Time (June 28)
Women currently “account for 22% of the Saudi workforce, according to government statistics. Bin Salman’s goal is to get that figure up to 30% by 2030. Not only will having women behind the wheel improve participation in the workforce, it will help the economy. According to Bloomberg, the lifting of the ban could add as much as $90 billion to economic output by 2030.”
Tags: Ban, Driving, Economy, MBS, Output, Participation, Saudi Arabia, Women, Workforce
Institutional Investor (June 27)
“Further escalation between the U.S. and China could make U.S. Treasuries less dependable.” But that’s only the tip of the iceberg. “Every trade is financed…. Trade and capital flows are part and parcel of a complex system. Mess with trade flows and there will be ‘unintended’ impacts on capital flows. Equally, disturb capital flow and there will be an impact on trade flows.” As trade issues also flare up with NAFTA and Brexit, it’s “no wonder equity markets are volatile.”
Tags: Brexit, Capital flows, China, Equity markets, Escalation, Impacts, Nafta, Trade, Treasuries, U.S., Unintended, Volatile
Financial Times (June 26)
U.S. “intelligence agencies have for several years identified cyber threats as a bigger risk than terrorism.” Though huge, the threat is little understood. Such is “the opacity of cyber space that the risks of massive miscalculation resulting in catastrophic escalation” are “hair-raisingly high” and the “ultimate nightmare” is “that we might sleepwalk into a cyber-Armageddon, just as Europe’s political leaders had stumbled into the first world war.”
Tags: Cyber threats, Escalation, Europe, Intelligence, Miscalculation, Nightmare, Risk, Sleepwalk, Terrorism, U.S., WW1
Washington Post (June 25)
“Mr. Trump owns this trade war, at home and abroad. He not only has decided to play a game of chicken with the U.S. economy. He has decided to play against the whole world.”
NBC News (June 25)
“The Trump Administration’s trade war is starting to have real impacts on farmers who grow everything from corn to cotton.” Soybeans look set to bear much of the economic pain. “Soybeans were the nation’s largest agricultural export in 2017 and China was the biggest buyer, purchasing 57 percent of the total. But since China announced the tariff, the price of soybeans has fallen by roughly 15 percent to a more than two-year low.”
Forbes (June 24)
“While Trump and some in the White House argue that China has much more to lose in a trade war than does the United States, they may be underestimating Xi’s resolve to appear unwavering in the face of attacks from China’s main economic rival, the United States.”
Tags: China, Lose, Resolve, Rival, Trade war, Trump, U.S., Underestimating, Unwavering, White House, Xi
The Economist (June 23)
“Donald Trump’s ill-fated policy of caging children” is a “blot against America.” Ultimately, it “will hurt his party more than him.” His immigration antics “may sustain his presidency,” but “the history of America’s moral corrections suggests that what they lack in spontaneity they make up for with momentum.” Ultimately, the Republican party will pay the price.
Tags: Blot, Caging children, Ill-fated policy, Immigration, Moral corrections, Republican Party, Trump
Wall Street Journal (June 21)
Investors aren’t quite sure “how to trade a trade war.” Some obvious stocks like Boeing and Caterpillar are being hit hard, but for many others there’s a lack of information on the potential impact, “partly because supply chains are so complex.” While there’s much to “suggest that trade war fears haven’t sunk in properly,” the bigger issue is that it is challenging “to price in something you don’t understand, and the implications of a trade battle are obscure, at best.” We don’t know “precisely which products will be targeted in the next round, or how long the tariffs will last.”
Tags: Boeing, Caterpillar, Complex, Fears, Impact, Implications, Investors, Obscure, Products, Supply chains, Targeted, Tariffs, Trade war
Reuters (June 21)
“An increasingly shrill exchange of words between the United States and China that is threatening to trigger a global trade war has claimed another victim—- Germany’s auto sector.”
Tags: Auto sector, China, Germany, Global trade war, Shrill, Threatening, Trigger, U.S., Victim
New York Times (June 20)
“The United States should stop the scattershot, pointless nonsense on tariffs and go the other way, and hard: It should drop all tariffs, even if the rest of the world doesn’t follow.” Economists have long “understood that free trade is the best policy. Studies show that countries with freer trade have both higher per-capita incomes and faster rates of productivity growth. Economists have also long understood that barriers to trade, while pitched as a way to help domestic workers, always heavily penalize domestic consumers.”
Tags: Barriers, Consumers, Economists, Free trade, Growth, Nonsense, Per-capita income, Productivity, Scattershot, Tariffs, United States, Workers
