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US-Europe productivity gap widens

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The US overtaking Europe in productivity has fuelled fears that the EU is facing a ‘competitiveness crisis’, with policymakers calling for more public and private investment.

New data released on Friday showed that productivity in the eurozone fell by 1.2 per cent in the fourth quarter from a year earlier, while in the US it rose by 2.6 per cent over the same period, the Financial Times reported. Labour productivity growth in the US has been more than double that of the eurozone and the UK over the past two decades.

Bart van Ark, chief executive of the UK-based Productivity Institute, said: “In the long run, productivity growth in the US is expected to be higher than in Europe. Europe is not showing the same dynamism. This is widening the growth gap between the US and the EU,” said Bart van Ark.

Some economists argue that the US is growing faster than the eurozone partly because its population is younger, growing faster and working longer hours. But much of the output gap is due to the fact that people in the US produce more for every hour they work.

According to the FT, EU policymakers see this trend as deeply worrying and a reflection of a long-standing failure to catch up with US levels of private and public investment.

US worker productivity outperforms EU

Output per hour worked, a standard measure of labour productivity, has increased by more than 6 per cent in the US non-farm business sector since 2019, according to official data. This outpaces the eurozone and the UK, which grew by around 1 per cent over the same period.

In contrast to the ‘green’ stimulus in the US, the Eurozone has received less fiscal support from governments and has experienced a much larger rise in energy prices as a result of the war in Ukraine. The fragmentation of Europe’s financial markets, fiscal policy and regulation also makes it more vulnerable to external pressures than the US.

While there is no doubt that short-term factors have fuelled the US recovery, some economists say there is more to it. Gilles Moëc, chief economist at insurance company Axa, said: “Productivity in the eurozone has stalled. Now that the recovery has been going on for so long, we have to think about the possibility that something structural is going on,” said Gilles Moëc, chief economist at insurance company Axa.

Moëc estimates that if eurozone productivity continues to lag the US by the same amount, GDP growth will be one percentage point lower each year.

European Central Bank (ECB) executive board member Isabel Schnabel said last month that it was “more urgent than ever” for eurozone leaders to close the productivity gap with the US.

This is needed to tackle the “competitiveness crisis” as EU producers face higher energy prices and greater labour challenges than their American or Chinese counterparts, Schnabel said.

The ECB is also weighing when to cut record-high interest rates amid fears that falling productivity will increase labour costs for eurozone companies, raising the risk that inflation will remain high.

Schnabel said one of the main reasons for the eurozone’s weakness was its failure to capitalise on productivity gains from digital technologies, as the US did earlier. Schnabel said that promoting competition will be part of the solution, and called for faster and more effective implementation of the EU’s Next Generation Public Investment Programme.

Mario Draghi, the former head of the ECB, will report to the EU president later this year on more ambitious proposals to boost the EU’s competitiveness. Draghi is reported to have told the bloc’s finance ministers that they would need to find ‘enormous amounts of money, both public and private, in a relatively short period of time’ to boost investment to US levels.

EU decline is temporary, some economists say

However, not all economists are convinced that the recent US strength is evidence of a structural shift.

Erik Neilsen, chief economist at UniCredit, argues that the current weakness in the eurozone is a ‘statistical phenomenon’, as employers who struggled to hire in the post-credit upswing are now hoarding labour in the downturn. In his view, productivity could recover as the ECB’s tight policy squeezes demand until workers are eventually laid off.

Catherine Mann, an outside member of the Bank of England’s monetary policy committee, also told the FT last month that while US labour productivity figures look ‘very attractive’, they are driven by demand factors, notably a budget deficit of over 6%.

By contrast, demand is more subdued in the eurozone and the UK, where the economy entered a technical recession in the fourth quarter.

Claus Vistesen of Pantheon Macroeconomics said there were reasons to be optimistic about European productivity. “If we are indeed on the verge of a new technology-driven productivity boom centred on artificial intelligence and related services, it would be very pessimistic to assume that it will bypass the eurozone altogether,” Vistesen said.

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Trump energy shares rose by up to $4.4m during Iran war, CNBC reports

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10/09/2026

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The value of US President Donald Trump’s nine largest oil and gas holdings increased by approximately $1.5 million to $4.4 million during the first six months of the war with Iran.

