Chris Riddell on Donald ‘Captain America’ Trump wielding his tariff shield – cartoon
Is the president really ready to do battle with China after causing global chaos and undermining the US economy?
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Trump’s tariff mess raises the danger of a US default | Lloyd Green
The US could breach the debt ceiling even sooner than predicted without action from Republicans
“Trump backs down on tariffs, again. And it doesn’t look strategic,” a headline blared on Wednesday afternoon.
At the end of trading, equities had recovered a portion of their losses. But plenty of damage had been done. Markets were thrown into turmoil, interest rates jumped and business activity took a hit. Beyond that, the possibility of a recession grew – and the possibility of a default by the US inched up to 6%, according to prediction markets.
Gold enjoys best week in five years as investors rush to safety
Even US Treasuries take a hit as Donald Trump’s tariff blitz shakes confidence in American assets
Trump plans to stockpile deep sea critical metals to counter China
US drafting order to collect ‘nodules’ from Pacific seabed for minerals used in battery supply chains
In the face of Trump’s mayhem, Europe is the direction to which the UK must turn – and Keir Starmer knows it | Tom Baldwin
The PM will not antagonise the unpredictable president, but it is clear to No 10 that Trump is the problem and the solution lies elsewhere
- Tom Baldwin is the author of Keir Starmer: The Biography
Keir Starmer was back at the Emirates Stadium on Tuesday to watch Arsenal’s 3-0 win over Real Madrid, a result that far exceeded expectations of his team’s chances in Europe. And, over the next few days, I wouldn’t be surprised if he tries to snatch a short Easter break in the warmth and sunshine of that same continent.
Football and family holidays offer him some much needed relief from the grim reality of a faltering economy, towering public debt and terrifying global insecurity, which are all being made worse on a daily – sometimes hourly – basis by Britain’s closest ally of the previous 80 years.
Did Trump’s tariffs kill economic populism?
Lasting damage has been done not only to Trump’s political credibility but to globalisation as a system
At the beginning of this helter-skelter week, Downing Street was declaring globalisation not only dead but a failure. Now, only five trading days later, the autopsy is still under way but the victim may instead be economic populism, strangled by Wall Street, the citadel of globalisation. Donald Trump’s so-called liberation day may in fact have been the anti-globalist’s entombment day.
In an effort to deny even a tactical retreat, Trump’s aides insist the White House goal all along was not to weaken globalism, or even to protect the US economy with tariffs, but instead to get into a negotiation to lower tariffs around the world and to punish China. As cover stories go, it is hardly credible, partly because the tariffs were repeatedly lauded by Trump as a macroeconomic revenue-raising measure, or a means to bolster US manufacturing.