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Unlock the Editor’s Digest for freeRoula Khalaf, Editor of the FT, selects her favourite stories in this weekly newsletter.Some of Britain’s biggest supermarkets and food producers, including Marks and Spencer and J Sainsbury, have called on the EU to agree a deal with the UK government to help smooth exports of plant and animal products across the English Channel.The strong industry intervention in support of a “veterinary agreement” between London and Brussels comes as the two sides prepare for a summit on May 19 to “reset” trade and security ties that suffered as a result of Brexit. In a letter seen by the Financial Times, 12 companies told Maroš Šefčovič, the EU commission vice-president in charge of Brexit negotiations, that “at a time when trading relationships around the world are being challenged, now feels like an opportune moment to solidify our economic partnership”.“Unnecessary red tape” since Brexit meant moving food and drink had become “significantly more expensive”, added the letter, which was also signed by retailers Morrisons, Lidl and Ocado as well as meat processors Cranswick and 2 Sisters. It comes ahead of May 1 local elections in England, where Nigel Farage’s pro-Brexit Reform UK party is predicted to mount a strong challenge to Sir Keir Starmer’s ruling Labour party.The government has committed to seeking a veterinary agreement with the EU to remove border red tape, including export health certificates and other paperwork, which the supermarket bosses said was adding significantly to their costs.Both the EU and UK have signalled their intention to conclude a veterinary — or sanitary and phytosanitary (SPS) — agreement. But Brussels has made clear it will have to involve “dynamic alignment” with EU laws, where the UK must automatically transpose EU laws on to its statute book.Lord David Frost, the Conservative peer who negotiated the original EU-UK trade agreement, this week accused ministers of preparing to “sell out” the UK’s right to independent self-government by striking a veterinary deal.“It’s increasingly obvious that Labour are going to sell out the country once again,” Frost told The Sun newspaper, following reports that the government was considering accepting the jurisdiction of the European Court of Justice over some elements of the deal.Industry is concerned that a strong showing by rightwing populist Reform in pro-Brexit areas could rattle Starmer’s administration and reduce ambition for the EU-UK reset, which will also address other politically sensitive areas such as migration and fishing rights.One industry executive said the letter was intended to “stiffen spines” on both sides as the political debate around the reset heated up, and make clear that there were “benefits for everyone” in doing a deal in terms of jobs, growth and food prices. The EU accounted for more than 70 per cent of UK food and drink imports last year, worth £45bn, and 57 per cent of UK exports, worth £14bn.The food and drink industry has been among the hardest hit by Brexit. According to research published last month by the Food and Drinks Federation, UK food export volumes to the EU were down by 34.1 per cent last year compared with 2019, before Britain left the bloc.European food and drink imports to the UK rose 3.3 per cent last year compared with 2023, because European goods are subject to fewer checks on entering the UK than UK goods entering the bloc, the trade body found. The letter’s signatories said a deal to remove border frictions would boost economic growth and increase investment in the UK and EU.“It is ultimately the customers and communities we both aim to serve that suffer, as well as the farmers, growers, and workers in our supply chains across the UK and EU,” they wrote.The Cabinet Office said: “We welcome that major UK businesses support our manifesto commitment to negotiate an ambitious SPS agreement to put food on people’s tables more cheaply as part of our strategic alliance with the EU.”The European Commission declined to comment.Additional reporting by Laura Onita in London More

Unlock the Editor’s Digest for freeRoula Khalaf, Editor of the FT, selects her favourite stories in this weekly newsletter.Uncertainty over global trade policies is “off the charts”, the head of the IMF has warned, saying Donald Trump’s tariffs were set to hit global growth, push up prices and potentially play havoc with financial markets. Kristalina Georgieva said on Thursday that the ongoing “reboot of the global trading system” by the US, the fund’s biggest shareholder, would lead to “notable markdowns” in growth estimates.But while the IMF will next week raise its forecasts for price pressures, it will stop short of predicting that the US president’s policies will push the global economy into an outright recession. “Financial markets volatility is up,” said Georgieva in a speech. “And trade policy uncertainty is literally off the charts.” Her comments came ahead of the IMF and World Bank’s spring meetings in Washington, where concerns over Trump’s threat to push US tariffs to their highest level in more than a century are set to dominate.Finance ministers from around the world are expected to use next week’s gathering