Filtered by Topic: Trump's second term Use setting Trump's second term
Vietnam has had one of the weakest hands to play in its trade negotiations with the US. If it is confirmed that it has agreed to a 20% tariff, this isn’t a template that other countries will feel they have to follow. Instead, the key lesson for other …
2nd July 2025
‘Chart of the week’ has to go to our China team, whose effort below was a centrepiece of discussions in our latest client roundtables. It shows exports from China to the US, Europe and the rest of the world up to May. (See Chart 1.) Two key shifts stand …
30th June 2025
Détente is on shaky foundations The understanding reached between the US and China during talks in Geneva and London has now been formalised, with the White House revealing that a written agreement was signed off two days ago. US officials have confirmed …
27th June 2025
Europe is taking Trump’s side on China When President Trump returned to office, his aggressive treatment of traditional allies raised the possibility that the EU and China would come together in defence of free trade. But the opposite is happening: US …
20th June 2025
Occam’s Razor is the idea that the simplest explanation is usually the best. It was in effect last week as the US and China wrapped up two days of trade talks in London. Both sides indicated progress had been made and President Trump concluded on social …
16th June 2025
Beijing continues to prioritise investment The State Council released another policy document this week promising to “further guarantee and improve people’s livelihoods.” But this latest pledge to support households is once again empty. The government has …
13th June 2025
We'll be online discussing the outlook for Latin American economies and financial markets in an online briefing on Wednesday 18th at 10am ET/3pm BST . Sign up here . Overview – Mexico has emerged from the US’s shift to protectionism better than was feared …
12th June 2025
President Trump’s claim that China has agreed to supply the US with “ANY NECESSARY RARE EARTHS… UP FRONT” might seem to draw a line under concerns about supply shortages and production shutdowns. But restrictions could be dialled back up. And as we set …
A deal with China is done, according to President Trump, but its scope seems to be limited to easing some recent non-tariff restrictions, including China’s rare earth export controls. The wider trade and economic issues that were supposed to be the focus …
11th June 2025
The Federal debt is undoubtedly on an unsustainable path. The debt burden is already close to 100% of GDP and, with the budget deficit likely to remain close to 6% of GDP for the foreseeable future, it would hit 120% of GDP within the next decade. …
9th June 2025
It’s big, but it’s far from beautiful. In fact, the sheer size of the ‘One Big Beautiful Bill Act’ that’s currently working its way through Congress is part of what makes it so unwieldy – and so unattractive. Size matters As we’ll argue in a report coming …
If President Trump succeeded in his aim of cutting prescription drug prices by 50% “almost immediately”, it could subtract more than 1%-point from headline PCE inflation. There is little indication of how the administration will achieve that aim, however, …
5th June 2025
Saudi in the driving seat of OPEC+ aggressive shift OPEC+ this week agreed to another 411,000bpd hike to oil output for July and there’s little reason to think that the cartel’s leader, Saudi Arabia, will reverse course on oil policy anytime soon. After …
Court rulings leave trade policy in disarray Although this week’s court ruling – that President Trump doesn’t have the “unbounded authority” to impose universal tariffs on other countries – has been temporarily stayed, there is a fair chance that even …
30th May 2025
US tariffs on China likely to remain high Just a day after the US Court of International Trade ordered the removal of Trump’s Liberation Day and fentanyl-related tariffs, a federal appeals court put that ruling on hold. If the appeals court upholds the …
Our new estimates based on trade in thousands of individual products suggest tha t rerouting helped to offset around half of the fall in China’s exports to the US during the first Trump trade war . If the US continues to impose high tariffs on China, …
29th May 2025
Court ruling adds another layer of uncertainty on Trump’s tariffs The ruling by the three-judge panel of the Federal Court of International Trade blocking President Trump’s reciprocal tariffs will presumably be appealed by the administration all the way …
Although the global tariff environment now appears to be heading towards a far more benign environment than had appeared likely a month or so ago, it still represents a demand shock that will prove a headwind to commodity demand and prices. Against an …
28th May 2025
Donald Trump jolted markets on Friday with a threat to slap steep tariffs on the EU. Group Chief Economist Neil Shearing jumped back on the podcast to join David Wilder and unpack whether this is classic brinkmanship – or something more serious. In the …
23rd May 2025
Fewer exports to US but more to other markets Chinese exports have so far held up much better than many had feared in response to US tariffs. In dollar terms they expanded a robust 8.1% in April . And there are few signs of weakness this month. Growth in …
Tariff man triumphant Following the agreement between the US and China to reverse most of the prohibitive tit-for-tat tariffs imposed a month earlier, stock markets have rallied further this week. The S&P 500 is now closing in on the high reached in …
16th May 2025
A deal is perhaps not so imminent Optimism that India was poised to seal a quick trade deal with the US has faded in the past week. Admittedly, Donald Trump still sounds positive about the negotiations – he claimed yesterday that India had offered a “no …
We still expect a slowdown this year The tariff de-escalation agreed at the start of this week is good news for Chinese exporters who were facing a collapse in exports to the US. But we haven’t changed our growth forecasts for China’s economy for a few …
One month on from the peak of the post-“Liberation Day” market turmoil, calm has largely returned and most key asset markets have recovered much, or all, of the ground lost in the days following 2 nd April. Indeed, core money markets never looked …
15th May 2025
