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Another month means another news round-up. And surprise, surprise, guess who’s at its forefront? The one and only... President Donald J Trump.
Since my last newsletter, we’ve seen Trump turn from trade warmonger to deal-striking exec. His deal with the UK signalled the President seemingly easing up on his tariff crackdown, and Wall St’s woes coming to an end. Even our PM, Starmer, called it a “fantastic, historic day”. One splash of fake tan, and you’d think he was lined up to host a rerun of The Apprentice.
The changes of heart don’t stop there. Brexit sent shockwaves throughout the UK, and despite BoJo’s bleats “get Brexit done”, Starmer has broken through the European hardliners (see the UK’s Eurovision results for evidence) to secure a trade deal with the EU.
Maybe it’s time to Buy British? I’ll let you decipher whether you think I’m talking about the FTSE or fish here.
Either way, for any average bystander, it would seem we’re on the up. With a potential end to ring-fencing for UK banks, the Mansion House Accord, a rousing speech from Rachel Reeves at IFGS, and the resurgence of ‘Sell America’, you might think the UK market is back on top.
I wouldn’t be too hasty... after all, as I’ve said before, it’s Donald’s world, and we’re just living in it...
So, what else? Well, watchdog shakeups are still all the rage across the Pond, with the OCC recently announcing it will combine its supervision of smaller, medium-sized, and larger banks. Of course, this is all despite Musk being sidelined from DOGE (amid a tanking Tesla stock), ending his eventful period of “living the meme”.
On the note of DOGE, a recent investigation by the FT found that, despite the (ambitious) $2tn Musk promised he would cut, only a fraction of that – $31.8bn – can somewhat be verified. All the pageantry of Musk and his merry band of fresh-faced engineers has fallen flat. Worse still, with Trump’s “big, beautiful” tax bill progressing further, the US budget deficit is only set to balloon. Bond vigilantes are on standby.
I’ll hold off on any schadenfreude. As we know, Trump is remarkably different to the man we saw in 2016 – and budget debacle aside, we can only hope this era of hand shaking continues.
You can read the full newsletter here.