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Donald Trump And The Polyethylene Industry: What Happens Next

By John Richardson EVERYTHING started going very well for the global polyethylene (PE) business from the end of 2014/early 2015 if you look at the spreads, or differentials, between naphtha costs and PE pricing. Spreads are only a blunt instrument to measure real profits. But both spreads and integrated naphtha-based margins have reached historic highs since this turning […]

The Trump White House: Why Facts Should Be Sacred

By John Richardson IN a 1921 essay marking the centenary of the British newspaper, the Manchester Guardian, CP Scott, the newspaper’s editor, wrote this very famous sentence: “Comment is free, but facts are sacred”. It is therefore heartening that the media has held the Trump administration accountable for comments about the size of the crowd at […]

Trump’s Yuan Mistake And A New Global Debt Crisis

By John Richardson DONALD Trump is right when he says that China is manipulating its currency. It is just that he misunderstands the direction in which the currency is being manipulated. Ten years ago, he would have been correct to accuse China of manipulating its currency downwards. Today, though, the opposite applies as China tries to […]

Trump’s Diplomacy And Oil Prices

By John Richardson WHEN he was a candidate for the presidency of the US, Donald Trump promised to “bomb the hell” out of oilfields controlled by ISIL. He also declared: “I’m good at war in a certain way” and “I love war… including with nukes, yes, including with nukes.” What is said about policy during […]

Southeast Asia: Confronting The Real Downside Potential

By John Richardson SOUTHEAST ASIA’S (SEA) economies can be divided into two main categories. These are the heavily export-exposed economies of Malaysia, Thailand, Vietnam and Singapore and the two countries with the biggest internal demand drivers – Indonesia and the Philippines. Next come the smaller emerging SEA economies with tremendous longer-term potential, such as Myanmar […]

Ageing Populations Threaten A Repeat Of The 1930s

By John Richardson THIS is an era of the populist strongman, and also a woman if Marine Le Pen wins this year’s French presidential election. We have been here before, of course, many times in history, most notably in the 1930s where rising discontent over the failure of mainstream politicians to meet the needs of their […]

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