US supreme court has ‘ransacked’ the country, president argues, in wake of its ruling against his trade agenda
Donald Trump has claimed he has “the absolute right” to impose new tariffs after the US supreme court ruled many of the import duties he imposed last year were illegal.
The president attacked the court in a late night broadside on Sunday, accusing it of having “unnecessarily RANSACKED” the US – and failing to show him sufficient loyalty.
Continue reading...Despite rare act of multilateralism, there is no guarantee the IEA’s release of 400m barrels from reserves will depress prices
IEA poised to call for largest ever release of stockpiled oil to reduce price
How the Iran conflict could affect energy prices – video explainer
When the global economy was still in the grip of the devastating 1970s oil crises, exposing the chokehold exerted by a few important oil states, the International Energy Agency (IEA) was created, in the hope of limiting future shocks.
Almost half a century on, the IEA’s 32 members have drawn up plans to hit the emergency button, for only the fifth time in its history.
Continue reading...Effect of war on prices not reflected in data, as Trump says only ‘fools’ would think oil price shocks would be significant
US inflation stayed flat at 2.4% in February, according to government data released Wednesday that provides a snapshot of the US economy before it was thrown into a tailspin by the US-Israel conflict with Iran.
The levelling comes after prices swung last year, reaching a four-year low in April before shooting back up in September. In late fall, inflation crept down again, reaching 2.4% in January.
Continue reading...Saudi Arabian state oil firm calls crisis by far the biggest the region has seen but firm can reroute 70% of exports and tap crude held in storage
Saudi Arabia’s state oil company has warned of “catastrophic consequences” for the world’s oil markets if the US-Israeli war with Iran continues to block shipping in the strait of Hormuz.
The world’s biggest oil exporter expects to be able to supply the market with about 70% of its usual crude output despite the stranglehold on the vital trade artery, but its chief executive warned that there would still be “drastic” consequences for the world economy if the disruption continues.
Continue reading...Donald Trump insists surge in energy prices is ‘very small price to pay’ as Middle East conflict sparks fresh stock market sell-off
Oil prices surged past $100 per barrel for the first time since 2022 as fallout from the US-Israel war with Iran continued to rattle global markets and leading economies moved to tackle a worsening energy supply crisis.
A weekend of escalating violence in the Middle East intensified concerns around a sustained supply crunch, propelling oil prices to their highest level in four years and triggering a deep stock market sell-off.
Continue reading...Reports of attack on US registered tanker in Gulf lifts crude by 3% to $84 a barrel as gas price also starts to climb
Stock markets have rebounded in Asia after days of heavy losses driven by the war in the Middle East, but oil and gas prices have continued to climb amid disruption to supplies.
South Korea’s KOSPI, which posted its biggest ever fall on Tuesday of 12%, rose by almost 10% on Thursday, while Japan’s Nikkei climbed by 1.9%. MSCI’s Asia-Pacific index excluding Japan jumped by 2.7%.
Continue reading...Plan, which aims to preserve jobs in clean tech and low carbon sectors, could include UK if there is reciprocal market access
The European Commission has proposed a “Buy EU” plan to boost domestic low-carbon industries and help the continent compete against China.
The commission published a draft regulation – called the Industrial Accelerator Act – on Wednesday, setting demands for EU-made and low-carbon content on bodies spending public money. The rules mark a major shift in economic thinking from Brussels, long a bastion of open markets.
Continue reading...Strait of Hormuz is effectively closed and vessels rerouted, sending some freight costs surging
Leading maritime insurers have cancelled war risk cover for vessels operating in the Gulf as the escalating Iran conflict disrupted shipping and sent some freight costs surging.
At least 150 vessels including oil and liquefied natural gas tankers have dropped anchor in the strait of Hormuz and surrounding waters, and at least three tankers were damaged and one seafarer killed over the weekend.
Continue reading...Rachel Reeves’ upcoming spring forecast has not led to slowdown, as property tax rumours did in November
House prices in the UK increased in February as Rachel Reeves avoided a repeat of the pre-budget “negative speculation” that depressed the market, as she prepares to present the spring forecast on Tuesday.
The average price of a home rose to £273,176 last month, up by 0.3% from the month before, Nationwide said. It matched January’s monthly increase, and was above analysts’ forecasts of a 0.2% gain. The annual growth rate remained steady at 1%, the country’s biggest building society said.
Continue reading...Funding uncertainty is main concern, despite Labour’s pledge to revitalise construction, survey shows
Almost two-thirds of senior council officers have said they are seeing construction projects delayed, despite the key role of local authorities in creating the wave of new housing and infrastructure promised by Labour.
Before Rachel Reeves’s spring forecast on Tuesday, a survey of senior council officers showed that 40% do not think the local authority they work for is well placed to follow through on its construction plans.
Continue reading...Chancellor urged to reform Office for Budget Responsibility to open way to more public investment
Rachel Reeves must reform the Office for Budget Responsibility (OBR) to open the way to more public investment, an alliance of thinktanks has argued ahead of the chancellor’s spring forecast on Tuesday.
