Trump, Biden close to rematch with 'Super Tuesday' wins

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Good morning. Donald Trump easily won nearly every state holding Republican primaries on Super Tuesday, a night that nearly secured him the party's presidential nomination to face Joe Biden in November.

As of 11:30 p.m. ET, Trump had won 12 of 15 states in Super Tuesday voting, a key date on the primary calendar. The former president's dominance – which included wins in California and Texas, the night's biggest prize – will put more pressure on his chief rival, Nikki Haley, to Give up the campaign.

Trump is expected to approach the 1,215 delegates to the Republican National Convention in July to determine the party's nomination, but not cross that threshold until later this month.

Meanwhile, Biden has dominated the Democratic primary in every state that has voted so far, overcoming challenges from Dean Phillips and Marianne Williamson. Read our Super Tuesday coverage.

• Instant insights: If we know anything about American politics in the Trump era, it's that pollsters are almost always wrong, writes Peter Spiegel. This time is no exception.

• Live results: Please follow our state-by-state primary election guide.

• Swing state: The November election will almost certainly be a rematch between Joe Biden and Donald Trump and will likely be decided in just six key states.

A landmark year for democracy, join the FT’s Washington correspondents Stef Chavez Giving you an essential guide to the most consequential election twists and turns in decades.Sign up for the US Election Countdown newsletter here.

Here's what else I'm focusing on today:

• European Union: The centre-right European People's Party, which leads opinion polls in June's EU elections, begins its congress in Bucharest, where European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen will be named as its candidate.

• Economic data: S&P Global released the UK construction purchasing managers' index for February, and Germany released trade balance data for January. The Bank of Canada announces its interest rate decision.

• result: AIB Group, Breedon, Capita, CLS Holdings, ConvaTec, Ibstock, Legal & General, Nichols, Quilter, Rathbones, Spirent Communications and Tullow Oil reported full-year results. Galliford Try and Ricardo reported half-year earnings, and DS Smith issued a trading update.

Five more popular stories

1. UK Chancellor of the Exchequer Jeremy Hunt will make a £10 billion personal tax cut the centerpiece of his budget on Wednesday, It would also see him abolish colonial-era “non-dom” institutions and provide tax breaks for investors in British companies. Conservative MPs hope Hunt can convince voters he has a plan to lift Britain out of recession, boost growth and cut taxes ahead of a general election later this year.

• High income earners: Disposable incomes of the top third of households are expected to fall by more than 6% in this parliament, according to a think tank.

• Business obstacles: Directors of smaller companies have expressed concerns about rising interest rates, labor shortages and difficulties in obtaining tax relief.

• Budget Q&A: Consumer editor Claer Barrett, economics commentator Chris Giles and Blick Rothenberg's Nimesh Shah are on hand to answer your questions.

2. Russia is actively restarting its espionage war with the West. A phone call released by Moscow in which senior German air force officers discussed sending cruise missiles to Ukraine is just the latest chilling example. It seems like almost every week another covert operation comes to light, showing the extent of Russian intelligence's penetration into Europe.

3. Exclusive report: EG Group is in talks to sell some of its UK assets to billionaire co-founder Zuber Issa, The company told investors the move was an effort to reduce the debt load on its gas station empire. The group is jointly owned by brothers Mohsin and Zuber Issa and private equity firm TDR Capital. The group told investors it “continues to be in active discussions with Zuber to divest certain assets in the UK and Ireland” and plans to do so “in the near term”.

4. Exclusive report: PwC removes three senior partners from management positions and disqualifies one partner from participating in U.S. business operations after it was discovered they had violated leadership election rules. The Big Four found “serious violations” of campaign rules and company policies by front-runner Neil Dahl and his allies, according to people familiar with the matter.

5. China has revealed little about how much money it will actually invest in the People's Liberation Army. While the official budget will increase by 7.2% this year, experts believe that figure masks a larger increase in military capabilities as leader Xi Jinping seeks to transform the People's Liberation Army into a more capable military while reducing the cost of weapons procurement.

news depth

Pinduoduo, the Chinese owner of e-commerce site Temu, aims for nothing less than to change the way the world shops: a faster, leaner, cheaper version of Amazon, expanding from China to 49 countries in less than two years . But why are U.S. investors so confident in an opaque company whose financial statements appear to lack much pattern or explanation and whose operations, management, auditors and regulators are located in distant, unreachable jurisdictions? ?

We are also reading and listening. . .

Chart of the day

Despite Bitcoin's recent surge, liquidity for the cryptocurrency industry's most famous token has yet to recover. According to data shared by data provider CCData, the liquidity of the top 21 centralized exchanges is still well below the level of the same period last year.

Take a break from the news

Refik Anadol watches Ridley Scott's 1982 neo-noir classic blade runner When I was young. A key scene between the film's robot protagonists imprints the Turkish artist's life's work: exploring the seemingly limitless realm of what machines imbued with “deep learning” can do with artifacts of personal and collective memory.

Other contributions by Benjamin William and Gordon Smith