FirstFT: EU leaders in present of solidarity with Ukraine’s Zelenskyy

Immediately’s agenda: White Home backtracks on tariffs; Trump memecoin windfall; child meals ‘premiumisation’; Dubai’s sizzling property market; and Lloyds shifts IT roles to India

Good morning. We begin in Brussels the place EU leaders yesterday placed on a present of solidarity with Volodymyr Zelenskyy at a summit designed as a riposte to the hostile remedy of the Ukrainian president by the Trump administration within the US.

Pledges of help: 5 days after Zelenskyy was ejected from the White Home following a conflict that led to the US suspending army assist and intelligence help to Kyiv, he was promised “enduring” help by all however one of many bloc’s leaders.

The joint EU assertion nods to elevated army help for Ukraine and the readiness of states to “contribute to security guarantees based on their respective competences and capabilities” to a post-conflict state. Hungary’s pro-Russia Prime Minister Viktor Orbán refused to help the assertion, forcing the opposite 26 leaders to situation a textual content with out him.

Defence capabilities: All 27 EU leaders, nonetheless, pledged to extend their very own defence capabilities within the face of an unsure transatlantic bond. They endorsed new defence funding initiatives proposed by the European Fee. These embrace adjustments to the bloc’s debt and deficit guidelines to exempt a rise in defence spending, and an instrument that would offer €150bn in loans to capitals to spend on army capabilities. Learn extra on the emergency summit.

Right here’s what else we’re maintaining tabs on as we speak and over the weekend:

• Central banks: Federal Reserve chair Jay Powell speaks at a financial coverage convention in New York. European Central Financial institution president Christine Lagarde offers the keynote speech on the ECB’s Worldwide Ladies’s Day convention in Frankfurt.

• Financial information: Brazil and the EU situation fourth-quarter GDP estimates whereas the US publishes employment information for February.

• Canada: On Sunday, the Liberal social gathering chooses its subsequent chief, who additionally turns into the nation’s prime minister.

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5 extra high tales

1. Donald Trump’s administration has backtracked farther from its menace to impose sweeping 25 per cent tariffs on Mexico and Canada, in a serious climbdown from its aggressive commerce agenda, capping a tumultuous week that has roiled markets and frayed diplomatic relations between Washington and its largest buying and selling companions. Extra on the US president’s government order.

• Market response: US shares fell sharply yesterday as a renewed sell-off within the tech sector rattled a market already weighed down by issues in regards to the impression of Trump’s tariffs.

• Tariff U-turns: Dizzying coverage adjustments have sparked an fairness market sell-off, concern from companies and panic in overseas capitals.

• Doge restrained: The president ordered his cupboard to make sure the “most productive” civil servants are exempted from sweeping lay-offs.

2. Trump’s crypto challenge made a minimum of $350mn from the launch of his memecoin, a windfall that’s prone to gas issues over conflicts of curiosity arising from the token. Digital wallets owned by the entities operating the scheme earned the cash from gross sales of $TRUMP within the three weeks after its January launch, in response to an FT evaluation of blockchain information.

3. Dad and mom having fewer youngsters are shopping for costlier child meals, in response to the pinnacle of Nestlé’s diet enterprise, because the world’s largest meals firm shifts its technique to offset the impression of falling beginning charges. The Swiss group stated that smaller households had pushed “premiumisation”.

4. Dubai’s property market is racing in the direction of a file bull run, with the Center Japanese business hub’s buoyant economic system and swelling inhabitants fuelling the longest worth rally for the reason that eve of the 2008 monetary crash. However some query how lengthy the meteoric worth rises can proceed.

5. Unique: Lloyds Banking Group is hiring a whole lot of IT engineers in India whereas planning to chop a whole lot of comparable jobs within the UK, in a transfer that can end in nearly half of its engineers being based mostly outdoors its dwelling market by the tip of the yr. Learn extra on the British lender’s hiring spree for its tech centre in Hyderabad.

The Large Learn

Personal wealth administration firms for the super-rich now handle trillions of {dollars} globally and are one of many quickest rising areas of finance. They’re additionally one of many least below­stood — or reg­u­lated. Learn extra on the hidden risks of household workplaces.

We’re additionally studying . . . 

• Syria’s new chief: Is Ahmed al-Sharaa a conquering hero with intentions of moderating or a brutal strongman with a aptitude for PR?

• A Mar-a-Lago accord?: Trump’s workforce considers monetary coverage interventions to be essential in a grand reordering of world finance and commerce, writes Gillian Tett.

• Romanian election: Călin Georgescu, the far-right outsider backed by Washington and Moscow, is using excessive within the nation’s presidential contest.

Chart of the day

In his evaluation of a worldwide survey on values, John Burn-Murdoch has discovered that on all the things from attitudes in the direction of worldwide co-operation, to urge for food for an autocratic management model, the Maga mindset is way nearer to that of Vladimir Putin’s Russia or Recep Tayyip Erdoğan’s Turkey.

Take a break from the information . . . 

Donald Shoup revolutionised the best way city planners considered parking. How he did it ought to be an instance to economists in every single place, writes Tim Harford. His genius was to take an issue that appeared boring and trivial and present that it was neither.