{"id":130606,"date":"2025-07-04T16:36:12","date_gmt":"2025-07-04T15:36:12","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.themintmagazine.com\/?p=130606"},"modified":"2025-07-04T16:36:12","modified_gmt":"2025-07-04T15:36:12","slug":"lost-leader","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.themintmagazine.com\/lost-leader\/","title":{"rendered":"Lost leader"},"content":{"rendered":"<p style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Ann Pettifor has long been an influential commentator on the state of global economies and finance, since leading a successful campaign for debt relief for developing countries in the 90s, Jubilee 2000, and then foreseeing the 2008 financial crash.<\/p>\n<p style=\"font-weight: 400;\">As Trump\u2019s trade wars destabilise the world economies, <em>The Mint<\/em> caught up with her to get her take on the current instability, where it would lead and what could be done. She wasn\u2019t that hopeful.<\/p>\n<h3>Summary<\/h3>\n<p style=\"font-weight: 400;\"><strong>Key Takeaways<\/strong><\/p>\n<ul style=\"font-weight: 400;\">\n<li>The trade war is fundamentally about inequality, with export-focused economies leading to domestic under-consumption and global overproduction<\/li>\n<li>Financial instability, particularly around US bonds and the dollar&#8217;s reserve currency status, poses major risks to the global economy<\/li>\n<li>A lack of political leadership and hollowed-out political systems make addressing these complex issues challenging<\/li>\n<li>Regional clearing unions could offer an alternative to the current global financial system, though implementing this globally faces significant hurdles<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p style=\"font-weight: 400;\"><strong>Topics<\/strong><\/p>\n<p style=\"font-weight: 400;\"><strong>Root Causes of the Trade War<\/strong><\/p>\n<ul style=\"font-weight: 400;\">\n<li>Inequality at home leads to focus on exports and &#8220;dumping&#8221; on other countries<\/li>\n<li>Export sectors given privileges\/subsidies, benefiting the wealthy (e.g. coastal China vs inland)<\/li>\n<li>Results in under-consumption domestically and overproduction globally<\/li>\n<li>Environmental consequences as resources extracted to produce goods that can&#8217;t be consumed<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p style=\"font-weight: 400;\"><strong>Financial System Instability<\/strong><\/p>\n<ul style=\"font-weight: 400;\">\n<li>US bond market showing signs of stress, with investors selling treasuries<\/li>\n<li>Weakening dollar despite higher US interest rates &#8211; capital flowing to Swiss franc, euro<\/li>\n<li>China holding large amounts of US bonds creates potential for major destability<\/li>\n<li>Need for alternatives to dollar as reserve currency, but no clear successor<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p style=\"font-weight: 400;\"><strong>Potential Solutions<\/strong><\/p>\n<ul style=\"font-weight: 400;\">\n<li>Keynes&#8217; idea of an international clearing union to balance trade without need for reserve currency<\/li>\n<li>Bank for International Settlements could potentially play this role<\/li>\n<li>More likely to see regional clearing unions emerge first (e.g. post-WWII European example)<\/li>\n<li>China could potentially lead on transforming economy and addressing climate crisis<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p style=\"font-weight: 400;\"><strong>Challenges for China<\/strong><\/p>\n<ul style=\"font-weight: 400;\">\n<li>Needs to reorient economy toward domestic consumption<\/li>\n<li>Facing overproduction issues across multiple sectors (steel, renewables, etc.)<\/li>\n<li>Must maintain growth to prevent social unrest<\/li>\n<li>Balancing development with environmental constraints<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p style=\"font-weight: 400;\"><strong>Global Economic Outlook<\/strong><\/p>\n<ul style=\"font-weight: 400;\">\n<li>Trump&#8217;s actions destabilizing entire global economy<\/li>\n<li>Lack of intellectual\/political leadership to address complex issues<\/li>\n<li>Hollowed out political systems ill-equipped to handle challenges<\/li>\n<li>Pessimistic outlook due to these factors<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Ann Pettifor has long been an influential commentator on the state of global economies and finance, since leading a successful campaign for debt relief for developing countries in the 90s, &hellip; <\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":130607,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"video","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"content-type":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[54,58,2],"tags":[181,864,290,2823,784,800],"class_list":["post-130606","post","type-post","status-publish","format-video","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-finance-sector","category-government","category-interviews","tag-ann-pettifor","tag-financial-crisis","tag-globalisation","tag-june-2025","tag-trade-war","tag-trump","post_format-post-format-video"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.themintmagazine.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/130606","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.themintmagazine.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.themintmagazine.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.themintmagazine.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.themintmagazine.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=130606"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.themintmagazine.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/130606\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.themintmagazine.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/130607"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.themintmagazine.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=130606"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.themintmagazine.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=130606"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.themintmagazine.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=130606"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}