With Keir Starmer’s government under intense pressure after Labour’s defeat by the Greens in Thursday’s Gorton and Denton byelection, the thinktanks called on Reeves to review the watchdog’s remit.
Continue reading...President announced increase from 10% using different authority from mechanism that supreme court struck down on Friday
Donald Trump announced on Saturday that he would raise a temporary tariff rate on US imports from all countries from 10% to 15%, less than 24 hours after the US supreme court ruled against the legality of his flagship trade policy.
Infuriated by the high court’s ruling on Friday that he had exceeded his authority and should have got congressional approval for the tariffs he introduced last year under the International Emergency Economic Powers Act (IEEPA), the US president railed against the justices who struck down his use of tariffs – calling them a “disgrace to the nation” – and ordered an immediate 10% tariff on all imports, in addition to any existing levies, under a separate law.
Continue reading...Labour MPs may clamour for bolder spending, but – like their Tory and Reform counterparts – they ask for the unaffordable
Too many Labour MPs want it all, and no amount of pleading from the top of government about the depleted public finances seems to make a difference.
The mainly leftist MPs want all the wrongs of the last 15 years put right and quickly. Their next opportunity to demand more cash arrives when Rachel Reeves delivers her spring statement on 3 March.
Continue reading...BRC survey finds finance bosses expect technology to improve productivity, with 69% pessimistic about the economy
UK retailers are planning to cut staff hours and jobs amid rising employment costs and pessimism about the economy.
Almost two-thirds (61%) of finance bosses at retail companies said they planned to reduce working hours or cut overtime, according to the latest survey from the British Retail Consortium (BRC), the trade body that represents most big retailers. More than half (55%) said they would cut head office jobs and 42% said they would reduce jobs in stores.
Continue reading...Office for Budget Responsibility says Rachel Reeves ‘had every right to expect that the [report] would not be publicly available until she sat down at the end of her budget speech’
Q: Yesterday you said Rachel Reeves was lying. Today you are saying she gave out false information. Are you still accusing her of being a liar?
Badenoch replies: “Yes.”
Continue reading...Investigation finds organisation’s leadership over many years was to blame for error, and similar breach happened earlier this year
Britain’s budget watchdog has said the early leak of its budget documents before Rachel Reeves made her speech was the “worst failure” in its 15-year history as it emerged a similar breach had occurred earlier this year.
The Office for Budget Responsibility (OBR) said an investigation had found that the leadership of the organisation, over many years, was to blame for the early release of its Economic and Fiscal Outlook (EFO) document online nearly an hour before Reeves’s address last Wednesday.
Continue reading...Clarification creates prospect of two-tier system for retirees solely on new state pension and those on private schemes
People who rely only on their state pension for their income will not have to pay tax on it, the chancellor, Rachel Reeves, has said, creating the prospect of a two-tier system for those in retirement.
The new state pension is poised to rise to £241.30 a week next April, putting the annual income for someone receiving the standard payment at £12,547 – just below the personal tax allowance of £12,570 a year.
Continue reading...PM says: ‘We kept to our manifesto in terms of what we’ve promised. But I accept the challenge that we’ve asked everybody to contribute’
The Conservative party is attacking the budget on the grounds that Rachel Reeves is putting up taxes supposedly to fund more spending on benefit claimants. Even though the rationale for this claim is questionable, the Tories were making it before the budget was announced, and Kemi Badenoch firmed it up last night, claiming it was a “Benefits Street budget”.
On LBC this morning, asked if the budget meant “alarm clock Britain paying for Benefits Street”, Reeves said she did not accept that. She said 60% of the families that would benefit from the removal of the two-child benefit cap (the most expensive welfare announcement in the budget) were in work.
I don’t think children should be punished by this pernicious policy any longer. And the cost to society of this is huge, the cost for councils of temporary accommodation, when people can no longer afford the rent, putting families in B&Bs, kids having to move to school all the time because parents have moved from B&B to another lot of temporary accommodation, and there’s costs for years to come, because all the evidence shows that kids that are growing up poor are less likely to get into work and more reliant on the welfare state in the future for them.
So this is a good investment in those kids, to give them the chances that I want for my kids, and everyone wants for their kids. It also saves money for taxpayers on that accommodation, on those additional health costs, and ensuring that those kids grow up to be productive adults.
Continue reading...Chancellor axes two-child benefit cap and cuts energy bills paid for by mansion tax and freezing tax thresholds
Rachel Reeves targeted Britain’s wealthiest households with a £26bn tax-raising budget to fund scrapping the two-child benefit policy and cutting energy bills.
On a chaotic day that involved key details of her budget accidentally being released early by the Office for Budget Responsibility (OBR), the chancellor defended the measures, saying she was “asking everyone to make a contribution to repair the public finances”, but that she wanted the wealthiest to pay the most.
Continue reading...By the time the chancellor reached the dispatch box, the OBR had accidentally published its verdict in full online
Shortly before midday on Wednesday, a series of headlines about Rachel Reeves’s budget began appearing on the Reuters newswire, sending instant ripples though financial markets.
The details were jaw-dropping: they appeared to spell out the key policies of the chancellor’s budget more than 40 minutes before she was due to deliver them to a crowded Commons chamber.
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