The great war of tariffs: Brace yourselves!

Written by: Aarthi Ramnath, Raghav Bikhchandani & Yash Budhwar

The great war of tariffs: Brace yourselves!

To set the mood, we begin with this viral and apt meme—see lead image.

Tit-for-tat tariffs: On Tuesday, the US slapped a 25% tax on all imports from Mexico and Canada. It also imposed an additional 10% on China—on top of the 10% announced in February. On Wednesday, at least two of them struck back.

Canada roars back: PM Justin Trudeau hit back with a 25% tariff on $107 billion worth of American goods—with these words about Trump:

We actually have to fall back on the one thing he has said repeatedly, that what he wants is to see a total collapse of the Canadian economy. Because that will make it easier to annex us.

Okay, wow! Also this:

The leader of Canada’s most populous province, Doug Ford, threatened to cut off energy supplies to the U.S. “If they want to try to annihilate Ontario, I will do everything, including cutting off their energy, with a smile on my face,” said Ford. Ontario supplies energy to Michigan, New York and Minnesota.

But this is what he’s already done—banned US companies from all government contracts (see fiery clip here):

Point to note: Mexico has vowed retaliation but not done much as yet.

As for Beijing: China announced a flurry of measures. An additional 15% tariff on US chicken, wheat, corn and cotton—plus an additional 10% tariff on agricultural and dairy products. It also added more than two dozen American companies to export control and corporate blacklists—and filed a lawsuit with the World Trade Organization protesting Trump’s tariff wars.

What’s notable: The true declaration of defiance was in the announcement re its own economy:

Meanwhile, Beijing set a growth target of about 5% for 2025, a signal that it expects the Chinese economy to resist the rising trade pressures coming from Washington. The government also set a deficit target of around 4% of gross domestic product, the highest level in years, suggesting that authorities intend to unleash more stimulus for an economy that was already in the doldrums before the renewed trade war.

Meanwhile, over at Silicon Valley: Big Tech is growing increasingly uneasy. Taxes on physical products don’t really disrupt the industry. But they offer a prime target for vengeful trade partners:

“It’s far more likely that this time, they’re going to hurt the U.S. where it matters,” [Gil] Luria said, adding that the big tech companies are “the best target.” If Canada, Mexico or China decide that the U.S. has taken a confrontational approach to tariffs, they can respond in kind by penalizing big tech companies like Microsoft, Google, Meta or Amazon. This, Luria said, would be “the most meaningful and most broad in its impact… In China, for instance, they can just eliminate the sales of iPhone altogether.”

Meanwhile, in India: Some seem to think Canada’s woes offer great opportunity:

With Canadian goods facing higher levies, Indian companies in industries such as petroleum products, automobiles, machinery, plastics, and electrical equipment could tap into increased demand from US buyers looking for alternative suppliers, experts said.

There’s also upbeat talk of taking advantage of higher taxes on Chinese goods. Ofc, all of it premised on a single, rather precarious assumption: We are so special that Donald-ji will spare us his wrath.

Point to note: We are so eager to court Trump’s favour, India plans to allow duty-free imports of US pulses—while imposing heavy duties on Canada—which is one of our key suppliers of masoor dal.

The real opportunity: may lie with US allies—like Britain and the EU—who are suddenly eager to sign free trade agreements with India—to mitigate the Trump-inflicted damage.

Reading list: Quartz is best on the risk to Big Tech. The Hindu has the latest in the tariff wars. China and India analysis is behind a paywall over at the Wall Street Journal and Mint, respectively.

Arab states make a Gaza plan… finally!

The context: For weeks after the ceasefire began, Donald Trump has repeatedly pushed for his grotesque plan to ‘cleanse’ the strip of 1.8 million Palestinians—to develop a “Riviera”. It was up to the Arab states—Jordan, Egypt, even Saudi Arabia—to build a new “beautiful” home for Gazans. This spurred the Arabs—who have been content to express outrage from the sidelines over months of carnage—to come up with an alternative.

What happened now: The Arab Summit on Tuesday adopted Egypt’s reconstruction plan for Gaza—presented in “a 91-page glossy document including images of leafy neighbourhoods and grand public buildings.” As a pointed response to Trump, no doubt.

Rebuilding Gaza: Here’s what the $53 billion plan proposes for the residents:

It has three phases—interim measures, reconstruction and governance.
Interim measures will last up to six months while reconstruction and governance will unfold over a four- to five-year period.
The first task is to build 200,000 temporary housing units for 1.2 million people and restore 60,000 damaged homes—in the first six months.
400,000 permanent homes, Gaza’s seaport and international airport will be rebuilt in the second and third phases.

