Economy

I was poking at a dessicated branzino at the Union League yesterday, half-listening to a schoolmate drone on about international alternatives, when he mentioned off-hand that the United States and France are gearing up for a trade war. Bordeaux could cost a bomb; brie could break the bank. I dare say, it shook me to my coeur. Thank God it’s not Sancerre season. They’re decorating the club for Christmas, so I worried I was delirious from the smell of brass polish. I excused myself and discreetly logged on to see that, alas, the dreadful news is true. It’s bad enough that they’re banning foie gras in New York, which is as civilized as burning churches. Now the feds are getting in on the act too.

It’s near the witching hour as the wolves begin to howl, the Tasmanian devil spins itself into a frenzy, and the red-eyed tree frog blinks into glass. The zoo is oddly quiet as US commandos (trained in zoology) scale the walls and deploy a well-placed and tiny explosive gum inside the lock to pop open the enclosure. The sleepy giant simply rolls over with dreams of bamboo and blasé dancing in its head. A bearded captain pulls out a black sack and pulls it over the animal’s head as they tranquilize the heavy sleeper — the panda rendition is complete. That’s right, I am proposing kidnapping the American domiciled pandas to expedite an end to the US-China trade war.

It will no doubt be met with furious resistance in parliament and on the streets. There will be an outcry over chlorinated chickens. There will be scare stories about the National Health Service being sold off. And the farmers will be angry at the prospect of the country being flooded with food that is far cheaper than anything they can produce. Even so, assuming the Conservatives win the election, we leave the European Union and Donald Trump wins re-election to the White House (OK, I will agree the hypothetical is doing some heavy lifting in that clause), Britain and the United States are going to attempt a comprehensive free trade agreement. That will be a big deal. America and the UK are, respectively, the biggest and fifth biggest economies in the world.

Early experiences of Uber in London did not encourage me to become a regular user. My first driver thought I wanted to go to Birmingham when the ride had been booked from Clapham to Mayfair. The next was a furious driver who would have seen off Lewis Hamilton at Hyde Park Corner. Call me old-fashioned, but I still prefer the pottering black cab with its opinionated Essex-dweller at the wheel and the possibility of paying in cash. So my own modus operandi is unaffected by Transport for London’s decision not to renew Uber’s license in the capital and I’m not in the least upset about it. OK, life today is all about apps, cashless convenience and the individual’s right to make choices and take risks.

This article is in The Spectator’s November 2019 US edition. Subscribe here. Elizabeth Warren looks like a deadly serious prospect for the Democratic presidential nomination. Bernie Sanders may never make it to that promised land, but there is no question that his spirit is still moving the Democrats toward democratic socialism. The party’s activist base and youth wing grow more anti-capitalist by the month. It’s enough to turn many a libertarian or Chamber of Commerce conservative into a Trump supporter, despite the president’s own defiance of free-market orthodoxy on trade. Yet the president might as well be Milton Friedman compared with some on the right who are, if anything, outflanking the left in their critiques of capitalism.

Of all the 9/11 conspiracy stories, one of the most persistent is the suggestion that al-Qaeda funded its operations by short-selling the shares of airline companies in the days before the attack. Inevitably, airline shares plummeted that day, netting short-sellers vast profits. While there was an increase in short-selling before the attack, no-one has proved one way or the other whether that was history’s most audacious case of insider-dealing or just a reaction to an industry which was already in trouble for purely commercial reasons. But is someone now trying on the same trick with the US-China trade war?

The animosity between the Trump administration and Europe has not yet damaged military relations, but the same can't be said for economic ties. Negotiations for an EU-US free trade agreement, the Transatlantic Trade and Investment Partnership (‘economic NATO,’ as the organization’s former secretary general, Anders Fogh Rasmussen, had called it), have stalled, perhaps permanently. Negotiations are at ‘a stalemate,’ said EU trade commissioner Cecilia Malmström. The Council went a step further, declaring the mandate for the talks to be ‘obsolete and no longer relevant.’ TTIP’s demise, and the frustration it has caused the Americans, might augur well for another possible transatlantic trade deal.

Can Donald Trump weather the spate of bad news that’s coming his way? Trump remains enmeshed in a battle over his prediction that Alabama would be socked by Hurricane Dorian, but what could really upend his presidency is the new report that job creation was a measly 130,000 in August and that the manufacturing industry is taking a hit because of his trade war with China. True to form, Trump is trying to blame someone rather than himself.Last week, he claimed that American businesses are at fault. They’re 'badly run and weak', he claimed. An odd stance for a Republican president to adopt, for sure. Today, he went back to an old reliable, the Federal Reserve, in — what else?

