Blair's Brexit beef

Yesterday’s intervention by former PM Tony Blair (here for full speech) calling for a rethink of the Brexit decision was both spot on and deeply troubling. On the one hand he perfectly nailed the hypocrisy of the case for leaving the EU – like Nick Clegg, I agreed with every single word – and calls for “a time to rise up in defence of what we believe”. Yet this was the same prime minister who failed to listen to the majority of the people when involving Britain in a highly unpopular war in Iraq. It also starkly highlights the lack of opposition to a government which appears bent on “Brexit at any cost”, as the party he used to lead slavishly follows the Conservatives in ramming through Article 50 (we can debate that another time). Yet it is somewhat troubling to hear a politician who was criticised for being part of the metropolitan elite arguing against the “will of the people.” I am reluctantly forced to concede that although his message is the right one, Blair is not the right man to deliver it and as a consequence it will not be heard.

Looking through the speech, there is nothing there that I have not pointed out over the past four years. But it is worthwhile quoting Blair who noted, “What was unfortunately only dim in our sight before the referendum is now in plain sight. The road we’re going down is not simply Hard Brexit. It is Brexit At Any Cost … How hideously, in this debate, is the mantle of patriotism abused … nine months ago both she [the PM] and the Chancellor, were telling us that leaving would be bad for the country, its economy, its security and its place in the world.  Today it is apparently a ‘once in a generation opportunity’ for greatness. Seven months ago, after the referendum result, the Chancellor was telling us that leaving the Single Market would be – and I quote – ‘catastrophic’. Now it appears we will leave the Single Market and the Customs Union and he is very optimistic.” 

He went on to point out that “This jumble of contradictions shows that the PM and the Government are not masters of this situation. They’re not driving this bus. They’re being driven …  We will trigger Article 50 not because we now know our destination, but because the politics of not doing so, would alienate those driving the bus. Many of the main themes of the Brexit campaign barely survived the first weekend after the vote. Remember the £350m a week extra for the NHS?” 

On the substantive issue of immigration, Blair pointed out “of the EU immigrants, the PM has recently admitted we would want to keep the majority, including those with a confirmed job offer and students. This leaves around 80,000 who come looking for work without a job. Of these 80,000, a third comes to London, mostly ending up working in the food processing and hospitality sectors. It is highly unlikely that they’re ‘taking’ the jobs of British born people in other parts of the country.”

Predictably, Blair’s comments were met with opprobrium from large sections of the press and from pro-Brexit MPs, with the lovable Iain Duncan Smith telling Sky News that "He seems to have forgotten what democracy is about. Democracy is about asking people a question and then acting on it.” Personally, I always thought it was about rational debate and respecting the fact that other people are allowed to hold different opinions, whilst being free to change one’s mind. But the frothing-at-the-mouth brigade doesn’t do rationality. Clearly, I am a fake news dupe!

The Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung also called it right in an article published yesterday: “In Great Britain, an era is coming to an end: 38 years characterised by a firm belief in liberalism and an open market economy, which began on 4 May 1979 when Margaret Thatcher moved into Downing Street ended – as it is becoming ever more clear – on 23 June 2016.” The article went on to say that although Theresa May is less alarming than Donald Trump, her economic programme is equally contradictory. “Her free-market rhetoric sounds hollow. It is not convincing when she praises economic openness and globalization as Britain's future and at the same time laments the openness of the British labour market.”

Two days before the House of Lords is due to reconvene to debate the Article 50 bill that was supported in parliament by an opposition whose MPs are more concerned about keeping their seats than debating the national interest, we should not pin our hopes on major changes. The most tragic thing about the whole affair is that EU membership is being used as the scapegoat for decades of policy failures by governments of all hues, in much the same way as traditional American values of decency and tolerance have been subverted by rage against the status quo. It is nothing short of a revolution.

