obvious setbacks to environmental policy around the world of late, the United States’ recent withdrawal from the Paris Agreement being a notable one. However ChangeNOW 2025 intends to reaffirm the spirit of Paris, while serving as a catalyst for progress ahead of COP30 and the United Nations Ocean Conference (UNOC). “Ten years after COP21, ChangeNOW is where leaders and changemakers converge to accelerate the ecological and social transition,” states Santiago Lefebvre, founder and president of ChangeNOW. “Thousands of solutions will be showcased demonstrating that meaningful progress is within reach.”

His message of positive climate action will be supported by a multitude of world famous faces who will be in attendance at the auspicious event. Natalie Portman, Academy award-winning actress, director, author, activist, and producer; Captain Paul Watson, Founder of Sea Shepherd and Ocean Conservationist; Hannah Jones, CEO of The Earthshot Prize and Olympic champion boxer and gender equality advocate Imane Khelif are just a few of the names set to appear at ChangeNOW 2025.

With over 500 speakers and 250 conference sessions exploring climate action, biodiversity protection, resource management, and social inclusion, ChangeNOW 2025 will also hear the insights of acclaimed corporate leaders from Accor, Bouygues, Henkel, Lidl, Nexans, and Saint-Gobain, who will explain how businesses can be the ones to drive real change.

And the event will not only be an opportunity for global policymakers to discuss next steps in climate action, it will also be a platform for nations to showcase local innovations through their country pavilions. Expect impactful solutions from countries including South Africa, The Netherlands, and Ukraine – demonstrating international collaboration on the topic of climate.

In addition to the packed program of speakers, workshops, exhibits and networking opportunities, ChangeNOW 2025 will host the Impact Job Fair on Saturday, 26 April, with over 150 recruiters and training organisations offering in excess of 600 roles. Dedicated to the public and young professionals, the interactive workshops, educational activities, and career opportunities in sustainable sectors on offer aim to inspire the next generation of changemakers.

The summit will also present the annual Women for Change conference and the accompanying portrait exhibition, which showcases 25 women who are set to have a significant positive impact on their communities, countries or on a global scale over the next 10 years. Created in 2021, the Women for Change initiative aims to platform and provide opportunities for women who are leading change around the world but require further recognition or investment to continue their work. The annual flagship event, which takes place on the afternoon of April 24th, offers women the chance to discuss new ideas, network with likeminded people, and also acquire funding to help solidify their leadership, and amplify their impact.

Step outside the Grand Palais and take a few steps to the Port des Champs Elysées, on the bank of the Seine, where the The Water Odyssey village awaits. One of the event’s standout features, the immersive 1,000 m² exhibition is open to the public and highlights solutions to maritime and river sustainability challenges – offering a mix of conferences, interactive displays, and sensory experiences to engage all ages.

For three days, ChangeNOW will transform Paris into the global capital of impact, bringing together policymakers, entrepreneurs, investors, and the public in the pursuit of sustainable progress.

Book your ChangeNOW 2025 ticket here

Trump has made China appear a beacon of free trade

The Chinese Communist Party, apostle of free trade. In a strange new world, that was the strangest thing, as shares crashed in reaction to President Donald Trump’s opening salvo of tariffs in a global trade war.

“The market has spoken,” said the foreign ministry spokesperson, Guo Jiakun, writing in English on Facebook – which is, by the way, banned in China. No double standards there, then. Beijing can always keep a straight face when it matters.

Politically, the Chinese government can scarcely believe its luck. It has stepped forward as a voice of reason and stability in a chorus of discord to promote the false narrative that it has been a model of good behaviour since it joined the World Trade Organisation (WTO) on 11 December 2001, a date that seems destined to live in the textbooks as the peak of globalisation.

The Trump tariffs “are a typical act of unilateral bullying”, complained a spokesperson for China’s Commerce Ministry.

“This approach disregards the balance of interests achieved through years of multilateral trade negotiations and ignores the fact that the US has long gained substantial profits from international trade,” the spokesperson added.

The official news agency, Xinhua, said the tariffs were “a weapon to suppress China’s economy and trade” and told the United States to stop undermining “the legitimate development rights of the Chinese people”.