to try to meet their US counterparts and negotiate a reduction in the tariffs announced by Trump on April 2.Ajay Banga, head of the World Bank, on Wednesday, called on governments “to care about negotiating and dialogue”. “It’s going to be really important in this phase,” he said, referring to the White House decision to pause implementation of the “reciprocal” tariffs for 90 days. “The quicker we do it, the better that will be.”The fund’s forecasting revisions will feature in the latest edition of its World Economic Outlook. In January, the IMF predicted a 3.3 per cent expansion in both 2025 and 2026, with the global economy boosted by the expectation of strong growth in the US. After Trump surprised markets with a far more aggressive trade policy than expected, many analysts downgraded their forecasts, with some now seeing a significant risk of a recession in the world’s largest economy.The Peterson Institute for International Economics said earlier this week that the US economy would grow by just 0.1 per cent — down from 2.5 per cent in 2024. Georgieva said the Trump administration’s tariffs were a response to an “erosion of trust”, triggered in part by more economic subsidies for exporters in some of the US’s biggest trading partners, including China and the EU. Washington has also provided manufacturing subsidies through measures such as former president Joe Biden’s Inflation Reduction Act, which gave tax breaks for producing green tech in the US. Both Trump and Biden have highlighted Beijing’s massive state support of its manufacturing industries as a problem for America. Trump has threatened Brussels with 20 per cent tariffs, while China faces levies of 145 per cent.Georgieva also warned that continuing uncertainty over trade policies risked creating more episodes of financial market stress, such as the sell-off last week when equity markets fell sharply and the US government’s borrowing costs rose. The IMF managing director described the movements in markets, which also saw the US currency drop, as “unusual”. “Despite elevated uncertainty, the dollar depreciated, and US Treasury yield curves ‘smiled’ — it is not the sort of smile one wants to see,” she said, adding that the movements “should be taken as a warning”. The fall in the dollar amid the market panic has led some to question whether its status as the global reserve currency is under threat. “Something that’s this well entrenched, that benefits from such strong network effects, there’s reason to be sceptical about a rapid unravelling [of the dollar’s status],” said Brent Neiman, a former US Treasury official under the Biden Administration who is now a professor at the University of Chicago. “But major changes about the extent to which the US is considered a place of stable policies and reliable commitment to rules and the current order could certainly have an impact.” More

Unlock the Editor’s Digest for freeRoula Khalaf, Editor of the FT, selects her favourite stories in this weekly newsletter.Turkey’s central bank unexpectedly raised its key interest rate from 42.5 per cent to 46 per cent on Thursday, in its first monetary policy meeting since the arrest of President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan’s main political rival and the Trump administration unleashed a global trade war.The surprise decision, which Turkey’s central bank described as a show of monetary “decisiveness”, comes after political instability hammered domestic assets last month and sent the lira currency to a record low.The bank reversed a previous cycle of rate cuts, also raising its overnight lending rate to 49 per cent from 46 per cent, and said it would tighten policy further if there were any signs of rising inflation.The lira rose against the dollar after the bank announced its decision, which investors said was designed to reassure investors after the recent sell-off.“This is a sensible move that is probably worth even more for [its] strong signal of commitment to an orthodox approach [to monetary policy] than the hike itself,” said Kieran Curtis, head of emerging markets local currency debt at Aberdeen Investments. “Maintaining attractiveness of lira deposits is crucial,” he added.Earlier this month, President Donald Trump announced a so-called reciprocal tariff of 10 per cent levelled on all Turkish goods imported to the US, the lowest rate he applied to trade partners.Turkey is 18 months into an economic stabilisation programme that has sought to squash runaway inflation caused by the ultra-low interest rate policy previously favoured by Erdoğan. The programme faced its most severe market test on 19 March with the arrest of Istanbul mayor Ekrem İmamoğlu, which sparked a market panic and Turkey’s largest street protests in a decade.Investors and domestic savers fled from the lira and into foreign currency. In response, the bank held an emergency rate-setting meeting, where it suspended lending at its key repo rate and raised its overnight lending rate to 46 per cent, which in effect became the main interest rate.The lira has since stabilised at around 38 to the US dollar, but the central bank has since spent more than $46bn intervening to support the currency, according to estimates by Bürümcekçi Research and Consultancy.