But revolutions succeed or fail depending on the extent to which a coalition of interest groups is able to come together “including elite groups and the middle class[1].” For example, the Iranian revolution of 1979 succeeded in overthrowing the government but set the country’s progress back years as the educated middle class left in droves. In the UK debate, large swathes of the popular press are in favour of Brexit, which is an important constituent. But their support can be fickle. Business generally does not support it, and the much-despised “elite” is not onside, so there is no sense of a broad coalition forming in the UK. It is going to be a bumpy ride, and much as Iain Duncan Smith, Nigel Farage et al might wish for it, people are not simply going to shut up and accept the result.

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[1] Dix(1984) ‘Why Revolutions Succeed & Fail’, Polity, Vol 16,  pp. 423-446

Keep the hands off the stash

They say that we live in a cashless society. The same cannot be said for India. On 8 November, the prime minister gave just four hours’ notice that 500 and 1,000 rupee notes would no longer be legal tender. People were told they could deposit or exchange their old notes at banks until 30 December, and new 500 and 2,000 rupee notes would be issued. This dramatic move was designed to flush shadow economy transactions out into the open in a bid to curb tax evasion. Given that these notes made up 86% of all cash in circulation, this has clearly led to more short-term disruption than necessary.

Official figures from the Reserve Bank of India suggest that as of January, currency in circulation with the public was almost 43% below year-ago levels. This does not bode well for overall economic growth: The IMF has lopped one percentage point off its 2017 growth projection, with the October forecast of 7.6% having been recently downgraded to 6.6%. According to the IMF, the disruptions which forced people to queue outside banks to exchange their notes and the simple shortage of cash resulting from the switchover, will curb consumption in the early part of 2017. It is fairly certain that activity will subsequently recover and before too long India will be able to regain its crown as the “fastest growing major economy” (it might still hold onto this position, depending on what happens in China in 2017). Nonetheless, the episode highlights how an apparently capricious decision of this nature can have far reaching consequences.

One of the prerequisites of money in a modern economy is that it acts as a stable source of value and medium of exchange. At a stroke the Indian government wiped out the cash holdings of those citizens who had not deposited their money in the bank, and in the process has done nothing to win the trust of those who have been disadvantaged. A bigger issue is that if we erode trust in money, we potentially erode wider trust in institutions.

In Europe, for example, the ECB has faced a battle to establish its credibility, particularly in Germany where it replaced the much-revered Bundesbank. As former European Commission president Jacques Delors pithily remarked in 1992: “Not all Germans believe in God, but they all believe in the Bundesbank.” Many people in Germany today have a problem with the monetary policy which the ECB is conducting because they see a huge explosion in the stock of money created by the central bank which they fear will ultimately lead to higher inflation. Whether they are right or wrong, only time will tell. But it is important for the ECB to win the credibility battle today or it may not survive long enough to say ‘we told you so’.

As it happens, there is a strong case for suggesting that if governments are serious about reducing the scope of the shadow economy, maybe they should withdraw all high value notes from circulation. To the extent that it is pretty easy to transport large quantities of cash in 1,000 Swiss franc notes or the 500 euro note without carrying a huge volume, the authorities are concerned about their use in illegal transactions. As a neat little paper by Peter Sands points out (here), the equivalent of one million dollars  in cash weighs just 2.2 kg in the highest denomination euro note whereas it weighs 10kg in the highest denomination  US dollar bills. Precisely for this reason, the ECB is to stop issuing the 500 euro note next year.

But in contrast to the ECB, which has given plenty of warning, the Indian authorities gave virtually none. As a way to crack down on the shadow economy and other avoiders of tax, it may well be highly effective. But if it leads to a sharp decline in economic activity with consequences for tax revenue, it may turn out to be counterproductive. Moreover, the government rather strangely decided to phase out the 1,000 rupee note and replace it with a 2,000 rupee note. It is not exactly what the authorities elsewhere would advocate in the fight against shadow activity. But given recent experience, those who might be tempted to hold any of their untaxed income in rupees in future may think again. It will thus be interesting to see whether it ultimately boosts demand for gold – the ultimate safe haven during times of uncertainty.

