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Graphic Truth: G7 vs BRICS, who has more economic clout?
The G7 countries – the US, UK, Canada, Germany, France, Italy and Japan – will convene this weekend in Kananaskis, a rural town in the mountains of Alberta, Canada. High on the meeting’s agenda are tariffs, artificial intelligence, and international security, with special focus on Russian sanctions and Israel’s recent attacks on Iran.
While the G7 was originally formed as an informal grouping of the world’s wealthiest democracies, the BRICS – composed of Brazil, Russia, India, China, South Africa – have sought to challenge their dominance of the global agenda.
Here’s a look at how the share of the global economy held by G7 and BRICS nations has evolved over time.
Detainees stand behind a fence at the Bluebonnet Detention Facility, where Venezuelans at the center of a Supreme Court ruling on deportation are held, in Anson, Texas, U.S. April 22, 2025.
Hard Numbers: SCOTUS removes protections for Venezuelans, France to build overseas prison, Rice prices soak Japan’s PM, US borrowing costs rise
350,000: The US Supreme Court ruled on Monday that the Trump administration can end temporary deportation protections for nearly 350,000 Venezuelans, making them vulnerable to mass deportation.
45 million: After a series of attacks on prison workers, France plans to build a new high-security prison in French Guiana, an overseas department of France which borders Brazil. The $45 million facility, meant to hold drug traffickers and radical Islamists, could open as soon as 2028, and will be located deep in the Amazon jungle.
27.4: With upper house elections approaching, Japan’s current government is facing its lowest approval ratings yet, as support for Prime Minister Shigeru Ishiba’s cabinet has fallen to 27.4%. Shigeru is blamed in part for soaring rice prices, which have doubled over the last year.
5.03: On Monday, US long-term borrowing costs edged up to 5.03%, the highest level since late 2023. The increase reflects the loss of the country’s triple-A credit rating, and concerns that Donald Trump’s major tax and budget bill will plunge the US government into even further debt.
French President Emmanuel Macron talks with Syrian President Ahmed al-Sharaa as they arrive to attend a joint press conference after a meeting at the Elysee Palace in Paris, France, on May 7, 2025.
Syria’s president visits France, and chats (indirectly) with Israel
Syria’s interim president Ahmed al-Sharaa, the former jihadist whose forces overthrew the dictatorship of Bashar al-Assad last December, met on Wednesday with French President Emmanuel Macron. It was his first trip to Europe.
The upshot: The French president said he would push for the lifting of EU sanctions – which have been in place since 2011 – if al-Sharaa continued on a path of reform and reconstruction that respected the rights of Syria’s religious minorities. He said he’d also lobby the US to follow suit.
The goal: France, with regional players Saudi Arabia, Qatar, and Turkey, favors swift relief from Western sanctions against Syria to speed the rebuilding of a country wrecked by civil war and mass emigration.
But the US has been more cautious, giving Damascus a list of conditions for sanctions removal that include icing out Iran, expelling Palestinian groups, and giving the American military a free hand in Syria.
The bombshell: During the meeting, Al-Sharaa revealed Syria has been holding indirect security talks with Israel. That’s a big deal: since Assad’s fall, Israel has bombed Syrian military sites, expanded a “buffer zone” into the country, and conducted airstrikes on behalf of Syria’s Druze minority.
Any prospect of an accord with Israel – which is deeply suspicious of Damascus’ intentions – would significantly improve Syria’s prospects of stability and prosperity.The letters "DDPF" are seen tagged on a wall of the Aix-Luynes Penitentiary Center in Aix-en-Provence, France, on April 15, 2025.
HARD NUMBERS: Terror hits French prisons, UK court defines "woman", Donald dulls diamonds, Wall Street mints money from chaos, India charges Gandhis with money laundering, Protests erupt in Tunisia
6: At least six French prisons have faced attacks from gunmen and arsonists this week in what authorities say were acts of terrorism. No one has claimed responsibility for the incidents, although several featured graffiti of the letters “DDPF,” an acronym for “French Prisoners’ Rights.” The attacks come as the government tries to stamp out rising drug violence – cocaine imports to Europe are blowing through records.
5: In a ruling sure to echo into culture wars about gender around the world, five judges of the UK Supreme Court on Wednesday ruled unanimously that, under the country’s anti-discrimination laws, the term “woman” refers only to a person born biologically female. The ruling was seen as a blow for trans rights activists, though the court stressed that it did not remove protections under other laws for trans people. The case stemmed from a dispute in Scotland over a law that required 50% female representation on the boards of public companies.
