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    Alan Beattie

    Senior Trade Writer

    Alan Beattie writes the Trade Secrets newsletter every Monday and an opinion column each Thursday, covering international trade, globalisation, the intersection of geopolitics and economics and the world financial system.

    Based in London, he was previously the FT's international economy editor and world trade editor and has been also been based in Washington and Brussels for the FT. He is the author of False Economy (Penguin, 2009), a popular economic history of the world, and Who's In Charge Here? (Penguin, 2012), an account of governments' mishandling of the global financial crisis. Before joining the FT, Alan was an economist at the Bank of England.

    Email Alan Beattie @alanbeattie  on Twitter (link opens in a new browser window)

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    • Thursday, 23 November, 2023
      Trade SecretsJavier Milei
      A faint chance of success for Javier Milei

      The new Argentine president’s ‘anarcho-capitalism’ undermines the idea of a unified “Global South”

      President of Argentina Alberto Fernández and president-elect Javier Milei pose for a picture
    • Monday, 20 November, 2023
      Trade Secrets
      Argentina lurches from one folly to another Premium content

      Javier Milei’s election as president puts the EU-Mercosur deal and the whole direction of South American trade in doubt

      Javier Milei
    • Thursday, 16 November, 2023
      Trade SecretsCurrency wars
      The US-China currency wars are in an unstable lull

      If Beijing returns to promoting export-led growth, tension over exchange rates may return

    • Monday, 13 November, 2023
      Trade Secrets
      The Manchinations of Senator Joe Premium content

      West Virginia Democrat shows the limits of the possible for US climate and trade policy

      Joe Manchin, the Democrat from West Virginia who last week announced he would stand down from the Senate next year
    • Thursday, 9 November, 2023
      Trade SecretsGlobal trade
      Israel-Hamas war won’t tear the world economy apart

      Unless it gets Donald Trump elected or spurs China to invade Taiwan, the Gaza conflict is not disastrous for trade

      Joe Biden
    • Wednesday, 8 November, 2023
      FT News Briefing podcast9 min listen
      Israel plans for ‘indefinite’ grip over Gaza

      The IMF warns that soaring wage growth risks blunting eastern Europe’s edge

    • Monday, 6 November, 2023
      Trade Secrets
      Why AI and data might not belong in trade deals Premium content

      The US is backing the right to regulate over the free flow of information

      US president Joe Biden talking at a US artificial intelligence event in October 2023
    • Thursday, 2 November, 2023
      Trade SecretsTrade disputes
      Rolling with the Biden punch on managed trade

      The EU and other trading partners should keep short-term peace while preserving fundamental principles

      Joe Biden holds a press conference. The US president’s managed trade is a bad idea, but it’s far better than four years of Donald Trump’s economic nihilism
    • Monday, 23 October, 2023
      Trade Secrets
      Brussels defies US pressure to join its anti-China gang Premium content

      Like Groucho Marx, the EU doesn’t want to join a club that will have it as a member

      US president Joe Biden met European Commission president Ursula von der Leyen and European Council president Charles Michel during the EU-US summit at the White House last week
    • Thursday, 19 October, 2023
      Trade SecretsGlobal trade
      Countries are seeking economic security in a turbulent world

      The EU and others are pondering how to deal with value-chain disruption and geopolitical rivalry

      A worker in a clean suit assembles an ASML photolithography machine in the Netherlands,
    • Monday, 16 October, 2023
      Trade Secrets
      A cynical transatlantic deal on steel Premium content

      The US is pushing China-bashing agreements that make European trade purists shudder

      Ursula von der Leyen with US president Joe Biden
    • Thursday, 12 October, 2023
      Trade SecretsCommodities
      How commodity markets are defying the new cold war

      Rivalry between China and the US over energy and minerals has not broken the global economy into blocs

      A nickel mining site in Sorowako, Indonesia
    • Monday, 9 October, 2023
      Trade Secrets
      The IMF is under pressure but on a mission Premium content

      Demand for its crisis lending soaring while interest rates are high has put the fund in a difficult position

      Security personnel stand at the entrance of the venue hosting the 2023 annual meetings of the IMF and World Bank in Marrakech, Morocco
    • Thursday, 5 October, 2023
      Trade SecretsGlobal trade
      Why the ‘Global South’ isn’t running the IMF

      China’s conflicted interests and strategic rivalries are helping to preserve the status quo of rich-country dominance

      A man in his seventies and in a suit, with Brazil flags on the wall behind him, gesticulates as he talks
    • Monday, 2 October, 2023
      Trade Secrets
      A subsidy club to restrain rich-world handouts to China Premium content

      High-income countries giving out cash that gets spent on imported Chinese cars and solar panels is politically tricky

      Electric vehicles being charged
    • Thursday, 28 September, 2023
      Trade SecretsAutomobiles
      A trade reprieve won’t fix the EU’s failures on electric vehicles

      Proposed anti-subsidy duties are an admission that European companies and governments have been slow to innovate

      An EV at the Munich motor show this month
    • Monday, 25 September, 2023
      Trade Secrets
      EU fails big test on geopolitics of trade Premium content

      Row over Ukrainian grain imports shows how the interests of member states sabotage Europe’s common goals

      Farmers inspect unsold grain stores in Poland
    • Tuesday, 19 September, 2023
      War in Ukraine
      The EU has a rogue state problem

      Poland, Hungary and Slovakia have trashed European law to break a trade truce with Kyiv

      A combine harvester mows a field of golden wheat
    • Monday, 18 September, 2023
      Trade Secrets
      The lawless free-for-all of greening world trade Premium content

      The WTO has little role in regulating environmental subsidies and regulations

      WTO signage outside its headquarters
    • Thursday, 14 September, 2023
      Trade SecretsGeopolitics
      The ‘Global South’ is a pernicious term that needs to be retired

      Arbitrarily dividing a complex world into simple blocs creates polarisation and retards progress

      A woman carries coal in Dhanbad, India. ‘Global South’ assumes a collective identity, which in truth elides a vast range of conditions and interests, including over the use of fossil fuels
    • Wednesday, 13 September, 2023
      UK trade
      Outgoing UK trade chief warns on dangers of global protectionism

      Simon Walker says the Johnson government failed to live up to its free trade promises

    • Monday, 11 September, 2023
      Trade Secrets
      G20 becomes shallower even as it expands Premium content

      Admitting the African Union while watering down statements on Ukraine doesn’t enhance group’s credibility

      G20 delegates
    • Thursday, 31 August, 2023
      Trade SecretsGlobal trade
      The fundamental reason China will struggle to dethrone the dollar

      Making a currency a global standard demands deep trust in its issuer’s openness and reliability

    • Thursday, 24 August, 2023
      Trade SecretsG7
      The Brics don’t stack up as a committee to run the world

      Even the rival long-established G7 rich countries have often struggled for consensus

      Brazil’s Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva, left, China’s Xi Jinping, South Africa’s Cyril Ramaphosa, India’s Narendra Modi and Russia’s foreign minister, Sergei Lavrov, at the Brics summit this week
    • Monday, 31 July, 2023
      Global trade
      Globalisation: the year so far Premium content

      There’s a succession of ongoing tussles over trade and signs of trouble ahead — but no apocalypse just yet

      Close-up of a circuit board
    Previous page You are on page 1 Next page

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