Is there no end to the meddling by the Obama administration in the internal affairs of the British people? The latest unwelcome intervention comes from US Trade Representative Michael Froman, who has warned categorically that Britain would be lumped with the likes of China or Brazil and face the same tariff barriers, with no prospect […]
China is a rising economic power, the European Union a declining one. So Britain’s future is best served by hitching its wagon to Beijing rather than to Brussels. As last week’s high-profile visit by Chinese President Xi Jinping shows, Britain can prosper as a global trading power outside the EU. Not so fast. The EU […]
Due to the ongoing crisis in Ukraine, when relations between Russia and Europe continue to deteriorate, the main task today is to help Ukraine to survive as a sovereign nation, i.e. to prevent its potential implosion. Following the House of Lords suggestions made in the EU and Russia: before and beyond the crisis in Ukraine report […]
The EU Remain campaign, Britain Stronger In Europe, launched on Monday 12 October, led by Lord Stuart Rose. The former chairman of Marks & Spencer opened the campaign with a speech on the importance of Britain’s EU membership in which he touched on Brussels’ role in police cooperation, counter-terrorism, consumer prices and our exports to […]
We generally have a good idea about what makes a society rich. The state needs to be secure from internal and external threats. Its political and economic institutions need to be transparent and accountable. At the heart of its economy, there needs to be fair and competitive markets where contracts are enforced, strong infrastructure, a […]
Britain, my friend Dan Hannan laments, does not negotiate her own trade deals. This is perfectly true. As a member of the European Union, the UK has pooled its trade policy with a single market of 500 million people. Dan regards this as a tragedy – but it is in fact a triumph. In order […]
“We export more to Belgium than we do to the whole of China!” Denis MacShane once told me during a debate on leaving the EU, with the air of a man slamming four aces onto the table. “Yes, and that’s precisely our problem,” I replied. “Which has the greater long-term potential?” We’ve been hearing a […]
The current refugee crisis represents a moment of great stress for the European project. A plethora of voices are calling for change, but now is not the time to forsake the freedom of movement enshrined in the Schengen agreement. In the last few months, the surge of refugees, mostly from Syria, Iraq, and Afghanistan, has […]
There is a growing isolationism in the modern GOP. The party is no less hawkish on foreign policy, but there is an increasing suspicious and hostility towards the outside world. This isolationism reached a climax last week, when Governor Scott Walker voiced support for a border fence separating the US and Canada. Isolationist has long […]
It’s all been kicking off in Venezuela this week. President Maduro announced on Monday that he was continuing to ramp up the anti-smuggling drive along the Colombian border. The “state of emergency” he called in August has meant deporting thousands of Colombians, as well as stationing over two thousand troops along the border in Tachira. […]
Sen. Bernie Sanders, the Democratic presidential hopeful, is no fan of free trade. In an interview with Vox, Sanders’ made his anti-trade position clear: “Unfettered free trade has been a disaster for the American people.” He also noted that he voted against all the free trade agreements that were proposed during his time in Congress […]
This is the weekly newsletter from CapX. This week, it has been delivered by Tim Montgomerie, who is producing a report for the Legatum Institute on the reform of capitalism. To receive the newsletter by email every Friday, along with a short daily email of our top five stories, please subscribe here. I’ve just finished reading Arundhati Roy’s […]
1. What has happened? China has stunned financial markets by intervening in global currency markets to force down the price of its currency, the Renminbi, for the second day running. Together with yesterday’s intervention by the People’s Bank of China (PBOK), the Renminbi is now 4% cheaper against the trade-weighted US dollar, after having stabilised at 6.2¥ […]
Can you remember the last time you used a floppy disk? Chances are some of CapX’s younger readers don’t even know that it was a device for sharing files in the prehistoric times before USB flash drives and cloud storage. That’s how antiquated the Information Technology Agreement (ITA) is. Inked in 1996, it’s a global […]
Australia’s Trade Minister Andrew Robb is regularly lauded as one of the most effective performers in the federal government for finalising his “trifecta” of free trade agreements with South Korea, Japan and China – three of our fourth biggest trading partners. And this week Prime Minister Tony Abbott has been out selling an upcoming review […]
The emails have been pouring in for weeks: thousands of them, tens of thousands. The British Left – or a goodly chunk of it, at any rate – doesn’t like the proposed EU-US trade deal, known as the Transatlantic Trade and Investment Partnership, TTIP. It will, say my worried constituents, force governments to contract out […]
Watch or listen to CapX’s weekly podcast ‘The Capitalist’ wherever you get your podcasts.