Recent actions by the Trump administration have raised doubts about the dollar’s safe-haven credentials, and could contribute to a further decline in its share of global FX reserves. At the same time, European governments, led by Germany, are set to …
13th May 2025
Global Trade Stress Monitor …
The US and China have each suspended for 90 days all but 10% of their Liberation Day tariffs and cancelled other retaliatory tariffs. This is a substantial de-escalation. However, the US still has much higher tariffs on China than on other countries and …
12th May 2025
One deal down. Many, many more to go. Except there was less to that much-touted US-UK trade deal than either government is suggesting and far tougher US talks with China and the EU are still to come. In this week’s episode of The Weekly Briefing from …
9th May 2025
Thanks to continued optimism over prospective trade deals to reduce US tariff rates, asset markets have generally recouped most of their losses after the 2 nd April tariff announcement. That said, we think that the boost from further trade negotiation …
UK-US trade announcement is no big deal The “full and comprehensive” trade deal between the US and the UK announced this week by President Donald Trump was none of those things. This rush to demonstrate progress on “deals” reveals a rising desperation …
Five months ago, we incorporated a 10% tariff on all UK goods exports to the US in our forecast. That has turned out to be a good call. Despite this week’s UK-US trade deal, the 10% “baseline” tariff remains. (See here for our response to the US-UK trade …
The “full and comprehensive” trade deal between the US and the UK announced in a rush today by President Donald Trump and PM Keir Starmer is no such thing. As Trump admitted in his press conference, the “final details” still need to be “written up in the …
8th May 2025
OPEC+ shifts tack to recapture market share The decision by OPEC+ to deliver another punchy oil output hike in June was not too much of a surprise, but it confirms that the group are shifting tack to a more aggressive policy in order to recapture market …
The trade data available for March and April suggest that a large number of EMs have benefitted from a front-running of tariffs in recent months, particularly those across Asia (Taiwan, Vietnam and India). That said, business surveys have weakened, …
Q1 GDP data showed that most of the world’s economies were still growing at a decent pace ahead of the main tariff hikes and several were boosted by front-running. Consumer and business confidence have deteriorated since then, but there is limited …
Early signs are that Vietnam is doing well as US buyers look to find alternative suppliers outside China. Asia publishes export data much faster than other regions, providing some of the most timely evidence of how trade is being affected by Trump’s …
6th May 2025
Data published for Korea from the past few days suggests the economy remains weak, but that the trade war so far appears to be having a minimal impact. While exports to the US fell in April, the declines were relatively small and were more than made up …
1st May 2025
President Trump’s first 100 days in office have brought substantial shifts in US policy. The next 100 will start to reveal whether his presidency is causing a realignment of the global economy. There are two key questions: will most countries be able to …
29th April 2025
President Donald Trump’s first 100 days back in office has been characterised by radical changes to trade policy, immigration and the Federal government, all implemented by an unprecedented use of executive power. In the second 100 days, we expect the …
The negative reaction in financial markets undoubtedly played a key role in making President Trump reconsider his eye-wateringly high tariffs on China and his ill-advised plans to fire Fed Chair Jerome Powell. But we suspect the dawning reality of what …
25th April 2025
The sharp fall in the dollar over the past three months can for the most part be explained by a rapid reassessment of the outlook for the US economy and financial markets, rather than an imminent threat to the dollar’s dominant status in global finance. …
China continues to rebuff Trump Earlier this week, President Trump gave the clearest indication yet that he is keen to row back tariffs on China, which he said would “come down substantially”. But, for now at least, the White House has ruled out doing so …
Despite further encouraging headlines on tariff reduction, a relief rally in Asian markets trading today has been notable by its absence. This reinforces our view that further gains in equity markets will become harder from here. Two stories broke on …
24th April 2025
If President Donald Trump does fire Fed Chair Jerome Powell, we suspect that the initial market reaction might not be disastrous, as long as Trump quickly lines up a relatively-qualified replacement, like Kevin Hassett or Kevin Warsh. In all likelihood, …
21st April 2025
Policymakers at the ECB appear to agree with us that risks to growth and inflation are increasingly skewed to the downside, supporting our view that the 10-year German Bund yield will stay around its current level and that the euro will give back some of …
17th April 2025
Overview – Our working assumption is that the 90-day pause on the Trump administration’s reciprocal tariffs will be made permanent, with tariffs remaining at 10% for most countries apart from China. Providing Congress soon recycles the tariff revenue into …
16th April 2025
The extremely high US import tariffs imposed on China will likely strengthen the forces that have driven multinational corporates to shift production for the US market away from China and towards other EMs in recent years. Those EMs with spare capacity in …
The ongoing fallout across financial markets from President Trump’s “Liberation Day” announcement has resulted in a sharp fall in the dollar and what looks increasingly like a generalised loss of confidence in the US as a safe haven in currency and bond …
15th April 2025
The market turmoil sparked by the tariffs announced by US President Donald Trump on “Liberation day” has somewhat eased in the past couple of trading days. Absent further bad news, we think the worst has probably passed for US markets, although we see …
14th April 2025
Available data don’t give a definitive answer to whether sales by Chinese institutions contributed to the recent volatility in the US bond market. But China’s state managers of foreign assets still appear to have more than half of their portfolios …
