The Business Times

Martin Wolf

FT

The main reason to worry about global trade imbalances is not the impact on manufacturing, but rather on financial stability.

Why global imbalances do matter

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

The US Capitol in Washington, DC. The US is embarking on financial deregulation at a time of high leverage and financial risk-taking. It is also continuing with high fiscal deficits while attacking its creditors via trade and fiscal policy.

Interest rates are normal, the world is not

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

In the fourth quarter of last year, 58 per cent of global reserves were in dollars, down from 71 per cent in the first quarter of 1999, but far ahead of the euro’s 20 per cent.

Trump’s assault on the global dollar

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

U.S. and Chinese flags are seen in this illustration taken March 20, 2025. REUTERS/Dado Ruvic/Illustration

China senses an opportunity in Trump’s cultural revolution

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

A child being given nutrition supplements provided by USAid at a refugee camp in Bangladesh. The agency has been described by billionaire Elon Musk as a “viper’s nest of radical-left marxists who hate America”.

The case for persisting with foreign aid

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

FILE PHOTO: People walk on Oxford Street in London, Britain April 10, 2023. REUTERS/Anna Gordon/File Photo

Reckoning with an era of slow growth

Opportunities exist for the UK and its European neighbours, but they must grasp the nettle of economic reform

Much of this private provision has, it seems, been imposed on local government to conceal responsibility for the refusal, in the UK’s over-centralised polity, to fund services adequately.

The benefits and limits of privatisation

Important lessons can be drawn from the UK’s varied experience

The US homicide rate homicide rate of 6.8 per 100,000 inhabitants in 2021 was almost six times as high as that of the UK and 30 times that of Japan.

What makes the US truly exceptional

Are American pathologies the necessary price of economic dynamism?

China needs higher consumption. But that reality creates a challenge to Chinese leaders, who seem to view investment and production as virtuous, while consumption and income redistribution are frivolous.

China’s economic ills are serious but not incurable

Unfortunately, policymakers have made things worse by resorting to temporary palliatives

Lant Pritchett, one of the world’s leading thinkers on economic development, argues in an article on “The political acceptability of time-limited labor mobility” that demographic changes might force an opening in the “Overton window” of what can be discussed on immigration.
THE BROAD VIEW

Immigration is both essential and impossible

The option of temporary worker contracts is not embraced by either side, but it may be the solution

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