Paying the price for good health

The Institute for Fiscal Studies released its annual Green Budget publication earlier this week (here). It is intended as a comprehensive assessment of the challenges facing the UK government as it prepares to unveil its official budget (scheduled this year for 8 March). It is certainly comprehensive – the report extends to 312 pages. However, one thing particularly jumped out at me: In the chapter on health and social spending, the authors showed that over the period 1955-56 to 2015-16, real health spending in the UK grew at an average rate of 4.1% per year whereas over the period 2009-10 to 2014-15, real spending increased by just 1.1% per annum (see chart).

We should keep this in perspective: Under the previous Labour government, real spending increased at a rate of 5.9% per year, so some degree of slowdown was required. Indeed, this huge surge in outlays was designed to raise health spending as a proportion of national income towards the average levels of health spending in other western European countries – a target which was not achieved. On a per capita basis real health spending has remained roughly unchanged since 2010 although the ageing of the population, which raises the share of elderly people, means that the per capita numbers are slightly misleading.

Nonetheless, the government can claim that it has abided by its manifesto commitment to protect the National Health Service from the cuts in other public services. But at a time when the strain on the NHS is greater than ever before, the government (irrespective of political persuasion) is going to have to face up to some uncomfortable truths on the provision of health care. Part of the problem stems from the fact that although health spending has been spared the worst of the cuts, the social welfare bill has been slashed, having fallen by 1% in real terms since 2009-10. Faced with a lack of options, people are being forced to turn to the NHS for help which it is not designed to provide, which in turn impairs its ability to meet its other targets.

Professor Sir Bruce Keogh, medical director of NHS England, highlighted in a newspaper interview two years ago (here) that the lack of local services such as district nurses, beds in community hospitals and mental health support were key factors behind the rising strain on front line health services. It is not as though the government is unaware of the problem. The Times reported in December that Chancellor Philip Hammond wanted to raise the funds allocated to social welfare provision but was overruled by the prime minister. It further suggested that the issues facing social welfare are “a political problem exacerbated by political cynicism,” following the stymying of cross-party efforts to find a solution to the problem by former Chancellor George Osborne before the 2010 election.

On the basis that the NHS in England expects to face a cash shortfall of up to £30bn by 2020, what can be done to plug the hole? Unpalatable though it may sound, a simple option would be to raise taxes. A rise of 1% in the basic rate of income tax would provide £4.5bn of additional revenue by 2019-20, according to the Treasury’s ready reckoner. Bearing in mind that the basic rate today, at 20%, is the lowest in decades (40 years ago it stood at 30% and it was last cut in 2008 from 22%), this is not the worst option. A 2% rise in the higher rate of tax would yield a further £2.0bn. The government could also raise national insurance contributions which are, after all, designed to fund social welfare provision. A 1% rise in employee contributions would raise almost £4.3bn and a similar increase in employer contributions would generate £5.1bn. But the real kicker is the government’s planned cuts in corporation tax rates. Each 1% reduction in the standard rate costs £2.4bn in revenue, and with the government planning to cut the standard rate from 20% today to 17% by 2020, this will cost £7.2bn in revenue. If corporate taxes are left unchanged and the other tax hikes are implemented, this would get us two-thirds of the way towards covering the health spending shortfall.

These are, of course, static calculations. Employers will create fewer jobs if payroll taxes rise which will result in less revenue than these numbers suggest. However, they illustrate that UK governments will at some point have to begin squaring the circle.  The 30 year period during which governments have cut taxes whilst promising world class public services are over.

Nobody likes to pay higher taxes of course (least of all me). Thus the other unspoken possibility is to introduce some form of charges in order to encourage rationing. One option might be to introduce an initial charge for doctor’s visits with subsequent visits incurring no such penalty. The British Medical Association reckons that there are around 340 million consultations per year; over 90% of this contact is with local general practitioners and the average member of the public sees a GP six times a year. Running through the maths, GPs see 51 million different people per year. Imagine that the first GP consultation per year was charged at £10 with subsequent ones free (with suitable exemptions for the very young and the very poor) – which is the equivalent of three pints of beer per year or 12 pints of milk – this would yield £0.5bn per year in user charges.

