American trade policy and free trade have rarely been bedfellows. President Trump’s arbitrary tariffs on imports of steel (25%) and aluminium (10%) announced on March 1st might be better understood as part of an American mercantilist tradition that stretches from...

In his novel, “War and Peace,” Leo Tolstoy rants at the idiocy of the intelligentsia for providing simplistic descriptions of the causes of events. The view that France invaded Russia because Napoleon gave the order and as a result, 600,000 people followed him across...

Concerns about persistent underinvestment in the U.S. economy resulting from the financial crisis are overblown. The underlying issue is that the lack of a robust anti-trust framework has made it too easy for dominant firms to increase profits. Without sufficient...

On March 1, the Dow plowed through the 21,000 barrier. Many market commentators sought to attribute this rise to President Trump’s congressional address the day before. Given that there was little policy detail in the speech, there seemed to be general agreement...

The bond market reacted decisively to Donald Trump’s success in the U.S. presidential election. Ten-year treasury yields rose from 1.86% on November 8th to 2.37% on November 25th. Trump’s promise to invest $550 billion in infrastructure over the next decade in...

The recent BREXIT vote should be a wake-up call for investors. The assumption that markets provide greater insight into the probability of certain events occurring was flawed. The betting markets along with the foreign exchange and equity markets were all signalling a...