The timing of US tariffs on Chinese EVs and Solar panels is political, but they also signal a significant shift in the Global Economy as Globalisation rapidly unravels. The reality is that China's competitive advantage is actually in automation, network effects, an integrated supply chain and a huge home market, which means that pretending it is about cheap labour and subsidies achieves nothing other than punishing consumers. Europe in particular can't compete with China because its energy costs are too high thanks to US led tariffs on Russia and the madness of net zero policies and US pressure to match these new tariffs threatens to seriously unbalance the unity of the EU - already troubled by populist push back against the key Globalist policies of open borders and net zero. Perhaps most important though is that a US economy that has successfully cut its import dependency is one that has every incentive to talk down the $

Today in the Alps it is -2 at the top of the mountain and 4 degrees in town. So what is the actual temperature in Chamonix? The reason for this post is that on Wednesday it will apparently reach 20 degrees in town, having been 1 degree in the morning, while still being below freezing up where they are skiing. This degree of variation in a single town on a single day gives lie to the idea that we can measure the average temperature of the whole world to within 0.1 degree, not only today, but over thousands of years and predict it into the future. On such false precision we are making huge economic decisions...