1/7: US President Donald Trump is a well known lover of all things gold, but his policies are now dulling the luster of another luxury jewel: diamonds. Shipments of the precious stones through Antwerp, a major hub, have fallen to just one seventh of normal levels since Trump began slapping tariffs on most of the world. The highly-globalized diamond industry includes mines in Africa, Asia, and Canada, polishing centers in India, traders in Europe and the Middle East, and – crucially – certifiers in the US. Tariff uncertainty has thrown a wrench into all of that, right as the industry is already suffering from competition with lab-grown gemstones.
37 billion: Some potential buyers of diamonds now have some extra cash to burn, as Wall Street’s biggest banks clocked $37bn in trading revenues in the first quarter of this year. Why? The wild, Trump-induced gyrations of the stock market created huge volatility, handing smart traders an opportunity to find an angle – including US Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene (R-GA), who has drawn fire over the timing of her own recent stock jockeying.
300 million: Authorities in India have charged the opposition Congress party leader Rahul Gandhi and his mother Sonia with money laundering, alleging that they used a shell company to illegally take control of properties worth more than $300 million. The Congress party said the probe, which began in 2022, is a “vendetta” by Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s ruling Bharatiya Janata Party.
3: Protests erupted in Tunisia on Tuesday after the collapse of a school wall in the town of Mazzouna killed three students on Monday. Several hundred protesters gathered both in Mazzouna and in the capital, Tunis, accusing the government of negligence and incompetence. This is no small thing in a country that tightly polices dissent. Keep an eye on how the government responds – this is, after all, a place where a single exasperated street vendor once sparked a region-wide revolution.
Marine Le Pen spoke at a support rally organized in Paris on Sunday.
Le Pen supporters protest her electoral ban in Paris
Approximately 15,000 supporters of France’s far right gathered at Place Vauban in Paris on Sunday to support Marine Le Pen, leader of the National Rally party. The three-time presidential candidate was recently convicted of embezzling European Union funds to pay staff, resulting in a five-year ban on holding public office, effectively barring her from France’s 2027 presidential election.
The event was described by French media as more of a campaign launch than a protest. Jordan Bardella, the 29-year-old president of the National Rally and Le Pen’s protégé, delivered a fiery speech accusing the judiciary of creating “a system determined to crush dissent,” while across the Seine, a small counter demonstration called for “No Trumpism in France.”
In a video address to an Italian far-right party before the protest, Le Pen invoked the legacy of American civil rights leader Martin Luther King Jr. as the inspiration for her “nonviolent, democratic struggle” against what she calls a politically motivated “witch hunt.” At the protest, she declared her intention to appeal the ruling, with a decision expected by summer 2026.
The timing of Le Pen’s appeal is critical for the future of France’s nationalist party. If her conviction and ban are upheld, she will be unable to run for president in 2027. While Bardella is popular, he does not have as devoted a following as Le Pen, and his youth and inexperience could work against him.National Rally leader Marine Le Pen poses prior to an interview on the evening news broadcast of French TV channel TF1, in Boulogne-Billancourt, outside Paris, France, on March 31, 2025.
Can France’s Marine Le Pen run again?
National Rally leader Marine Le Pen was found guilty by a French court on Monday for embezzling European Parliament funds. She was sentenced to four years (with two years suspended and the remainder under house arrest with electronic monitoring) and faces a five-year ban from running for public office.
Coup de grâce? Le Pen shared her anger with French voters. “Like you, I’m scandalized, indignant, but this indignation, this feeling of injustice, is an additional push to the fight that I fight for [the voters],” she said on French television Monday night.
Le Pen’s lawyer said she will appeal the decision, which will likely lead to a retrial in 2026 — months before the 2027 presidential election. Le Pen can also petition the Constitutional Council to review her case and ultimately decide her eligibility. Last week, this court ruled that local politicians can be barred from office immediately if they are convicted of a crime — but this won’t apply to national figures like the National Rally’s longtime leader.
“Le Pen will now seek to make her appeal explicitly political, arguing before the Constitutional Council that she is too important a politician to ban and that doing so would be an affront to French democracy,” said Rahman. Even so, her route back to eligibility won’t be easy.
Next in line. If Le Pen is ultimately barred from running, National Rally President Jordan Bardella would be the most likely candidate to succeed her. The clean-shaven millennial, who grew up in the Paris suburbs, has tried to expand the party’s tent by courting younger voters and distancing the party from Le Pen’s father, the Holocaust-denying founder of National Rally.
Will Marine Le Pen's conviction really keep her out of French politics?
Ian Bremmer's Quick Take: A Quick Take to kick off your week. Turning to France where Marine Le Pen, who has long been the leader of the National Front, now renamed National Rally Party, and principal contender her party to win French elections in 2027, which would be an absolute turning point in French elections, as meaningful for France as Trump's second win in 2024 in the United States, has been found guilty in a criminal court in France of embezzlement charges up to $500,000 directly and millions of dollars in terms of mishandling the way European funds were being used for staffers, including her sister and her best friend and a bodyguard. Not a political case at all, actually just a criminal court. Nobody arguing that the judge is particularly politicized here. And while two of the years of the jail term's suspended, the first two years, she has to wear an ankle bracelet. So we'll probably get a video of that real soon. I'm sure it'll be fashionable, since it's France.
