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Martin WolfFinancial Times |
The list of inconsistencies goes on and on. Nobody should have designed such an absurdity

Improved standards of living are the foundation of modern democracy

Keir Starmer’s government should seize the chance to make radical reforms

Javier Milei’s plight in Argentina demonstrates how difficult it can be to rescue economies

It is dangerous to have confidence in what lies ahead

Nostalgia is not a strategy: the past cannot return

Nations must work out how to contend with Trump’s America and China

We must not repeat the mistakes of the appeasers in the 1930s

Encouraging institutions to get bigger by taking risks is the opposite of what Reeves should do

Trump’s focus on the goods of the past is ridiculous. What matters is competitiveness in the future

In just six months, the US president has made huge strides in advancing his agenda

Political responses to a bad situation tend towards either charlatanism or timidity

It is easy to imagine conditions in which money simply dries up, perhaps in response to large movements in bond yields

If the US wants to accelerate a worldwide discussion with a policy intervention, the obvious one would be a tax on capital inflows

We have surely gone beyond being able to give the tech sector the benefit of the doubt

The Big Beautiful Bill Act is a classic example of pluto-populism

Trump’s tariff war brings with it unpredictability and a consequent loss of confidence

Consolidation of funds makes evident sense, bringing economies of scale and scope

Given all this fragility, recessionary or inflationary shocks — or even both together — are conceivable

Deals struck recently with the US, EU and India will not make a significant difference to Britain’s parlous position

The difficulty is that, however unsatisfactory the hegemon might be, the alternatives look worse

We now seem unable to turn the surplus in some countries into productive investment elsewhere

China and others must think afresh as the US steps away from its role as balancer of last resort

Trump’s unreliable America is throwing away the assets it needs

A country as mired in stagnation as the UK has to take risks if it is to succeed

How is it possible that a company with such huge resources, including artificial intelligence tools, cannot deal with this?

The IMF is trying to make sense of the unknowable

Trump’s delight in doing whatever he wishes in the moment is incompatible with stability and sustained dynamism

The situation is dire and only active policymaking is going to make a difference

The trade deficits will remain roughly unchanged — the globe will just end up poorer

Policymakers in Beijing believe they will benefit from the destruction of America’s global credibility

The government must embark on a much more radical programme of structural reforms

How do technocrats expect the needed macroeconomic adjustments to occur?

The US president wants both to protect domestic manufacturing and hold the dollar as the reserve currency

The government needs to view the hard times coming upon us as an opportunity, as well as a crisis

The continent is an economic superpower but it now has to mobilise in defence of democracy

America is trying to undo the very system of open trade that it created

Spending on defence will need to rise substantially if the UK is to meet the challenges it faces

Washington has decided to abandon both Ukraine and its postwar role in the world

A complex society is best served by a competent, professional and neutral public service

Without resources, they will be grossly unprepared for the difficult business of governing

Until now, the US has been a strikingly benign and successful hegemon

An inconsistent US is an unreliable partner — it’s that simple

Britain is in a hole and the government is right to try to dig it out

The impact of artificial intelligence on productivity could be epoch-making

An economic renaissance is unlikely, not least because the US economy is very far from the disaster he proclaims it to be

The government must retain the confidence of its creditors

We must hope that the American people will not lightly abandon the enlightenment traditions of their country

He drove radical reform of an anti-market policy regime that was strangling growth

There is a danger that animal spirits and the propensity to invest expire in a vicious downward spiral
