Donald Trump

We are seeing decent selling in today’s US equity markets, with the VIX up some 25%. And most people are pointing to the Trump scandals. But this is only one day. What is happening with Trump – while negative - will not change the arc of…

Here in Washington, the city is abuzz over the crisis engulfing the Trump Administration. But politics are less important to markets than one might expect, despite markets being forward-looking. That’s because it’s often hard to judge what…

It is now clear that Donald Trump dismissed FBI Director James Comey in a fit of pique over the investigations into Trump’s ties to Russia. But this move has already backfired, with the Senate investigation issuing subpoenas to former Trump…

I just finished reading an illuminating article by Andrew Ross Sorkin on healthcare and it got me to thinking about a review of structural reforms by Dani Rodrik which encapsulates the problem with fixes to ‘competitiveness’. The message:…

This morning, the Trump Administration called the leaders of Canada and Mexico to tell them that he "agreed not to terminate NAFTA at this time," showing, yet again, that Donald Trump is much less audacious a President than some expected.…

Donald Trump is a very media-centric public figure. And because the chatter in DC now is of Trump as a legislative failure during his first hundred days in office, Trump needs a win - and Canada is an easy target. Here’s why.

This morning data from the US Commerce Department showed the US trade deficit in January at its highest level since March 2012. The numbers were not unexpected as the $48.5 billion deficit was bang on economist estimates.

Tonight US President Donald Trump is due to give his first state of the union address. From a foreign policy perspective, the big item on the table is Russia. But from an economic perspective, the country we meed to be thinking about is…

The problem with the Trump administration’s talk about lengthening the maturity of debt issuance is that it confuses the future path of interest rates with the steepness of the yield curve. They talk about locking in low rates. And what…

You probably heard that Germany recorded its third consecutive year of government budget surpluses. This year it was the highest full year surplus since German reunification - 24 billion euros. A lot of the commentary on this will stress…