- Economical with the truth - 30th April 2025
- Culture vulture! - 30th April 2025
- Banked cheque - 29th April 2025
During 23 years with the BBC, and a 41 year journalistic career (when he was trained to use clear and simple language, avoiding jargon), for our Editor, Welshman Phil Parry, stories about the economy have always featured prominently, and now this is emphasised by new figures suggesting the truth about the world economy and that of the United States of America (USA) – that they may be in trouble with Donald Trump in power.
As well as pure politics, it has always been ECONOMIC issues which brought down senior political leaders.
Could the same be about to happen with the contentious President of the United States of America (USA) Donald Trump?
Obviously the mechanisms to eject him now are rarely used, and he was freely elected in a democratic society, but the latest figures do not look good for him, possibly resulting in fewer votes at the ballot box.
Pocket book issues, such as how much money they have are always at the forefront of minds of voters, as I know well.
On one occasion I secretly recorded a boss who was paying his staff less than the minimum wage (so they were receiving small amounts of money, which was bad for them as well as for the local economy).
On another I ‘doorstepped’ a factory owner who was unlawfully closing down his business and throwing a lot of people on the dole.
This was at a time when the unemployment total was a huge political issue – it isn’t now.
The figures today make for sobering reading.
The US economy shrank 0.3 per cent in the first three months of the year as firms stockpiled imports ahead of Mr Trump’s swingeing tariffs.
But researching surveys of real-time numbers suggests the situation could be even worse in future – mobility data and restaurant bookings are down, caused, it seems, by the damage of those tariffs.
Cargo shipments of imports and exports can take up to 40 days, so the results are only starting to filter through now – but they may be worrying for him as well as us.
Indicators are beginning to look scary. Bookings for new journeys between China and the USA, for example, plummeted by 45 per cent year-on-year in the week beginning April 14, according to Vizion, a data firm.
The number of ‘blank’ sailings, when a vessel skips a port or a carrier runs fewer ships on a route to even out the service, has risen to 40 per cent of all scheduled trips.
Pricing data indicates that trade flows are being reshuffled, so the cost of sailing between Shanghai and Los Angeles (LA) has fallen by about $1,000 in the past month, according to Freightos, a logistics company, as companies have gone from ‘front-running’ the tariffs—by importing more than usual to beat their implementation deadline—to avoiding them altogether.
The price for ferrying goods from Vietnam to the USA has risen by a similar amount, possibly meaning that importers have been looking for alternative suppliers.
So the jury is out about what it could result in for Mr Trump at the ballot box (and the mid-terms are coming), but it doesn’t appear positive for him.
As I know it is the economy as well as politics which can destroy people…
The memories of Phil’s astonishing, decades long award-winning career in journalism (when economic stories like these were all important) as he was gripped by the rare neurological disabling condition Hereditary Spastic Paraplegia (HSP), have been released in the book ‘A Good Story’. Order it now.
