Englund

In the Strait of Hormuz, tankers have been burning, along with what remains of the post-1945 American-led order. Meanwhile, the IMF’s new baseline forecast for global growth this year is exactly the same as it was six months ago and stock prices have gone up.   In the cold war, political crises over Cuba or Berlin had little economic relevance. Today, globalisation means that about 50 per cent of all trade and capital flows pass through places or sea lanes with high military tensions, from the Baltic Sea to Taiwan. That means there is widespread exposure to low-probability but severe events.  During the 1990s and 2000s, inflation was low and converging across the world. In the past five years, US consumer prices have risen by a cumulative 25 per cent. Patrick Foulis FT 24 April 2026 https://www.ft.com/content/c4669693-0c5b-4733-99f7-173f18cfa843 The writer is an FT contributing editor, a visiting fellow at the Hoover Institution, and author of a forthcoming book on global...

After five centuries concentrated in the West and North, power is dispersing to the East and South.  From 1990 to 2025, the share of the world’s gross domestic product held in the Group of Seven (France, Germany, Italy, Canada, Japan, the UK and the US) shrunk from half to a quarter,  while the share held by China, India and Southeast Asia rose from 15% to 55%. Trump has de facto disavowed territorial integrity, self-determination, free trade and human rights — bedrock principles America has championed for 80 years. What Ernest Hemingway wrote about going bankrupt can also be said of the end of the rules-based international order. It happened in two ways: gradually, then suddenly. More nations, especially developing ones, are exercising regional and even global leadership. Poland will soon have Europe’s strongest military. Turkey has the world’s third-largest diplomatic footprint. Qatar has become an essential conflict mediator.  The second trend is an ongoing shift in po...

Även om Trumps Magarörelse så småningom blir av med den politiska makten är det inte sannolikt att ett nytt styre under Demokraterna skulle rulla tillbaka handelspolitiken.  När de hade chansen under president Biden lät de Trumps tullar bestå. Rudolf Kjellén, statsvetarprofessor i Uppsala vid förra sekelskiftet, var bland de första att använda begreppet geopolitik. Under 1960- och 70-talen fick det diskrediterade konceptet en renässans. Globaliseringens historia kan delas in i sex faser. Första världskriget krossade den frihandelsinriktade världshandeln Efter att kanonerna tystnat såg den engelske ekonomen John Maynard Keynes tillbaka på en förlorad värld: ”Vilken enastående episod i människans ekonomiska framsteg den tid var som tog slut i augusti 1914! Bretton Woods-systemet fungerade ungefär som tänkt i 30 år. År 1971 upphävde president Nixon möjligheten att växla dollar mot guld. De tusenåriga banden mellan pengar och metall försvann över en natt. Trump får också vatten på sin ...

More competition in the zero-sum world of geopolitics is turning traditional engines of cooperation like trade into new sources of conflict and instability.  As power-hungry elites cling ever more tightly to their perches, populist politics grow stronger and the system destabilizes even further. That’s the doom loop. Large swathes of voters around the world feel disenfranchised and are missing out on economic wealth, paving the way for populists to pounce, and creating a destructive feedback loop between misfiring economics, divided public opinion and fraught geopolitics . The book offers a stark warning from history. “Chronicles of many ancient civilizations reveal a recurring pattern: Extreme concentration of wealth and power among elites typically lead to collapse, with regeneration far from assured,” Prasad writes.  “When economic and political systems are captured by elites to the detriment of the broader population, they eventually come apart. The rot sets in from within...

Though Macron seemed to relish his rock-star reception by screaming students at Sichuan University, his central message was of mounting fear in European capitals that China’s export-driven economic model poses an existential threat to their own industries. “These imbalances are becoming unbearable,” Macron said at a joint appearance with Xi in Beijing on Thursday.  “We need more tech neutrality and a European preference” for domestic industries such as automobiles, Macron said  “This is not at all aggressive or protectionist. The Americans and other players in the North American market do it, the Chinese do it,” the president said. “The major risk for Europeans is accelerated deindustrialisation.” FT 7 December 2025 https://www.ft.com/content/ebfa1d6e-747e-451b-bc28-96e5d73fedf7 Europa i skottgluggen när Kina exportrusarGlöm tullkriget. Kinas exportmaskin når rekordnivåer. Och för Europa är risken att den nya vågen av Kinaprylar bara har börjat.  Nils Åkesson DI 8 decembe...

