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Buy Now Pay Later (BNPL) is expected to make further inroads in Qatar’s financial landscape with more banks set to sign strategic pact with fintechs providing "growth enabling" services, according to experts."The lenders are seized of its (BNPL) opportunities in the banking space. Fintechs are enablers than competitors, there is a symbiotic relationship between the two," said a top official of a private sector bank, which is planning to enter in a strategic relationship with BNPL provider.This symbiotic relationship leverages the strengths of both entities, leading to a "win-win" situation, according to him.The streamlining and strengthening of operations at the Qatar Credit Bureau have also helped fintechs offering BNPL services to undertake quick due diligence regarding customers, the official said.Recently, Qatar Islamic Bank tied up with PayLater to deliver Shariah-compliant BNPL services to customers and merchants in Qatar, providing flexible financing solutions that promote financial inclusion and support the growth of the nation’s digital economy.BNPL, which is gaining momentum in the Middle East and North Africa region, is essentially a short term (no more than 12 months) interest free credit facility that allows a customer to split its transaction amount into instalment payments to allow repayment over a period of time.The maximum credit per customer at any point of time has been fixed at QR25,000, as per the Qatar Central Bank (QCB) regulations for the sector.The tech-savvy consumer base, the quest to explore the latest in online shopping and the alternative payment solutions with flexibility are giving the required thrust (for the BNPL segment), said the bank official.The QCB had approved five companies – Spendwisor; Qaiver FinTech; HSAB for Payment Solutions; Mihuru; and Pay Later Website Services – as a first cohort for the BNPL service; awarding entry into its exclusive sandbox programme.The banking regulator had in 2023 issued the BNPL regulations following the launch of its fintech strategy. The objectives of the BNPL regulations are to ensure that customers are provided with adequate protections without unduly impacting the availability and cost of BNPL products and services, to protect the rights of BNPL customers from unfair lending practices, and to encourage the development of the consumer credit industry.Terming that BNPL isn’t a trend — it’s a shift in mindset; Mohammed al-Delaimi, SkipCash’s founder and managing director, had said it introduces financial flexibility and responsible consumption, particularly in markets that have traditionally been underserved or cash-dependent.For small businesses, it means increased sales and better customer retention, while for consumers, it’s a lifeline to spread out essential purchases without falling into debt traps, he had said.The changing consumer preferences and the growing e-commerce market are paving the way for strong growth, the bank official said, adding the rise in e-commerce deals during the Covid-19 lockdowns led to a significant increase in the use of BNPL services.Snoonu had earlier this year joined forces with PayLater to enhance financial flexibility and reshape the digital shopping experience for consumers. Beema recently tied up with PayLater.LuLu AI, the investment arm of LuLu Financial Holdings, had announced a strategic investment in PayLater Qatar.

Manufacturers like US lawnmower maker The Toro Company are not panicking at the prospect of US President Donald Trump’s global trade tariffs. Despite five years of dramatic supply disruptions, from the Covid pandemic to today’s trade wars, Toro is resisting any temptation to stack its warehouses to the rafters.“We are at probably pre-pandemic inventory levels,” says its chief supply-chain manager, Kevin Carpenter, looking relaxed in front of a whiteboard at his office in Minneapolis. “I mean 2019. I think everybody will be at a 2019 level.” Among US manufacturers, inventories have roller-coasted this year as they rushed to beat Trump’s deadlines for tariff hikes, only to see them repeatedly delayed. But since their post-pandemic expansion, inventories have mostly contracted, according to US Institute for Supply Management data. Instead, “just in time” inventory management — which aims to increase efficiency and reduce waste by ordering goods only as they are needed — is back.But how can firms run lean inventories even as tariffs fluctuate, export bans come out of the blue, and conflict rages? One of the answers, they say, is artificial intelligence.Carpenter says he uses AI to digest the daily stream of news that could impact Toro’s business, from Trump’s latest social media posts to steel prices, into a custom-made podcast that he listens to each morning.His team also uses generative AI to sieve an ocean of data and to suggest when and how many components to buy from whom.It is a boom industry. Spending on software that includes generative AI for supply chains, capable of learning and even performing tasks on its own, could hit $55bn by 2029, up from $2.7bn now, according to US research firm Gartner, driven in part by global uncertainties.HYPE“The tool just puts up in front of you: ‘I think you can take 100 tonnes of this product from this plant to transfer it to that plant. And you just hit accept if that makes sense (to you),” McKinsey supply chain consultant Matt Jochim said.The biggest providers of overall supply chain software by revenue are Germany’s SAP, US firms Oracle, Coupa and Microsoft and Blue Yonder, a unit of Panasonic, according to Gartner.Generative AI is in its infancy, with most firms still piloting it spending modest amounts, industry experts say.Those investments can climb to tens of millions of dollars when deployed at scale, including the use of tools known as AI agents, which make their own decisions and often need costly upgrades to data management and other IT systems, they said.In commenting for this article, SAP, Oracle, Coupa, Microsoft and Blue Yonder described strong growth for generative AI solutions for supply chains without giving numbers.At US supply chain consultancy GEP, which sells AI tools like this, Trump’s tariffs are helping to drive demand.“The tariff volatility has been big,” says GEP consultant Mukund Acharya, an expert in retail industry supply chains.SAP said the uncertainty was driving technology take-up. “That’s how it was during the financial crisis, Brexit and Covid. And it’s what we’re seeing now,” Richard Howells, SAP vice president and supply chain specialist, said in a statement.An AI agent can sift real-time news feeds on changing tariff scenarios, assess contract renewal dates and a myriad of other data points and come up with a suggested plan of action.But supply chain experts warn of AI hype, saying a lot of money will be wasted on a vain hope that AI can work miracles.