It would be a mistake to write off Chinese rhetoric. The regime of Xi Jinping is serious and its actions speak louder than words.

Clue: China has listed “legitimate development rights” as one of its “red lines” in dealing with the US. The term is code for the export-led economic model which has propelled the country to the rank of second largest economy on earth since it joined the WTO.

Understand that and you understand that for China this is existential. There could be no greater contrast to the whirlwind in Washington than the disciplined, efficiently executed responses announced by Beijing in nine statements outlining reprisals that went beyond mere numbers.

Xi himself did not deign to speak publicly, let alone do anything as vulgar as posting on social media in capital letters. The Chinese public would have thought it beneath his dignity.

Untroubled by such niceties, Trump swiftly posted to his followers online that “CHINA PLAYED IT WRONG, THEY PANICKED.”

With all due respect to the American president, that is exactly what they did not do. The Xi hit list is ominous because it is well-planned and researched. The “Red Emperor” rules a mandarin class of sophisticated operators who do nothing else but study China’s opponents using every intelligence tool at their disposal.

The easy part for China was to impose reciprocal 34 per cent tariffs on all American imports from 10 April. It also suspended six American firms from exporting to China, launched anti-dumping actions in the medical sector and targeted the US giant DuPont with a probe into potential monopoly practices.

The hard part showed just how thoroughly the Chinese had done their work. No penguin islands or weird mathematics here. They banned the export of “dual use” items, which could have military or civilian applications, to 16 US firms, all in the technology sector.

Their key move was to put export controls on seven rare earth elements “to safeguard national security”. It’s on the public record that some of these are vital to US weapons systems.

The list of rare earths included terbium, which is used to enhance the properties of specialised magnets used in guidance systems, satellites and radar. The magnets are integral to the state-of-the-art F-35 fighter, Predator drones, cruise missiles and nuclear submarines.

Then there’s dysprosium, a rare-earth element of which China controls nearly all the world’s supply. It is used to make high-grade magnets that work in super-heated conditions and is found in the newest semiconductors. Other rare earths on the list are vital to jet engine turbine blades. All will now require special export licences.

China and America are thus in a new kind of war over technology and artificial intelligence. Both Joe Biden and Trump tried to choke the supply of advanced semiconductors to Chinese manufacturers, while China is seeking to choke the supply of raw materials to America’s tech champions.

It’s not hard to see how dangerous this could get. The founder of free-trading modern Singapore, the late Lee Kuan Yew, once told me in an interview that “World War Two was caused because of empires and protectionism”.

He recalled that in the 1940s an oil embargo on Imperial Japan pushed its military leaders into war and he warned that if the West tried to isolate China economically “that is bound to lead to conflict”.

Lee was talking in the 1990s, when China stood on the threshold of globalisation. It joined the WTO only after hard-fought talks. But Charlene Barshevsky, who sealed the deal for the United States, later lamented that the Americans failed to use the WTO to punish Beijing when it broke the rules.

That created the belief that appeasement and elite inertia condemned the American working class to decline, the foundation story of Trump’s movement to Make America Great Again. So it is some irony that the Chinese have just filed a formal complaint about Trump’s tariffs – with the World Trade Organisation.

Michael Sheridan, longtime foreign correspondent and diplomatic editor of The Independent, is the author of The Red Emperor published by Headline Press at £25

The US president must stop his ‘Trump Slump’ becoming a global one

Most shocks in capital markets are, by definition, unexpected. They sometimes derive purely from some almost random-seeming shift in market sentiment, albeit with more deep-set fundamental factors at work. The Great Crash of 1929 and the stock market crash of October 1987 – Black Monday – fall neatly into that category.

Others are more clearly understood in real time, but still a shock: the global financial crisis of 2008 is comprehensible from a distance, albeit famously seen as a “black swan” event. Still others are more purely external – Arab nations imposing an oil curfew after the Yom Kippur war in 1973; or whatever bat, pangolin or Chinese lab assistant was responsible for the coronavirus getting loose.

The Trump tariff crash of 2025 is an altogether unusual affair – one of the few such catastrophes to befall the savings and livelihoods of millions of people caused by the stubbornness of one man.