Under Donald Trump, the world has taken a sharp turn back toward the 17th century doctrine of mercantilism — the notion that trade is a zero-sum game in which countries should be self-sufficient and focus on exporting far more than they import. It worked for Louis XIV and other early European empires, and the aim of America First is to reintroduce it with the US this time the victor. The world has acquiesced in tipping the terms of trade sharply in favor of the US. So far, this looks like a crushing victory for America First.  But it ignores one critical factor. There is already one country that has been practicing mercantilism for decades, it’s very good at it, and it appears to be a step ahead of the US as it starts to play the same game: China. John Authers Bloomberg September 26, 2025 https://www.bloomberg.com/opinion/articles/2025-09-26/why-america-will-lose-its-mercantilist-game

Dubbelstimulansen är Sveriges sista livlina Trots regeringens stora skattesänkningar gör Riksbanken ett till försök att väcka liv i svensk ekonomi. Styrräntan sänks från 2 till 1,75 procent. Om denna dubbelstimulans inte snart vänder konjunkturen måste det ses som tecken på djupa problem i Sveriges tillväxtmodell. Svensk tillväxt står fortfarande stilla. Vi närmar oss fyra år av en stegvis försämrad arbetsmarknad. Sverige får en av den rika världens lägsta styrräntor – euroländernas ränta ligger högre trots att deras inflation just nu är lägre. Samtidigt får vi en injektion från finanspolitiken. Om inte heller den här injektionen får effekt måste det tolkas som tecken på att vi har djupare problem i vår tillväxtmodell. Carl Johan von Seth DN 23 september 2025 https://www.dn.se/ekonomi/carl-johan-von-seth-dubbelstimulansen-ar-sveriges-sista-livlina/ RE: Sveriges tillväxtmodell? Har vi en sådan?  485 900 personer arbetslösa, 8,7 procent I augusti var 485 900 personer arbetslösa, mätt...

  Investor med styrelseordföranden Jacob Wallenberg behöver agera för att Electrolux ska ha en chans att vända utvecklingen, enligt Di:s analytiker Magnus Dagel.Foto: Joey Abrait Fram till första kvartalet i år hade Electrolux på bara tre år samlat ihop totalt otroliga 7,6 miljarder kronor i förluster i Nordamerika.  Den kinesiska konkurrensen har i praktiken förstört Electrolux marknad i USA, en marknad som tidigare var väldigt lönsam för vitvarujätten. Det egna kapitalet är nere på 8 miljarder kronor och soliditeten har krympt ytterligare till bara 7,9 procent.  DI 26 augusti 2025 https://www.di.se/analys/wallenberg-kan-hejda-haveriet/ FAM ägs av de tre största Wallenbergstiftelserna – Knut och Alice Wallenbergs Stiftelse, Marianne och Marcus Wallenbergs Stiftelse och Stiftelsen Marcus och Amalia Wallenbergs Minnesfond – via ägarbolaget Wallenberg Investments AB. https://englundmacro.blogspot.com/2024/10/fam-via-agarbolaget-wallenberg.html

Over time, analysts expect that the tariffs, if left in place, could be worth more than $2 trillion in additional revenue over the next decade.  Economists overwhelmingly hope that doesn’t happen and the United States abandons the new trade barriers. But some acknowledge that such a substantial stream of revenue could end up being hard to quit.  “We have so much money coming in, we’re thinking about a little rebate, but the big thing we want to do is pay down debt,” Mr. Trump said last month of the tariffs. New York Times 3 augusti 2025 https://www.nytimes.com/2025/08/03/business/trump-tariffs-how-much-money-debt.html Förra året hade den federala staten knappt 7 000 miljarder dollar i utgifter men bara 5 000 miljarder i inkomster. Under högkonjunktur, alltså. Det är klart att tillväxten blir hög. Amerikansk ekonomi lever på en finanspolitisk sockerkick The US economy grew throughout, yet nobody found a way to redeploy the people impoverished by globalization.  That wasn’t...