“AI is really a powerful enabler for supply chain resilience, but it’s not a silver bullet,” says Minna Aila, communications chief at Finnish crane-maker Konecranes and member of a business board that advises the OECD on issues including supply chain resilience. “I’m still looking forward to the day when AI can predict terrorist attacks that are at sea, for instance.” Konecranes’ logistics partners are deploying AI on more mundane data, like weather forecasts.The company makes port cranes that are up to 106m (348ft) high when assembled. When shipping them, AI marries weather forecasts with data like bridge heights to optimise the route.“To ship those across oceans, you do have to take into consideration weather,” Aila says.RISING COSTSBy keeping inventories low, firms can bolster profit margins that are under pressure from rising costs. Every component or finished product sitting on a shelf is capital tied up, incurring finance and storage costs and at risk of obsolescence.McKinsey has been surveying supply-chain executives since the pandemic. Its most recent survey showed that respondents relying on bigger inventory to cushion disruptions fell to 34% last year from 60% in 2022. Early responses from its upcoming 2025 survey suggest a similar picture, Jochim said.Gartner supply chain analyst Noha Tohamy says that without AI, companies would be slower to react and be more likely to be drawn into building up inventories.“When supply chain organisations don’t have that visibility and don’t really understand the uncertainty, we go for inventory buffering,” Tohamy says.But AI agents won’t put supply chain managers out of work, not yet, consultants say. Humans still need to make strategic and big tactical decisions, leaving AI agents to do more routine tasks like ordering and scheduling production maintenance.Toro supply chain chief Carpenter says that without AI, supply chain managers might need to run bigger teams as well.Is he worried that AI is coming for his job one day? “I hope it doesn’t take it until my kids get through college!”— Reuters

The US national debt has exceeded $37 trillion for the first time in the country's history, highlighting the rapid expansion of federal borrowing amid mounting criticism of the government's expansive spending policies.Data released by the US Treasury Department on Tuesday showed gross national debt reaching $37.005 trillion. According to the Congressional Budget Office, federal debt could climb to $54 trillion within a decade, driven by rising healthcare costs, an aging population, and the impact of elevated interest rates, which are increasing debt service burdens.Credit rating agencies have warned of the deteriorating fiscal outlook. In mid-2023, Fitch Ratings downgraded the US's long-term credit rating from AAA to AA+, citing worsening financial conditions and persistent political gridlock. In May 2025, Moody's followed suit, cutting its rating from Aaa to Aa1 and projecting that interest payments could surge from 9% of federal revenues today to 30% by 2035.Federal debt has surged in recent years, fueled by massive pandemic relief and stimulus measures under successive administrations. The Biden administration added about $4.8 trillion by September 2022, including $1.85 trillion for the American Rescue Plan and $370 billion for infrastructure projects. Under the former Trump administration, the debt grew by $7.5 trillion during his first term, with the COVID-19 crisis pushing the fiscal 2020 deficit to a record $3.1 trillion, followed by more than $2.7 trillion in 2021.The scale of the increase is striking: four decades ago, US federal debt totaled $907 billion. Today, interest payments in the current fiscal year -- which began in October -- have already outstripped combined spending on Medicare and the defense budget.

For many developing countries, the global economic landscape has shifted dramatically in recent years. Lower growth, disrupted supply chains, reduced aid flows, and heightened financial-market volatility represent significant headwinds. Underpinning these changes is a fundamental restructuring, driven by the developed world, of the postwar economic and financial order. Against this background, a handful of factors are becoming critically important for the current and future well-being of developing countries – and for the fate of multilateral institutions.For much of the period following World War II, the global economic and financial order operated as a core-periphery construct, with the US at its centre. The US provided global public goods, led multi-country policy co-ordination, and acted as a crisis manager, in accordance with a widely accepted set of rules and standards. The end goal was eventual convergence, securing an ever more integrated and prosperous world economy.But three factors undermined this order. First, insufficient attention was paid to increasingly destabilising distributional outcomes, leading to widespread alienation and marginalisation within politically influential segments of society. Instead of continuing to influence politics, economics became subservient to it.Second, the existing order struggled to integrate rapidly expanding large developing countries. The most notable example is China, whose immense economy but relatively low per capita income created a persistent misalignment between its domestic development priorities and its new global responsibilities. The world could no longer absorb smoothly the external consequences of China’s economic strategy, generating tensions that international governance structures have struggled to resolve.The third factor was the transformation of the US from a stabilising force to a source of volatility. Contributing to this development were the 2008 global financial crisis (which originated in the US), the weaponisation of tariffs against China in 2018, and the increasing use of payment-system sanctions. It accelerated in recent years with the failure to ensure the equitable global distribution of Covid-19 vaccines, the “uber-weaponisation” of tariffs against friends and foes alike, the dismantling of America’s foreign-aid system, and continued indifference to devastating humanitarian crises and repeated violations of international law.While the traditional core-periphery model is inherently ill-equipped to handle all this, there is nothing to replace it, resulting in a bumpy journey toward an unclear destination. Despite this, developing countries have navigated the changing landscape relatively well so far. Their success can be attributed largely to hard-won policy achievements, including the strengthening of macroeconomic frameworks and institutions in recent decades.But to maintain this positive trajectory in an increasingly challenging external environment, developing countries must affirm four key policy priorities. The first is to preserve macroeconomic stability while aggressively addressing any structural and financial vulnerabilities, including shallow domestic financial