But the point is, this would prevent her from running in 2027. And that would mean that Bardella, who is number two essentially in that party, all of 29 years old, nowhere near as popular as Le Pen and would completely tank the ability of the National Rally to win, would become the candidate. It is too early to say that this ban is going to stand up. She has an appeals process. She can bring it to the French equivalent of the Supreme Court, a constitutional counsel, to answer what'll be called a priority question of whether her immediate five-year ban from politics before her appeals against the conviction can stand as valid. And there's a very good argument that has been made in the plaintiff's favor in recent cases that this would not stand. And that while her appeals are going on, she would still be eligible to run, and indeed, she'd be able to go through this appeals process through 2027.
So what now looks like and is being reported in the English language press as she's being thrown out of politics probably isn't going to stand. So in other words, Le Pen out for now. Le Pen probably back soon. And France, in 2027, a really significant, maybe watershed moment from where European politics are going to go. Because if you look at politics right now, you have Friedrich Merz, probably shortly after Easter going to be putting together his grand coalition government, very strongly pro-Europe, very centrist government. You have Meloni, who certainly has a good relationship with Trump, but nonetheless, very strongly pro-EU and very much wanting to act as a bridge to support the EU in using her relations in the United States to be effective in that regard. Macron same, and even Keir Starmer in the UK, post-Brexit, yes, but wanting to be seen as a European leader. Hence taking the lead with Macron in all of these Ukraine summits. That's for now.
But as we look forward to what politics in 2027, '28, '29 look like in Europe, we could easily see that in Germany, suddenly Alternative für Deutschland could do better. Especially if the economy is not doing well. And could force the Germans to be in a position where they would have to enter a coalition with them. In France, very much the National Rally Party and Le Pen still in contention. In the UK, the Reform Party in contention too. So the end of Trump's term for Europe and the transatlantic relationships looks radically different than the beginning of Trump's term. And today's news headlines on France are a blip, not a structural shift. Watch this space as Le Pen is still very relevant indeed. That's it from me, and I'll talk to you all real soon.
France puts the AI in laissez-faire
France positioned itself as a global leader in artificial intelligence at last week’s AI Action Summit in Paris, but the gathering revealed a country more focused on attracting investment than leading Europe's approach to artificial intelligence regulation.
The summit, which drew global leaders and technology executives from around the world on Feb. 10-11, showcased France’s shift away from Europe’s traditionally strict tech regulation. French President Emmanuel Macron announced $113 billion in domestic AI investment while calling for simpler rules and faster development — a stark contrast to the EU’s landmark AI Act, which is gradually taking effect across the continent.
Esprit d’innovation
This pivot toward a business-friendly approach has been building since late 2023, when France tried unsuccessfully to water down provisions in the EU’s AI Act to help domestic firms like Mistral AI, the $6 billion Paris-based startup behind the chatbot Le Chat.
“France sees an opportunity to improve its sluggish economy via the development and promotion of domestic AI services and products,” said Mark Scott, senior fellow at the Atlantic Council’s Digital Forensic Research Lab. “Where France does stand apart from others is its lip service to the need for some AI rules, but only in ways that, inevitably, support French companies to compete on the global stage.”
Nuclear power play
France does have unique advantages in its AI: plentiful nuclear power, tons of foreign investment, and established research centers from Silicon Valley tech giants Alphabet and Meta. The country plans to dedicate up to 10 gigawatts of nuclear power to a domestic AI computing facility by 2030 and struck deals this month with both the United Arab Emirates and the Canadian energy company Brookfield.
About 70% of France’s electricity comes from nuclear — a clean energy source that’s become critical to the long-term vision of AI companies like Amazon, Google, and Microsoft.
France vs. the EU
But critics say France’s self-promotion undermines broader European efforts. “While the previous European Commission focused on oversight and regulation, the new cohort appears to follow an entirely different strategy,” said Mia Hoffman, a research fellow at Georgetown University’s Center for Security and Emerging Technology. She warned that EU leaders under the second Ursula von der Leyen-led Commission, which began in September 2024, are “buying into the regulation vs. innovation narrative that dominates technology policy debates in the US.”
The summit itself reflected these tensions. “It looked more like a self-promotion campaign by France to attract talent, infrastructure, and investments, rather than a high-level international summit,” said Jessica Galissaire of the French think tank Renaissance Numérique. She argued that AI leadership “should be an objective for the EU and not member states taken individually.”
This France-first approach marks a significant departure from a more united European tech policy, suggesting France may be more interested in competing with the US and China as a player on the world stage than in strengthening Europe’s collective position in AI development.