  The zero-sum view manifests itself in both rhetoric and policy, with the left aiming to redistribute from the rich to the poor, and the right from foreigners to natives.  Both sides are very much mistaken. Today’s world economy is not zero sum. It is not without its problems but real wages and wealth are increasing, as is our standard of living. There is a tendency to assume that if someone is getting more, someone else must be getting less. That’s because for most of human history, this assumption was basically true.  Allison Schrager Bloomberg 28 July 2025 https://www.bloomberg.com/opinion/articles/2025-07-28/don-t-be-seduced-by-zero-sum-thinking-about-the-economy Globalisering har varit ett av de mest omdebatterade begreppen i västerländsk samhällsdebatt under de senaste decennierna. Gros ingick i det team hos EU-kommissionens dåvarande ordförande Jacques Delors som tog fram planen för införandet av euron.  När den infördes 1999 var det allmänt förväntat att bri...

Gordon Brown has described his failure to rally the nation round the “necessary fiscal stimulus” following the financial crisis as one of the biggest regrets of his time in office. In a new book set to be published next week, the former Labour prime minister expressed dismay over his inability to convince the public that progressive policies “were the right and fairest way to respond” to the global recession. “Taming globalisation and redirecting it to meet the interests of working people has been, and still is, the defining political challenge of our era.” FT 30 October 2017 https://englundmacro.blogspot.com/2017/11/gordon-brown-his-failure-to-rally.html Amazon.com: Gordon Brown: books, biography, latest update The US economy grew throughout, yet nobody found a way to redeploy the people impoverished by globalization.  That wasn’t inevitable, and can’t be fixed by blocking off imports.  The government might have intervened to stop inequality reaching this point, most logicall...

You’ve heard the fear of AI destroying jobs. During the Industrial Revolution, you actually had all sorts of destruction of all sorts of suboptimal jobs that were no longer needed and that allowed people to create more wealth, that allowed you to do more with less and it allowed our society to succeed.  Automobiles decimated the horse carriage industry, including the people who took care of the horses, their drivers and all the things that went along with them. Automation took us from a time when 80% of the people were involved in agriculture to 2% today. The answer to the question “Where will the jobs come from?”  is “I don’t know, but they will!” That has always been the answer, and it has always been the correct answer.  John Authers 6 June 2025 https://www.mauldineconomics.com/frontlinethoughts/good-news-and-creative-destruction

Evan Osnos’s Haves and Have-Yachts explores growing wealth disparity and the subtle self-delusion embraced by the ultrarich. There are now more than 800 USD billionaires  in the US, up from 66 in 1990, Osnos writes. Between President Donald Trump’s first and second inaugurations alone, the scale of their wealth more than doubled.  In The Haves and Have-Yachts: Dispatches on the Ultrarich (Scribner, June 3), Osnos, a staff writer at the New Yorker, peers into these extraordinary fortunes. https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2025-05-30/-the-haves-and-have-yachts-review-how-the-ultrarich-destabilized-the-us New York’s Wealthiest All Want to Live Downtown Now https://englundmacro.blogspot.com/2025/05/new-yorks-wealthiest-all-want-to-live.html Economic Data Paint a Picture of Two Americas https://englundmacro.blogspot.com/2024/06/economic-data-paint-picture-of-two.html  The US economy grew throughout, yet nobody found a way to redeploy the people impoverished by globalizat...

When a 40-year-old economics professor at Harvard University named Dani Rodrik was preparing to publish his first book in 1997, he sent the manuscript to a fellow economist to ask for an endorsement.  The title of Rodrik’s book was Has Globalization Gone Too Far?, and it argued that without government policies to mitigate the downside of free trade, the result would be deep and corrosive social divisions.  “he said I was giving ammunition to the barbarians.” The “barbarians” were men like Pat Buchanan on the right and Richard Gephardt on the left We believed that globalization created so much prosperity around the world that the loss of jobs in places like Flint, Michigan, and High Point, North Carolina, was a small price to pay. 77 million people voted for the man who has said that “tariff is the most beautiful word in the dictionary.” Which leads to the obvious question: What did those of us who believed in neoliberalism and globalization miss?  To put it another way, w...

