The writer is professor of economics and political science at the University of California, Berkeley The dollar has had a spectacular run, having risen more than 10 per cent against other major currencies since the start of the year. Actually, not a few governments and central banks would prefer the adjective “disastrous” to “spectacular”. For developing

This year Patrick Pouyanné, chief executive of TotalEnergies, was en route to Mozambique when he stopped off in the tiny central African nation of Rwanda. Rwanda has no oil and gas reserves and a small domestic market of 13mn people. Yet Pouyanné and Rwanda’s president Paul Kagame signed a co-operation agreement anyway, agreeing to explore

Two weeks after seasoned regulator Liu Rong arrived in the central province of Henan, plain-clothes security officials clashed with hundreds of protesters outside a local branch of the People’s Bank of China. The protesters were desperate to recover about Rmb40bn ($5.9bn) in frozen deposits from four rural banks. Beijing’s deployment of Liu, a veteran of

Walmart has cut its outlook for the second quarter and the rest of the year, signalling a sharp worsening of the US retail environment as inflation bites the price-sensitive consumers on which the world’s largest retailer depends. “The increasing levels of food and fuel inflation are affecting how customers spend, and while we’ve made good

Rishi Sunak and Liz Truss have exchanged blows over the economy in a crucial televised Tory leadership debate that ended in a bloody stalemate but took the contest to new levels of acrimony. Sunak, former chancellor, had hoped to use the primetime BBC1 debate to secure a breakthrough against foreign secretary Truss, who is seen

Walmart has issued its second profit warning in 10 weeks, signalling a further deterioration in the US retail environment as inflation weighs on the price-sensitive consumers on whom the world’s largest retailer depends. “The increasing levels of food and fuel inflation are affecting how customers spend,” said Doug McMillon, Walmart’s chief executive. He said the

Liz Truss, foreign secretary, has proposed sweeping reforms to UK trade union laws that would guarantee minimum services during strikes and raise the threshold on the number of workers needing to take part in ballots on industrial action. Truss, the bookmakers’ favourite to be the UK’s next prime minister, pledged on Monday to introduce legislation

Lord David Trimble, a key architect of the Good Friday Agreement that brought peace to Northern Ireland almost a quarter of a century ago, has died after a short illness. He was 77. The Ulster Unionist party, which Trimble led from 1995-2005, released a brief statement from his family saying the politician had died earlier

The chemicals sector faces a £2bn hit of post-Brexit red tape, twice the cost of initial industry estimates, as Britain sets up its own regulatory regime, ministers have warned. While Liz Truss and Rishi Sunak have promised to “axe EU red tape” during the Tory leadership campaign, the cost of homegrown British red tape after