“Recent events — domestic politics and the global tariff war — have strengthened the Turkish central bank’s mandate to do whatever it takes to fight inflation. Reserve loss was [also] too much,” commented Tim Ash, a longtime Turkey watcher at BlueBay Asset Management.“Credit to the [central bank’s] governor and . . . team,” Ash added of Thursday’s decision. “They proved their independence in doing the right thing.”A cost of living crisis caused by high inflation has hurt Erdogan’s poll ratings, and, so far, he has allowed officials free rein to get inflation down, even if it has meant high interest rates.The bank said in a statement that its “tight monetary stance will be maintained until price stability is achieved via a sustained decline in inflation”. It added: “Monetary policy . . . will be tightened in case a significant and persistent deterioration in inflation is foreseen.” It also said it would resume lending at its key repo rate, which was suspended after İmamoğlu’s detention.“It’s clear that the central bank’s easing cycle has hit a major roadblock, and it could take some time before the easing cycle is restarted,” Nicholas Farr, emerging Europe economist at Capital Economics, said.Turkish inflation last month fell more than expected to 38 per cent. The bank is targeting 24 per cent by the end of the year. More

Unlock the White House Watch newsletter for freeYour guide to what the 2024 US election means for Washington and the worldThe European Central Bank has cut its benchmark interest rate by a quarter-point to 2.25 per cent as it prepares for economic fallout from the trade war ignited by US President Donald Trump.Thursday’s cut, which brings borrowing costs in the currency bloc to their lowest in more than two years, had been widely expected after Trump’s announcement of sweeping tariffs on most of the US’s trading partners on April 2. “The outlook for growth has deteriorated owing to rising trade tensions,” the ECB said in comments that accompanied the rate decision. It added that “the adverse and volatile market response to the trade tensions is likely to have a tightening impact on financing conditions”.But it dropped language from last month that referred to monetary policy becoming “less restrictive” in what some saw as a hint there could be less room to cut rates in the future.Pooja Kumra, rates strategist at TD Securities, said the ECB’s language change appeared hawkish but also highlighted the bank’s warning on the risks tariffs posed to growth, adding: “Feels that’s a balancing act between hawks and doves.” Ahead of the decision, Trump compared the ECB’s rate-cutting record with the US Federal Reserve, which kept rates on hold at its last meeting in March. Trump said Fed chair Jay Powell, who warned on Wednesday of the tariffs’ impact on US growth and inflation, was “always TOO LATE AND WRONG” and his “termination cannot come fast enough!”The ECB’s cut this week is the seventh reduction since it started cutting its deposit rate last June.Traders stuck to their bets of at least two further quarter-point cuts by the end of this year, according to levels implied by swaps markets after the decision.The euro was little changed at $1.135 immediately after the cut.Trump performed a partial U-turn last week, delaying his full “reciprocal tariffs” of 20 per cent on EU goods for 90 days, during which time a rate of 10 per cent will apply. But top central bankers say his protectionist policies are still likely to be a negative economic shock for the Euro area.The ECB is already confronting slower growth and cooling price pressures. In March, the central bank cut its 2025 growth forecast for the Eurozone to 0.9 per cent — its sixth consecutive reduction.Inflation edged down last month to 2.2 per cent — marginally above the ECB’s 2 per cent target — as service prices rose at their slowest pace for almost three years.Economists say inflation could be driven further down by this month’s oil price fall, the recent rise in the euro against the dollar, and a potential surge in Chinese imports to the Eurozone. All three developments are widely seen as consequences of Trump’s trade policy, at least in part. But the increase in debt-funded spending in Germany and elsewhere in the Eurozone could prove an inflationary pressure. More

Unlock the Editor’s Digest for freeRoula Khalaf, Editor of the FT, selects her favourite stories in this weekly newsletter.The writer is global head of research at Ashmore GroupIt is hard to talk about Brazil without acknowledging its potential. More than twice the size of India, Brazil is an energy, mining and agricultural powerhouse. It has a hyperconnected population, a well-educated middle-class and a sophisticated financial system. As per Jorge Ben Jor’s classic song “País Tropical”, it is a “tropical country blessed by god and beautiful by nature”.Despite all its strengths, investor confidence in Brazil is very low. Unsustainable fiscal dynamics under President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva led to humiliating valuation levels by the end of last year. But betting on a collapse of the country’s social-economic structure is a mistake. With the highest real rates in the world, a weak currency and equity markets