Editor’s note (December 9th 2024): This article has been updated to incorporate news of China’s investigation of Nvidia.

<i><b>Editor’s note (December 9th 2024)</b>: This article has been updated to incorporate news of China’s investigation of Nvidia.</i>

Prosperity uncommon

From Apple to Starbucks, Western firms’ China dreams are dying

Geopolitics

American foreign policy

Donald Trump will upend 80 years of American foreign policy

A giant Donald Trump striding across the globe

Leaders

The Telegram

Marco Rubio will find China is hard to beat in Latin America

An illustration of a side profile portrait of Xi Jinping with his eyes on a globe showing South America.

International

Free exchange

An American purchase of Greenland could be the deal of the century

A polar bear, representing Greenland, weaaring a MAGA cap.

Finance & economics

Really cool jobs

The harsh economics of the Arctic

Christmas Specials

European (g)ratification

Can an agreement with the EU resurrect Mercosur?

The Americas

Charlemagne

Europeans are hoping they can buy more guns but keep their butter

A cross looking businessman stands on a rusty tank that is falling apart as he puts a coin into a paying machine that is attached to the side of the tank. On top of the tank is an EU flag in tatters and in the background stands a farmer with his cow.

Europe

Turkey, Syria and the Kurds

As Syria’s regime collapses, Erdogan eyes victory over the Kurds

A Syrian National Army (SNA) soldier carries ammunition as they celebrate victory in Manbij on December 7, 2024

Middle East & Africa

Business in China

Business

Art of the deal, Chinese edition

TikTok’s time is up. Can Donald Trump save it?

Protesters in favour of TikTok stand outside the United States Capitol.

Schumpeter

The UFC, Dana White and the rise of bloodsport entertainment

A tattooed man punches a large head, with motion lines and stars showing impact. He wears orange shorts.

Tesla and Mexico

Will Elon Musk scrap his plan to invest in a gigafactory in Mexico?

A billboard welcoming the American electric car maker Tesla, in Monterrey, Mexico

Food fads

Germany is going nuts for Dubai chocolate

 Dubai chocolate on display at a shop in Berlin, Germany.

Bartleby

The year ahead: a message from the CEO

A man in a white shirt rides a brown horse in reverse. He is pointing ahead of him. The background is yellow.

Hot stuff

One of the biggest energy IPOs in a decade could be around the corner

From oil to AI

Can the Gulf states become tech superpowers? 

People visit Saudi Green Initiative Pavilion in Green Zone of COP28

The world this week

Politics

The weekly cartoon

The Economist 

This week’s cover

The World Ahead

The World Ahead 2025

The end of the house of Assad

How the new Syria might succeed or fail

Spanish lessons

What Spain can teach the rest of Europe 

Artificial exuberance

America’s searing market rally brings new risks 

Abandonment anxiety 

Multilateral institutions are turning away from the poorest countries 

Brain drain

Can you read as well as a ten-year-old?

On nuclear weapons, Jordan Peterson, credit cards, John D. Rockefeller, our cover, behaving in lifts

Letters to the editor

Letters

Holding the line

South Korea’s crisis highlights both fragility and resilience, writes Wi Sung-lac

By Invitation

After Assad

Syria has exchanged a vile dictator for an uncertain future

Briefing

An unexpected juncture

The Assad regime’s fall voids many of the Middle East’s old certainties

La excepción

Spain shows Europe how to keep up with America’s economy

Not so fast

Syrian refugees in Europe are not about to flock home

Why buy the cow

The Polish restaurants that dare to be dairy

Uncertain reaction

Amid Russian bombing, Ukraine is planning more nuclear reactors

Cancel that

Why Romania cancelled a pro-Russian presidential candidate

Fixing the foundations

Britain’s government has only half a plan to improve infrastructure 

Britain

A clamour for clans

A search for roots is behind a surge in Scottish tourism

Peer pressure

Britain’s House of Lords purges itself

The foreign-aid fiddle

Britain’s aid budget is less generous than it looks

A novel award

And the prize for the oddest book title goes to…

An energy unicorn

The battles of Greg Jackson, Britain’s clean-energy disrupter

Bagehot

British politics enters the “death zone”

Tremors of earthquakes to come

Protests have shut down Mozambique

Getting away with murder

Kenyan women are fed up with rampant sexual violence

Back in the dock

Binyamin Netanyahu is in court again in Israel

Playing on

Sudan’s football team wants to reach the World Cup

Message in a bullet

Luigi Mangione’s manifesto reveals his hatred of insurance companies

United States

Reading, Writing and Wrestling

Donald Trump threatened to smackdown the education department

Tort report

America’s best-known practitioner of youth gender medicine is being sued

The district attorney’s downfall

The Young Thug trial could be Fani Willis’s last big act

Lexington

Trump for Dummies

Unmasked

Nicaragua’s ruling couple tighten their grip

Energy (in)security

The Caribbean struggles to break its dependence on fossil fuels

The coup that crashed

South Korea’s unrepentant president is on the brink

Asia

Miracle or mirage?

Bangladesh’s economic progress may have been hyped

Banyan

India wields cricket as a geopolitical tool against Pakistan

Rubbish story

How to clean up India’s filthy cities

China and America

MAGA with Chinese characteristics

China

Intruder alert!

Chinese hackers are deep inside America’s telecoms networks

Language lessons 

Why China is losing interest in English

Too much drama

China cracks down on Karate-chopping cleaning ladies

Bridging the dairy divide

What has four stomachs and could change the world?

The Art of the Deal: global edition

Add agencies

Farewell, Don Draper: AI is coming for advertising

All-In on Donald Trump

The PayPal Mafia is taking over America’s government

Trustbusting transformed

What Trump’s new antitrust enforcers mean for business

Food fight

Why judges were wrong to block the Kroger-Albertsons merger

The next big thing 

What do the gods of generative AI have in store for 2025?

The employee awards for 2024

Tesla, Intel and the fecklessness of corporate boards

Top of the charts

Which economy did best in 2024?

Monetary kombat

The Federal Reserve takes on Trump—and stubborn inflation

Buttonwood

Bitcoin is up by 138% this year. It is a nonsense-free rally

Dream, baby, dream

How much oil can Trump pump?

Stretched thin

The World Bank is struggling to serve all 78 poor countries

Remedial classes required

Are adults forgetting how to read?

What a censored speech says about China’s economy

The Babel wish

Machine translation is almost a solved problem

Science & technology

Assistive intelligence

AI can bring back a person’s own voice

Vexing visits

Carbon emissions from tourism are rising disproportionately fast

Mystery story

Humans and Neanderthals met often, but only one event matters 

A thousand sails

Why China is building a Starlink system of its own

Full of sound and fury

The novel was a dominant art form last century

Culture

From the shelf to the couch

Does great literature translate into great television?

Twenty-sided dicing with death

How did “Dungeons & Dragons” win?

In tune with the times

The Economist’s pick of the best albums of 2024

The future of humanity

Was Henry Kissinger an AI “doomer”?  

Singing from the same hymn sheet

The unholy alliance of the Russian Orthodox Church and the Kremlin 

Indicators

Economic data, commodities and markets

What now?

From Apple to Starbucks, Western firms’ China dreams are dying

Economic growth is slowing, competition is stiffening and geopolitical tensions loom

Explore more

Business December 14th 2024

From the December 14th 2024 edition

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