Ruling Gaza: Here’s what it proposes for governance—which is the trickiest bit:

In the six-month interim period, Gaza will be administered by a Governance Assistance Mission—featuring “independent Palestinian technocrats.”
UN peacekeepers are expected to man security.
Also: this Mission is meant to pave the way for the return of Palestinian Authority to Gaza—after losing the strip to Hamas in 2007.
There is no mention of Hamas at all—only a vague mention of the “obstacle” of militant groups.

Point to note: Hamas is ready to cede the governance of Gaza—but has refused to disarm.

Funding Gaza: Super-rich nations like Saudi Arabia are likely to pay the bills—though the plan also mentions funds from Europe—and proposes a donor conference in Cairo “as soon as possible.” Relevant point to note: The leaders of Saudi Arabia and UAE did not attend the meeting—and sent reps instead.

The big picture: Needless to say, no one is putting in a single penny unless there is a permanent ceasefire—which is unlikely given, well, Benjamin Netanyahu. Bibi will also never agree to any pathway to an independent Palestine—which is the entire point of this plan. Then there is Hamas—which will not go easily into the night. OTOH, the Palestinian Authority has zero credibility among Palestinians. Yeah, there’s a lot of wishful thinking baked into this plan. But it is way more achievable and desirable than, well, ethnic cleansing.

Reading list: New York Times and Reuters have the details. BBC News offers analysis. Al Jazeera has Israel’s angry response.

The great AI threat to Indian IT

The Indian technology industry—worth $254 billion and the country’s biggest white-collar job creator—is in trouble. Its growth rate slowed to 3.8% in the last fiscal year—from 8.4% in the year before. Now there’s even more bad news about US banks—which are the biggest clients of the big five: TCS, Infosys, HCL, Wipro, and Tech Mahindra. Their best customers are pausing or cutting back on spending thanks to AI. And the real pain is yet to come—it will be felt most when IT contracts are up for renewal.

Data points to note: “In the quarter ended December, banks, along with insurance firms and capital markets, accounted for 31.7% of business at TCS, 27.8% for Infosys, 20.3% for HCL Technologies, 34.1% for Wipro, and 16.1% for Tech Mahindra.”

Silicon Valley says: The world’s biggest VC firm Andreessen Horowitz recently offered this gloomy forecast for those who rely heavily on outsourcing by US companies (business process outsourcing firms)—i.e Indian IT industry:

BPOs can have prolonged turnaround times for their work output, can be prone to human error since their employees lack individual accountability, and can be incapable of completing certain tasks satisfactorily because they lack the context and authority to do so… With AI, startups can now give customers the best of both worlds and enable enterprises to in-house their own customer experience and back-office operations in a high-quality, scalable, and cost-efficient way.

The big picture: Many in the industry insist the fears about AI are overblown—such tools are nowhere close to replacing software engineers. Others think the pain is already here—and more is to come:

“Everyone is talking about it (AI), but it is delaying significant IT spending and slowing down the growth of the tech services market,” said Bendor-Samuel. At the same time, he pointed out that publicly, the IT services companies were on a brave face “and talking about all the work they are doing, the investments they are making and how excited they are.”

Mint (paywall) has lots more on US banks—while this blog post on their website has more on the Andreessen Horowitz view.

Content warning: This item is not suitable for crabs of any kind or age.

A horror movie starring the cuttlefish monster

The context: First meet the villain of this flick: The dreaded cuttlefish—aka masters of deception who “can camouflage almost instantaneously to hide from predators.” They disguise their fiendish nature behind their disarming good looks:

Onto the horror show: A team of scientists have discovered that cuttlefish are far more versatile in camouflage than expected. They use four distinct body patterns when approaching their prey—stripe, leaf, branching coral and pulse. But the real story lies in how they made the discovery—by filming the cuttlefish from the POV of crabs—just before they were eaten! Behold the sneaky stripe attack:

But the creepiest is the “branching coral technique”:

If you’re in the mood for more monster movie thrills, we suggest checking out this dramatic David Attenborough clip. (New York Times, splainer gift link)

what caught our eye

business & tech

Tim Cook has teased the potential launch of a new Macbook Air—reports suggest the new models come with an M4 chip
Also coming soon: an ‘AI Phone’ by Deutsche Telekom. It will run ‘Magenta AI’, giving users access to Perplexity, Google Cloud and other AI tools.
Ola chief—a beleaguered Bhavish Aggarwal—has taken a leaf out of the Elon Musk DOGE playbook by establishing ‘Kya Chal Raha Hai?’—a new program requiring staff to send weekly progress reports to Aggarwal.
Nifty’s record-breaking 10-day losing streak has investors sweating as foreign funds flee, valuations tumble, and first-timers get a harsh reality check.
Taiwanese chipmaker TSMC has pledged to invest at least $100 billion on US manufacturing facilities over the next four years

sports & entertainment

Gen Alpha’s fave popstar Tate McRae has topped the Billboard 200 chart—earning the Canadian singer the #1 album in the US.
Thanks to a vintage Virat half-century, India beat Australia by four wickets to reach the Champions Trophy final. The Men in Blue will face either South Africa or New Zealand in Dubai on March 9.

