Good morning. President Donald Trump’s Middle East tour has already been full of surprises. On Monday, he accepted Qatar’s gift of a plane, despite ethics concerns. And yesterday, he announced a big defence and AI pact with Saudi Arabia, and a surprise end to US sanctions on Syria. Three days to go. How many more surprises are in store?

Unhedged is thrilled to introduce a new team member, Hakyung Kim. Hakyung, a graduate of NYU Stern, is joining us from CNBC, where she covered markets, after stints at The Wall Street Journal and NPR. She already appears likely to join the list of people Rob has hired who turn out to be smarter than he is. Email us: robert.armstrong@ft.com, aiden.reiter@ft.com and hakyung.kim@ft.com.

CPI inflation

The news was most welcome: headline CPI inflation rose just 2.3 per cent in April from a year before, the lowest since early 2021. But as regular readers will know, that’s not how Unhedged likes to look at it. We like to exclude food and energy and look at the month-to-month change annualised. This is a smoother and more timely reading. And on this basis, inflation picked up a bit this month: