La Touche Global

'The Craziest Tariff Day in History: 9 April 2025', by Richard Baldwin, Professor of International Economics, IMD.

The Craziest Tariff Day in History: 9 April 2025 By Richard Baldwin, Professor of International Economics, IMD Business School. Factful Friday, 5 April 2025.

'Thanks to President Trump’s volatile and unilateral use of tariffs to attempt to bully others into geopolitical submission, we are all upping our game on the basics of trade policy, including tariffs, quotas and long-running disputes over sectors such as steel. Combined with his ongoing attack on rules-based order, this is the time for progressives to come back to the table on trade policy – it is too important an area of global politics to leave just to trade economists and policy experts, diplomats – or even President Trump.'

International trade needs rules but they must be fair to all - Institute of Development Studies IDS researcher argues for progressives to come back to the table on trade policy in the light of President Trump's actions on tariffs.

'Xi Jinping has called for the renminbi to become a global reserve currency, in some of his clearest comments on his ambitions for China’s currency as Beijing seeks to play a greater role in the international monetary system.
In commentary published on Saturday in Qiushi, the ruling communist party’s flagship ideology journal, China’s president said the country needed to build a “powerful currency” that could be “widely used in international trade, investment and foreign exchange markets, and attain reserve currency status”.
China’s leadership has long sought to promote the internationalisation of the renminbi. But the comments marked Xi’s clearest definition yet of his goal of a “strong currency”, as well as the broader financial foundations Beijing will need to build to support it.
These include a “powerful central bank” capable of effective monetary management, globally competitive financial institutions and international financial centres able to “attract global capital and exert influence over global pricing,” Xi wrote.' - Financial Times

https://www.ft.com/content/c948b978-c22b-44b7-ba3d-4798e641e673?fbclid=IwY2xjawPssQ5leHRuA2FlbQIxMABicmlkETFJOEx6TlBGcHA0SUFQaUlLc3J0YwZhcHBfaWQQMjIyMDM5MTc4ODIwMDg5MgABHqojUUZ1x0Dsf0reKjvzqxVS5FFYlZFTNMjc1fTKenpwi6uyhe0X2jSBTSiw_aem_8k4150U5WGykhIdLgfKz_A

Xi Jinping calls for China’s renminbi to attain global reserve currency status Latest commentary details ambitions for ‘powerful currency’ to play a greater role in trade and forex

Sky’s economics and data editor Ed Conway spends time on the frontlines of Donald Trump's trade war and reveals the messy reality of this economic experiment.
In the US and Canada's automotive capitals, he meets carmakers struggling to make sense of what tariffs they need to pay and how to absorb the extra costs, with international ports doubling up as carparks as trade flows slow down amid companies trying to process this new world order.

Sky’s Ed Conway on the frontline of Trump's trade war Sky’s economics and data editor Ed Conway spends time on the frontlines of Donald Trump's trade war and reveals the messy reality of this economic experiment...

Was South Africa’s G20 summit a success, despite a US boycott? The hosts hailed the gathering, but others warned about the G20's future.

Applications are now open for the 2026 SheTrades Caribbean ➡️UK Trade Mission.

For Caribbean, women-led businesses in the agrifood, beauty and wood product sectors, this is a unique opportunity to:

✅ Connect directly with UK buyers and business support organisations
✅ Learn about export requirements and market opportunities
✅ Visit UK companies to explore potential partnerships

Organised by the ITC SheTrades Commonwealth+ Programme in collaboration with the Caribbean Development Bank - SheTrades Caribbean Hub, this mission is designed to accelerate opportunities and build business between the Caribbean and the UK.

🔗 Visit https://bit.ly/3LUtqQB for full details.

✍️ Applications close 8 December 2025.

🤝 Partners: ITC SheTrades, UK in Barbados and Eastern Caribbean, BELTRAIDE, Development Bank of Jamaica, Small Business Bureau Guyana, Organisation of Eastern Caribbean States, Grenada Investment Development Corporation - GIDC

Interested in how emerging standards and regulations may affect trade? Join the Committee on 11 November for the conversation on international standards for critical and emerging technologies, good regulatory practices and metrology. Watch here: https://bit.ly/43Q41O9

The World Trade Organization and the International Monetary Fund (IMF) have developed the Trade Policy Activity (TPA) Index, a fresh tool designed to track how governments are actively changing trade rules. 📈🛃

🔍 What it does:
• Monitors trade-facilitating vs. trade-restricting measures
• Offers a timely snapshot of global trade-policy trends
• Acts as an early-warning system for supply-chain & trade-policy shifts

www.wto.org

In his speech at the Scotland Investment Summit, the Governor of the Bank of England, Andrew Bailey, calls for a supportive environment for investment to drive innovation and economic growth, particularly in the context of emerging technologies like AI.
He highlights the importance of pragmatic policy frameworks, strong infrastructure and welcomes reforms to mobilise institutional investment into high-potential UK businesses.