Whilst this is not a huge amount in the grand scheme of things, it might be the direction in which we are forced to travel. As we all know, demand for health care is near-infinite, and unfortunately we need to find ways to fund this demand as our population ages and the pressure on the system mounts. But are our governments brave enough to face up this unpalatable truth? It certainly won’t win votes but it might help to preserve the health services.

The haze of regulation

Having posted previously on the subject of incentives (here), and how important it is to ensure they are set correctly in order to avoid unintended consequences, the recent spate of warnings regarding pollution levels in London over the winter months brought the issue to mind once again. There are many contributory factors to high pollution levels in urban areas with climatic conditions exacerbating the problems caused by central heating systems and wood burners (one of the recent scapegoats). But one of the factors rising up the worry list in London is the problem caused by emissions from diesel engines (see chart).

Ironically, it is not long ago since diesel engines were hailed as the great new clean technology which would save us from the choking carbon dioxide emissions of petrol engines. Beginning in the early-1980s, UK excise duties on diesel were set lower than those on petrol, though since the late-1990s they have remained the same as those on unleaded fuel. From a fuel consumption perspective diesel engines are more efficient than their petrol equivalents, so even if the duty per litre is the same, the tax paid per mile (or kilometre) travelled is lower for diesel than for petrol. Successive governments were happy to encourage the switch to diesel engines because – we were told – they emit less carbon dioxide than petrol, and this switch was seen as one of the arrows in the quiver designed to reduce CO₂ emissions in line with international agreements. Unfortunately, diesel engines emit more nitrogen oxides and small particulate matter, which is even worse for human health than CO₂. Moreover, the evidence appears to suggest that their average CO₂ emissions are no better than petrol engines.

The chemistry associated with the burning of diesel is not new. So how is it that governments across Europe have encouraged this trend? According to the academics Cames and Helmers (here) one argument is that “the European oil industry co-initiated the shift to diesel cars in the 1980s and 1990s in order to find outlets for middle distillates” which had collapsed as natural gas displaced heating oil as a fuel used in electricity generation. In addition, the increased use of nuclear power for generating purposes further increased the downward pressure on distillate demand.  Whatever the reason, across most European countries, diesel cars received favourable tax treatment at the expense of petrol-engined cars. If governments were indeed using the switch as a cover to promote the need to reduce CO₂ emissions it was at best misleading, and if the claims advanced by Cames and Helmers are true, it points to collusion between the interests of the oil industry and government.

This goes back to the point I made recently (here) about how there is evidence to suggest that interest groups can have undue influence over government policy which may not always be in the best interests of voters. Perhaps the most egregious example of this is the policy towards obesity in the western world. It has become accepted wisdom that the problem is caused by too much fat in the diet. However, as long ago as 1972, a scientist called John Yudkin wrote a book claiming that there is a clear correlation between the rise in heart disease and a rise in the consumption of sugar, and questioned whether there was any causal link between fat and heart disease. But the food industry struck back, led by a scientist called Ancel Keys who – aided and abetted by the sugar industry – proceeded to discredit Yudkin’s work. However, the work spearheaded in recent years by prominent scientists such as Robert Lustig, suggest that Yudkin had been right all along.

This was not a simple academic spat: It was an issue of fundamental scientific importance with implications for human health. It also highlights the problem that if a particular interest group funds research which is unequivocally accepted by government, and is used as the basis for public policy, there is an incentive to distort the research to ensure the desired outcome. I am not endorsing the claims of Cames and Helmers with regard to the influence of the oil industry. But the very fact that it has been hinted at indicates that the line between genuine scientific research and that conducted for ulterior motives is at best blurred.

As it happens, European countries have a pretty good track record in preventing dodgy research from slipping through the net – think of the good work done by the drug regulatory authorities. However, it is crucial that these high standards are maintained, which is something else for the UK government to think about as it embarks upon Brexit. And as the diesel and sugar episodes remind us, it is also important to think about the longer-term effects of today's policy choices. Failure to think long-term can - quite literally - be fatal.

