Economy

Presumably, some future government will have to reverse the ban on the sale of new petrol and diesel vehicles in Britain. The country quite obviously lacks anything like the necessary charging infrastructure for a wholesale switch to electric for the national vehicle fleet in the foreseeable future. Let alone sufficient generation capacity at peak times. But if or when they do, those future vehicles will now have to be manufactured abroad. The 2030 deadline was first announced by Boris Johnson in 2020, and UK car makers began grandfathering the plant and production lines for new internal combustion engine (ICE) vehicles in the wake of that decision. If the 2030 deadline

Donald Trump’s announcement of huge levies on all the US’s major trading partners has triggered a global stock market meltdown, which may soon be followed by a full-blown recession. Almost no mainstream economist, and certainly none who believes in free markets and free trade, has a good thing to say about Trump’s tariffs. Yet there is a hidden logic behind the policy. It is not as completely brainless as it might appear. In fact, there are six reasons why the tariffs could make sense.  First, they may well be an effective battering ram for taking down tariff and trade barriers globally. No one seriously disputes that the American market is

This week Donald Trump declared ‘Liberation Day,’ unveiling a barrage of tariffs that had been trailed as correcting unfair trade practices overseas. In a theatrical Rose Garden ceremony, the US president presented a table, detailing a slew of new “reciprocal” tariffs targeting nations right across the globe. A sharp market reaction might lead to a change of heart in the White House Traditionally, trade reciprocity implies matching another country’s tariffs tit-for-tat. For instance, if the UK imposes a 10 per cent tax on US chicken, the US would impose the same import tax on British chicken. Many had anticipated that ‘Liberation Day’ would therefore introduce a complex array of tariffs reflecting

As it turned out, the only thing Liberation Day was actually liberating anyone from was their money. In the wake of President Trump’s imposition of a massive round of tariffs on America’s trading partners the stock market has been in freefall. For the moment Trump is ignoring that. But he won’t be able to forever – a bear market is too damning a verdict on his presidency.  You can’t ‘make America great again’ in a bear market Investors, to put it mildly, took one look at the latest round of tariffs, and dumped equities as fast as possible. In the wake of the tariffs announcement, the Dow Jones Industrial Average plunged

The reactions to Donald Trump’s tariffs between London and Brussels could not be more different. Where Keir Starmer was conciliatory, stressing that his government still hoped to negotiate with the US, European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen was quickly out of the blocks with threats of retaliation, saying that a package of measures was being finalised. It has since emerged that the EU plans to wait four weeks before imposing any retaliatory measures. Nevertheless it does rather expose the difference between the EU and post-Brexit Britain. The EU sees itself as a match for the US, and views Trump’s declaration of trade war as a power game. Britain, on the other

Donald Trump is, at least, a man of his word. Before he won the US election, Trump said that China had ‘really taken advantage of our country’ and vowed to slap punitive tariffs on imports from the People’s Republic. As we have repeatedly seen, Trump carries through on his threats. ‘Liberation Day’ saw China hit with 54 per cent tariffs as payback for what the president deemed unfair policies, the highest rate on any country. Punishing US allies in Asia is not helpful for countering the threat from Beijing That this is part of a wider move against Beijing was made clear this week when, in a leaked memo, US