Is Donald Trump bonkers? In the past few days, the notion that Trump is not all there has been picking up steam. His references to what would amount to a divine mandate — 'I am the chosen one' — or eager embrace of his putative status as King of the Jews have prompted more than a little head shaking in the media. Perhaps the most vociferous member of the Trump-as-nutcase brigade is his aggrieved former aide Anthony Scaramucci who most recently likened the president to Rev. Jim Jones. Trump has reciprocated Scaramucci’s concern about his mental health by deeming him, in turn, a 'nut job.' But it is Trump’s actions today that have his detractors sounding fresh alarms. After Federal Reserve chairman Jerome H.

Jay Powell, the Federal Reserve Chairman, has banned any public appearances by any member of the Fed, Cockburn hears. Appearances at conferences have been canceled, all scheduled interviews have been abandoned and any comments on or off the record are outlawed. This unprecedented action is a reflection of two pressures. First, there are growing economic indicators that suggest the US is heading into a recession with the Dow plunging 800 points on Wednesday. Second, relations with the White House have reached a new low. President Trump has pinned the success of his presidency upon a strong economy and his qualifications as a businessman who understands the economy. If a recession takes hold, Trump believes his reputation will be destroyed and his chances of reelection dimmed.

The Federal Trade Commission’s decision to fine Facebook $5 billion for privacy violations is an expensive slap on the wrist that will do little to change anything in what is developing as a titanic struggle between the nation states (governments) and the new market states (technology companies). Across the world, the nation states are struggling to keep pace with technology developments and largely failing. Meanwhile, the nation states are proceeding at breakneck speed to develop a world of their choosing where countries become less and less relevant to the course of our future history. The FTC fined Facebook for a series of ethics and privacy violations and imposed the largest fine in the FTC’s history.

‘We’re holding a gun to our own heads,’ said Sen. John Cornyn in June. He was talking about President Trump’s threat to impose tariffs in order to force Mexico to crack down on illegal immigration into the Unites States. Many congressmen agreed, fearing, as establishment figures are prone to do, that Trump was risking the whole economy for some nebulous border demand. A month later, it seems Trump’s tariff gambit has worked. After Mexican officials agreed to crack down on illegal immigration to avoid US-imposed tariffs, the Department of Homeland Security reports that border apprehensions dropped from 144,278 in May to 104,344 in June — a 28 percent decrease.

‘If we will not endure a king as a political power,’ Sen. John Sherman of Ohio said in 1890, ‘we should not endure a king over the production, transportation, and sale of any of the necessities of life.’ These words helped drive through the Sherman Anti-Trust Act that saved early American capitalism by breaking up Standard Oil and the robber barons’ fiefdoms.A long line of Anglo-Saxon dragon slayers straggles behind the senator, all the way back to King John at Runnymede. Over-mighty kings and industrial barons get short shrift in Britain and America. This isn’t mere resentment. It is a philosophy of power and knowledge, and the principle behind democracy and free markets.

'First, I think it’s really important to understand that the Iranians are sowing disinformation,' Mike Pompeo told reporters Sunday en route to the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates  ('two great allies in the challenge that Iran presents.')'You’ll see too,' the secretary of state continued, 'that our campaign that began when President Trump took office will continue. On Monday, there’ll be a significant set of new sanctions.' Sure enough, this afternoon Trump announced intensified sanctions on Iran’s Supreme Leader.With that, the secretary was off, jetting from Joint Base Andrews to Riyadh and Abu Dhabi.

Let's not mince words. President Trump and his loyalists were dead right. His threat of tariffs pushed Mexico to work harder to stop the Central American caravans, and the migrants who hope to exploit immigration law loopholes in order to receive asylum in the United States. And the bipartisan, Trump-loathing political, business and media establishments were all dead wrong. They warned that his strong-arming would ignite a trade war, disrupt the thick web of supply chains linking the American and Mexican economies, and risk a recession. Equally off-base was the establishmentarians' angst that Trump's gambit would endanger the revamp of the North American Free Trade Agreement (Nafta) that he has sought and which Mexico and Canada recently signed.

Donald Trump likes to brag about his deal-making prowess. During his visit to the United Kingdom, he’s touting the prospects for a ‘very, very substantial trade deal.’ But even as he dangles sugarplums before the British, he’s blowing up another agreement that he wanted to complete before the 2020 election — the United-States-Mexico-Canada Agreement, which is supposed to supplant NAFTA.His attempt to fuse national security and nationalism in the form of a tariff on Mexico could end up torching his own presidency. Trump’s big idea — concocted by his aide Stephen Miller — is that he can pressure Mexico to crack down on immigration by pressuring it with tariffs.