markets, weak regulatory frameworks, and governance deficits.The second priority is to strengthen international links that boost resilience, improve agility, and expand optionality. This requires coordinated, multiyear efforts to harmonise regulations, foster regional financial integration, and build trade infrastructure.Third, developing countries should prepare themselves to exploit the new opportunities created by innovations – from productivity enhancements in traditional sectors to improvements in social sectors where investment in human capital has the highest returns. AI, in particular, holds immense potential to revolutionise medicine, education, and agriculture, which could help these countries leapfrog traditional development stages. Building a supportive ecosystem requires investing in digital infrastructure, cultivating a skilled workforce, and developing an innovation-friendly regulatory environment.Lastly, with many US assets appearing overvalued and US Treasuries becoming more volatile, the small but strategically important subgroup of developing countries with high levels of foreign reserves and substantial financial wealth in dollars is being pushed to reconsider their holdings’ traditional US overweight. This process will inevitably be protracted and complex, and will require careful asset disaggregation, revised asset-allocation methodologies, and new investment mindsets that look beyond conventional safe havens.Multilateral institutions such as the World Bank and regional development banks have a crucial role to play in helping their members pursue such an approach. To become trusted advisers, these institutions must get better at compiling and disseminating best practices for new and evolving technologies that can improve health, educational, and productivity outcomes, and they must do more to promote these technologies’ uptake. For example, their staff must be equipped to answer questions about interacting with AI agents, leveraging innovations to deliver essential services, and managing the attendant risks.Multilateral institutions should also encourage regional links and projects that facilitate trade, expand cross-border infrastructure, and promote shared resource management. And in a world shaped increasingly by frequent shocks, there is an urgent need to enhance contingency-funding facilities, such as by strengthening risk-sharing tools.Of course, this should not undermine the essential work that these institutions perform in fragile countries. Given the overwhelming evidence that traditional development models struggle in countries with such serious governance and security challenges, this, too, is an area that requires more out-of-the-box thinking.AI and other emerging technologies provide developing countries a rare opportunity to unlock new pathways to inclusive economic growth. But exploiting this historic opportunity is far from automatic. Unless developing countries create the conditions necessary for the efficient and equitable diffusion of such innovations throughout their economies – starting, crucially, with the health and education sectors – they risk falling further behind, causing inequalities within and between countries to deepen, and accelerating the fragmentation of the global order.This commentary is based on the author’s keynote presentation at the 2025 Annual Bank Conference on Development Economics. - Project SyndicateMohamed A El-Erian, President of Queens’ College at the University of Cambridge, is a professor at the Wharton School of the University of Pennsylvania, an adviser to Allianz, and Chair of Gramercy Fund Management. He is the author of The Only Game in Town: Central Banks, Instability, and Avoiding the Next Collapse (Random House, 2016) and a co-author (with Gordon Brown, Michael Spence, and Reid Lidow) of Permacrisis: A Plan to Fix a Fractured World (Simon & Schuster, 2023).

Global economy is no longer anchored in a stable inflationary or deflationary regime, but rather navigating a new era marked by structural volatility, according to QNB.While secular deflationary forces – particularly from technological progress, automation, and the digitisation of services – are expected to remain dominant over the long term, they are increasingly being punctuated by short, sharp episodes of inflation driven by supply shocks associated with geopolitical tensions, green transition costs, and policy uncertainty, QNB said in an economic commentary.This evolving landscape is not one of runaway inflation or entrenched deflation, but of heightened sensitivity to shocks, where pricing dynamics vary significantly across region, sectors, and time horizons, it said.Prices changes of key baskets of goods and services are some of the most closely watched metrics in macroeconomics, alongside economic growth.They are crucial indicators of economic health, affecting everything from purchasing power and household confidence to investment decisions and monetary policy.While some level of price appreciation (inflation) is a normal and even desirable feature of a growing economy, both excessive inflation and outright price declines (deflation) can cause significant distortions and long-lasting damage.Moderate inflation, like the one observed during the period of the so-called Great Moderation (1990-2007) in most advanced economies, typically reflects a vibrant economy that delivers well balanced growth. However, when inflation becomes excessive and persistent – as seen in periods of demand overheating, supply shocks, or poorly anchored expectations, such as during the immediate post-Covid pandemic period – it erodes real incomes, compresses profit margins, and destabilises financial markets. It also compels central banks to respond with aggressive policy tightening, which can trigger recessions or financial stress.Conversely, deflation – the sustained decline in the general price level or much lower than normal inflation – is often a symptom of deeper structural weakness, such as depressed demand, financial deleveraging, or demographic stagnation.Falling prices may appear positive on the surface, but they can discourage consumption, delay investment, increase real debt burdens, and trap economies in a vicious cycle of low growth and weak confidence.Japan’s experience in the 1990s and early 2000s remains a cautionary tale of the long-term consequences of entrenched deflation. To a lesser extent, the same is also true for other major economies following the Great Financial Crisis in 2007-08.Interestingly, following a period when pandemic-related supply side shocks triggered much higher than normal inflation, there is little consensus on whether inflation or deflation are going to be major driving forces over the medium- or longer-term.On the one hand, some analysts highlight that one of the key reasons inflation has re-emerged as a central economic concern lies in the unravelling of several structural forces that underpinned