In the round of international newspapers today, the British newspaper The Guardian warned of a threat to the global economy, and the Washington Post monitored Trump’s electoral performance, while in the Independent there was a look by the British Booker Prize-winning writer Howard Jacobson, on a life dominated by the smartphone.
We start with The Guardian newspaper and writer Larry Elliott, who warned in his article of a storm threatening the global economy.
Elliott believed that the global economy witnessed many bad events this year, including two regional wars affecting prices and supply chains everywhere in the world, high inflation, and the US-China trade collision.
However, according to the author, the impact of these events remained limited.
He says that those attending the International Monetary Fund meeting in Bangkok, which began on Friday, will not deal - which is a miracle, according to the writer - with a financial banking crisis as happened in the fall of 2008.
Elliott listed three reasons for the steadfastness of the global economy so far: the huge amount of investment in developing artificial intelligence programs, countries resorting to withdrawing from their oil reserves, and the Chinese economic strategy that is based on exporting cheap goods to the rest of the world, which puts pressure on import prices elsewhere.
However, the writer saw that danger still lurks everywhere, explaining that the situation in the Middle East is deteriorating as the conflict extends to Saudi Arabia, and that oil reserves continue to decline.
He continued, saying that the United States found itself involved in the same long wars that Trump used to criticize.
He also pointed out that cheap Chinese goods threaten manufacturing jobs in the West. Huge American investments in artificial intelligence have raised borrowing costs and led to a shortage of capital available for other sectors.
The International Monetary Fund is concerned, according to the author's description, that the limits of this resilience may soon be tested.
He explained that bringing peace to the Middle East would lead to a sharp decline in oil prices, “but unless this happens quickly, a long winter awaits us.”
He said that the matter seemed closer to a postponed crisis than a crisis that was completely avoided. It may just be the calm before the storm.
We move to the United States, specifically the Washington Post, and an article by writer Henry Olsen, in which he commented on the performance of US President Donald Trump in the midterm election campaigns.
The writer believed that Trump spending most of his electoral time in places viewed as “safe strongholds” for the Republican Party reflects the “tremendous challenges facing his party” in the upcoming elections.
Olsen describes the situation of Trump and his party as “miserable,” as there are only three weeks left until the election, and “the most important figure in the Republican Party is traveling around the country to convince the party’s most loyal supporters to go to the polls.”
He says Trump's travel schedule reflects two other things: weak enthusiasm within the Republican Party, and the president's problems with swing voters.
The writer added that Republicans should be concerned that the party leadership is not confident that the base will participate massively in the vote.
As for swing voters, Olsen says that Trump does not usually visit places that contain large numbers of them. Polls throughout the year showed that independents expressed high levels of dissatisfaction with the president.
He points out the latest poll conducted by The New York Times in cooperation with Siena College, which included five close races for Senate seats in Republican states, that the Democratic candidate leads among independent voters by 24 points.
The writer says that Trump could have addressed these voters directly, defending the achievements of the first two years of his term and warning that the return of the Democrats to power would restore the policies that voters rejected in 2024. But he does not do that, which suggests, according to the newspaper, that his advisors do not believe that he is capable of changing the opinions of independents.
He believes that the most important indicator will be Trump's travel schedule during the final weeks of the campaign.
“If more rallies are held strongly in Republican states and districts, that will be clear evidence that the Republican Party is trying to avoid disaster,” Olsen says. “But if it moves to more politically balanced positions, it will likely mean that internal party polls have improved enough to put Trump in places that presidents typically visit during campaigns.”
In the British Independent, an article was written by Howard Jacobson, winner of the British Booker Prize in 2010, in which he confesses his immersion in smartphone technology, which changed the rhythm of his life.
Jacobson says, “I write these words on my phone without leaving my seat, without searching for a pen or sharpening a pencil, and without walking around the room as I used to do one day to freshen the air around my words. My arms do not draw any elegant arc, and my fingers do not embody the meaning of my thoughts.”
Jacobson describes giving up pen and paper in favor of writing on a phone screen as losing his hand.