Not your father's world

This is a post which I considered very carefully before deciding to publish. I certainly do not “do” conspiracy theories – they have often struck me as the paranoid delusions of people who cannot accept that the world works differently to how they would like. I struggle with the idea that the world is run by a secret cabal of men (for that is how they are normally portrayed in James Bond films) sitting in some glamorous location making decisions which affect the lives of the little people. Nor do I buy the idea that the likes of the Bilderberg Group are trying to subvert the democratic process in the western world. But I was recently brought up short by a couple of articles by people who I have long regarded as sane commentators. 

The first was by George Monbiot, an environmentalist and political activist. I have to confess that I have not always been a fan of his work, believing for many years that he hugely exaggerated his stance on many positions. But I was impressed with his intellectual honesty in reversing his position on nuclear power and I now take him much more seriously, even if I don’t always agree with what he writes. However, the article, published in The Guardian (here) took a cogent look at how so-called "dark money" – used to fund organisations involved in political advocacy without disclosing where it comes from – has a huge impact on the way in which government policy is shaped.

In particular, he focused on the activities of one Dr Liam Fox MP, who is a prominent supporter of Brexit and currently Secretary of State for International Trade. In 1997, Fox founded Atlantic Bridge, described as an educational organisation designed "to bring people together who have common interests [and] ... defend these interests from European integrationists who would like to pull Britain away from its relationship with the United States.” In 2007, a sister organisation was set up in the US with affiliations to the American Legislative Exchange Council (ALEC), described by Monbiot as "perhaps the most controversial corporate-funded thinktank in the US" and which has extremely close ties to the Trump administration (see Monbiot’s article for the detail). After registering as a charity in 2003, the UK arm of Atlantic Bridge was dissolved in 2011 after the Charity Commission concluded that it was "not evident that [it] had advanced education" and "may lead members of the public to call into question its independence from party politics.”

Monbiot convincingly makes the case that Fox has consistently blurred the lines between the public interest and his own personal interests. However, by being tasked with the job of securing trade deals with other countries, Fox is ideally placed to lead the way in securing a UK trade deal with the US.  But as has been pointed out numerous times before, any trade deal will be on terms which put US interests ahead of those of Britain. As Monbiot put it, “European laws protecting the public interest were portrayed by Conservative Eurosceptics as intolerable intrusions on corporate freedom. Taking back control from Europe means closer integration with the US. The transatlantic special relationship is a special relationship between political and corporate power. That power is cemented by the networks Liam Fox helped to develop.”

You may or may not agree with this view, but whilst it is plausible, Monbiot has “form” and we know where he stands on the political spectrum. But the blog post by Tony Yates, professor of economics at Birmingham University and which made some similar points, comes from someone who in my experience does not consistently advocate a particular political stance (here) Yates points out that many of the grievances which led to the Brexit result "have been stoked and crafted ruthlessly. The vortex is stoked and our descent into it is piloted in the name of the ‘will of the people’.  But in fact the journey is in the service of the populist-controllers who have managed to sell the people the bad policies.  What do they get out of it?  Publicity, gratification, media careers, control over policies that affect the net worth of companies they and their associates are connected with."

Precisely because I regard Yates as a rational commentator is the reason why his argument hits with such force. Regular readers will know that I have consistently questioned how the policies of Trump – or the UK government with regard to Brexit – serve the economic interests of their respective electorates. If both the US and UK governments are pursuing policies designed to benefit a small group of individuals, we are in more trouble than I thought. I will leave it to the political scientists to assess the impact on the democratic process. More worrying from an economic perspective is that the international institutions upon which our security and prosperity have been built for 70 years are under threat. I have noted previously (here) that the parallels with the 1930s are more worrying than people care to admit, and historians will tell you that despots come to power riding a wave of popular support to impose policies which impoverish their countries. Whilst Trump may not be a despot, and Theresa May is certainly not, they both lead governments whose policies are economically harmful. 