the “Great Moderation.”During that time, a confluence of factors helped supress price pressures and stabilise macroeconomic volatility: deepening globalisation fostered cheaper imports and offshoring; relative geopolitical stability ensured open trade routes and capital flows; supply chain integration enabled just-in-time production with minimal inventory costs; and the rise of rational, technocratic politicians and government officials who contributed to anchor economic expectations through credible policies and transparency, QNB said.In recent years, however, many of these tailwinds have turned into headwinds. Geopolitical fragmentation, marked by rising protectionism, US-China rivalry, the Ukraine War, and regional conflicts, has partially undermined trade openness and added uncertainty to global production networks, QNB noted.The Covid pandemic exposed the fragility of over-optimised supply chains, prompting a shift toward reshoring and redundancy that carries higher cost structure.Moreover, the populist backlash and politicisation of economic policy have, in some cases, weakened governance and institutional restraints on decision makers at least since the beginning of Trump 1.0 in 2017.Combined with demographic pressures (less people working to sustain more people not working), green transition costs, and strategic competition over critical technologies, these reversals support the argument of some analysts about a more inflation-prone environment ahead, in which price stability can no longer be taken for granted.On the other hand, many analysts argue that it would be a mistake to assume that the post-Covid and Ukraine War era is uniformly inflationary. Powerful disinflationary forces are at play and accelerating – particularly those rooted in technological innovation.Advances in digitisation, robotics, and artificial intelligence (AI) continue to disrupt traditional production functions, compress operating costs, and drastically reduce the marginal price of services and knowledge-based goods.The digital delivery of education, finance, media, and even healthcare is shifting cost structures downward, while automation and machine learning improve productivity in both manufacturing and services.Moreover, QNB noted, some geopolitical developments commonly viewed as inflationary – such as trade fragmentation – may actually have deflationary consequences under certain conditions.A pertinent historical analogy is the 1930s, when aggressive tariff barriers like the US Smoot-Hawley Act triggered retaliatory trade wars, leading not to higher prices, but to collapsing global demand and deflationary spirals.

Qatar National Bank (QNB) group said that secular deflationary forces, particularly from technological progress, automation, and the digitization of services, are expected to remain dominant over the long term, but they are increasingly being punctuated by short, sharp episodes of inflation driven by supply shocks associated with geopolitical tensions, green transition costs, and policy uncertainty.In it weekly commentary, QNB pointed that global economy is no longer anchored in a stable inflationary or deflationary regime, but rather navigating a new era marked by structural volatility.According to QNB, prices changes of key baskets of goods and services are some of the most closely watched metrics in macroeconomics, alongside economic growth. They are crucial indicators of economic health, affecting everything from purchasing power and household confidence to investment decisions and monetary policy.While some level of price appreciation (inflation) is a normal and even desirable feature of a growing economy, both excessive inflation and outright price declines (deflation) can cause significant distortions and long-lasting damage, QNB said.Moderate inflation, like the one observed during the period of the so-called Great Moderation (1990-2007) in most advanced economies, typically reflects a vibrant economy that delivers well balanced growth. However, when inflation becomes excessive and persistent, it erodes real incomes, compresses profit margins, and destabilizes financial markets. It also compels central banks to respond with aggressive policy tightening, which can trigger recessions or financial stress, The Bank added.Conversely, deflation, the sustained decline in the general price level or much lower than normal inflation, is often a symptom of deeper structural weakness, such as depressed demand, financial deleveraging, or demographic stagnation, QNB noted.Falling prices may appear positive on the surface, but they can discourage consumption, delay investment, increase real debt burdens, and trap economies in a vicious cycle of low growth and weak confidence, it added.QNB cited Japan's experience in the 1990s and early 2000s as a cautionary tale of the long-term consequences of entrenched deflation, pointing that the same is also true for other major economies following the Great Financial Crisis in 2007-08.Relatedly, the bank noted, following a period when pandemic-related supply side shocks triggered much higher than normal inflation, there is little consensus on whether inflation or deflation are going to be major driving forces over the medium- or longer-term.The weekly commentary pointed that some analysts highlight that one of the key reasons inflation has re-emerged as a central economic concern lies in the unravelling of several structural forces that underpinned the "Great Moderation."During that time, a confluence of factors helped supress price pressures and stabilize macroeconomic volatility: deepening globalization fostered cheaper imports and offshoring; relative geopolitical stability ensured open trade routes and capital flows; supply chain integration enabled just-in-time production with minimal inventory costs; and the rise of rational, technocratic politicians and government officials who contributed to anchor economic expectations through credible policies and transparency, QNB said.The Covid pandemic exposed the fragility of over-optimized supply chains, prompting a shift toward reshoring and redundancy that carries higher cost structure, it added.Combined with demographic pressures (less people working to sustain more people not working), green transition costs, and strategic competition over critical technologies, these reversals support the argument of some analysts about a more inflation-prone environment ahead, in which price stability can no longer be taken for granted, the bank added.On the other hand, many analysts argue that it would be a mistake to assume that the post-Covid and Ukraine War era is uniformly inflationary. Powerful disinflationary forces are at play and accelerating, particularly those rooted in technological innovation.QNB considered that some geopolitical developments commonly viewed as inflationary - such as trade fragmentation - may actually have deflationary consequences under certain conditions.

