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Can the nuclear industry find a better way to build?

The sector is hopeful that using copies of established reactors can help keep costs down and prevent delays for new projects

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FT : China imposes retaliatory tariffs on $14bn worth of US goods

China has imposed retaliatory tariffs on the US, hitting about $14bn worth of goods and dashing hopes that a trade war between the world’s two largest economies could be avoided.

Beijing announced the tariffs last week in response to a US decision to impose an additional 10 per cent levy on Chinese products, which US President Donald Trump called an “opening salvo” in a renewed trade offensive against China.

Compared with the blanket US tariffs, China’s measures — which target US exports of liquefied natural gas, coal, crude oil and farm equipment as well as some automotive goods with levies of 10 per cent to 15 per cent — were seen as creating space for negotiations to avert a wide trade conflict.

But by the Sunday deadline there was no news of a deal and China’s embassy in Washington said the tariffs came into effect at 12.01am Beijing time on Monday (11.01am on Sunday in Washington DC).

Beijing last week also announced an antitrust probe into Google, whose search engine is blocked in China, and Illumina, a US biotechnology company. And it blacklisted the holding company of US clothing brands Calvin Klein and Tommy Hilfiger.

China underlined its control of the rare earths supply chain by restricting exports to the US of five critical metals used in defence-related industries, solar panels, electric vehicle batteries and other green energy products. China produces about 60 per cent of the world’s rare earths and accounts for 90 per cent of processing in the industry.

Financial markets had initially hoped Trump might follow the same playbook with China as with Canada and Mexico — against which he also announced tariffs, but then gave a month’s reprieve following last-minute talks with their leaders.

Trump had suggested he would speak with Chinese President Xi Jinping, but later said he was in “no rush” to do so.

Experts have suggested Beijing might have objected to Trump’s tactics, announcing the tariffs just two days before they came into effect, and before approaching Chinese officials for negotiations.

Trump has accused China, along with Mexico and Canada, of failing to curb the flow of the deadly opioid fentanyl into the US.

He has also instructed the US Trade Representative to investigate Chinese compliance with the first phase of the trade deal he sealed with China in 2020 during his first term in the White House, under which Beijing agreed to buy more American products.

The USTR is due to report the findings from the probe on April 1, at which point there could be another confrontation, analysts said.

Beijing has taken some measures to stem the flow of ingredients for fentanyl — known as precursor chemicals — since a summit in San Francisco in late 2023 involving the then US president Joe Biden and Xi. But the Trump administration accuses Beijing of subsidising Chinese companies that make the precursors.

The US-China trading relationship has shaped both countries’ economies in recent decades.

But China’s share of total US imports has fallen markedly since Trump introduced tariffs during his first term, leading some analysts to suggest that Beijing may be better placed this time to endure the president’s measures.

Frederic Neumann, chief Asia economist at HSBC, said many Chinese companies would be able to bear a 10 per cent tariff on their goods, given the country’s export prices had declined much more than those of rival producers over the past two years.

“If there was only a 10 per cent tariff on China and we left it at that, I think many investors would sleep more comfortably,” he added. “The big worry, of course, is this is a prelude to potentially larger trade restrictions.”

President says ‘fraud and abuse’ at the Pentagon will be the next target of cost-cutting by Elon Musk

Donald Trump said he would seek to cut billions of dollars from the Pentagon budget as the next big target in the effort led by Elon Musk to slash spending by US government agencies.

In an interview on Sunday, Trump backed Musk’s cost-cutting push through the so-called “Department of Government Efficiency” even as it faces growing setbacks in federal courts and allegations from Democrats that it is exceeding its powers.

Trump said Musk had been “terrific” and a “great help” in scouring the federal government for possible spending cuts so far. He indicated that the defence department, which has an annual budget of about $800bn, would be next in the billionaire’s sights.

“Let’s check the military. We’re going to find billions, hundreds of billions of dollars of fraud and abuse. You know, the people elected me on that,” Trump said.

Musk’s potential role in scouring the Pentagon for savings has already raised concerns about potential conflicts of interest, given that his companies SpaceX and its subsidiary Starlink have contracts with the government.

But Mike Waltz, Trump’s national security adviser, brushed off those worries in an interview with NBC. He said “all of the appropriate firewalls” would be in place to prevent any conflicts, though he did not offer further details.

