On Thursday, Donald Trump will walk into the Great Hall of the People in Beijing, shake Xi Jinping's hand, and declare it a great meeting. There will be announcements. There will be numbers — billions of dollars in Chinese purchase commitments, a new bilateral mechanism with an important-sounding name, possibly a joint statement on Iran. Trump will post on Truth Social. Markets will rally briefly. Pundits will argue about who won. None of that will tell you what actually happened. What is actually happening in Beijing this week is something more consequential and more uncomfortable than the summit theatre will reveal: two leaders of two deeply mutually dependent superpowers, both of whom need this meeting to succeed for entirely different reasons, sitting across a table in a world that has already moved past the assumptions that defined their last nine months of negotiations. The Iran war changed the equations. The rare earth gambit changed the power balance. Taiwan is sitting in...
The online payments service PayPal has taken the unusual step of suspending transactions in India for more than a week. Anuj posted this on the PayPal blog Hi blog readers, it’s Anuj from the communications team here. I’m writing to let you know that personal payments to and from India and transfers to local banks in India have been suspended while we work with our business partners and other stakeholders to address questions they have about the service. During this time, customers can still make commercial payments to India but merchants cannot withdraw funds in Rupees to local Indian banks. We’re trying to resolve the situation as quickly as possible and we’re really sorry for the inconvenience that this may cause our customers in India and around the world. I’ll update the blog as soon as we have more information to share. Anuj There is no eloborations as to why this steps been taken. We expect some clarity in the coming weeks. Paypal is owned by online auctions giant eBay. An ori...