Trump policies make US ‘scary place to invest’ and risk stagflation, says Stiglitz
Donald Trump’s tariff threats have made the US “a scary place to invest” and may unleash stagflation, the Nobel prize-winning economist Joseph Stiglitz has said.“It risks the worst of all possible worlds: a kind of stagflation,” Stiglitz said in an interview with the Guardian.He argued that despite optimism about the US economy at the turn of the year, the uncertainty created by Trump’s on-off tariff plans and the president’s apparent contempt for the rule of law would deter investment.“If you’re a corporate in the US or in Europe, do you think you have a global market, or do you have just a European market? Where do you locate your factories?” he said.He highlighted Elon Musk’s efforts to slash government departments without congressional authority, and Trump’s disregard for contracts – including the trade pact he struck with Canada and Mexico in his first term – among damaging signals for investors considering the US as a destination.
“The government has a huge number of contracts and we’re just tearing them up.How much risk do you want? The US has become, I would say, a scary place to invest,” he said.Stiglitz argued that the uncertainty was likely to slow economic growth, while at the same time Trump’s tariffs – and retaliation by other countries – would drive up inflation.The prospect of rising inflation in the world’s largest economy has led investors to pare back bets on the US Federal Reserve cutting interest rates since Trump’s return to office, amid mounting concern over the fallout from a global trade war.Stiglitz, a Columbia University professor and former World Bank economist who served as chair of Bill Clinton’s council of economic advisers, said the Fed was “clearly worried” about the inflationary effects of Trump’s policies, which could lead it to raise interest rates.
“Almost all economists agree that the tariffs will increase prices,How much it will increase prices is a little bit affected by the magnitude of the appreciation of the exchange rate, but all economists think that the extent of the appreciation of the exchange rate won’t be anywhere near enough to compensate for the tariffs,Sign up to Business TodayGet set for the working day – we'll point you to all the business news and analysis you need every morningafter newsletter promotion“I could certainly see a scenario where we get to stagflation – we get inflation, and a weak economy,” he said,“I cannot see a really robust economy, because I just see the global economy suffering so much from the uncertainty that Trump poses,”Scott Bessent, the US Treasury secretary, has suggested the administration wants to bring down 10-year US Treasury yields, an important interest rate, which would have a knock-on effect across global markets.
Lower Treasury yields would make it cheaper for Washington to borrow.But Stiglitz suggested the only way the president’s policies would positively contribute to that goal was by running the US into the ground.“The inflation from the tariffs is going in the wrong way, and the only thing that is going in the right way for Bessent is his efforts to crater the economy,” he said.“In supporting Trump’s economic policies, [Bessent] is helping to get the yield curve down by crashing the US economy – not a good policy, I would say.”
Drawing strength from the notion of sisu | Letters
Re the Finnish concept of sisu (Why we all need sisu – the Finnish concept of action and creativity in hard times, 10 February), Estonian, one of the Finno-Ugric languages, has the same word. In Estonian, sisu means something that is inside – as in a box, jar, luggage, or a letter, book, or in a fruit or vegetable.With regard to humans, it is a quality or a characteristic, or even the absence of meaning to life if a person seems to be lacking sisu. In Estonian folklore, sisu is a source of strength. When living in Estonia recently, I often heard foreigners comment about “the strong Estonian woman”
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Recently, there has been much more discussion of menopause. But one debilitating condition, experienced by 80% of women, remains shrouded in secrecy and misunderstandingWhen Lorraine Kelly shared her experience of menopause on her daytime TV show in 2017, she was her own last resort. Initially, she set out to interview a famous woman about her story, but everyone she approached refused.“I thought, nobody else will talk about it so I’ll do it. It was a breakthrough moment,” said Kelly
‘Fight for every penny’: the over-70s battling to achieve Scottish cohousing dream
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NHS faces £5.7bn bill for patching up hospitals before demolishing them
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Betting giants spared regulatory action after secret deals with watchdog
Betting firms have been reaching secret deals with Britain’s gambling watchdog, including surrendering revenues for failings that are kept out of the public domain, the Observer can reveal.The Gambling Commission has been placing some betting firms into special measures, enabling them to avoid formal action, which can include fines or the revoking of a licence. If a company agrees to implement an action plan and “divest any profit” from regulatory failures, the regulator typically does not make its failings public.Campaigners say the regime has been a “protective bubble” for firms that may put gamblers at risk of harm.The watchdog’s supervision of betting brands is under scrutiny as it faces a legal claim filed in the high court last week by Annie Ashton, whose husband, Luke, took his life after becoming addicted to gambling
Why are women still being sent to prison as ‘a place of safety’? | Eva Wiseman
Every now and then I learn something about the world today that sticks into me like a fish hook and I find myself asking friends, colleagues, “Wait, did you know this? Did you know this was happening?” The most recent felt like a horror-movie trope. It’s the part of the film, about a third of the way in, where a woman is locked up with the lie that the incarceration is for her own good.It’s not just films, of course, not just fiction – countless women were institutionalised in the 19th century for “abnormal” behaviours, like disagreeing with their husbands, or following “unnatural” sexual impulses. Some were locked up for postnatal depression, some alcoholism, some “moral insanity”, which meant, somehow, infidelity. But what shocked me even more than historical reports on women like Elizabeth Packard, who was incarcerated by her husband in 1860 (the doctor’s reasons included her refusal to shake his hand and the fact that she was above the age of 40), what got me asking, saying wait, was the knowledge that something similar is still happening daily, in prisons across the country
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