The main events by the morning: July 7

• Trump proposed to impose new duties against the countries supporting the BRICS. He wrote about this in Truth Social, stressing that there will be no exceptions. This statement was a reaction to the agenda of the June BRICS summit, where the reforms of international institutions and the geopolitical situation, including the Middle East conflicts, were discussed.

• Ursula von der Leyen risks losing her position as President of the European Commission due to hearings on a vote of no confidence. The vote is linked to allegations of corruption in the procurement of COVID-19 vaccines. Although only 74 out of 720 members of the European Parliament have expressed support for the initiative, the process has nonetheless been initiated. However, the likelihood of the vote passing is low, as the European People's Party and other factions have already expressed their support for von der Leyen.

• The EU fears that the US will stop updating software for its weapons. According to the NYT, we are talking about equipment already purchased by European countries. The reason is uncertainty about Trump's position on NATO and his restrained attitude towards Russia. As a result, some EU countries began to reduce the volume of purchases of American weapons.

• Lavrov: Global debt is out of control, and the United States has reached record levels. Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov said that the situation with public debts is becoming critical: since 2011, the number of countries with high debt levels has almost tripled. Developing economies, he said, are already spending more on debt servicing than on development. In the United States, the national debt has reached a record $37 trillion and continues to grow.

• Economists note the «paradox» of the Russian consumer model. Despite the growth in income, the share of Russians' spending on food has remained virtually unchanged over the past 20 years. This contradicts the «Engel law», according to which, with increasing incomes, the structure of consumption should change towards education, leisure and investment in the quality of life. Experts believe that such stability in costs hinders the development of human capital.