health & environment

Wanna get inked? A new Danish study has found that tattoos may be linked to an increased risk of skin and lymphoma cancers.
A new study suggests that a specific ratio of gut bacteria can predict how multiple sclerosis develops.
Scientists are sounding the alarm over a recent study that shows our brain can accumulate a spoonful of microplastics.

meanwhile, in the world

BBC News breaks down what the Donald’s decision to pause military aid could mean for the future of Ukraine.
Hours after the US pulled back however, the EU unveiled a $158 billion fund to boost military forces—the bloc’s biggest defense push since the Cold War.
The US VP however dismissed the idea of 20,000 troops from a “random country” securing Ukraine, sparking outrage in Britain, which has pledged forces. He obviously later denied referring to the UK or France.
In horrifying news coming out of Sudan, UNICEF says that armed men have been raping and sexually assaulting children—including one-year-olds—amid the ongoing civil war there.
Sticking with Sudan, Reuters traces how a key ingredient of Coca-Cola and M&M candy—gum arabic—is being increasingly trafficked out of the war-torn country.
Todd Alcott in Hollywood Reporter argues that Trump and Vance played an old Hollywood trick—called ‘The Stranger in the Room’—on Zelenskyy during their Oval Office blow-up last Friday.
‘Gotham but no Batman’—a crime wave has gripped Dhaka six months on from the ousting of Sheikh Hasina. Al Jazeera has more.
The Indian Embassy in Jordan has confirmed that on February 10, an Indian victim of visa fraud was shot dead by Israeli troops—while trying to illegally cross the Jordan-Israel border under false pretenses of a job offer.
The UAE has executed Shahjadi Sabbeer Khan—a caregiver from Uttar Pradesh who was handed a death sentence last year for the alleged murder of a four-month-old baby in her care. Indian Express has more on the case.
Amreeki log are holding several local protests against the Donald’s billionaire bestie Elon Musk for his gutting of federal programs under DOGE policy. Gizmodo has the list of places hosting these demonstrations.
A rare handwritten copy of a musical adaptation of Shakespeare's Sonnet 116 has been unearthed at Oxford University’s Bodleian Library.

meanwhile, in India

The Print has a must-read on how India’s pilot training pipeline is broken—featuring steep costs, old aircraft and a long wait for jobs.
In today’s India, buying a gun is just a WhatsApp message away—according to new analysis of over 8000 messages conducted by Princeton University’s Digital Wellness Lab.
Calling someone "Pakistani" or “miyan-tiyan” may be in bad taste, but it doesn’t hurt religious sentiments, says the Supreme Court.

Four things to see

One: Rosenmontag (Shrove Monday) marks the peak of Germany’s carnival season. This year’s standout float? A brutal takedown of a certain right-wing tech billionaire. Do note the details: the baby diaper stamped with the Alternative for Germany (AfD) logo; a swastika-shaped American flag and a “Napo-Elon” hat. The finishing touch? A red X-branded megaphone spewing excrement, while a nurse wrestles him into a straitjacket.

Another float put Trump, Putin, and Xi Jinping together—stark naked, with their testicles stamped with… well, you can see for yourself:

You can take a peek at the other floats here. (Huffington Post)

Two: Modi inaugurated Anant Ambani’s wildlife collection conservation centre in Jamnagar—after conferring it with the “prestigious” Prani Mitra Award a week ago. You can see all the cringey photos of the visit here. The cheesiest one:

Also: see this artistic one—which is sadly not photoshopped:

Three: Tired of the humans vs robot trope? How about humans and robots banding together to bring the revolution? The Russo brothers’ latest ‘The Electric State’ is a retro-dystopian sci-fi thriller starring Millie Bobby Brown and Chris Pratt. It is adapted from a 2018 graphic novel of the same name by Simon Stålenhag. The movie is set to drop on Netflix on March 14. (Gizmodo)

Four: The battle against deepfakes just got a new line of defense—and it fits in your pocket. Honor’s 2024 flagship, the Magic 7 Pro:

“Our deepfake detector can effectively inspect tiny details of pixels on your screen so it can detect those deepfakes and identify the deepfakes, tell our customers within six seconds.”

Watch the demo below. (Reuters via Yahoo News)