2 min readChinese President Xi Jinping and U.S. President Donald Trump agreed to resume trade negotiations ahead of the G20 summit last weekend, with the U.S. granting a reprieve on certain Huawei restrictions and on further tariff increases. China agreed to buy additional American agricultural goods in exchange. Stock markets surged on Monday in reaction to the…
2 min readTrade Dispute Escalation The apparent lack of progress in U.S.-China trade negotiations stoked volatility in the financial markets in early May. On Friday, President Trump imposed 25% tariffs on $200 billion of Chinese goods with China responding in kind on $60 billion of U.S. goods. And just this morning, Trump targeted Chinese telecom giant Huawei…
5 min readBrexit has been delayed until Halloween, a fitting deadline for what has turned into a three-year nightmare for the British populace. UK Prime Minister Theresa May had pushed for a shorter extension, out until the end of June, in hopes that the UK would not have to participate in the upcoming EU elections. However, it…
2 min readOverview The FOMC concluded its two-day meeting on Wednesday, May 1st and, as expected, kept the fed funds target range unchanged at 2.25-2.50%. Echoing its comments in March, the Fed expressed comfort with their current “wait and see” approach to monetary policy. The equity markets declined slightly as Fed Chair Powell attributed the weakness in…
5 min readWhen the Bureau of Labor Statistics reported early this month that non-farm employment rose by only 20,000 jobs in February—a huge miss from consensus estimates of about 175,000 new jobs—it threw many observers for a loop. Was the low number an indicator of a slowdown in growth? Or could it be written off as a…
2 min readWith a March 29th deadline looming for the UK to leave the European Union, there is still no decision about how the departure will be managed. In the two years since a popular referendum triggered the Brexit process, negotiations over a deal for a smooth exit have been unsuccessful. Scenarios range from a “hard” Brexit,…
26 min readDOWNLOAD FULL REPORT Abstract With the March 29th deadline for the UK to leave the European Union looming, there is still no decision about how the departure will be managed. In the two years since a referendum forced the UK government to trigger Article 50 of the Lisbon Treaty indicating their intention to leave the…
7 min readIt’s been widely publicized that Federal Reserve Chairman Jerome Powell has come under pressure from the White House to pause rate hikes for fear of straining the economy. More recently, there have been allegations that balance sheet reduction is in part to blame for the volatility that shook markets in December. At the same time,…
5 min readThe longest government shutdown in history is already having a significant impact on the economy. Equally important, but less well understood, is the potential impact on negotiations over the March 1 deadline to raise the U.S. debt ceiling. As President Trump has continued to insist on a $5.7 billion allocation towards construction of a border…
2 min readIn the midst of the recent saber rattling over a potential trade war between the U.S. and China, one salient point has often been overlooked: so far, other than narrowly focused tariffs on steel and aluminum, neither side has taken immediate concrete steps to act on the announcements. The recent tit-for-tat threats from the Trump…