Business

As if the vast scale of artificial intelligence (AI) investments wasn't scary enough, the head of the world's largest sovereign wealth fund is also sounding the alarm. Nicolai Tangen, CEO of Norway's Government Pension Fund Global (GPFG), warned last week that, in an extreme market collapse, a massive loss to its $2.4 trillion (€2.07 trillion) portfolio is "not completely improbable." The fund, created to invest the Nordic country's vast oil and gas revenues, delivered a record profit of 1,753 billion Norwegian kroner ($186 billion/€161 billion) in the first six months of the year. Nicolai Tangen, the head of Norway's sovereign wealth fund, has presided over record growthImage: Ole Berg-Rusten/NTB/IMAGO Yet, Tangen warned that the AI-chip trade — whose lofty valuations helped drive tho...

As if the vast scale of artificial intelligence (AI) investments wasn't scary enough, the head of the world's largest sovereign wealth fund is also sounding the alarm. Nicolai Tangen, CEO of Norway's Government Pension Fund Global (GPFG), warned last week that, in an extreme market collapse, a massive loss to its $2.4 trillion (€2.07 trillion) portfolio is "not completely improbable." The fund, created to invest the Nordic country's vast oil and gas revenues, delivered a record profit of 1,753 billion Norwegian kroner ($186 billion/€161 billion) in the first six months of the year. Nicolai Tangen, the head of Norway's sovereign wealth fund, has presided over record growthImage: Ole Berg-Rusten/NTB/IMAGO Yet, Tangen warned that the AI-chip trade — whose lofty valuations helped drive tho...

As if the vast scale of artificial intelligence (AI) investments wasn't scary enough, the head of the world's largest sovereign wealth fund is also sounding the alarm. Nicolai Tangen, CEO of Norway's Government Pension Fund Global (GPFG), warned last week that, in an extreme market collapse, a massive loss to its $2.4 trillion (€2.07 trillion) portfolio is "not completely improbable." The fund, created to invest the Nordic country's vast oil and gas revenues, delivered a record profit of 1,753 billion Norwegian kroner ($186 billion, €161 billion) in the first six months of the year. Nicolai Tangen, the head of Norway's sovereign wealth fund, has presided over record growthImage: Ole Berg-Rusten/NTB/IMAGOYet, Tangen warned that the AI-chip trade — whose lofty valuations helped drive thos...

Philippe Aghion is an expert in creative destruction. That's the term economists use when innovations disrupt whole industries and create new ones. Think steam engine, assembly line production and the IT revolution. Or now, artificial intelligence (AI). For his groundbreaking research on how technological innovation can drive long-term economic growth, Aghion, who is French, was awarded the Nobel Prize for economics in 2025, together with Canadian Peter Howitt and Israeli-American Joel Mokyr. Philippe Aghion, Nobel laureate in economics 2025 and professor at College de France, INSEAD and London School of EconomicsImage: A. Becker/DW"More than ever, AI will bring creative destruction," Aghion told DW on the sidelines of this year's Brussels Economic Forum. "There will be job destruction. ...

The US Trade Representative's office (USTR) has said it will impose a 25% tariff on most imports from Brazil. The charges are set to come into effect in a week, on July 22.  The trade barriers are the first of their kind since the Supreme Court annulled the cornerstone of US President Donald Trump's prior sweeping tariff regime, famously announced on what Trump dubbed "Liberation Day" in 2025.  It also comes amid friction between the Trump administration and Brazil's President Luiz Inacio "Lula" da Silva, not least because of Trump's ties to Brazil's former right-wing populist president Jair Bolsonaro and his family. Brazil votes in general elections this October. What US measures are planned against Brazil?  Following an investigation, the USTR argued that Brazil's trade practices on ...

Oil and gas exports from the Gulf face renewed disruption as fighting between the US and Iran intensifies. For both countries, control of the Strait of Hormuz is key. Over the past months, Iran has shown it can control or at least disrupt the strait, said Guntram Wolff, a senior fellow at Bruegel, a think tank, and a professor of economics at the Free University in Brussels. "Several months of bombing campaigns have not undone Iran's ability to control the Strait of Hormuz," said Wolff, leaving the US with the challenge of trying to get the upper hand. This week, traffic in the strait has again nearly stopped as Iran attacked tankers and fired drones and missiles at military facilities in Bahrain, Kuwait and Jordan. The US launched more strikes on Iran and restarted a naval blockade ...

In July, hundreds of firefighters are battling flames in Spain, Portugal and France. A map from NASA's Fire Information for Resource Management System (FIRMS) shows more wildfires: Red dots are scattered all over the world — essentially only the white areas of Greenland and Antarctica are excluded. Each of the dots marks a satellite-detected hotspot or active fire. NASA's Fire Information for Resource Management System shows red dots that indicate a satellite-detected hotspot or active fireImage: NASA FIRMS With heat waves and droughts, wildfires are occurring more frequently worldwide. They often starts quite unspectacularly — a discarded cigarette or a spark blown away from a campfire is enough to set dry leaves and small branches on fire. After that, quick action is important to ext...

The youth job crisis that first became obvious in China points to major economic and social problems that governments and businesses need to address. Last year, unemployment, weak job prospects and a general lack of economic opportunities drove young people onto the streets in Kenya, Peru, Nepal, Indonesia and the Philippines. This year, concerns about youth unemployment have added fuel to protests in South Africa and Morocco. In India, they helped give rise to the Cockroach Janta Party, a movement that started as a satirical social media project but quickly gained national attention. China's youth unemployment problem Youth unemployment refers to the share of young people, typically aged 15 to 24, who are actively seeking work but cannot find it. The rate is usually higher than overal...

How bad are Germany's economic problems? One commonly used indicator is the number of company insolvencies and recent figures have produced worrying headlines. According to a study by the Halle Institute for Economic Research (IWH), the insolvency rate among partnerships and corporations in Germany was 80% higher in June than in an average June between 2016 and 2019, the period before the COVID-19 pandemic. Sole proprietors, freelancers and very small businesses were not included in these figures because they are considered less relevant to the overall labor market. Partnerships and corporations account for about 90% of jobs affected by insolvencies and 95% of the claims involved. The number of company bankruptcies in the second quarter of 2026 reached its highest level in 20 years, acc...

In what seems like the blink of an eye, China has gone from being up to five years behind the United States in top-tier artificial intelligence (AI) to lagging by just a few months. While US players, including Anthropic's Claude and OpenAI's ChatGPT, have spent hundreds of billions of dollars to push the frontier of AI, China has pursued a very different path. Faced with US curbs on high-end chips that help AI to do its most advanced thinking, Chinese tech firms have prioritized dozens of open-source AI models built on "good enough" technology. These platforms, including DeepSeek, Alibaba's Qwen and Xiaomi's MiMo, are now widely deployed across Chinese businesses, government services and consumer devices. Chinese AI models narrow gap with US leaders In the latest sign of the gap closi...