Matthew Lynn is a financial columnist and author of ‘Bust: Greece, The Euro and The Sovereign Debt Crisis’ and ‘The Long Depression: The Slump of 2008 to 2031’
Forget whisky, cars or chemicals. The real blow to the British economy from President Trump’s determination to impose steep tariffs on everything the United States imports from the rest of the world is still to come. Over the next few days, Trump plans to unveil levies on pharmaceuticals. And if the UK can’t find a
A recession now looks even more certain for the United States than it does for the UK. Output has flattened. The chaotic implementation of Donald Trump’s tariff regime has left businesses bewildered. And consumers will soon be facing huge price rises. Of course, the States might well emerge in better shape at the end of
There will be some stirring speeches about saving jobs. There will be lots of grand rhetoric about securing a great British industry. Who knows, some of the more mischievous Labour backbenchers may even break out into a chorus on the Red Flag. Parliament will vote on Saturday in favour of an emergency bill that will
Donald Trump has peered into the abyss. The US President watched the Wall Street meltdown and the global trading system (from which America benefits as much as anyone) start to collapse, and he hit pause. The conventional narrative will be that Trump has blinked, but I think he simply got what he wanted. Yesterday’s decision
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This week: Trump’s tariffs – madness or mastermind? ‘Shock tactics’ is the headline of our cover article this week, as deputy editor Freddy Gray reflects on a week that has seen the US President upend the global economic order, with back and forth announcements on reciprocal and retaliatory tariffs. At the time of writing, a
A Harley-Davidson will cost you a little more in France; Florida orange juice will be more expensive in Germany and American soybeans will go up in price everywhere across Europe. The European Union has decided to start taking the fight back to President Trump with a round of retaliatory tariffs. The trouble is, it is
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
The FTSE-100 is up by a couple of hundred points. Germany’s DAX has added 400 points, and in Tokyo the Nikkei 225 rose by 6 per cent overnight. After the wild trading ever since President Trump announced the imposition of huge tariffs on all of America’s major trading partners, some stability appears to have returned
There will be plenty of victims of the crash currently playing out across the global financial markets. A few hedge funds may well fail. The trading desks of the main investment banks will be watching their annual bonuses disappear. And ordinary investors will be nursing some big losses on their investment portfolios. But the most
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
They would restore manufacturing, force trade barriers to be taken down, and allow new industries to be created. There have been various different explanations for why President Trump’s new tariff regime made sense. And yet when they were finally revealed yesterday one point was clear. There was no logic. The tariffs were just weird. The
Council tax is going up. Train fares are rising. Broadband will cost more, and so will electricity and water. April opens with a blizzard of price rises that will make it far harder for everyone to make ends meet, especially if they are on a low income. The one compensation is that the minimum wage
The UK should have been doing everything possible to secure an exemption from Trump’s tariffs. We could have scrapped the digital services tax that is largely levied on the American tech giants. We could have opened our agricultural markets – even to chlorinated chicken. Heck, we could have offered President Trump his own apartment in
If you have had your eye on a bungalow along the Devon coast, a cottage in the New Forest, or a tastefully painted terrace in one of the sea-facing villages in Norfolk, this could be your moment. Many holiday home owners are choosing to sell up to avoid a hike on council taxes. From next
WH Smith is opting for the oldest trick in the corporate playbook. It is changing its name. It might have been better to get some new carpets – or at least to freshen up some of the display counters. As the chain’s high street shops are sold off, they will be rebranded as TG Jones,
It was hardly the message Chancellor Rachel Reeves would have been looking for a day before a Spring Statement which could well make or break her political career. The Governor of the Bank of England, Andrew Bailey, delivered a speech yesterday warning that growth was going to prove very hard over the next five years.
Ahead of last summer’s election, the Labour party made lots of grand promises about how it was going to fix the pothole crisis plaguing Britain’s roads. Finally, eight months on, Keir Starmer’s government has revealed its plan to woo drivers: councils will get an extra £500 million from mid-April to fill in the holes. Yes,
Tesla and its hyper-active boss Elon Musk are having a bad month. On both sides of the Altantic, there have been protests against the ‘Nazi-mobile’ and the ‘Swasti-car’. The electric vehicle (EV) manufacturer’s sales are collapsing across Europe, and its stock is in freefall. On top of all that, its main rival, China’s BYD, has
Even the OECD has finally noticed. The Paris-based policy forum is normally always in favour of higher taxes and more government spending. But the Scottish parliament has clearly pushed even the left-leaning think tanks too far. The OECD has just recommended that MSPs be given training in financial literacy. If the OECD gets its way,
The pound has not collapsed. You can still trade shares, bonds and currencies in the City of London. And inflation, while still high, at least doesn’t come with ‘hyper’ as a prefix, at least not yet. If the Governor of the Bank of England Andrew Bailey wants to celebrate today’s fifth anniversary of taking charge