My favourite extracts from the speech:
"What really drives the growth of economies? Two things drive growth in the capacity of economies (the supply side), the available labour force, and productivity (the efficiency with which that labour force produces things).
Of these two, it is productivity that drives living standards forward, so it matters a lot. And, investment does a lot to drive productivity – reflecting innovation and the putting to work of ideas and inventions.... Investment isn’t just good for business, its good for the economy, the country and the public.
What drives investment and productivity then? Lots of things shape and affect them, but history strongly suggests that really to move the dial – to do more than affect an incremental change - takes a breakthrough in so-called General Purpose Technology, or GPT for short. By the way, that’s not ChatGPT, which stands for Generative Pre-Trained Transformer, just to confuse things. Rather, in history, examples of GPTs are things like the steam engine (where Greenock’s James Watt was instrumental), electricity, and most recently the Internet. Their significance is that these technologies lead to economy-wide growth, re-shaping industries and markets. They spread out into many sectors of the economy, and for some quite extended period of time they keep developing and improving productivity, and they create an environment in which one innovation leads to another.
Why does this matter today? It matters a lot, because the evidence would suggest that across many economies, the UK included, we are in one of those periods of waiting for the next GPT to come along and lift economic growth. Of course, many other things determine actual economic growth, but in terms of the growth of potential and living standards, productivity matters a lot. And behind that sits investment.
The benefits of such technological shifts can, however, take some time to come through, hence the rather famous quote from the economist Robert Solow who said in 1987, “You can see the computer age everywhere but in the productivity statistics”. Give it time was the lesson from this era – though that does not mean waiting to invest, lest we miss our chance. The other thing to say is that technological impacts on the productivity growth rate are not permanent – they can have a permanent effect on the level of activity and what we do day-to-day, but innovations have a life cycle in terms of their contribution to growth rates. And then, we have to wait for the next GPT to come along." - Governor Bank of England

(GPT not ChatGPT).

Investment in Scotland - speech by Andrew Bailey Given at the Scotland Global Investment Summit 2025

'The administration of Donald Trump has derided the World Trade Organization as a “toothless” failure, but the Geneva-based body is still clinging to hope that Washington has not completely turned its back on the rules-based order of global trade. While the US President’s unilateral tariffs have ridden roughshod over the WTO’s core principle of reciprocity in trade, diplomats argue that, behind the scenes, the administration is still fighting to preserve elements of the global system.' - Financial Times
Certainly, the world cannot continue to be held to ransom by an empire in decline, holding on through desperation and malfeasance. Nor can we set ourselves up to be inclined to surrender the future to current US anomalies.
At the fall of the Roman empire, Britannia, Spain, France, Germany, Netherlands all emerged, some to be greater empires than Rome could ever have imagined. We must be neither limited to nor restricted by what the US has achieved. The US can be a part of the future or long may it continue on its downward spiral. By the time Italy learnt its lesson from its declining Roman empire, it was too late!

WTO clings to signs Donald Trump still needs it — sometimes US takes ‘à la carte’ approach to global trade body, suggesting it has not completely turned its back on rules-based order

On 17–18 September, the global trade community gathers in Geneva to explore how digital trade is reshaping the global economy.
Explore the sessions & speakers 👉 wto.org/pf25

🍂 September at the WTO means one thing: the is almost here!

On 17–18, the global trade community gathers in Geneva to explore how digital trade is reshaping the global economy.

Explore the sessions & speakers 👉 wto.org/pf25

'A New Global Order' - Tianjin Summit, 2025.

'Chinese President Xi Jinping and Russian President Vladimir Putin pressed their vision at a regional summit on Monday for a new global security and economic order that prioritises the "Global South".
Xi was hosting more than 20 leaders of non-Western countries at a two-day summit in the northern Chinese port city of Tianjin of the Shanghai Cooperation Organisation (SCO).
The SCO must "promote the democratisation of international relations and enhance representation of developing countries", Xi said in a speech, adding that at a time of turbulence "global governance has reached a new crossroads".
"We must continue to take a clear stand against hegemonism and power politics, and practise true multilateralism," he said, in a veiled attack on the current U.S.-dominated world order.
However, Xi did not set out any concrete policies in what he called his "Global Governance Initiative" - the latest in a series of policy frameworks from Beijing that analysts say are mainly geared to promoting China's global leadership role.' - Reuters

China's Xi, Russia's Putin share vision for new global order at security forum Chinese President Xi Jinping and Russian President Vladimir Putin pressed their vision at a regional summit for a new global security and economic order that prioritises the "Global South", in a direct challenge to the United States.