First economic: The US dollar is down 5% over the last six months against a basket of currencies. And over the past year, it’s lost 9.6%. The biggest winner against a dollar has been the euro which has gone up 13% however, which truly is a win for Europe because it makes their natural gas […]
Trade
I don’t have much time today as I am travelling a lot in the next few days for various work commitments. But recently I did a podcast for Real Progressives in the US about trade and the external economy. I started the discussion with an interesting quote that I will reproduce here. Regular readers will…
Australia’s deputy Prime Minister, Richard Marles (yep, him), has pulled off a successful trip to the United States after managing to negotiate a tariff exemption for Australian made couches, with US Vice President, JD Vance. ”JD loved the Australian made... Read More ›
So, Trump has decided to raise tariffs on India to 50% (who knows if he actually will), over their imports of Russian oil. Meanwhile: Senators Lindsey Graham, a South Carolina Republican, and Connecticut Democrat Richard Blumenthal are the lead sponsors of a bipartisan bill which would impose primary and secondary sanctions against Russia and entities […]
This is a complete capitulation: 15% tariffs on EU goods, 0% on US goods EU to buy 750 billion dollars in LNG over the next 3 years (US LNG is more expensive than alternatives) 600 billion EU investment in the US 50% tariff on steel and aluminum to the US stays in place A commitment […]
The US-EU trade deal is a "hopelessly one-sided" agreement, which will ultimately harm the economy on both sides of the Atlantic, argues Simon Nixon
Campaigners warn that it risks creating a system of “corporate courts”
Soon after the US President announced – Liberation Day tariffs – I wrote this blog post – US government is pinning its tariff hopes on some unlikely to be realised assumptions (April 7, 2025) – to help readers understand what logic there was, if any, in the decision by the American government to impose wide-ranging…
It’s obviously becoming difficult to keep track of where the US government policy is on any particular day. Last week, it was ‘Liberation Day’, which included tariffs being imposed on remote penguin colonies in the back of nowhere, then Musk labelling the Trump’s trade adviser ‘dumber than a sack of bricks’, then tariffs on Chinese…
The Prime Minister's attempts to embrace Trump-style rhetoric, while rejecting everything that rhetoric implies, risks making him look ridiculous, argues Adam Bienkov