@dangay
Political economist who advises on and writes about economics and sustainable development, international trade & the least developed countries. Former UN. Scottish. Likes running, cycling & the outdoors. www.emergenteconomics.com | dangay.substack.com
"Almost every action the Trump administration takes in the area of geoeconomics screams 'diversify and insulate' at its trading partners," says Alan Beattie.
More to the point, the FT graphs person has been reading William Styron.
giftarticle.ft.com/giftarticle/...
Dubai evacuation costs rise as high as $250,000 as more families flee - giftarticle.ft.com/giftarticle/...
Me? I'm not even a member of the Green party. I'm just looking at what seems best for the environment. I completely agree that practical action and backing at the local level are critical.
Would you prefer that they *don't* prioritise renewables in their Manifesto? The Greens are more ambitious here than Labour. Both have local dissenters - Labour arguably worse.
Ramsay isn't co-leader any more and his opposition contradicts the official line.
No they don't: "We need pylons and solar farms, says Green leader" www.bbc.com/news/article...
Former co-leader Adrian Ramsay opposed a proposed pylon route in E. Anglia to connect wind farms. But that's one bloke. The Green manifesto calls for wide-scale wind, solar, storage and distribution.
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My Dubai brunch was interrupted by Iranian missiles.
Blog: Trump's war in the Middle East deals a fatal blow to the idea that all the supposed wealth generators will leave if you try to tax them fairly. dangay.substack.com/p/i-moved-to...
Did a blog: Trump's war in the Middle East spells the end of the wrongheaded idea that taxation in rich countries must be a race to the bottom. open.substack.com/pub/dangay/p...
I think it was Jeffrey Sachs - or at least so he'd like to claim.
Economies never frictionless or somehow smooth functioning. They're always decisively affected by 'non-economic' factors or in other words, reality. The founders of the discipline were wise to call it political economy.😀
Box 10 of this year's SA109 form on UK tax returns will make interesting reading.
(On second thoughts, it won't).
Exactly what I was thinking.
(b) It's not the centi-millionaires or billionaires who create the wealth, it's workers. The super-rich are just the ones who've snaffled all the wealth. Most of them aren't entrepreneurial at all.
One of the biggest lies put about by mainstream economics is somehow that we live in a near-frictionless world economy where if you raise tax a little bit, all the wealth generators will disappear. (a) The super-rich never leave en masse or for long. They like the UK, including culture and security
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Oh yes, i've no doubt a bailout will come in some form or another.
“Moved to Dubai for tax shelter and now I’m in a bomb shelter,” says someone quoted in the FT.
UK Inland Revenue and wealth tax proponents glued to their screens...
"Chinese companies gave themselves the ability to misvalue imports to reduce tariff costs. The US government, while letting consumers take the hit, will be shelling out $ bns to a rising number of Chinese companies."
It’s payback time for Trump’s tariff fiasco - giftarticle.ft.com/giftarticle/...
- And meanwhile regionalism, bilaterals and blocs are blossoming.
- There's also the risk that WTO reform would play into US hands, even further weakening the institution.
So all this discussion might be academic, as things will move ahead regardless and the world continues to fragment.
- A good critique of the WTO is essential.
- One-member-one vote and consensus decision-making can be highly conservative - progress is glacial.
- Some parts of the WTO agreements are directly against the interests of the global south, like a lot of the TRIPS agreement.
- But it needs to be sensible, redesigned multilateralism with full participation. Maybe an impossible ask!
- Multilateralism would indeed be a bulwark against Trump's arbitrary tariff moves but i'm not sure how much life it has left in it.
In response to this interesting piece i'd say:
- Yes, progressives need to understand the WTO properly and not mischaracterise it as just a 'neoliberal' body that bullies poor countries. This is just completely wrong.
- A progressive trade agenda for the late 2020s (and beyond) is sorely needed.
"the WTO does not get the attention it once did, for good or for bad, and thus these discussions tend to happen outside of the public gaze."
At the Cancun Ministerial in 2003 Evan Davis, then a BBC reporter, told me that the meeting was well down the UK news agenda. www.ids.ac.uk/opinions/int...
This is directly anti-development; it contradicts everything everyone in economic development works towards. We *want* industrial capacity. Luckily, some Asian countries have developed it.
It's the US (&EU) that over-subsidises farmers so they outcompete more efficient ones from poorer countries.
This short para from Martin Wolf's latest should be required reading. If most people understood it, it'd clear up a lot of misperceptions. giftarticle.ft.com/giftarticle/...
I read that as A.I. would last six months. ChatGPT probably would do a better job of running the country.
