Archive

December 09, 2025
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China Re-rooting Rather Than Dumping

  • China’s rising export growth to Europe in November demonstrates base effects around a steady trend that predates US tariff increases. It isn’t about dumping.
  • Avoidance measures remain rife, with transhipping through Vietnam not dented by the provisions in their US trade deal. Effective tariff rates aren’t rising belatedly.
  • Profit-maximising companies still seem to be working around US measures, keeping the impact on inflation and growth smaller than many other economists feared.

By Philip Rush

December 08, 2025
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2026 Politics: Nine Guesses & A Certainty

  • In what promises to be another year fraught with uncertainty, politics and markets will again be dominated by the United States in general and Donald Trump in particular.
  • Widely differing views of equity market prospects demonstrate this, i.e. the ‘bubble is about to burst’ doomsayers versus the bullish seeming consensus on Wall Street.
  • However, the biggest challenge facing investors is focusing on what really matters amid the continuing ‘noise’ emanating from the Trump Administration in particular.

By Alastair Newton

November 26, 2025
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UK Backloads A Tax Trap

  • The UK’s fiscal hole was even smaller than we thought (£6bn), allowing the government to backload a fiscal tightening that is unsurprisingly focused on tax increases.
  • Delaying prudence to an election year is implausible. There will be a substantial deficit in 2029-30, not the current budget surplus in the OBR forecasts based on existing policy.
  • Labour is setting up a tax trap for Reform and the Conservatives to say how they’d avoid tax increases, similar to the backloaded spending cuts they myopically ignored in 2024.

By Philip Rush

November 24, 2025
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UK Labour Party: Damned If They Do…

  • Whatever Rachel Reeves comes up with in her 26 November budget, she is bound to run into criticism from within her own parliamentary party.
  • Bond markets seem set to react badly to this, especially if it seems likely that her overall objectives will be undermined by internal resistance to proposed measures.
  • She and the PM will probably survive this, but a market-unsettling change and slide to the left look increasingly likely by mid-2026, followed by defeat at the next election.

By Alastair Newton

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