Day: December 8, 2025

China’s Politburo says ‘more proactive’ fiscal policy to come in 2026

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China has pledged to continue to exert a “more proactive” fiscal policy and “moderately loose” monetary policy next year. After a meeting of the 24-member Politburo on Monday, the major decision-making body of the ruling Communist Party said the country would “seek progress while maintaining stability and pursue higher quality and greater efficiency in next year’s economic work.” “[We need] to better coordinate domestic economic work and international economic and trade struggles, as well as development and security,” according to a readout released by state news agency Xinhua. Advertisement The…

Trump’s new doctrine confirms it. Ready or not, Europe is on its own | Georg Riekeles and Varg Folkman

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Europe is on a trajectory towards nothing less than “civilisational erasure”, the Trump administration claims in its extraordinary new National Security Strategy, a document that blames European integration and “activities of the European Union that undermine political liberty and sovereignty” for some of the continent’s deepest problems. Everybody should have seen it coming after Washington’s humiliating 28-point plan for Ukraine. JD Vance’s shocking Munich speech in February, in which he suggested that Europe’s democracies were not worth defending was an early red flag. But the new words still land as…

The power crunch threatening America’s AI ambitions

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In cutting-edge Microsoft data centres, racks of chips used to train AI models sit idle. “The biggest issue we are now having is not a compute glut, but it’s power,” said Microsoft’s chief executive Satya Nadella during a recent podcast interview. The topic has been top of mind in a year when big tech “hyperscalers” — Amazon, Google, Meta and Microsoft — have set out plans to spend more than $400bn in capital expenditure. That outlay, mainly on data centres, has triggered market fears of an AI-fuelled bubble. Big tech…

Airwallex plots Silicon Valley expansion after securing $8bn valuation

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Stay informed with free updates Simply sign up to the Fintech myFT Digest — delivered directly to your inbox. A Singapore fintech that was labelled a “Chinese backdoor” by a prominent tech investor has diluted its major Chinese shareholder and added a US headquarters as part of a fundraising round that values the business at $8bn. Payments company Airwallex has made San Francisco its second headquarters, and the $330mn raised in the round will be used to expand its presence in Silicon Valley. The company hopes to hire swaths of…