Financial Times (July 28)
“The world was in striking agreement on one point: if Donald Trump went ahead with tariffs, it would strengthen the dollar and trigger stagflation.” It hasn’t, even though the “effective US tariff rate has already risen from 2.5 per cent to 15 per cent.” This outcome is unlikely to upturn conventional tariff wisdom. The U.S. is not “really enjoying a free lunch, taking in $300bn a year in tariff revenues with none of the expected heartburn.” It is much more probable that other factors, like AI’s explosive growth, have hidden the impact. The most likely culprit is “the timeworn mistake of employing simple models…. Complex economies are rarely shaped by just one factor, not even a shock as big as Trump’s tariffs.”
Tags: 15%, Agreement, AI, Complex economies, Conventional wisdom, Dollar, Free lunch, Hidden, Impact, Simple models, Stagflation, Tariffs, Trump, U.S.
Inc. (October 4)
There was “a collective sigh of relief from U.S. business owners and economic officials” with Thursday’s agreement “to send 45,000 striking longshoremen back to work, and reopen nearly 40 East and Gulf Coast ports that had been closed since Tuesday.” The move “allows nearly half of the nation’s imports and exports to begin flowing again, and avoid the serious blow to retailers and industrial companies—and the wider economy—that could have occurred if the walkout had continued.”
Tags: Agreement, Business, East coast, Exports, Imports, Industry, Longshoremen, Officials, Owners, Ports, Relief, Reopen, Retailers, Striking, U.S.
Deutsche Welle (February 2)
“EU member states on Friday finally came to agreement and approved new laws governing the safety and use of artificial intelligence, or AI…. The crux of the problem in finding unanimity came down to the balance between giving companies enough maneuvering room to make the development of AI products lucrative within the EU, while at the same time establishing rules for the use of a technology that is already affecting every aspect of society.”
Tags: Agreement, Approved, Artificial intelligence, Companies, EU, Lucrative, Rules, Safety, Society, Technology, Unanimity
Washington Examiner (August 2)
“Yellow Freight, one of the oldest trucking companies in America…hit the end of the road Friday” when both union and nonunion workers were laid off. A bankruptcy filing appears imminent. “While the Teamsters-UPS agreement to avert a strike has lessened what could have been a disastrous economic event, Yellow’s potential insolvency marks one of the biggest collapses in jobs in the U.S. trucking industry” and could still lead to “economic uncertainty.”
Tags: Agreement, Avert, Bankruptcy, Collapses, Disastrous, Insolvency, Jobs, Laid-off, Nonunion, Strike, Teamsters, Trucking, U.S., Union, UPS, Workers, Yellow Freight
The Economist (July 10)
“Remote work has a target on its back.” Many CEOs “are intent on making working from home a relic of the pandemic…. With bosses clamping down on the practice, the pandemic-era days of mutual agreement on the desirability of remote work seem to be over.” Around the globe, “plans for remote working by employers fall short of what workers want.”
Tags: Agreement, CEOs, Clamping down, Desirability, Employers, Home, Pandemic, Remote work, Target, Workers
New York Times (May 30)
“No one walked away satisfied by the agreement reached late Saturday to raise the debt ceiling…. Yet with the risk of ruinous economic default less than a week away, Congress should pass this agreement as quickly as possible.”
Tags: Agreement, ASAP, Congress, Debt ceiling, Economic default, Pass, Risk, Ruinous, Satisfied
Institutional Investor (February 2)
“What happens when a company gets an A from one ESG rater and an F from another? With the explosion of ESG data and ratings, there’s little agreement on what makes a company good or bad.”
Bloomberg (March 13)
“Whatever happens on March 29—a no-deal Brexit, a delay to the departure or some kind of agreement—the U.K. faces a slow but steady erosion to its position as the European center of looking after other people’s money….. However Brexit plays out, the U.K. fund management industry will be a long-term loser from the fallout.”
The Guardian (April 26)
“There is little chance of a concrete agreement of any kind resulting from the summit” between North Korea’s Kim Jong-un and South Korea’s Moon Jae-in on April 27. “Beginning negotiations with a meeting between the two leaders, before any details have been hammered out, is always risky. The meeting will likely be followed by months, if not years, of negotiations at the lower levels before anything is signed.”
Tags: Agreement, Kim Jong Un, Moon Jae-in, Negotiations, North Korea, Risky, South Korea, Summit
Reuters (December 14)
The world finally “learned its lesson and got a climate deal.” The victory in Paris “was an agreement born from a fear of failure, delivered by the smoothness of French diplomacy.” Remarkably, it took place just six years after “countries had bitterly walked away from global climate talks in Copenhagen without a deal.”
Tags: Agreement, Climate deal, Copenhagen, Diplomacy, France, Paris, Victory, World
