Closing post
With the London stock market closed, it’s time to wrap up for the day, and the week!
A brisk recap:
US consumer sentiment has fallen to one of the lowest readings on record, as Americans fear that Donald Trump’s trade war will drive up prices and slow the economy.
China has denied it is in talks with the US about a trade deal… after Donald Trump claimed the two sides were negotiating.
China and the U.S. are NOT having any consultation or negotiation on #tariffs. The U.S. should stop creating confusion. pic.twitter.com/OrapuQzJRW
— CHINA MFA Spokesperson 中国外交部发言人 (@MFA_China) April 25, 2025
But there are also signals that Beijing is lifting some tariffs, to de-escalate the situation.
Top policymakers in Beijing also pledged to support firms and workers most affected by the impact of new US tariffs.
In London, the FTSE 100 index has posted its longest winning streak in over five years.
Our US Politics blog will be tracking the action:
Here’s our economics editor Heather Stewart’s take on this week’s Spring Meeting of the IMF in Washington.
And here’s a flavour:
Kristalina Georgieva’s favourite film, the International Monetary Fund boss told the audience at a packed panel event in Washington on Thursday, is Tom Hanks’s cold war romp Bridge of Spies.
In one of the stranger digressions in a frequently strange week, Georgieva recalled the moment when Hanks’s character, a US lawyer, tells the Soviet spy he has been appointed to defend that he will probably be executed. “You don’t seem alarmed,” Hanks says to him; to which the spy – played by Mark Rylance – replies, “Would it help?”
Georgieva mentioned the vignette to underline the fact that this week’s spring meetings of the IMF and World Bank were not swept up in panic, despite the mayhem emanating from the Trump administration.
