New Target | NATO wants European allies and Canada to increase their stocks of weaponry and equipment by about 30%, we're told, part of new military capability targets it aims to agree on in June. Reaching these new targets won't require much additional spending from the US, but the financial effort for the others will be massive. No Boom | European countries have spent the last three years funneling their munitions into Ukraine. That helped Kyiv fight back against Russia's invasion, but has exhausted the continent's reserves of gunpowder, TNT and other crucial supplies. As the EU gears up for rearmament, producers of those materials are scrambling to increase output. Tariff Assessment | Trump has been president for just over two months, but for international trade, it's felt much longer. As it starting getting more difficult to keep track of all the tariffs he's imposed — not to mention the ones he's threatening — Bloomberg is forecasting what these tariffs' likely economic effect will be. Booze Reprieve | The EU is delaying its proposed 50% tariff on American whiskey until mid-April rather than April 1, aligning it with broader countermeasures against US steel and aluminum duties. The shift makes room for more talks with US officials — and is giving anxious distillers a glimmer of hope that the worst might not come to pass for them. Coin Clash | European Central Bank Chief Economist Philip Lane said that the EU needs to launch its digital euro — which has been a work in progress since 2021 — to dampen usage of cryptocurrency tokens dubbed "stablecoins." Lane said an EU-issued electronic currency would limit the likelihood of foreign stablecoins catching on across the bloc. |
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