A newly-acquired Bain Capital company in Japan that makes airplane seats, toilets and galleys is betting its US-based manufacturing hub will give it an advantage under President Donald Trump’s tariff regime.Armed with private equity cash, Jamco Corp’s new management is rebooting its aircraft seat business, chasing market share from rivals RTX Corp’s Collins Aerospace and France’s Safran SA, Executive Chair Kate Schaefer said in an interview.Supply chain issues that have seen wait times for cabin fittings blow out to as long as three years — forcing the likes of Delta Air Lines Inc and American Airlines Group Inc to ground newly delivered jets as they await seats — also present an opportunity to fill, Schaefer said.“Right now with everything that’s going on with tariffs, it appears to be an advantage in manufacturing and assembling these seats in the US,” she said. The company is also promising to deliver products in as little as six months.Jamco’s main production line is located near Boeing’s largest assembly line in Everett, just outside Seattle. The US has rolled out a raft of tariffs on global trading partners, with Japanese and European Union goods being levied at 15%, and up to 25% for India and 39% for Switzerland.Across the industry, carriers from Singapore Airlines Ltd to British Airways are spending hundreds of millions of dollars revamping seats as they upgrade cabins to lure more high-end travellers. Jamco plans to focus on higher-margin first-class and business seats, which can cost from $80,000 to $160,000 each depending on materials used and the level of customisation required.Jamco’s seat-making business struggled during Covid as global travel bans and border closures hammered the aviation industry. It paused research and development during the pandemic, but is restarting that under new management. Schaefer said the business has a slim orderbook but a factory and a workforce ready to go.Previously, Jamco counted the likes of Singapore Air and Dutch carrier KLM as top customers for its seats. Its other business units continue to make components and equipment like galleys for Boeing Co and Airbus SE jets.Jamco was bought by Bain in a $700mn buyout earlier this year. Like Virgin Australia Holdings Ltd., which delivered Bain a 3.5 times’ return on its initial investment when it listed the airline in June, the private equity firm says it aims to pursue an initial public offering of Jamco in a five-year timeframe. Bain is also actively looking for smaller complementary acquisitions to expand on Jamco’s current line of work.Bain’s Tokyo-based leadership who led the deal, Masa Suekane and Nick Gattas, sees Jamco as a “bet on the industry,” bolstered by the decade-long waitlist for new planes. Jamco aims to take advantage of the challenging ramp-up in widebody production by Boeing and Airbus as an “attractive” five-year window to win new business.

When her husband was arrested in an immigration raid near Los Angeles last month, “Martha” was abruptly separated from the father of her two daughters.She also lost the salary that allowed her to keep a roof over their heads."He's the pillar of the family... he was the only one working," said the undocumented woman, using a pseudonym for fear of reprisals. "He's no longer here to help us, to support me and my daughters."Los Angeles, where one-third of residents are immigrants – and several hundred thousand people are undocumented – has been destabilised by intensifying Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) raids under the Trump administration.Since returning to power, US President Donald Trump has delivered on promises to launch a wide-ranging deportation drive, targeting undocumented migrants but also ensnaring many others in its net.After her husband's arrest, 39-year-old Martha has joined the ranks of people barely managing to avoid ending up on the streets of Los Angeles County – a region with prohibitively high housing prices, and the largest number of homeless people in the United States outside New York.Her 700sq-foot apartment in Buena Park, a suburb of the California metropolis, costs $2,050 per month.After her husband's arrest, she urgently found a minimum-wage night job in a factory to cover their most pressing needs.It pays just enough to keep them afloat, but has left Martha unable to cover a range of obligations."I have to pay car insurance, phone, rent, and their expenses," she said, pointing to her six- and seven-year-old daughters, who need school supplies for the new academic year. "That's a lot of expenses."How long can she keep up this punishing schedule, which allows her barely three hours of sleep on returning from the factory before having to wake and look after her daughters?"I couldn't tell you," she said, staring blankly into space.Los Angeles has seen some of the worst of the ICE raids.Squads of masked agents have targeted hardware stores, car washes and bus stops, arresting more than 2,200 people in June.About 60% of these had no prior criminal records, according to internal ICE documents analysed by AFP.Trump's anti-immigration offensive is taking an added toll on Latino workers, who were already among the worst-affected victims of the region's housing crisis, said Andrea Gonzalez, deputy director of the CLEAN Carwash Workers Centre, a labour rights non-profit."A bigger storm is brewing. It's not just about the people that got picked up, it's about the people that are left behind as well," she said. "There is a concern that people are going to end up on the streets."Her organisation is helping more than 300 struggling households whose incomes have plummeted, either because a family member has been arrested or because they are too afraid to return to work.It has distributed more than $30,000 to help around 20 families who are unable to afford their rent, but covering everyone's needs is simply "not sustainable," said Gonzalez.Local Democratic Party leaders are trying to establish financial aid for affected families.Los Angeles County is planning a dedicated fund to tackle the problem, and city officials will also launch a fund using philanthropic donations rather than taxpayer money.Some families should receive "a couple hundred" dollars, Mayor Karen Bass said last month.However, for Gonzalez, these initiatives do not "even scratch the surface" of what is needed, representing less than 10% of most affected families' rent requirements.She called for a "moratorium on evictions" similar to one introduced during the early days of the coronavirus (Covid-19) pandemic.Otherwise, Los Angeles' homeless population – currently numbered at 72,000, which is down slightly in the past two years – risks rising again, she warned."What we're living through right now is an emergency," said Gonzalez.Maria Martinez's undocumented immigrant husband was arrested in June at a carwash in Pomona, a suburb east of Los Angeles.Since then, the 59-year-old has had to rely on help from her children to pay her $1,800 monthly rent.Her $1,000 disability allowance falls far short."It is stressful," she said. "We're just getting by."

