Aurelia Butler

(Reuters) – Inflation dropped in most economies around the world in 2024, but voters didn’t care. Angered by the hefty ramp-up in prices for everything from eggs to energy over the past few years, they punished incumbent parties at almost every opportunity. The pain of inflation lingers, and ruling parties took the blame in election after election.In the United States, higher costs helped Donald Trump win a second term as president four years after he was voted out of the White House and then falsely claimed election fraud. His supporters failed in their bid to overturn Trump’s defeat by storming the U.S. Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021. This year, they made their voices heard at the ballot box, ushering in a new American leadership likely to test democratic institutions at home and relations abroad.The inflation-driven anti-incumbent sentiment also ushered in new governments in Britain and Botswana, Portugal and Panama. South Korean voters put the opposition into power in its parliament, a check on President Yoon Suk Yeol. In early December, the president imposed martial law, a move the National Assembly quickly reversed. Elections also shook up France and Germany, and Japan and India. One place there was no change: Russia, where Vladimir Putin was re-elected president with 88% of the vote, a record in post-Soviet Russia. Moscow continued to prosecute its war against Ukraine, grinding out notable territorial gains. The big question is what impact Trump’s return to the White House will have on the conflict. He has promised to end the war in a day. Many in Ukraine and elsewhere in Europe fear that will mean siding with Putin and freezing the status quo. In the Middle East, Israel continued its war against Gaza and extended it to Lebanon, where it left Iran-backed Hezbollah damaged and in disarray. In Syria, a well-coordinated collection of rebel groups toppled Bashar al-Assad and now seeks to run the country. In business, companies around the world grappled with how to adapt to artificial intelligence. The dominance of tech companies for investors can be summed up in this simple fact: seven tech firms — the so-called Magnificent Seven — now account for more than one-third of the S&P 500’s market cap. Elon Musk, who runs one of those companies, Tesla (NASDAQ:TSLA), is an adviser and financial backer to President-elect Trump. Looking ahead, that combination of tech bro mojo and political power could well define 2025.  More

WASHINGTON (Reuters) – The Biden administration on Monday announced a last-minute trade investigation into Chinese-made “legacy” semiconductors that could heap more U.S. tariffs on chips from China that power everyday goods from autos to washing machines to telecoms gear.The “Section 301″ probe, launched just four weeks before President-elect Donald Trump takes office on Jan. 20, will be handed over to his administration in January for completion, Biden administration officials said.The effort could offer Trump a ready avenue to begin imposing some of the hefty, 60% tariffs that he has threatened on Chinese imports.Departing President Joe Biden has already imposed a 50% U.S. tariff on Chinese semiconductors that starts on Jan. 1. His administration has tightened export curbs on advanced AI and memory chips and chipmaking equipment to China and also recently increased tariffs to 50% on Chinese solar wafers and polysilicon. The U.S. Trade Representative’s office, which will conduct the new probe, said it is aimed at protecting American and other market-driven chip producers from China’s massive state-driven buildup of domestic chip supply.U.S. Trade Representative Katherine Tai said that the trade agency has found evidence that Beijing is targeting the semiconductor industry for global domination, similar to its buildup in steel, aluminum, solar panels, electric vehicles and critical minerals.”This is enabling its companies to rapidly expand capacity and to offer artificially lower priced chips that threaten to significantly harm and potentially eliminate their market-oriented competition,” she told reporters on a conference call.Legacy chips use older, mature manufacturing processes and are found in a wide range of mass market applications. They do not include advanced chips for use in artificial intelligence applications or sophisticated microprocessors.The Biden administration will begin accepting public comments on the probe on Jan. 6, and has planned a public hearing for March 11-12, according to a Federal Register notice on the probe. It is unclear whether Trump’s choice to lead USTR, Jamieson Greer, a trade lawyer and former USTR chief during Trump’s first administration, will be confirmed by the U.S. Senate by then.The probe is being conducted under Section 301 of the Trade Act of 1974, the same unfair trade practices statute that Trump invoked to impose tariffs of up to 25% on some $370 billion worth of Chinese imports in 2018 and 2019, triggering a nearly three-year trade war with Beijing.If Trump takes up the probe, it needs to be completed within a year from initiation.DOWNSTREAM GOODS PROBED A Biden administration official said in addition to examining the impact of the imported chips themselves, the probe would also look at their incorporation into downstream components and end-use goods for critical industries including defense, automotive products and medical devices.It also will target China’s production of silicon carbide substrates and wafers for semiconductor fabrication. U.S. Commerce Secretary Gina Raimondo said her department’s research shows two-thirds of U.S. products using chips had Chinese legacy chips in them, and half of U.S. companies did not know the origin of their chips including some in the defense industry, findings that were “fairly alarming.”After the COVID-19 pandemic disrupted the supply of semiconductors and temporarily halted production of autos and medical equipment, the U.S. has sought to build its own semiconductor supply chain with $52.7 billion in new subsidies for chip production, research and workforce development.But Raimondo said China’s plans to build more than 60% of the world’s new legacy chip capacity over the next decade were discouraging investment elsewhere and constituted unfair competition.It “undercuts our companies and makes the U.S. dependent on China for the chips that we use every day in so many things,” she told reporters.Despite a bitter presidential campaign, one of the few areas of continuity between Biden’s and Trump’s administrations will be tariffs on China. Biden kept in place all of the duties on Chinese imports imposed by Trump and added to them, including 100% duties on Chinese-made electric vehicles in an effort to keep them out of the U.S. market. More