trading near 2008 levels, Brazil offers an enticing value opportunity for international investors. There are some signs of economic improvement that can be built on. GDP growth was 3.4 per cent in 2024, the strongest since 2011, excluding the pandemic rebound. Unemployment also fell from 15 per cent to 6.2 per cent, the lowest since 2015. However, growth is projected to drop to about 2 per cent this year. Lula’s government has repeatedly undermined its commitment to fiscal responsibility. Recent measures include a bill raising the income tax exemption threshold to R$5,000 (US$850) per month, which would leave at least 56 per cent of the country’s workforce paying no income tax. The government’s proposal to offset these losses by taxing the wealthiest 0.1 per cent has done little to assuage investor concerns as its approval is uncertain. Furthermore, quasi-fiscal measures — such as payroll-linked credit extensions — potentially mask deeper deficits. Fiscal profligacy has, in turn, prompted capital flight. A weaker currency has added to inflation, forcing the central bank to raise policy rates to 14.25 per cent today, or 10 per cent in real terms, the highest across emerging markets. This has put further strain on government finances. The cost of servicing debt accounts for most of the budget deficit, which stands at 8.5 per cent of GDP. Brazil’s net debt-to-GDP ratio is 61.4 per cent and gross debt approaches 76 per cent. Elections are not until October 2026 but are very much on investors’ radars. Lula’s approval ratings recently dropped to historic lows of 24 per cent. Voters blame his economic policies for their falling purchasing power and fear the prospect of future tax rises.This backdrop echoes that of the US, where the Democrats were voted out last year in part due to cost of living concerns. The parallel ends there, though. While Donald Trump passed through various court cases and was re-elected US president, Jair Bolsonaro is ineligible and likely to serve time for his role in plotting a coup to remain in power. The opposition could now rally around Tarcísio de Freitas, the current governor of São Paulo and former infrastructure minister who was not caught in the net of criminal proceedings against Bolsonaro. A technocrat and former engineer, Freitas has led the completion of several infrastructure projects and the privatisation of electricity provider Eletrobras. He also oversaw the approval of market-friendly legal frameworks for natural gas, railways and cabotage shipping. His approval rating is high, and he has the lowest rejection rates among potential candidates.Freitas becoming the opposition candidate and winning the election in 2026 could provide a positive confidence shock, boosting the currency and lowering inflation expectations. This would allow for rate cuts and therefore lower interest costs. Given the primary deficit is relatively small, lower interest rates would help to restore debt sustainability. Former presidents Fernando Henrique Cardoso and Michel Temer managed fiscal consolidations with anaemic GDP growth. Recent structural reforms under Lula suggest the economy can now expand by 2.5 to 3.5 per cent, making it easier to steer the country towards debt sustainability.Brazil needs to build. Capex to GDP has been below 20 per cent since the 1990s. The next government, whoever forms it, should find budgetary resources for infrastructure investment by announcing a credible four-year fiscal consolidation plan that could include freezing public sector hiring, and keeping entitlements below nominal GDP. They could then spearhead a Brazilian infrastructure renaissance that would attract further investments from the private sector. If capex to GDP can rise above 20 per cent again within a credible budget, Brazil will be back on track. More

Unlock the White House Watch newsletter for freeYour guide to what the 2024 US election means for Washington and the worldChina could replace the US as the world’s dominant energy power as Donald Trump’s trade war rattles American oil producers and Beijing extends its cleantech lead, analysts have warned.The US president announced an aggressive new tariff regime earlier this month that sent oil prices sharply lower, and has also moved to kill the previous Biden administration’s drive to build a domestic cleantech industry to compete with China.The tariffs could make it harder for US oil producers to compete in its “most attractive export markets”, said a report from consultancy Wood Mackenzie, while the country was also being “significantly outpaced” by China in technologies such as lithium-ion batteries, electric vehicles and solar cells.US oil output soared during former president Joe Biden’s term and is now higher than that of any country in history. But it would start to decline by the early 2030s, said Wood Mackenzie, despite Trump’s vow to slash regulations and executive orders to support his “drill, baby, drill” energy strategy. “US upstream dominance is set to continue for some time yet on current trends. However, its leadership faces challenges and may eventually erode,” the report said. While Trump has backed down from some of the sweeping tariffs he announced on his “liberation day” on April 2 — and has spared energy imports from some duties — his trade war with China has triggered fears of recession and helped spark a vicious oil market sell-off in recent weeks. “Lower oil prices could have, depending on how low they go, quite a significant impact on the potential for the US oil production to continue to grow and perhaps cause a decline,” said Jason Bordoff at Columbia University’s Center on Global Energy Policy.Tariffs, including a 25 per cent tax on steel imports, are also likely to sharply increase American shale drillers’ production costs, oil executives and analysts have warned.