Bumbling into a global trade war

US tariffs could trigger a tit-for-tat trade dispute, damaging global growth. Alex Rankine reports.

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Donald Trump: it's the midterms, stupid
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Donald Trump has already pulled America out of the Trans-Pacific Partnership and the Paris climate-change agreement, says The Economist's Buttonwood column. "Now he appears determined to roll back the international trade arrangements that have been in place since 1945." The president has announced that he will impose tariffs on $60bn of Chinese exports to the US, a move that threatens to spark a trade war between the world's two largest economies.

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Markets editor

Alex is an investment writer who has been contributing to MoneyWeek since 2015. He has been the magazine’s markets editor since 2019. 

Alex has a passion for demystifying the often arcane world of finance for a general readership. While financial media tends to focus compulsively on the latest trend, the best opportunities can lie forgotten elsewhere. 

He is especially interested in European equities – where his fluent French helps him to cover the continent’s largest bourse – and emerging markets, where his experience living in Beijing, and conversational Chinese, prove useful. 

Hailing from Leeds, he studied Philosophy, Politics and Economics at the University of Oxford. He also holds a Master of Public Health from the University of Manchester.