“The American people have said enough, enough with the bloat and the waste and the debt,” Waltz said. “We do need great minds and we do need business leaders to go in there and absolutely reform the Pentagon’s acquisition process,” he said.

With Musk in a leading role, Trump’s second administration has moved aggressively to grind some federal programmes and agencies to a halt.

In one setback for Musk on Saturday, a federal judge in New York temporarily blocked his team’s effort to gain access to the US Treasury department’s payment data, saying it could lead to the disclosure of sensitive personal information that could cause “irreparable harm” to Americans.

Democrats have increasingly been crying foul.

“This is the most serious constitutional crisis the country has faced, certainly since Watergate,” Chris Murphy, the Democratic senator from Connecticut, told ABC on Sunday.

“The president wants to be able to decide how and where money is spent so that he can reward his political friends, he can punish his political enemies. That is the evisceration of democracy,” he added.

The hardest hit federal agencies include USAID, which administers foreign aid, and the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau, whose employees were told on Saturday by its acting director Russell Vought to cease virtually all of their activities, including investigations and supervision. Trump has also vowed to eliminate the Department of Education, which has long been a target of conservative ire.

Republicans in Congress have stood by Trump and Musk as they have moved to halt a wide range of federal programmes, even though the push has undermined the constitutional role of lawmakers in authorising spending.

Mike Turner, an Ohio Republican, said on ABC that the Trump administration needed to take a “critical view” of US spending policies because the country’s fiscal path was “unsustainable”. But he also said Musk could be moving more artfully.

“He needs to, in a more professional way, communicate with the American public,” Turner said.

Canadian investment firm Brookfield plans to invest €20 billion by 2030 in artificial intelligence projects in France (around $20.7 billion at current exchange rates), according to a report from La Tribune Dimanche confirmed by news agency AFP. The majority of the sum will be used to build AI-focused data centers.

This announcement is the latest in a series of investment commitments as heads of state and global tech leaders plan to gather for the Artificial Intelligence Action Summit in Paris starting on Monday.

According to La Tribune Dimanche, around €15 billion of Brookfield’s investment will go toward a massive data center in Cambrai in the North of France. This data center will have a capacity of up to one gigawatt. The rest will be used for new infrastructure projects, including the construction of new electricity production capabilities.

On Friday, France and the United Arab Emirates announced an AI campus project along with a large investment of up to €50 billion ($52 billion). Once again, most of the investment will go toward a data center with a capacity of up to one gigawatt.

There are two reasons why these mega investment projects are occurring right now. First, on January 21, OpenAI, SoftBank, MGX and other partners unveiled the Stargate Project, a $500 billion investment program to build multiple data centers for AI in the United States.

While it’s unclear how much each investor is actually willing to commit to Stargate, this announcement — combined with Mario Draghi’s recent report on European competitiveness — acted as a wake-up call for many policy-makers in Europe.

Second, the majority of France’s electricity production comes from nuclear power plants (around 65%) and renewable sources (around 25%). It also produces more electricity than it needs. Tech companies are struggling to reduce their carbon footprint and find sufficient electricity capacity, so they are increasingly looking to France as an attractive location for their power-hungry data centers.

Separately, Bpifrance, France’s public investment bank, announced that it plans to invest as much as €10 billion ($10.3 billion) in the AI ecosystem in France. This isn’t a data center project, as Bpifrance mostly wants to back more AI startups and become a limited partner in VC firms specialized in AI investments. Bpifrance is already a shareholder in Mistral, H and Poolside.

Finally, Iliad, the telecom company founded by French billionaire Xavier Niel, is allocating €3 billion toward AI investments ($3.1 billion) with the help of financial partners, such as Infravia. Around €2.5 billion ($2.6 billion) will be used to build new AI-focused data centers with “hundreds of megawatts of capacity.”

Scaleway, a cloud computing company based in France, is a subsidiary of Iliad. So the new computing power will likely be available through Scaleway. Some European AI companies have already used Scaleway to train their AI models, such as Mistral, H and Photoroom. (Interestingly, Xavier Niel also happens to be an investor in Mistral and H.)

If you add up all these announcements, France could receive €83 billion ($85 billion) in AI-related investments in the coming years, primarily related to data centers and infrastructure projects. And there might be more to come at the AI Action Summit.