Under one particularly charitable reading, Donald Trump’s discontent with the global financial status quo, reflected in his administration’s drastic trade policies, is a response to the pressure that a chronically overvalued dollar puts on the competitiveness of US industry. As the prospect of a likely trade war-induced recession shows, tariffs carry large economic costs, including […]
Shortly after becoming president, Vladimir Putin held a now-historic meeting in the Kremlin with Russia’s oligarchs. The deal he put on the table in the summer of 2000 was simple: the country’s economic elite could keep and further cumulate their enormous wealth, more often than not acquired through legally and ethically dubious means, but they […]
The blunt reality is that there will be dwindling appetite and patience in the US Congress – and in the American body politic writ large – to expend increasingly precious funds on behalf of nations that are apparently unwilling to devote the necessary resources or make the necessary changes to be serious and capable partners […]
Last summer’s production of Richard III at Shakespeare’s Globe decided to be ‘brave’. Trump quotes were added to the script. The Duke of Buckingham was sporting a red baseball cap. The cultural resistance was back. Putting aside the cringe, it didn’t even work. Richard III tells the tale of a physically deformed but intellectually cunning […]
So, what happens now? There is general agreement that last Friday’s White House meeting was a disaster. Nothing like that has ever occurred in the Oval Office. It was the sort of way in which Stalin might have treated one of his colleagues, before ordering him to be taken off and shot. The Western Alliance: […]
Since the ‘peace process’ of the 1990s, the St Patrick’s Day event at the White House has become a much-anticipated junket for politicians north and south of the Irish border. This annual celebration of paddywhackery brings traditional enemies together in pursuit of US patronage and cash, while the backdrop of shamrocks and Guinness appeals to […]
In the latest episode of our weekly podcast, The Capitalist: Microsoft’s Satya Nadella says it’s time to separate AI’s real impact from the noise: true success isn’t measured in viral demos but in global GDP growth. So, is AI delivering – or are we buying into a bubble? Meanwhile, Donald Trump’s approval ratings are slipping as […]
Next year will be 20 years since we first published the ‘Bumper Book of Government Waste’. It put public spending under the spotlight, challenged Whitehall and local government to up their ante and encouraged people to hold ministers and budgetholders to better account. It won an Atlas Award in Washington DC in the process, for […]
If you need to hold a summit, Paris comes highly recommended: since the peace conference which produced the Treaty of Versailles in 1919, there have been at least four similar major meetings in the French capital. It was natural enough, then, that European leaders responded to President Emmanuel Macron’s invitation and converged on Paris on […]
Since his inauguration as US President, Donald Trump has not wasted any time upsetting the applecart. Within days, federal aid had been paused to ensure spending matched the administration’s agenda. Further actions include the freeze on hiring federal employees and the creation of the Department of Government Efficiency, otherwise known by its acronym, DOGE. The […]
Donald Trump might take this as a compliment, but he resembles two very different pursuits: Wagner and red-deer stalking in the Scottish highlands. In both cases, nobody is indifferent. Some find themselves addicted: others repelled. The same is true of Trump. His supporters revel in MAGA. His opponents believe that the Oval Office has been […]
The US has imposed a 10% tariff on Chinese goods and a 25% levy on Mexican and Canadian goods will come into force in a month. Tariffs on the EU are also in the pipeline at a rate still to be determined. The governments of the targeted countries are planning retaliatory tariffs against the US, […]
Donald Trump’s inauguration as President of the United States last month was rich in symbolism. One of the most striking images was the parade of ultra-rich technology entrepreneurs who had declared their support for him. Most prominent was Elon Musk, CEO of Tesla and named by Trump as head of the Department of Government Efficiency, […]
With a healthy majority in Parliament, what’s stopping Britain’s Government from enacting the kind of sweeping policy changes we’re seeing in the United States? Michael Binyon from The Times and the National Review Institute’s Dominic Pino share their insights, plus: will tariffs force Putin’s hand in Ukraine? And how can we restore consumer optimism in […]
The effects of Donald Trump’s return to the Oval Office are already being felt at His Majesty’s Treasury. On inauguration day, President Trump signed an executive order instructing his government to ‘notify the OECD [Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development] that any commitments made by the prior administration on behalf of the United States with […]
What a week. Donald Trump has returned to the White House promising a new golden age for America, and issued a blizzard of executive orders that are shaking both America’s domestic order and the international system. In Britain, meanwhile, Rachel Reeves and Keir Starmer have leaned into their pro-growth rhetoric: promising to expand Heathrow, tackle […]
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