Top White House economic advisers have defended President Donald Trump's firing of the head of the Bureau of Labour Statistics (BLS), pushing back against criticism that Trump's action could undermine confidence in official US economic data.US Trade Representative Jamieson Greer told CBS that Trump had "real concerns" about the data, while Kevin Hassett, director of the National Economic Council, said the president "is right to call for new leadership”.Hassett said on Fox News that the main concern was Friday's BLS report of net downward revisions showing 258,000 fewer jobs had been created in May and June than previously reported.Trump accused BLS Commissioner Erika McEntarfer of faking the jobs numbers, without providing any evidence of data manipulation.The BLS compiles the closely watched employment report as well as consumer and producer price data.The BLS gave no reason for the revised data but noted "monthly revisions result from additional reports received from businesses and government agencies since the last published estimates and from the recalculation of seasonal factors”.McEntarfer responded to her abrupt dismissal on Friday in a post on the Bluesky social media platform, saying that it was "the honour of her life" to serve as BLS commissioner and praising the civil servants who work there.McEntarfer's firing added to growing concerns about the quality of US economic data published by the federal government and came on the heels of a raft of new US tariffs on dozens of trading partners, sending global stock markets tumbling as Trump presses ahead with plans to reorder the global economy."I think what we need is a fresh set of eyes at the BLS, somebody who can clean this thing up," Hassett said on *Fox News Sunday.In an interview with CBS's *Face the Nation, Greer acknowledged that there were always revisions of job numbers, "but sometimes you see these revisions go in really extreme ways”.Brian Moynihan, chief executive of the Bank of America, said that large revisions of economic data could undermine public confidence and that government officials should develop ways of improving data quality."They can get this data, I think, other ways and I think that's where the focus ought to be: how do we get the data to be more resilient and more predictable and more understandable?" he said on CBS. "Because what bounces around is restatements... that creates doubt about it."Critics, including former leaders of the BLS, slammed Trump's move and called on Congress to investigate McEntarfer's removal, saying that it would shake trust in a respected statistical agency."It undermines credibility," said William Beach, a former BLS commissioner and co-chair of the group Friends of the BLS."There is no way for a commissioner to rig the jobs numbers," he said. "Every year we've revised the numbers. When I was commissioner, we had a 500,000 job revision during President Trump's first term," he said on CNN's *State of the Union."And why do we do that? Because firms are created or firms go out of business, and we don't really know that during the course of the year, until we reconcile against a real full count of all the businesses."Former Treasury secretary Larry Summers, who worked in both the Clinton and Obama administrations, also criticised McEntarfer's firing."This is a preposterous charge. These numbers are put together by teams of literally hundreds of people following detailed procedures that are in manuals," Summers said on ABC's *This Week.The BLS surveys 121,000 employers – businesses and government agencies – each month, seeking their total payroll employment during the week in which the 12th day of the month falls.The response rate has fallen sharply over the last several years since the coronavirus (Covid-19) pandemic, from 80.3% in October 2020 to about 67.1% in July.Knowing that, the BLS allows late-arriving employer submissions, and revisions to earlier submissions, to be taken into account over the next two months.That means each month's initial estimate of employment for the immediately preceding month also contains revisions to the two months before that as well, because by the third month the response rate has typically climbed to around 92%.The revisions in Friday's report were, however, large by historic standards.The downward revision of 125,000 jobs for May was the largest between a second estimate and third estimate since a 492,000 reduction for March 2020, which was the largest ever and was reported in June 2020 for the payrolls report for May 2020.Aside from that revision, Friday's revision for May was the largest for a change from the second estimate to the third estimate since a 127,000 job downward revision in March 1983, according to BLS data.

Japan’s main bourse is seeking to capitalise on the growth of strategies that enhance yield.Trades such as call overwriting — when investors who own shares sell bullish options to pocket the contracts’ premium — have become increasingly popular in Japan, and the Tokyo Stock Exchange now wants to enable listings of actively managed exchange-traded funds with over-the-counter derivatives.The bourse is asking an advisory body for guidance to take on ETFs that use non-listed instruments such as swaps and options, according to Kei Okazaki and Ryutaro Someya, managers at the new listings department of the Tokyo Stock Exchange. While listed funds can use options on Osaka’s derivatives exchange, OTC products are currently prohibited.The Tokyo exchange is seeking to get the Financial Services Agency’s nod to list such ETFs by next June, Okazaki and Someya said, adding that the change would help lower the cost of managing the funds. A representative for the FSA, which gives guidance for investment trusts and ETFs, declined to comment.Call overwriting — also known as the covered call strategy — is common across the world and is especially appealing in Japan, where interest rates remain some of the lowest among developed markets even after the central bank ended its years-long zero-rate policy. In the US, some actively managed ETFs with derivatives-driven strategies may also use OTC instruments.“Banks and insurers are seeking yield as they have to pay more in interest rates to their clients,” Okazaki said in an interview in Tokyo, explaining that covered call strategies offer regular and stable income. He expects the market for listed covered call products to expand to more than ¥1tn ($6.8bn) from the current ¥35bn.The bourse is also asking the regulator to allow ETFs that sell options to pay dividends with the premiums they receive, adding to investors’ returns, Okazaki also said.Call overwriting may be one of the most popular volatility trades globally, according to Georges Debbas, head of equity-derivatives strategy for Europe at BNP Paribas SA. At large institutions, the strategy is fully automated and growing, and several active ETFs are also using it, he said.The trade tends to do well in a falling or stable market but underperforms during strong rallies. In such cases, the sale of the contract caps equity gains, given that the buyer is likely to exercise the option, forcing the seller to part with the underlying shares.Some market watchers say call overwriting may dampen equity volatility and form temporary price resistance levels if a large open interest builds up at a particular strike and maturity. But fund managers that do the strategy systematically tend to spread out their trades to avoid clustering on certain contracts and to limit the strategy’s impact, according to Geoff Kirk, a manager at Premier Miton in London.“Asset managers doing systematic overwriting are very aware of market impact and pin risk,” Kirk said, referring to the uncertainty that comes when an option’s expiration price is close to its strike. “Banks also have quite strict risk limits so dealing desks will reject orders or just price to lose when they’re at capacity on a certain underlying.”In a June note, JPMorgan Chase & Co strategists said the trade performed well during the market selloff between February and April but lagged behind in the sharp rebound that followed, concluding that timing and selectivity are key.“The post-Covid growth in assets into covered-call ETFs that sell equity volatility for yield has continued a gradual ascent,” Tanvir Sandhu, Bloomberg Intelligence’s chief global derivatives strategist, wrote in a note last week. “The rationale for call overwriting is that selling call options can provide income, and on an expectation that the market rally is contained within the expiry time frame.”