  Beijing has achieved its key goal — modernising a manufacturing sector that once relied entirely on cheap labour.  Financial Times 28 May 2025 https://www.ft.com/content/724431ad-26db-4f6d-acab-ccb3cad11daa

 Fifty years ago the last Americans were evacuated from Saigon, leaving behind a war-ravaged and impoverished country. Today Saigon, renamed Ho Chi Minh City, is a metropolis of over 9m people full of skyscrapers and flashy brands.  The country has attracted $230bn of multinational investment and become an electronics-assembly titan. Chinese, Japanese, South Korean and Western firms all operate factories there. In the past decade Vietnam has grown at a compound annual rate of 6%, faster than India and China. Vietnam’s growth miracle is concentrated around a few islands of modernity.  Big multinational companies run giant factories for export that employ locals. But they mostly buy their inputs abroad and create few spillovers for the rest of the economy.  This is why Vietnam has failed to increase the share of the value in its exports that is added inside the country.  If Mr Lam fails, Vietnam will muddle on as a low-value-added production centre that missed its...

Mr Trump is appalled by lives lost in war, seeing many conflicts as simply incomprehensible. The president and his inner circle do subscribe to a global value system. That universal value is money.  Mr Trump is a globalist of a particular kind. He has no illusions about the brotherhood of man. Instead, he trusts in the solidarity that binds powerful individuals in a position to enrich themselves and one another.  Syria’s interim ruler suggests Damascus as the site for a new Trump Tower.  The Economist 13 May 2025 https://www.economist.com/international/2025/05/13/why-donald-trump-is-a-globalist https://www.ft.com/content/23afa500-cfd8-4fb7-b950-57be74714172 Syrian rebel forces have entered Damascus BBC 8 december 2024 In the Middle East, the enemy of my enemy isn’t necessarily my friend https://englundmacro.blogspot.com/2024/12/what-has-just-happened-in-syria.html President Donald Trump said the US would explore normalizing relations with Syria after the toppling of longt...

On the 80th anniversary of VE Day, the world is edging ever closer to another apocalyptic conflagration, with India-Pakistan the latest terrifying escalation.  Pax Americana has been shattered, never to return, and with it the delusions of Western modernity. The situation feels hopeless. The Long Peace, as John Lewis Gaddis called it, was an accident of history, a one-off consequence of America’s fleeting supremacy and the Cold War,  not, as hubristic Western elites convinced themselves, the byproduct of an inevitable ascent of humanity from superstition to reason. The Global South is laughing at the decadent West, including at Donald Trump’s naivety, and China’s President Xi is meeting his new vassal Vladimir Putin. America is no longer rich, strong or capable enough to keep the peace, and it wouldn’t want to even if it could.  Its efforts to do so after 9/11 ended in catastrophe, as did its meddling in Libya and elsewhere. Trump voters no longer want to serve as cannon ...

  To understand the problems the world economy faces it helps to start from the topic of “global imbalances”, which was much discussed in the run-up to the global and Eurozone financial crises of 2007-2015.  Trump’s protectionism has to lose, Chinese mercantilism must not win, since it, too, creates substantial global difficulties. Since the US runs trade and current account deficits and has a comparative advantage in services, it also runs large deficits in manufacturing. US has been fortunate to live beyond its means for decades. That need not be a problem: nobody, after all, will be able to force the US to pay its liabilities back.  It (US) also has ways, both elegant and not so elegant, to default. Inflation, depreciation, financial repression and mass corporate bankruptcies all come to mind. The counterpart of external deficits tends to be unsustainable domestic borrowing.  Combined with financial fragility, the latter can lead to huge financial crises, as it di...

Ett slags perfekt storm av geopolitik, handelskrig och svaga marknader https://www.di.se/ledare/samuelssons-krisplan-inte-nog-for-att-radda-volvo-cars/ Porsche and Volvo Victims of Deglobalization Europe’s automakers were huge beneficiaries of globalization, but now the hangover has arrived — and Porsche AG and Volvo Car AB look particularly sickly. Worryingly, their profits have collapsed even before the full impact of US tariffs has been felt.  It’s still unclear whether as a Chinese-owned manufacturer — Volvo’s majority shareholder is Zhejiang Geely Holding Group Co. — it can even keep selling cars in the US under Washington’s new cyber security rules. Bloomberg  29 april 2025  https://www.bloomberg.com/opinion/articles/2025-04-29/trump-s-tariffs-porsche-and-volvo-become-victims-of-deglobalization   Tillbaka till Rolfs länktips 29 april 2025 https://englundmacro.blogspot.com/2025/04/rolfs-lanktips-29-april-2025.html