Incoming centrist prime minister Francois Bayrou has struggled for almost 10 days to put together a government as he looks to stave off a vote of no-confidence in mid-January and ensure parliament agrees on a budget for 2025 in February.”Given the national day of mourning, the (government) announcement will not be before 1800 (1700 GMT),” the presidency said. There are fears that hundreds or even thousands may have been killed by Cyclone Chido in France’s Indian Ocean territory of Mayotte.Bayrou initially sought to broaden his incoming administration to appeal to both the left-wing Socialist party and the conservative Les Republicains, hoping not to suffer the fate of his predecessor Michel Barnier, whose government collapsed after just three months amid opposition to his budget measures.However, Bayrou, who has vowed to name his government before Christmas, has failed in particular to satisfy demands from the left in his quest to secure majority support in a deeply fractured parliament.In a letter seen by Reuters addressed to Les Republicains, which won just 5% of votes in the summer parliamentary election, Bayrou sets out security and budgetary measures in the hope of ensuring it joins the next government. Bayrou is trying to cut a wide budget deficit but is finding consensus as hard to achieve as Barnier. An opinion poll published on Dec. 19 found 64% were dissatisfied with his appointment as prime minister.After a European Parliament election last June in which the far-right Rassemblement National made significant gains, President Emmanuel Macron called a snap parliamentary election that he promised would bring more clarity.Instead, no party or bloc won a majority, leaving parliament divided into three main blocs, and Macron’s nominees for prime minister so far unable to muster the majority support that would enable them to survive an inevitable vote of no-confidence. More

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Unlock the Editor’s Digest for freeRoula Khalaf, Editor of the FT, selects her favourite stories in this weekly newsletter.The UK economy failed to grow in the third quarter, in the latest blow to a government already under fire from businesses for its tax-raising Budget.GDP did not register any growth in the three months to September, the Office for National Statistics said on Monday, down from its first estimate of a 0.1 per cent expansion. The economy was held back by the dominant services sector, which stagnated over the quarter. Production output fell 0.4 per cent, offsetting a 0.7 per cent increase in the construction sector.The figures show the economy stalled in the immediate aftermath of Labour’s July election victory, even before chancellor Rachel Reeves’ Budget dented business confidence.Reeves on Monday admitted that the government faced a “huge” challenge but insisted that the Budget had laid the foundations for long-term growth.If growth undershoots forecasts made in the Budget, it raises the prospect that the chancellor may need to deliver spending cuts or higher taxes next year to ensure she continues to meet her borrowing rules.“The challenge we face to fix our economy and properly fund our public finances after 15 years of neglect is huge,” Reeves said. “But this is only fuelling our fire to deliver for working people.”The government has put boosting growth at the heart of its agenda, but now faces the threat that the economy could have contracted in the final quarter of the year.GDP shrank 0.1 per cent in October, the second straight monthly contraction.The ONS also revised its estimate for second-quarter growth down from 0.5 per cent to 0.4 per cent, indicating the economy began slowing earlier than previously thought. Recent figures have pointed to a softening in the jobs market, stubborn inflation and falling business confidence.The Bank of England last week predicted zero expansion in the fourth quarter, down from its previous forecast of 0.3 per cent growth.Economists said the details of Monday’s downwardly revised data contained some bright spots, with consumer spending growing at a healthy pace, business investment picking up and households no longer piling more money into savings. Paul Dales, at the consultancy Capital Economics, said the downward revision in the third quarter was “mainly due to external influences rather than the domestic economy”, including a bigger drag from net trade. But the overall picture was that growth had “ground to a halt”, he said, due to “the lingering drag from higher interest rates, weaker overseas demand and some concerns over the policies in the Budget”.Elliott Jordan-Doak, senior UK economist at the consultancy Pantheon Macroeconomics, said the revision would not change the BoE’s thinking on interest rates, as much of the weakness had been in government spending and would “fade away” next year. Last week Andrew Griffith, shadow business secretary, claimed the UK was heading for a “January of discontent” and the possibility of a recession. He said if there was a recession it would be “made in Downing Street”. More