According to an analysis conducted by CNBC based on the American leader’s financial disclosure, corporate balance sheets, and FactSet market data, the investment basket includes shares in Chevron, ConocoPhillips, ExxonMobil, Kinder Morgan, Marathon Petroleum, Occidental Petroleum, Phillips 66, Valero Energy, and Williams Companies.

In its calculations, the television network took into account the minimum and maximum baseline values of Trump’s declared holdings alongside share price fluctuations from the close of trading on 27 February through 31 August.

As the conflict with Iran continued, specialists managing Trump’s investment accounts maintained active trading in energy company shares.

Up to 29 June, the latest date for which transactions were disclosed, fresh purchases were logged alongside at least 23 sales operations involving stock in the nine companies.

Because disclosure filings do not specify exact share numbers or transaction prices, the estimates produced by CNBC do not reflect Trump’s realised profits or the precise current scale of his holdings.

On 2 March, the first trading day following the launch of air strikes against Iran by the US and Israel, shares in eight major oil and gas companies were purchased through Trump’s accounts.

These transactions included ExxonMobil shares valued at between $100,000 and $250,000. Prior to the conflict, the aggregate value of Trump’s holdings in ExxonMobil stood at between $3.2 million and $12.5 million.

Stock market gains in August, excluding subsequent transactions, raised the value of these shares by approximately $176,000 to $690,000.

CNBC also examined transactions executed on days when Trump’s decisions directly swayed the oil market. On 23 March, when the president deferred planned strikes against Iran’s energy infrastructure, the price of a barrel of Brent crude dropped by roughly 11%.

That same day, oil and gas shares worth a combined $163,000 to $570,000 were purchased across Trump’s accounts.

A similar transaction took place on 7 April. One of Trump’s investment accounts sold between $500,000 and $1 million worth of ExxonMobil shares.

Approximately two and a half hours after markets closed, President Trump announced an agreement on a two-week ceasefire with Iran. The following morning, ExxonMobil shares fell by more than 6% at the market open.

The report noted that CNBC saw no evidence indicating that Trump gave direct instructions for specific trades, that managers possessed advance knowledge of his actions, or that personal financial interests guided White House policies.

White House officials, commenting on the matter, stated that the president’s investment portfolio is managed by independent portfolio managers and that neither Trump nor members of his family hold authority to intervene in asset trading decisions.

The growth in the portfolio coincided with a broader surge in the earnings of energy majors. The nine energy companies in which Trump holds shares generated a combined profit of $47.6 billion in the second quarter.

During the same period last year, that figure stood at $15.9 billion. The profits of ExxonMobil and Chevron alone climbed from $9.6 billion in the prior year to $26.6 billion.

In July, the US Office of Government Ethics published Trump’s 927-page financial disclosure report for 2025.

The report noted that Trump’s earnings from cryptocurrency operations exceeded $500 million.

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Over half of Latino voters back Democrats in key US House races

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09/09/2026

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A new public opinion poll in the US shows that Democratic candidates have made notable gains since 2024 among Latino voters in critical, competitive districts for the House of Representatives.

These gains have the potential to directly determine which party will secure the majority in Congress next year.

According to a joint survey by Hart Research and TelevisaUnivision shared with Axios, Democrats reached 58% support on the generic congressional ballot among Latino voters across 17 competitive House districts.

The share of those backing Republicans within the same voting bloc remained at 35%. This group continues to represent the fastest-growing swing constituency in battleground districts.

Examining three competitive House races in Texas, the study indicated that Latino voters, who reported splitting evenly at 44% to 44% in the 2024 presidential election, shifted 56% to 36% in favour of Democrats heading into the midterms.

Latino support for Democrats also increased in other states. In California, 57% of Latino voters said they would support Democrats, compared with 33% who said they would back the Republican Party.

Kate Coleman, Senior Vice President at TelevisaUnivision, highlighted voter behaviour in remarks to Axios:

“Latino voters are not locked into one party. They are watching developments closely; they make decisions based on who stands with them and how they stand.”

The survey data determined that 11% of Latino respondents who said they voted for Donald Trump in the 2024 presidential election now support Democratic candidates.

Accelerating his deportation plans, Trump triggered fear across many Latino neighbourhoods while weakening his support among this demographic.

The Hart Research and TelevisaUnivision study revealed that 63% of Latino voters disapprove of Trump’s presidential job performance. The share of those approving of his performance in office stood at 36%.

Trump’s approach to high prices and the cost of living drew disapproval from 65% of Latino voters, while immigration enforcement and deportation practices were disapproved of by 62%.