“Thinking about steel tariffs and the equipment used in wells, producers are worried about oil costs inflating by mid single to low double digits,” said Robert Clarke, upstream research vice-president at Wood Mackenzie.Shale oil producers have warned that plunging oil prices, Trump’s tariff war and policy uncertainty mean they face their worst crisis since the coronavirus pandemic shattered the sector in 2020.The concerns about China’s cleantech dominance echo warnings from energy experts and renewables industry executives, who have said the Trump administration’s hostile approach to green energy could cement China’s control over the sector.  “It will be hard for the US to catch up [to China], however, there are other options, like diversifying the supply of domestically produced solar panels,” said David Brown, a director in Wood Mackenzie’s Energy Transition Practice. “But you’re seeing that debate play out now in Congress, over how much government support there should be for new energies.”Bordoff said building supply chains at home within “any meaningful timeframe” was a “more daunting prospect than anyone in Washington seems to want to acknowledge”. On Wednesday the Trump administration scrapped a $5bn offshore wind project that Norway’s Equinor was developing off the coast of New York City — the administration’s latest move to halt Biden’s renewable energy programme.Trump is also threatening hundreds of billions of dollars in loans, grants and tax breaks to cleantech developers as he unpicks the Inflation Reduction Act, the Biden climate law stuffed with subsidies to support huge projects to break American dependence on Chinese technology.While the US’s low-carbon energy production was expected to keep rising, China’s global market share in EVs, batteries and energy storage would too, Wood Mackenzie said, as the county capitalised on its low-cost manufacturing. More

Unlock the Editor’s Digest for freeRoula Khalaf, Editor of the FT, selects her favourite stories in this weekly newsletter.Blackstone president Jonathan Gray has warned that the US economy faces the risk of a recession unless Donald Trump can rapidly strike trade deals, becoming the latest Wall Street boss to ratchet up pressure on the administration.The US president last week announced a 90-day suspension of the steep “reciprocal” tariffs the White House had imposed on most of America’s trading partners, paving the way for negotiations with dozens of countries.Gray, who oversees the day-to-day operations at the investment group, said: “I would expect an economic slowdown. How significant the economic slowdown is will be directly correlated to the length of the tariff diplomacy.”The Blackstone president added: “The recession risk is directly tied to the length of the uncertainty”, saying that a speedy resolution to the trade talks would be “positive for the economy and markets”.Trump’s climbdown came after the aggressive duties unleashed days of market turmoil. The US president, who has said that more than 70 countries are lining up to negotiate trade agreements, held talks with Japanese officials over a potential deal this week.The comments from Gray come after JPMorgan Chase chief executive Jamie Dimon said he hoped the White House would soon reach “agreements in principle” with the US’s trading partners.Stock and bond markets have stabilised since Trump’s “reciprocal” tariffs pause, but the White House has increased duties on China and also kept a baseline 10 per cent levy on imports from all countries.Gray said the ructions in markets had created opportunities for Blackstone, which has $1.2tn in assets, for new investments. “[You] have to anticipate that we are in a period of heightened volatility and uncertainty, but in some cases, we are seeing prices start to reflect that and it can create opportunities for us to invest,” he said.Blackstone on Thursday reported first-quarter results that surpassed Wall Street’s expectations, with its distributable earnings — a metric favoured by analysts as a proxy for the group’s cash flows — climbing 11 per cent to $1.4bn.The company raised $62bn from investors in the quarter, its biggest haul in almost three years, with its credit and insurance business attracting $30bn.Led by chair and chief executive Stephen Schwarzman, Blackstone also raised $11bn for its funds from wealthy individual investors. About a quarter of the group’s total assets are now managed on behalf of individual investors, up from almost nothing a decade ago.This month Blackstone announced a plan with Vanguard and Wellington Management to create funds that would invest in public and private assets and cater to affluent investors. Blackstone is betting that the cohort will help drive its growth in coming years. More