“Poverty”, Aristotle famously observed, “is the parent of revolution and crime”. History has repeatedly proven the point: inequality often fuels political and social instability, giving rise to conflict and despair.Today, in the face of widening economic disparities and climate disruption, international co-operation on sustainable development is no longer just an expression of solidarity – it is a strategic imperative. Yet just as development challenges grow increasingly urgent, the resources to confront them are steadily declining.In 2015, world leaders adopted the UN Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs), outlining a shared vision for a more equitable, low-carbon future. Since then, however, overlapping global crises – from the Covid-19 pandemic to rising geopolitical tensions and escalating climate change – have reversed much of the progress made over the past 25 years.The realities of our increasingly multipolar world call for a shift in mindset. Policymakers must focus on doing more with less, which means fostering effective partnerships between the public and private sectors. This was my main takeaway from the Fourth International Conference on Financing for Development (FfD4) in Seville, Spain: to meet climate and social targets, we must rethink how development is financed – and by whom.While every country relies on access to financing to manage crises, support growth, and provide essential services, this need is especially acute in developing countries, where investment in infrastructure and human capital is crucial to long-term progress.To achieve the SDGs, developing countries will need to raise roughly $4tn annually. With development budgets under pressure globally, it is clear that public funding alone is not enough, and that closing today’s investment gap requires mobilising private capital.Public budgets should serve as a catalyst, not a substitute, for private investment. That’s the thinking behind the European Union’s Global Gateway initiative, which focuses on creating the conditions necessary for sustainable financing. By combining guarantees, grants, and long-term loans, it aims to reduce risk, unlock private capital, and enable transformative investments in high-quality infrastructure projects, with a strong focus on education, job training, health, and climate resilience.At FfD4, for example, we signed a €75mn ($88mn) guarantee agreement with Spain’s COFIDES to expand off-grid energy access in underserved regions across Sub-Saharan Africa, Latin America, and the Caribbean. Projects like these often cannot move forward without effective risk mitigation. By reducing financial exposure, EU guarantees help make long-term financing viable and more accessible.We are also developing innovative financing vehicles such as the Digital Leap Fund, which uses grants, guarantees, and first-loss equity to attract private investors to projects they might otherwise avoid. The goal is to mobilise up to €500mn for digital infrastructure, including 5G networks, data centres, and broadband connectivity.At the same time, we are working to remove barriers to investment. As a former international banker, I understand that investors tend to seek safe, long-term returns – the kind that well-designed development projects can offer. But they also need predictability, transparency, and robust regulatory frameworks.Our local partners, for their part, need the capacity to build value chains that align with their strengths and priorities. Too often, developing countries that produce or extract highly sought-after resources retain only a fraction of their final value. A cashew grown in Africa may be shipped to Asia for processing and then exported to Europe, delivering limited benefits to local communities while imposing a high environmental cost.The EU’s value-based model tackles this imbalance head-on by focusing on three key areas: job creation and investment in skills, education, inclusion, and sustainability; high-quality infrastructure; and supporting local ownership, governance reform, and stable investment conditions.This approach is already being implemented in Angola and Zambia, where we are helping to transform the Lobito Corridor – an EU-backed project to renovate the railway linking Angola to landlocked, mineral-rich regions in Zambia and the Democratic Republic of the Congo – into more than just a trade route for critical raw materials.To ensure that the economic benefits remain in the region, we are supporting vocational training, education, and local processing. In Zambia, we are using grants to strengthen sustainable agriculture, combining value-chain development with technical training in beekeeping, agro-processing, and rural entrepreneurship. Meanwhile, in Angola, we are investing in vocational programmes tailored to the transportation, logistics, and energy industries.Achieving lasting impact requires long-term planning, which is why our approach is demand-driven, skills-oriented, and focused on creating good jobs and promoting local ownership. The Namibia Green Hydrogen Programme, which aims to help Namibia realise its green hydrogen potential while supporting Europe’s energy transition, is a prime example. Led by national institutions and developed with private partners like Hyphen Hydrogen Energy, the project provides specialised training for workers in the hydrogen and electricity sectors.In fragile settings, the stakes are even higher. When institutions and basic services break down, instability and unrest often follow. With nearly one-quarter of the world’s population living in areas affected by conflict, natural disasters, and displacement, initiatives like the Global Gateway help bridge the gap between humanitarian aid and long-term development by working to restore essential services and build resilience where it is needed most.Europe has the tools to lead this effort, but lasting progress depends on local ownership, commitment, and resolve. National governments and local communities must take the lead on meaningful reform, effective governance, and sustainable development. Our role is to stand beside our partners and provide reliable, transparent support. – Project SyndicateJozef Síkela is European Commissioner for International Partnerships.