Perhaps we are all being a little bit jumpy in the wake of the political upheavals of the last year and wiser heads will soon prevail, such that by the end of the year we will all wonder what the fuss was about. Or maybe, as Yates wrote, the failures of current policies "can be sold as a success, whose ill effects are blamed on simply not punishing the imaginary villains enough.  And the next round follows." This is not my father’s world. It’s my grandfather’s.

Trading places

I spent this evening at a seminar organised by the National Institute of Economic and Social Economic Research (NIESR) at which they outlined their latest economic view and some of the associated research topics. One of the presentations, by Monique Ebell, looked at NIESR's ongoing research into Free Trade Agreements and how the UK is likely to fare post-Brexit.

The worrying conclusion was that leaving the European Single Market (ESM) is going to impose significant costs, irrespective of whatever deal the UK signs with other countries. This is due to the fact that the ESM is a deep and comprehensive trade agreement which is designed to reduce non-tariff barriers, whereas conventional FTAs do little to tackle this problem. And because they are generally aimed at trade in goods, they do little to stimulate services trade which is an important issue for the UK.

NIESR used conventional gravity models to estimate the impact of post-Brexit trade flows. Such models approximate bilateral trade flows between two countries by employing the ‘gravity equation’, derived from Newton’s theory of gravitation. The idea is that just as planets are attracted to each other in proportion to their sizes and proximity, so too are countries. Relative size is determined by GDP, and economic proximity is determined by trade costs – the more economically ‘distant’ the greater the trade costs. Gravity models suggest that relative economic size attracts countries to trade with each other while greater distances weaken the attractiveness.

The empirical results suggest that if the UK were to leave the ESM and impose WTO rules, as Theresa May has threatened, this would lead to a long-term reduction of around 60% in UK trade with the EU compared to what would otherwise take place. Swapping ESM rules for an FTA used by the EU in trade with third party countries would produce a smaller, but still significant, reduction of 45% in UK-EU trade. There would be a modest offset if the UK could replace WTO rules with some form of FTA with the BRICS or Anglophone countries, but it would in no way be enough to fully compensate for the losses.

As it currently stands, leaving the ESM will make the UK significantly less well off. Indeed, NIESR's calculations indicate that swapping the current EU trading arrangements for WTO rules will cut GDP by around 2.3% over the longer term (5-10 years). This is rather smaller than the numbers suggested by the Treasury prior to the referendum, but it is likely there would be significant second round effects which I reckon could produce a long-term decline somewhere in the region of 5%.

We should, of course, be careful of the spurious precision attached to such estimates. But they support the view that leaving the safety of the ESM, which is one of the most integrated international trading markets in the world, will leave the UK poorer than it needs to be. And it is for this reason I continue to believe that the gamble taken by David Cameron in holding the referendum in the first place, and the comments made by Theresa May in her speech two weeks ago, represent steps which are not in the UK's national interest.

If conventional FTAs suggest that the gains from trade with third countries will be outweighed by the losses resulting from a loss of access to the ESM, might it be possible to devise ways to narrow the losses? Obviously, one way would be to replicate the features of the ESM which make it so successful, by reducing non-tariff barriers. But this would involve efforts to improve economic integration in any new trade deals, which in turn would require greater regulatory harmonisation, though this is precisely one of the things which the electorate (narrowly) rejected last June.

Ironically, on a day when the proportion of MPs voting in favour of the Article 50 bill (81.4%) was greater than the proportion of the electorate voting for Brexit (51.9%), the government has still given us no indication that it understands the risks which it is taking with the UK's economic future. Moreover, the fact that the EU is expected to present the UK with a significant exit bill, likely to be in the region of £40-60 bn, suggests that it will take at least five years to recover from the initial financial hit (so much for saving money by leaving, eh Nigel?). Thus, even if Brexit does not cause the damage that is feared, in order to come out ahead the new arrangements would require the UK to get a bigger growth boost than the current arrangements can deliver. Let's just say I am not hopeful.

On the Seventh Day ...

