PALM BEACH, Florida — Republican Donald Trump claimed victory in the 2024 presidential contest after Fox News projected that he had defeated Democrat Kamala Harris, which would cap a stunning political comeback four years after he left the White House.

“America has given us an unprecedented and powerful mandate,” he said early on Wednesday to a roaring crowd of supporters at the Palm Beach County Convention Center, flanked by his vice presidential running mate, Senator JD Vance, Republican leaders and members of Mr. Trump’s family.

He also spent several minutes praising Elon Musk, the richest man in the world, who pumped some $120 million into backing Trump’s campaign. Mr. Trump has said he will appoint Mr. Musk to lead a government efficiency commission.

Other news outlets had yet to call the race for Mr. Trump, but he appeared on the verge of winning after capturing the battleground states of Pennsylvania, North Carolina and Georgia and holding leads in the other four, according to Edison Research.

Ms. Harris did not speak to her supporters, who had gathered at her alma mater Howard University. Her campaign co-chair, Cedric Richmond, briefly addressed the crowd after midnight, saying Harris would speak publicly on Wednesday.

“We still have votes to count,” he said.

The former president was showing strength across broad swaths of the country, improving on his 2020 performance everywhere from rural areas to urban centers.

Republicans won a U.S. Senate majority after flipping Democratic seats in West Virginia and Ohio. Neither party appeared to have an edge in the fight for control of the House of Representatives where Republicans currently hold a narrow majority.

Mr. Trump went into Election Day with a 50-50 chance of reclaiming the White House, a remarkable turnaround from Jan. 6, 2021, when many pundits pronounced his political career to be over. That day, a mob of his supporters stormed Congress in a violent attempt to overturn the results of the 2020 election.

Mr. Trump picked up more support from Hispanics, traditionally Democratic voters, and among lower-income households that have keenly felt the sting of price rises since the last presidential election in 2020, according to exit polls from Edison.

Mr. Trump won 45% of Hispanic voters nationwide, trailing Harris with 53% but up 13 percentage points from 2020.

About 31% of voters said the economy was their top issue, and they voted for Mr. Trump by a 79%-to-20% margin, according to exit polls. Some 45% of voters across the country said their family’s financial situation was worse off today than four years ago, and they favored Trump 80% to 17%.

Global investors were increasingly pricing in a Trump win late on Tuesday. US stock futures and the dollar pushed higher, while Treasury yields climbed and bitcoin rose — all flagged by analysts and investors as trades that favor a Trump victory.

No matter who won the election, history was in the making. Mr. Trump, 78, the only president to be impeached twice and the first former president to be criminally convicted, would also become the first president to win non-consecutive terms in more than a century and would be the oldest presidential candidate ever elected.

If elected, Ms. Harris, 60, the first female vice-president, would become the first woman, Black woman and South Asian American to win the presidency.

TRUMP OUTPERFORMS 2020
Mr. Trump was earning a bigger share of the vote than he did four years ago in nearly every corner of the country.

By 12:30 a.m. ET, officials had nearly completed their count of ballots in more than 1,600 counties – about half the country — and Mr. Trump’s share was up about 2 percentage points compared to 2020, reflecting a broad if not especially deep shift in Americans’ support for the president they ousted four years ago.

He improved his numbers in suburban counties, rural regions and even some large cities that are historically bastions of Democratic support; in high-income counties and low-income ones; and in places where unemployment was comparatively high and in places where it is now at record lows.

Ms. Harris had banked on big margins among urban and suburban voters, but her support in those places was running well behind President Joseph R. Biden’s in the 2020 election.

Nearly three-quarters of voters said American democracy is under threat, according to the exit polls, underscoring the depth of polarization in a nation where divisions have only grown starker during a fiercely competitive race.

Mr. Trump employed increasingly apocalyptic rhetoric while stoking unfounded fears that the election system cannot be trusted. Ms. Harris warned that a second Trump term would threaten the underpinnings of American democracy.

Hours before polls closed, Mr. Trump claimed on his Truth Social site without evidence that there was “a lot of talk about massive CHEATING” in Philadelphia, echoing his false claims in 2020 that fraud had occurred in large, Democratic-dominated cities. In a subsequent post, he also asserted there was fraud in Detroit.

“I don’t respond to nonsense,” Detroit City Clerk Janice Winfrey told Reuters.

A Philadelphia city commissioner, Seth Bluestein, replied on X, “There is absolutely no truth to this allegation.”

Trump voted earlier near his home in Palm Beach, Florida.

“If I lose an election, if it’s a fair election, I’m gonna be the first one to acknowledge it,” Mr. Trump told reporters.

Millions of Americans waited in orderly lines to cast ballots, with only sporadic disruptions reported across a handful of states, including several non-credible bomb threats that the FBI said appeared to originate from Russian e-mail domains.

