The dockworkers’ strike could hit Americans where it hurts: Bananas
Bananas are the most popular fruit in the United States. Virtually all of them enter the country through US ports. Americans’ taste for imported foods is on full display as 45,000 dockworkers strike, ...
US aims to block Chinese and Russian vehicles for good
Move over, TikTok , the US government is considering banning Chinese cars like BYD as well. Citing national security risks of hacking and data collection, the Commerce Department has proposed a ban on...
Temu and Shein’s favorite import policy is about to disappear
Last month, we discussed a proposal from five US senators to crack down on Chinese e-commerce companies taking advantage of the "de minimis" loophole to ship billions of dollars of goods to the US, du...
Ireland’s corporate tax receipts are creating an embarrassment of riches
Yesterday, the European Commission ruled that Apple owes the Irish government €13 billion ( $14.4 billion ) in unpaid taxes from 2003 to 2014, plus interest. The ruling caps off a lengthy legal battle...
Mexico could be the loser in US elections
The outcome of the US elections could have a big impact on... Mexico, which was supposed to be the site of tens of billions of dollars of investment by electric car companies. Bloomberg is reporting t...
Smuggling banned Nvidia AI GPUs to China is a big business
The feverish competition to train ever-more-powerful AI models has led to the world’s top tech companies to spend billions of dollars hoarding powerful H100 GPUs. But US export controls prevent the H1...
The government wants China to start paying its taxes
Last week, five US senators released the bipartisan “Fighting Illicit Goods, Helping Trustworthy Importers, and Netting Gains (FIGHTING) for America Act” to “halt the flood of illicit packages into th...
Walled off: America now imports more from Mexico than China
Walled off China’s ongoing trade war with the US — which has involved disputes and tariffs over everything from steel to washing machines, corn to cars, and has most recently focused on the increasin...
Made in Mexico: Imports from America's southern neighbor are rising
The great wobble The world’s second-largest economy continues to limp along, as China reported this week that both its imports and exports fell in August. The country, often hailed as the “factory of...
Willow windfall: A controversial Alaskan oil project has got the green light
Windfall in the Willow On Monday, Joe Biden greenlit the Willow oil drilling project — a proposal to drill at 3 sites in Alaska’s vast North Slope region. At peak production, the project is anticipat...
War, inflation and oil. How the Russian invasion shook the world.
The "I" word Even before the final chapters of 2021 had been written, one of the main topics for 2022 — inflation — was already emerging. As the impact of pandemic stimulus checks set in, supply-chai...
Is "peak globalization" behind us?
The ongoing violence in Ukraine has prompted hundreds, if not thousands, of western companies to follow their governments in sanctioning or withdrawing from Russia . Just this week we've seen Starbuck...
Oil supply: The oil price is spiking as Russia's invasion of Ukraine intensifies
The price of Brent crude oil, the widely-used global benchmark, spiked to more than $113 per barrel this week — its highest level in almost 7 years and a far cry from the (briefly) negative oil prices...
Why EU dependence on Russian energy is important
In recent days few words have been used as much as "sanctions". As one of the easiest ways to deter Russia, without risking escalation, the list of announced sanctions has been getting longer and long...
Russia's invasion caught everyone by surprise, including markets
It's hard to overstate the political, economic and — most importantly — human impact of Russia's invasion of Ukraine this week. After just over 24 hours of fighting hundreds of casualties have already...
A pot of Irish gold: Ireland has long benefited from its low corporate taxes
Ireland has abandoned its long-held 12.5% corporate tax rate, agreeing, with other members of the OECD, to a global corporate tax deal that could see large companies pay an extra $100bn in corporate t...
Brexit: The "B" word is back in the spotlight, as UK exports to the EU fell sharply in January
The "B" word hasn't occupied as much airtime in the UK over the last year, but it will today as the latest trade data from the UK Office for National Statistics (ONS) just hit the tape . The data reve...
New kids on the bloc: 15 countries just signed the world's largest trade agreement
There is a new kid on the (trading) bloc. This week 15 countries signed a free-trade agreement to create the Regional Comprehensive Economic Partnership (RCEP). That makes RCEP the largest trading blo...
Chip stocks are getting routed by political news
Semiconductor stocks staggered through their worst day in four years, as potential new Biden administration regulations on chip-related tech exports to China, and bombastic Trump comments aimed at Tai...
China is leaning on exports to shake off its economic slump. It’s not working.
China’s monthly trade surplus, the difference between the value of imports and exports, touched a record of almost $100 billion in June, with some observers suggesting the surge could reflect an effor...