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Alan Beattie

Senior Trade Writer

Alan Beattie writes the Trade Secrets newsletter every Monday and an opinion column each Thursday, covering international trade, globalisation, the intersection of geopolitics and economics and the world financial system. Sign up for the newsletter here.

Based in London, he was previously the FT's international economy editor and world trade editor and has been also been based in Washington and Brussels for the FT. He is the author of False Economy (Penguin, 2009), a popular economic history of the world, and Who's In Charge Here? (Penguin, 2012), an account of governments' mishandling of the global financial crisis. Before joining the FT, Alan was an economist at the Bank of England.

Email Alan Beattie @alanbeattie  on Twitter (link opens in a new browser window)
  • Thursday, 10 October, 2024
    Trade SecretsSupply chains
    How value chains survived the great inflation without state help

    One-off supply-demand mismatches during the Covid shock don’t justify widespread government intervention

    Aerial view of truck with trailers a port
  • Monday, 7 October, 2024
    Trade Secrets
    A divided EU presents China with easy targets Premium content

    Member states are failing to show Beijing a united front over electric vehicles

    Electric vehicles at the Port of Taicang, China, bound for shipment to Europe
  • Thursday, 3 October, 2024
    Trade SecretsElectric vehicles
    Why the US can’t impose its will over global trade in electric cars

    The American market is too small to give Washington leverage over Chinese software in EVs

    An employee works at the BYD Coach and Bus manufacturing facility in Lancaster, California
  • Monday, 30 September, 2024
    Trade Secrets
    The dock strikes that threaten trade and the freeports that fail to boost it Premium content

    US east coast labour unions are set to cause serious disruption to container shipping

    A container ship is unloaded in the APM Terminals yard at the Port of Mobile in Mobile, Alabama
  • Thursday, 26 September, 2024
    Trade SecretsEuropean companies
    How supply chain superheroes have kept world trade flowing

    The flat-pack furniture giant Ikea has successfully ridden the shocks of Covid and Ukraine

    Jon Abrahamsson Ring
  • Monday, 23 September, 2024
    The Economics Show with Soumaya Keynes podcast31 min listen
    What would Trump do on trade? With Alan Beattie

    Donald Trump has promised yet more extreme policy if re-elected. What will stick?

  • Monday, 23 September, 2024
    Trade Secrets
    Stagflation piece of polycrisis has stubbornly failed to materialise Premium content

    Competent central banks have avoided a repeat of the Great Depression

    ECB president Christine Lagarde sitting on a sofa with her thumb up on one hand.
  • Thursday, 19 September, 2024
    Trade SecretsAustralian politics
    Australia’s exemplar for the world on building economic security

    Despite interventionist industrial policy rhetoric, Canberra has maintained open trade and a market economy

    The Lynas Rare Earths Ltd. processing plant in Kalgoorlie, Australia
  • Monday, 16 September, 2024
    Trade Secrets
    Can the middle powers save multilateral trade? Premium content

    Mid-sized countries, and talk rather than litigation, might be the best thing for the WTO

    Ngozi Okonjo-Iweala arrives for the opening of the WTO Public Forum in Geneva last week
  • Monday, 9 September, 2024
    Trade Secrets
    The Fortress America that’s built from costly steel Premium content

    Joe Biden and Kamala Harris blocking the Nippon takeover of US Steel shows protectionist business as usual

    The US Steel Clairton Coke Works facility in Pennsylvania
  • Friday, 6 September, 2024
    The new economic nationalism
    Can globalisation survive the US-China rift?

    Rivalry between Washington and Beijing has put global trade under intense pressure. But the system is proving more resilient than many expected

    Montage of images of a container ship, a satellite and a fraying submarine optical fibre cable
  • Thursday, 5 September, 2024
    Trade SecretsUS trade
    Why the US can’t launch a green Marshall Plan

    America’s lagging technology and protectionist trade policy hamper its global leadership

    Chief of Staff General George C. Marshall
  • Monday, 2 September, 2024
    Trade Secrets
    Canada goes the Washington way on tariffs Premium content

    How Ottawa let everyone down — except the US

    Canada’s Prime Minister Justin Trudeau
  • Thursday, 29 August, 2024
    Trade SecretsFood security
    How open trade saved us from a global food crisis

    Fears of an international hunger emergency after the Ukraine invasion proved unfounded

    A combine harvests wheat in a field
  • Thursday, 22 August, 2024
    Trade SecretsUS presidential election 2024
    Harris remembers the consumer cost of worker-centred tariffs

    The Democratic candidate makes a welcome attack on Donald Trump’s reckless trade plans

    Democratic presidential nominee Vice President Kamala Harris, center, is hugged by President Joe Biden
  • Monday, 19 August, 2024
    Trade Secrets
    How the lifeblood of trade bypasses the world’s blocked arteries Premium content

    Obstructions in the Panama Canal haven’t stopped goods commerce any more than those at Suez

    A large ship carrying freight sails along the Panama Canal
  • Monday, 29 July, 2024
    Trade Secrets
    Small isn’t beautiful when you’re paying EU carbon tariffs Premium content

    Countries like Trinidad and Tobago lack capacity and finance to cope with Brussels’ border measure

    An oil refinery on Trinidad and Tobago
  • Thursday, 25 July, 2024
    US manufacturing
    How Bidenomics will survive Biden’s departure

    Kamala Harris won’t have much room to shift from industrial intervention and import tariffs

    US vice-president Kamala Harris stands in front of several American flags
  • Monday, 22 July, 2024
    Trade Secrets
    The protectionist president who’s been good for trade — for now Premium content

    Joe Biden’s fiscal stimulus did global growth a lot of good

    Joe Biden standing in front of a banner that says Investing in America
  • Thursday, 18 July, 2024
    Trade SecretsClimate change
    Why Brussels can’t see the deforestation for the trees

    The EU’s international policies on climate, trade and development are incoherent

    Deforestation along the border of the Bwindi Impenetrable Forest National Park in Uganda
  • Monday, 15 July, 2024
    Trade Secrets
    Blocking China’s Mexican backdoor into Fortress America Premium content

    Washington has to keep acting to maintain its trade and tech barriers against Beijing

    A row of BYD electric taxis
  • Thursday, 11 July, 2024
    UK immigration
    The immigration dilemma Labour hopes will go away

    Starmer’s government faces a familiar trade-off between the economics and the politics of foreign workers

    An inflatable craft carrying migrants crosses the shipping lane in the English Channel
  • Monday, 8 July, 2024
    Trade Secrets
    The dangerously simple story about radical populists Premium content

    Open trade and the EU are not (yet) being destroyed by a phalanx of hard-right governments

    Rassemblement National supporter, looking sad, holding a glass of champagne and the French flag
  • Monday, 1 July, 2024
    Trade Secrets
    Le Pen brings protectionism home to the French border Premium content

    The cross-party consensus on trade policy in the UK and even the US is absent in France

    Rassemblement National (RN) leader Marine Le Pen, speaking at a podium
  • Friday, 28 June, 2024
    Trade SecretsGlobal trade
    Labour may face a tug of war between European trade and US security

    The gravitational force of the EU economy will pull against the UK’s strategic alliance with Washington

    A woman in a red suit strolls through a pillored atrium as media photographers aim their cameras at her
Previous page You are on page 1 Next page

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