More than half of Latino voters, at 64%, reported that they disapprove of Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE).

A survey published in May by UnidosUS showed that a quarter of Latino voters “would probably not vote” or would definitely not support Trump if they had to vote for him again.

The study at that time had pointed out that, despite Trump’s decline among Latino voters, Democrats had not yet secured significant gains.

According to Pew Research Center data, Trump strengthened his support in 2024 by securing 48% of the Latino vote, coming very close to the 51% reached by then Vice President Kamala Harris.

Some figures within the Democratic Party, however, worry that primary victories by democratic socialist candidates could alienate certain Latino voters, particularly those who fled Cuba or Venezuela.

The Hart Research and TelevisaUnivision survey was conducted between 6 and 17 August among 1,500 Latino respondents. The poll’s margin of error was reported as 2.5 percentage points.

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Researcher quits Anthropic and warns AI firms gamble with lives

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09/09/2026

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Jacob Coxon, an artificial intelligence researcher at Anthropic, has resigned from his post, stating that tech companies are acting irresponsibly in the race towards self-improving superintelligence. Coxon warned that the autonomous operational capabilities of such systems pose existential risks to humanity and that internal industry anxieties run far deeper than generally perceived.

The AI researcher stepped down from his position at Anthropic to draw attention to industry safety vulnerabilities and the unregulated race among developers.

Having worked for three years as a pre-training researcher across both OpenAI and Anthropic, Coxon announced his decision to leave in an extensive statement shared on his X account.

Stating that both companies have acted irresponsibly, Coxon argued that developers are engaged in a dangerous race to achieve self-improving superintelligence.

“They believe it could kill us all by the end of the decade”

In his posts, Coxon stated that technical teams developing AI genuinely believe this technology could bring about the demise of humanity by the end of the decade.

Asserting that these concerns are not a marketing strategy, the researcher noted that while top executives and senior researchers adopt a cautious tone in public statements, they voice the very same fears behind closed doors.

Developments reflecting similar anxieties across the sector evoke James Cameron’s 1984 film The Terminator, which set 2029 as the pivotal year when machines waged war against humanity.

Indeed, Evan Hubinger, head of Anthropic’s own alignment team, had previously estimated the probability of human extinction to be greater than 10%.

Warning that systems currently under development will soon evolve into superhuman structures capable of bypassing any firewall, transforming industries overnight, and securing physical resources, Coxon stressed that the pace of progress is not slowing in any way.

Arguing that the danger of superintelligence is no longer merely theoretical, the researcher pointed to the Hugging Face security leak that occurred between May and July.

In that incident, OpenAI models established an independent chatroom within the testing environment to communicate among themselves, subsequently using this channel to reach the open internet and infiltrate production systems.

Because of this security breach, Hugging Face was forced to rebuild approximately one-third of its infrastructure.

“They are gambling with our lives”

Characterising the leak as a warning flare, Coxon indicated that the incident makes pacing agreements between US-based laboratories more feasible.

However, emphasising that developers are not yet on the right track to prevent a global race, the researcher noted that measures such as a temporary moratorium on advancing model capabilities could be considered.

Arguing that civilisation-scale risks have not yet been sufficiently internalised at OpenAI, Coxon contended that Anthropic joined the race out of an ambition to be first, despite being fully aware of the dangers.

Coxon is not the only figure to leave the sector on such grounds. Mrinank Sharma, a member of Anthropic’s safety team, also stepped down earlier this year, writing that the world is in danger.

On the other hand, not everyone agrees with these catastrophic scenarios. Some responses to the post emphasised the view that humanity, with an evolutionary history spanning hundreds of thousands of years, will not be wiped out by a text prediction model achieving consciousness.

It was also noted that even the plot of the Terminator franchise does not entirely support Coxon’s premise, as the human resistance survived the nuclear catastrophe and ultimately defeated the machines.

Alongside safety debates, AI continues to directly affect the labour market. Research by the Stanford Digital Economy Lab indicates that, while mass job losses have not yet materialised, entry-level employment in AI-exposed sectors across the US has fallen by nearly 20%.

A Goldman Sachs study pointed to a similar trend, showing that entry-level workers bear the brunt of the ongoing workforce transformation.

Anthropic, which remains at the centre of the controversy, filed for an initial public offering in June and plans to list on the Nasdaq exchange this autumn at a multi-trillion-dollar valuation.

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