Tuesday’s vote capped a dizzying race churned by unprecedented events, including two assassination attempts against Mr. Trump, Mr. Biden’s surprise withdrawal and Ms. Harris’ rapid rise. — Reuters

BEIJING — As Republican Donald Trump claimed victory in the US presidential election, defeating Democrat Kamala Harris, China is bracing for four more years of bitter superpower rivalry over trade, technology and security issues.

Mr. Trump showed strength across broad swathes of the country, earning a bigger share of the vote nationwide than he did four years ago, ballots showed.

Chinese strategists said that while they expected more fiery rhetoric and potentially crippling tariffs from Mr. Trump, some said his isolationist foreign policy could give Beijing a vacuum to expand its global influence.

“Beijing anticipated a close race in the US election. Although Trump’s victory is not China’s preferred outcome and raises concerns, it is not entirely unexpected,” said Tong Zhao, senior fellow at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace.

“The Chinese leadership will likely strive to maintain an appearance of a cordial personal relationship with Trump, while intensifying efforts to project China’s power and strength.”

TRUMP TARIFF THREAT
Mr. Trump has proposed tariffs on Chinese imports in excess of 60% and ending China’s most-favored-nation trading status, and analysts say the prospect of a trade war has rattled China’s leadership.

China sells goods worth more than $400 billion annually to the US and hundreds of billions more in components for products Americans buy from elsewhere.

“Beijing is particularly wary of a potential revival of the trade war under Trump, especially as China currently faces significant internal economic challenges,” said Mr.  Zhao.

“China also expects Trump to accelerate the decoupling of technologies and supply chains, a move that could threaten China’s economic growth and indirectly impact its social and political stability.”

In response, China is likely to intensify its push for greater technological and economic self-sufficiency, while feeling more pressure to bolster economic ties with countries like Russia, he added.

“Going forward, Beijing would likely be drawing up a list of clear bargains and interest tradeoffs that it could float with Washington, in hope that it can focus on its much needed domestic economic concerns whilst Mr. Trump’s attention is occupied elsewhere,” said Brian Wong, assistant professor at the University of Hong Kong who studies grand strategy.

GLOBAL POWER VACUUM
China is likely to shore up ties with the Global South, Europe and Northeast Asian countries in the event of a Trump win, given his “transactional, isolationist, anti-globalist and anti-multilateral foreign policy,” said Mr. Wong.

Chinese President Xi Jinping and Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi reached a rare rapprochement last month, while Beijing has tentatively reached out to the new Japanese administration this autumn following years of strained relations.

“China expects the second Trump administration to further disengage from international agreements and commitments, creating opportunities for China to expand its influence in emerging power vacuums,” Mr. Zhao added.

Mr. Trump has unnerved democratically governed Taiwan by saying it should pay Washington for its defense and that it had taken US semiconductor business.

“The Biden administration applied high-pressure tactics to China on Taiwan, with US troops stationed in Taiwan and even selling weapons to Taiwan… in a huge break with the former Trump administration’s Taiwan policy,” said Shen Dingli, an international relations scholar in Shanghai.

“Trump is not too likely to give Taiwan the same support in future.” — Reuters

MADRID — Damages to businesses in towns hit by floods in eastern Spain could rise to over 10 billion euros, with banks loan exposure to the area worth alone around 20 billion euros ($21.82 billion), representatives for local firms and a Bank of Spain official said on Tuesday.

On Tuesday, the government earmarked around 10.6 billion euros to help victims of some of Europe’s worst flooding in decades. At least 217 people died and more are still unaccounted for.

Spanish banks’ loans to areas worst hit by floods mainly in Valencia region would rise to around 13 billion euros to households and 7 billion euros to companies, said Angel Estrada, the central bank’s head of financial stability.

In total, the central bank identified 23,000 companies with outstanding loans and 472,000 loan holders in those regions.

Of those 150,000 were mortgage contracts on which the government and banks agreed to offer loan moratoriums. Clients will be spared from paying monthly installments for the first three months and just pay interests for an additional nine months on their mortgages.

Estrada said it was important to make sure that those moratoriums would not lead to reclassification of credits that might trigger higher provisions.

Jose Vicente Morata, Chairman of Commerce for Valencia region, said that the damage to businesses in the worst affected area of this region would provisionally rise “well over” 10 billion euros.

Estrada said it was still too early to assess the precise economic impact of the floods though he acknowledged that there had been a more “significant destruction of capital” than during the COVID-19 pandemic.

He said the banking sector would be “able to absorb” any impact, though they had laid bare that climate risks were materializing faster than expected and banks should now focus on measuring accelerating physical risks as well as addressing the transition risks of shifting to a lower carbon economy.

Mirenchu del Valle, chairman of Spain’s UNESPA insurance association, said the Valencia floods would represent Spain’s “most significant damages claim for a climate event,” without putting a figure on it.

A spokesperson for the Economy Ministry, which oversees the insurance sector, declined to provide a figure for the claims so far.

So far, the most costly economic event by floods took place in Bilbao in 1983, when claims rose to more than 821 million euros and 1.08 billion included associated damage for high winds, according to data from the Spanish insurance consortium. — Reuters