Attention to the Unseen

The Guardian reports: UK bank bosses will hold their first meeting to establish a national alternative to Visa and Mastercard, amid growing fears over Donald Trump’s ability to turn off US-owned payment systems. The meeting, chaired by Barclays’ UK chief executive, Vim Maru, will take place this Thursday and bring together a group of City funders that will front the costs of a new payments company to keep the UK economy running if problems were to occur. The City-funded, but…

Read More Read More

Politico reports: Home builders are warning President Donald Trump that his aggressive immigration enforcement efforts are hurting their industry. They’re cautioning that Republican candidates could soon be hurt, too. Construction executives have held multiple meetings over the last month with the White House and Congress to discuss how immigration busts on job sites and in communities are scaring away employees, making it more expensive to build homes in a market desperate for new supply. Beyond the affordability issue, the executives…

Read More Read More

The Wall Street Journal reports: At Monte Cielo, a new housing development in this growing region of South Texas, half-built homes are sitting empty. On a recent day, just a few workers hovered behind temporary wrap tacked to wall frames. The quiet scene comes after federal immigration agents have hit the development repeatedly, carrying out at least half a dozen raids there in recent months, builders said. The most recent was a few weeks ago. Some eight workers were arrested…

Read More Read More

The New York Times reports: Current economic conditions and Trump administration policies could lead to “a widespread collapse of American agriculture,” a bipartisan coalition of former Agriculture Department officials and leaders of farm groups warned in a letter on Tuesday. The letter to the heads and ranking members of the House and Senate agricultural committees was signed by 27 influential figures in the farming sector, including former heads of powerful associations representing corn and soybean farmers and officials from the…

Read More Read More

Paul Krugman writes: So Kevin Warsh will be the next Fed chair. The silver lining to his appointment is that he shouldn’t be able to do much damage, although with one big caveat (see below). The Fed is a republic, not a dictatorship; key decisions are made by a committee in which the chairperson has only one vote. Fed chairs can only drive policy through persuasion — and Warsh lacks the intellectual and moral credibility to be effective on that…

Read More Read More

BBC News reports:The European Union and India have announced a landmark trade deal after nearly two decades of on-off talks, as both sides aim to deepen ties amid tensions with the US. “We did it, we delivered the mother of all deals,” European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen said at a media briefing in Delhi. Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi called the pact “historic”. It will allow free trade of goods between the bloc of 27 European states and…

Read More Read More

The New York Times reports: Chief executives of Target, Best Buy, General Mills and Cargill were among more than 60 large Minnesota companies to issue a public letter on Sunday calling for an “immediate de-escalation of tensions” in the state. The letter marks the first time the most recognizable businesses in Minnesota have weighed in on the turmoil in Minneapolis amid the aggressive crackdown by federal immigration agents, which have sparked widespread protests throughout the city. It comes one day…

Read More Read More

Fortune reports: As the European Union weighs options to retaliate against President Donald Trump’s latest tariffs, its most potent weapon may be in financial markets. France is already urging the EU to deploy its “anti-coercion instrument,” which can target foreign direct investment and finance as well as trade. That’s after Trump announced new U.S. tariffs on NATO countries that sent troops to Greenland amid his plans to take over the semi-autonomous Danish territory. At face value, a 10% tariff rising…

Read More Read More

Kiel Institut reports: • The 2025 US tariffs are an own goal: American importers and consumers bear nearly the entire cost. Foreign exporters absorb only about 4% of the tariff burden—the remaining 96% is passed through to US buyers. • Using shipment-level data covering over 25 million transactions valued at nearly $4 trillion, we find near-complete pass-through of tariffs to US import prices. • US customs revenue surged by approximately $200 billion in 2025—a tax paid almost entirely by Americans….

Read More Read More

Bloomberg reports: The European Union is in talks to potentially impose tariffs on €93 billion ($108 billion) of US goods if President Donald Trump follows through on his threat to hit European countries with a 10% levy on Feb. 1. The EU is also weighing additional countermeasures beyond the tariffs but will first try to find a diplomatic solution, according to people familiar with the discussions. Representatives from the EU’s 27 countries met Sunday to begin preparing options. EU leaders…

Read More Read More

Politico reports: Donald Trump’s decision to slap tariffs on countries that have shown support for Greenland is pushing transatlantic relations to a breaking point as EU leaders contemplate ways of retaliating against Washington that until now have been unthinkable. Relations between Washington and Europe have been rocky for months as the U.S. president has wavered on support for Ukraine, pressured EU countries into accepting a lopsided trade deal and forced NATO allies to massively ramp up their spending on defense….

Read More Read More

The Wall Street Journal reports: A surge in exports powered China’s growth last year, defying expectations that a trade war with the U.S. would hobble the world’s second-biggest economy. China’s gross domestic product expanded 5% last year when adjusted for deflation, according to data released Monday by the country’s National Bureau of Statistics. That met Beijing’s official growth target and is in line with the 5% real GDP growth notched in 2024. At the beginning of last year, many analysts…

Read More Read More

Politico reports: Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent spent months laying the groundwork for a smooth transition at the Federal Reserve that wouldn’t rattle markets. That plan is now in disarray. The Justice Department’s criminal investigation into whether Fed Chair Jerome Powell misled Congress about renovations at the Fed headquarters — and allegations over who leaked the news — has the White House in damage-control mode. Officials are scrambling to reassure markets and create distance from an episode that aides say was…

Read More Read More