… Donald created chaos. In recent days, the Trump Administration has imposed an immigration ban which is generating controversy around the world, whilst today the head of the National Trade Council, Peter Navarro, publicly accused Germany of using a “grossly undervalued” euro to “exploit” the US and its EU partners. Both these issues call into question the underlying principles of the international economic and financial framework. Whilst recent events reveal that the new Administration is not going to play by the old rules, and we are going to have to live with it, they also display a degree of callowness regarding how the world works.

On a wider view, businesses and investors do not like what they have seen and heard. It is potentially the first step towards a more protectionist world which will damage the US as much as its trading partners. Of more concern is that the global financial system has historically worked best when the global superpower acts in its benevolent self-interest by maintaining access to its markets, allowing unrestricted access to its financial markets and generating higher global incomes which benefit everyone – corporate America included. Any sense that the system is to be gamed in favour of the US will not end well for anyone.

Navarro’s comments in particular were worrying on many levels, not the least of which because he is wrong. It is true that Germany is running an excessively large external surplus which, as I have pointed out in a previous post (here), does put undue strain on the workings of EMU. But ironically, a higher surplus ought to put upward pressure on the currency, rather than weaken it. After all, it is not as if the whole of Germany’s surplus is solely generated at the expense of other EMU members. Moreover, the perceived weakness of the euro is due more to ECB asset purchases than to any deliberate action on Germany’s part, something which has been strongly opposed by the German contingent at the ECB (notably Bundesbank President Weidmann, who has been a vociferous critic of QE).

An excellent article in The Economist a couple of weeks ago noted that “there are reasons to be worried about the head of Donald Trump’s new National Trade Council” (here). In particular, The Economist notes that Navarro’s view that unbalanced trade is responsible for a slowdown in US growth since 2000 is simply “dodgy economics.” It goes on to suggest that Navarro “seems to think that once they [China] comply with global trade rules, the trade deficit will close and manufacturing jobs will return to America’s shores … This is a fantasy. When manufacturing production moves overseas and then returns, productivity has usually risen in the interim; so far fewer jobs come back than left.”

Navarro’s views on the EU are equally wrong-headed. He said in a recent FT interview that “The unequal treatment of the US income tax system under biased WTO rules is a grossly unfair subsidy to foreigners exporting to the US and a backdoor tariff on American exports to the world that kills American jobs and drives American factories offshore.” Whatever else it might be doing, Europe is not stealing US manufacturing jobs. It might be getting more of its share of US corporate taxes than the government would like but there is a simple solution to that – cut the corporate tax rate, which is amongst the highest in the industrialised world.

But perhaps what is most worrying of all – and it was highlighted by a number of below the line commentators on the FT website, who are a pretty savvy bunch – is that the US government appears to be trying to drive a wedge between EU nations by highlighting the fact that Germany is “exploiting” other European partners. Certainly, it seems to have a preference for negotiating bilateral deals with the intention of (as one commentator put it) “the destruction of the EU, by peeling one nation at the time from the EU, till the whole thing collapses.” That might be a bit over the top but it is a common theme.

Even more worrying from a UK perspective, as the inestimable Gideon Rachman noted in the FT yesterday, is that “the election of Mr Trump has transformed Brexit from a risky decision into a straightforward disaster (here).” I have long believed that the main risk Trump poses to the UK is that many of his policies may well not be in the UK’s national interest. As Rachman put it, “If Britain had voted to stay inside the EU, the obvious response to the arrival of a pro-Russia protectionist in the Oval Office would be to draw closer to its European allies. Britain could defend free-trade far more effectively with the EU’s bulk behind it …  As it is, Britain has been thrown into the arms of an American president that the UK’s foreign secretary has called a madman”.

When a man who wants to build a wall on the southern US border to keep out Mexicans; who wants to ban immigrants from one of the most tolerant and open societies in the world and who threatened to jail his political opponent, thinks Brexit is a good idea we really need to think again! As the Ancient Greek storyteller Aesop wrote, “A doubtful friend is worse than a certain enemy. Let a man be one thing or the other, and we then know how to meet him.”