Unlock the White House Watch newsletter for freeYour guide to what the 2024 US election means for Washington and the worldWhen you’re forced to listen to Trumpite complaints about America’s trading partners ripping off the US, one grievance in particular routinely emerges: US roads and garages are full of Volkswagens, Hyundais and Toyotas, but the rest of the world won’t buy American cars.Europe is the main target of this outrage, and the old statistic gets another airing that the EU imposes a 10 per cent tariff on autos from the US, four times the 2.5 per cent the latter charges on cars from Europe. In reality it’s the US’s own long-standing auto protectionism that has fostered an inward-looking and globally uncompetitive industry and one now falling behind in the electric vehicle (EV) revolution. Donald Trump’s utterly absurd 25 per cent tariff on cars and car parts shows he has learnt the wrong lesson.To address that well-worn talking point: the EU import duty on standard cars such as hatchbacks and minivans is indeed 10 per cent versus the US’s 2.5 per cent. But the US production of light trucks, including pick-ups, has long sheltered behind a 25 per cent tariff wall. The duty is known as the “chicken tax” after Lyndon B Johnson imposed it in 1964 in retaliation for European levies on American poultry.Industry experts say the Big Three car companies in Detroit — Ford, General Motors and Chrysler (now part of the Stellantis group) — have accordingly increasingly focused their innovation on making pick-up trucks and used the same platforms and components to develop gas-guzzling large sport utility vehicles (SUVs). Felipe Munoz, senior analyst at the market intelligence company Jato Dynamics, told me that while pick-ups and heavy SUVs were only 17 per cent of US light vehicle sales, “it’s where the Big Three US manufacturers make most of their money in the American market”. The rest of the world, however, tends to have narrower roads and higher fuel taxes than the US. “The protection has made the US car manufacturers less competitive globally,” Munoz told me. Japanese companies make family cars popular around the world: Detroit does not. The biggest car exporter from the US is the German BMW, not a US manufacturer.When American car companies have actually responded to their European customers, they have succeeded, including by manufacturing there. Ford has had a long-standing position in the European market, including consistently being one of the best-selling brands in the UK. But it’s now struggling, having discontinued popular smaller cars to concentrate on SUVs. GM five years ago sold the Opel brand it had run in Europe for decades to focus on bigger vehicles in its home market.It’s not EU protectionism that hurts American carmakers abroad. The European Commission has long had an open offer to the US to cut all industrial goods tariffs including cars to nil, which the US has failed to take up. Still the sense of victimhood persists. Despite Tesla’s pioneering role in EVs, the traditional US manufacturers ceded ground to China by being slow to move into the new technology, even more than their sluggish European counterparts. The EU has recently taken a pragmatic approach of using targeted tariffs, together with joint ventures and tech transfer with Chinese companies, to give its carmakers space to catch up in its domestic market.But the Biden administration attempted to create a North American EV industry behind a protective wall. It created limited tax credits while hitting Chinese imports with 100 per cent tariffs and banning Chinese auto software, pressing Canada and Mexico to do the same. As of 2023, the share of EVs in total US auto sales was around half that in Europe and a quarter of that in China. Trump has gone even further and imposed tariffs in an attempt to repatriate car production from Canada and Mexico. This is a potentially catastrophic move, even more so if he removes the current tariff exemption for car parts that are eligible for the US-Mexico-Canada trade deal. It was nonetheless supported by the leadership of the UAW, the carworkers’ labour union, dismaying its Canadian counterpart.Increasingly, the disarray in US trade policy means that relying on the American market, large though it is, carries serious risks. Jato Dynamics calculates that Trump’s tariffs could actually hit the big three US manufacturers harder than their Japanese and European competitors, since the former depend so much on the US market and source from Canada and Mexico.The FT reported this week that the Chinese EV manufacturer BYD has begun to regard its absence from the US market as a benefit. Unlike its rival Tesla, it can get on with conquering the rest of the world rather than anxiously watching for Trump’s next twist and turn, such as his vague suggestion on Monday that he might suspend car tariffs for a while.The US has squandered its historic lead in auto manufacturing by the very trade barriers it rails against abroad. Trump’s tariffs will drag it even further behind. It would be hard to invent a more poignant cautionary tale about the damage that protectionism can wreak at [email protected] More