US health secretary Robert F Kennedy Jr’s changes to federal vaccine policy are prompting medical organisations and several states to formulate their own vaccine recommendations for the fall respiratory illness season, concerned many healthy children and pregnant women could lose access to preventive shots.This push for an alternative standard to the one set by the federal government runs the risk of increasing confusion among providers and patients, according to health experts.It also runs up against hundreds of laws at the state level that rely on a federal vaccine advisory panel, the experts said. The Advisory Committee on Immunization Practices, or ACIP, advises the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention on which people should receive vaccines and at what intervals after they are approved by the Food and Drug Administration. Kennedy has spent decades sowing doubts about vaccines even when contradicted by scientific evidence. Since being appointed by Republican President Donald Trump to head the US Department of Health and Human Services, or HHS, Kennedy has upended the federal government’s process for recommending vaccines for the American public. Kennedy last month fired all 17 ACIP members, replacing them with hand-picked advisers including anti-vaccine activists. Prior to that, Kennedy in May withdrew a federal recommendation for Covid shots for pregnant women and healthy children without ACIP’s input, saying there was not enough evidence to support offering these boosters to healthy children.Leading US medical organisations including the American Academy of Pediatrics, known as AAP, and the Infectious Diseases Society of America, called IDSA, have sued Kennedy over the Covid decision.AAP said it will promote its own evidence-based vaccine guidelines starting with the fall respiratory season for Covid, influenza and respiratory syncytial virus, or RSV.“We simply cannot and will not stay silent as the system we rely on is being intentionally dismantled,” Dr Sue Kressly, the academy’s president, told Reuters.The American College of Obstetricians and Gynecologists, called ACOG, is also developing guidelines for the upcoming respiratory illness season, to be issued in August or September. An ACOG spokesperson said the organisation continues to recommend Covid vaccines for pregnant women, a group at increased risk for severe Covid and pregnancy complications.The spokesperson also said the organisation rejects a recommendation by Kennedy’s vaccine panel against flu shots containing thimerosal, a mercury-containing preservative that vaccine sceptics long have sought to link to autism despite evidence that these vaccines are safe.Both organisations and several others including the IDSA are collaborating with the Vaccine Integrity Project, a group of public health and infectious disease experts formed amid concerns about changes to vaccine policy, to review the latest scientific evidence on licensed vaccines for use in their guidelines.“What we’re trying to do is add a piece of non-biased, authoritative review of the data for use by the (medical) societies,” said Dr Michael Osterholm, director of the Center for Infectious Disease Research and Policy at the University of Minnesota, who served as an adviser to Democratic former President Joe Biden on Covid.An HHS spokesperson defended Kennedy’s actions, saying the newly configured panel brings “fresh, independent scientific judgement” and that ACIP “will continue to be the statutory authority guiding immunisation policy in this country.”Jen Kates, a senior analyst at the nonprofit health policy organisation KFF, said US states have always maintained a patchwork of health policies. But having multiple entities issuing vaccine recommendations at the state and federal levels could make it hard for parents to know who to trust, according to Kates.“This patchwork could become even more pronounced with significant implications for health. State laws and requirements may vary, but pathogens don’t abide by borders,” Kates said.Recommendations issued by ACIP since its founding in 1964 have become embedded in laws across the United States governing health insurance coverage, access to vaccines for children in low-income families, school immunisations, the ability of pharmacists to administer vaccines, and, in some states, vaccine purchasing.“It is mind-numbing when you compare how many things are impacted by ACIP,” said Rebecca Coyle, who serves as executive director of the American Immunization Registry Association, an organisation that develops and updates vaccination information systems used by physicians, and as an adviser to ACIP.An analysis by the Association of State and Territorial Health Officials found that nearly 600 statutes and regulations across 49 of the 50 US states, three US territories and Washington, DC, reference ACIP recommendations.Several states have already taken action.Wisconsin said it continues to recommend the current Covid vaccine during pregnancy and for everyone age 6 months and older, and noted that the state’s Medicaid health programme for low-income people will continue to cover the shot for eligible people. The Democratic governors of California, Washington state and Oregon condemned Kennedy’s dismissal of the ACIP panel members, citing their “grave concerns” about the integrity and transparency of upcoming federal vaccine recommendations.These states said they will continue to recommend Covid vaccines for children 6 months and older and pregnant women in accord with leading US medical associations.Some states have started rewriting statutes to no longer defer exclusively to ACIP. Colorado, for instance, has amended laws to include vaccine recommendations from major medical societies in addition to ACIP when setting the state’s policies for immunising schoolchildren.Massachusetts lawmakers are considering legislation proposed by Democratic Governor Maura Healey to empower the state’s public health commissioner to determine routine childhood immunisations in lieu of ACIP’s recommendations. Legislators in Maine have removed references to ACIP from a state vaccine access law.Osterholm said health insurers have told the Vaccine Integrity Project that they would be more likely to cover uniform vaccine recommendations, increasing pressure for alignment among various groups.“We need to come together the best we can,” Osterholm said, but “we can’t leave the ACIP or HHS recommendations as the only other source out there.” — Reuters