Unlock the Editor’s Digest for freeRoula Khalaf, Editor of the FT, selects her favourite stories in this weekly newsletter.Ireland’s top central banker has said rate-setters are facing more uncertainty now than during the early stages of the coronavirus pandemic. Gabriel Makhlouf told the Financial Times that the outlook for next year was probably clouded by “more uncertainty than there was when we went into lockdown” as the agenda and actions of incoming US president Donald Trump were all but impossible to read. The president-elect has pledged to impose levies of up to 20 per cent on all US imports, with the tariffs rising to 60 per cent on China, once he returns to the White House on January 20. Most economists, including those at the European Central Bank, think a US-instigated global trade war would dent growth in the export-dependent Eurozone. Some analysts think the ECB should cut rates pre-emptively to guard against Trump’s second term in the White House as growth in the Eurozone has been weaker than expected, while inflation is falling quicker than anticipated towards the central bank’s 2 per cent goal. But, despite the risks, Makhlouf, who holds one of the 26 votes on the ECB’s governing council, said uncertainty was so rampant that “insurance cuts [to interest rates] really may not necessarily help [but] may actually create a different problem”.Makhlouf warned that it was unclear if Trump was really serious about tariffs, or if his threat was just a bargaining strategy to achieve other policy goals. While he acknowledged that additional barriers to trade would “not be good for the world”, he said the fallout for growth and inflation was all but impossible to quantify at this point in time. “There are so many caveats [and] so many variables that any scenario analysis risks giving people a wrong sense [that] we understand how all this is going to pan out.”Makhlouf said that the ECB needed to be “very vigilant”, but argued against calls for the central bank to start cutting rates by 50 basis points at a time at forthcoming meetings in early 2025. The ECB in December lowered borrowing costs for the fourth time this year by a quarter point. ECB president Christine Lagarde said that further cuts were likely next year and disclosed that some members of the governing council had argued in favour of a 50bp reduction in December.Makhlouf told the FT his preference was still “for gradual moves rather than big leaps”, unless “the facts and the evidence” suggest otherwise. “I have not seen, and I at the moment do not see, the need for a sudden big leap.”Makhlouf pointed to the risk that inflation may flare up again if the ECB eased too fast. “We haven’t declared victory [over inflation] yet” as “some elements” of services inflation were still “a bit” concerning. “We wouldn’t want to complicate our price stability objective by making these sort of insurance cuts,” he said. The ECB could respond when it had “more information” and understood more clearly was Trump’s policies meant for the outlook.Makhlouf said he expected borrowing costs in the Eurozone to fall to a level where they were neither restricting nor stimulating economic activity — a level often described by economists as the “neutral” rate. “I couldn’t tell you whether that will be at 2.75 [per cent], at 2.5 [per cent] or at 2.25 [per cent],” he said. Makhlouf indirectly suggested that the current market consensus that interest rates were to fall to 1.75 per cent by the second half of next year was off the mark. “People who are saying that [the neutral rate is] below 2 are probably ahead of themselves,” he said. More