Is President Trump’s pitch to disgruntled manufacturing workers a leading political indicator, portending future trends, or a lagging one, appealing to a small and declining segment of the public? We may be about to find out, thanks to Trump’s controversial tariff plan. Trump’s decision last week to levy duties on steel and aluminum imports from Europe, Canada and Mexico seems, ...

For all the talk of China’s mountain of debt, defaults and deleveraging, there’s a chasm nobody is talking about. Here’s an alarming and frequently cited statistic: Chinese industrial companies have at least $124 billion of debt maturing over the next two years. Actually, it’s worse. They have another $34 billion of bonds with put options – giving creditors the right ...

Never before has a US president worked so hard to isolate his country from its friends. The G-7 summit of advanced economies that started on Friday in Quebec sees Canada, France, Germany, Italy, Japan and the UK united in opposition to Donald Trump’s protectionist trade policy. The problem goes deeper than a first round of tariffs and counter-tariffs, because Trump’s ...