Business

Donald Trump gave a little relief to a car industry left reeling by his tariffs on imports of vehicles and auto parts. The president signed one order giving carmakers a reprieve from import duties on aluminium and steel, so there is no “cumulative effect” in the tariffs they face, he said. A second order amends his 25% car tariff by allowing manufacturers who make vehicles in the United States with foreign parts to claim a rebate of 3.75% against the value of their sales, falling to 2.75% next year. Several carmakers, including General Motors and Stellantis, have pulled their profit guidance amid the uncertainty.

The Trump economy

America’s economy shrank by 0.3% in the first quarter of the year at an annualised rate. The trade deficit swelled as companies rushed to build up inventories of foreign goods before tariffs came into effect. And government spending declined over the three months.

Microsoft brought some welcome cheer to investors by reporting solid earnings for the first quarter. Revenues rose by 13%, year on year, to $70.1bn, and net profit increased by 18%, to $25.8bn. Revenues from its cloud-computing division were in line with expectations, putting to rest for now market concerns of slower growth in the business.

Meta also published a set of bumper results for the quarter, with net profit up by 35%, to $16.6bn. The company raised its estimate of how much it will spend on investing in data centres. Underlining Mark Zuckerberg’s wish to ensure Meta leads its rivals in artificial intelligence, the company unveiled a stand-alone app to rival ChatGPT.

An American court referred Apple, and one of its managers, for possible criminal charges over the firm’s attempt to wriggle out of an injunction requiring it to change its rules around in-app purchases. Apple said it “strongly disagreed” with the ruling.

At Pirelli, an Italian maker of tyres, the board of directors voted to remove the status of Sinochem, a Chinese state-owned conglomerate, as its controlling shareholder. Sinochem is Pirelli’s biggest shareholder with a 37% stake, but two years ago the Italian government used legislation to limit Sinochem’s influence. Italy’s regulators gave Pirelli the option of changing its status. Pirelli’s tyre-sensor technology is what’s at stake. It fears being shut out of America because of its Chinese links.

First Light, a British fusion-energy firm, abandoned its plan for a reactor that would fuse heavy isotopes of hydrogen into helium, thus releasing energy. Its approach, one of more than half a dozen being tested to the same end by companies around the world, used projectiles fired from an electromagnetic gun to compress fuel-containing capsules to the point where the atomic nuclei therein would merge.

Airbus agreed to buy some factories from Spirit AeroSystems, which makes aircraft fuselage sections. The deal, which includes sites in North Carolina, France and Northern Ireland, secures a future for Spirit, an integral supplier to the aviation industry. The company used to belong to Boeing until it was sold off 20 years ago, but it struggled, despite adding Airbus as a customer. Boeing is buying back the rest of the business.

Deliveroo, a British food-delivery company that also operates in France, Italy and elsewhere, said it would probably recommend that shareholders accept a £2.7bn ($3.6bn) takeover offer from DoorDash, the largest food-delivery platform in America, if the deal’s other details are acceptable. It is the latest instance of consolidation in the low-profit industry.

Investigating journalism

A presenter on CBS’s “60 Minutes”, America’s premier current-affairs programme, told viewers that Paramount, CBS’s owner, was supervising its content and that the show’s top producer had resigned because he felt he had lost his independence. None of its stories has been pulled, but speculation has swirled that Paramount wants to ensure its merger with Skydance Media won’t be torpedoed by the Trump administration because of its networks’ political coverage. Meanwhile, Paramount was reportedly ready to settle a lawsuit brought by Mr Trump that accuses CBS News of underhandedly editing an interview with Kamala Harris, Mr Trump’s Democratic opponent last year.

The recent turmoil that hit bond and currency markets proved to be a boon for Deutsche Bank, which reported its best quarterly pre-tax profit in 14 years. The German bank has now earned more in cumulative profits than it has lost over the past ten years; between 2015 and 2019 its losses were huge.

The euro area’s GDP grew by 0.4% in the first quarter of 2025 compared with the last quarter of 2024, and by 1.2% year on year. German GDP expanded by 0.2%, quarter on quarter. The European Central Bank cut interest rates again recently, taking the rate on its deposit facility to 2.25%, amid concerns that a trade war would hurt the currency bloc’s economy.

In a sign of the White House’s sensitivity to the public’s scepticism on tariffs, Mr Trump’s press secretary described Amazon’s reported plan to display the cost of import duties against products on its website as a “hostile and political” act. We have no such plans, Amazon hastily responded. Mr Trump called Jeff Bezos to smooth things over. He “solved the problem very quickly”, said the president. “He did the right thing. Good guy.”