Because it is Donald Trump – and he alone – who is responsible not only for the substance of his reckless shutdown of US trade with the rest of the world, but the deeply flawed design of the tariff schedules, the practically unprecedented suddenness of their introduction, and the incomprehensible rationale for the policy. Certainly, Mr Trump made no secret of his love for – “the most beautiful word” – tariffs.

But the scale and incompetence that has been attached to his attack on trade has stunned and appalled the world. Worse even than that, it has left people confused.

At one point over the weekend, serious analysts were suggesting that Mr Trump actually intended for the markets to crash. In most cases, this was not a product of the over-conspiratorial minds of the Trump cultists, but because the president himself had reposted a story on social media suggesting that he was “Purposely CRASHING The Market”. A White House spokesperson had to state that the president did not, in fact, deliberately wipe some $8 trillion off the world’s stock markets – another unwelcome precedent set by this president.

The question then arises: “What does Mr Trump think he is doing?” The answer is that no one knows, not even the president.

Some, including the president himself in his unorthodox Rose Garden presentation and his secretary for commerce, Howard Lutnick, suggest that it is all about reindustrialising the United States and generating “trillions” of long-term tax revenues. In his address to workers at Jaguar Land Rover on Monday, Sir Keir Starmer admitted that tariffs are “a huge challenge for our future, and the global economic consequences could be profound”.

Less than comfortingly, Mr Trump compares what he’s putting the previously healthy American economy through to a patient undergoing an operation. Others, occasionally also including the president himself, suggest it is merely another of his brilliant negotiating tactics, and point excitedly to the response of nations such as Vietnam, Israel and Argentina offering zero-tariff deals with America – but which would therefore yield zero returns for the proposed new US “External Revenue Service”.

Put simply, it is a matter of “Tariffs bad – uncertainty even worse”. Businesses and households cannot plan in such an environment, and that means that investment will be frozen for weeks, if not months, and a recession becomes ever more likely.

That is one imminent danger. Another is the way that the market contagion has spread from industrial and resources stocks to the banks, with the obvious worry that the trade recession will soon be joined by its evil twin, a credit crunch. As confidence drains from the world economy, companies are nervous about investing, banks are reluctant to lend, and savers will turn to safer havens than equities. Historically, such security was offered by the United States dollar; now, perhaps, not so much.

One of the great ironies in Mr Trump’s plan to boost the American economy is that, within a fairly short time, he will have plunged it into such a slump that he will need to take emergency measures to rescue it – tax cuts, and increasing the US budget deficit to pay for it. The Federal Reserve may find it has no alternative but to cut interest rates – usually a welcome move, but in this case merely proof of the disaster the Trump administration is inflicting on its people.

The net result may be stagflation: above-target increases while economic activity stagnates. It is analogous to what a combination of the Brexit shock and the reckless Truss experiment that crashed the UK economy in 2022 would do. It is that bad.

What can the authorities, including in the United States, do to prevent a slump? Unlike in 2008 and 2020, for example, in most Western economies, there is far less scope for borrowing at sustainable interest rates to support the economy.

In 2008, when Gordon Brown was prime minister and had to nationalise most of the British banking sector, the UK national debt-to-GDP ratio stood at about 36 per cent. By the time Boris Johnson and Rishi Sunak were faced with closing down the economy in 2020, it was 85 per cent. It now stands at 95 per cent, and trending higher.

If the present chancellor, Rachel Reeves, has barely enough fiscal headroom to keep to her fiscal rules, she will have to find some convincing explanations about the much more onerous costs of nursing Britain through what we may soon be calling “the Trump Slump”. That, of course, is not even accounting for the real cost of deterring Vladimir Putin and helping to defend Europe (that being another direct consequence of Mr Trump’s election).

Much the best move, and one still hoped for, is that Mr Trump accepts the manifold and genuine offers of constructive negotiations he’s had from world leaders, declares an early “victory” for his tactics, and announces a 90-day moratorium during which new, freer trade deals can be reached across the world.

It would be good news for all. The markets would calm, American voters would no longer fear opening their pension fund statements, and Mr Trump might turn his mess into a miracle of trade liberalisation.

The dangers if President Trump does press on with his mercantilist “medicine” for America are too gruesome to contemplate. At times such as this, what else is there other than optimism?