President Trump’s attention on trade has largely been focused on China in recent weeks. But there’s a growing sense that he could soon turn his fight to Europe. The European trade commissioner, Cecilia Malmstrom, reportedly warned E.U. trade ministers that they “should brace” for U.S. tariffs on billions of euros worth of European goods over a dispute about Airbus subsidies. New York Times
The bond market is sending powerful signals that there’s economic trouble ahead for the United States economy. They’re powerful enough, in fact, that they’re even rattling the parts of Wall Street that people do talk about. New York Times
Olivier Blanchard, a former chief economist of the IMF, told the annual meeting of the American Economic Association that there were many reasons to doubt the supposed costs of public debt. Since then Jason Furman and Larry Summers of Harvard University, both of whom advised Barack Obama on economics, have written in Foreign Affairs, a journal, that it is time to kill off the “debt obsession”. The Economist
A futures bet gone spectacularly wrong provoked a daylong crisis at one of the clearinghouses that are supposed to be global safeguards. New York Times
Michael Grubb discusses three realities about Brexit that need to be recognised in order to move the process forward. There should be time for a wider debate about what sovereignty means which only a long extension can offer. UCL
The Global Centre—the tale of its construction, its occupants and its evolution is neither a spectacular success nor a catastrophic failure but a long economic struggle, a contest between China’s tremendous potential and the cracks in its foundations. America is only a secondary player in the drama. China, for better and for worse, is writing its own story. The Economist
The dollar has in recent years amassed greater stature as the favored repository for global savings, the paramount refuge in times of crisis and the key form of exchange for commodities like oil. New York Times
Already in 1585, English scientist Thomas Hariot dreamt of the opportunities Atlantic trade would offer to Britain as he strove for his country to break away from continental and Mediterranean trading routes to ensure a profitable future for him and his countrymen. QUARTZ
By addressing Britain’s longstanding concerns over intra-EU migration and its attendant costs, the European Union could both set the stage for a reversal of Brexit and shore up its own long-term stability. Project Syndicate
In most histories of how Americans became so polarized, the Great Inflation of the 1970s is given short shrift. But inflation was as pivotal a factor in our national crackup as Vietnam and Watergate. New York Times
© Stefan P. Schleicher 2024
