It’s a “dry” county (not state). Been there - done that.
What strikes me is the advantage America has being a large country with enormous resources, a single market and currency. If only the EU could follow this route and present a united face to the rest of the world. I believe that Brexit was orchestrated by American and Russian interests alarmed by the emergence of a potential new financial superpower and wanting to weaken it. In a different world Bojo and Farage would be accused of treason.
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Ah, my bad. Thanks for clarifying.
It’s on my bucket list of places to visit. To be honest, they should be flying me out all expenses paid considering how much of the stuff I buy… Pretty sure I’ve singlehandedly put Jack Daniels’ great great grandkids through college all by myself 
I think there was a big element of that. Certainly there was a ton of Russian-sourced disinformation on social media and the various Leave campaigns were backed by some dubiously-sourced money - the Electoral Commission found against them but of course by then it was too late.
It ought to have been enough to invalidate the vote, but of course Theresa May wasn’t going to do that.
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Plenty of economists, mind. Here’s a quote from PSL which seems thoughtful and succinct in explanation - from today’s article ’ Pound Sterling Facing Headwinds After Great White Shark Scents Blood in Water’.
“Yesterday’s announcement is another nail in the coffin of the post-1989 golden era of profit growth. Geopolitical stability and technological advance made hyper globalisation possible, in turn contributing to the rise of US profits as a percentage of GDP in every decade since the 1980s,” says Freya Beamish, chief economist at TS Lombard, in a research briefing last Thursday.
“A major driver here was the positive supply shock of a huge amount of cheap labour coming online. Some form of industrial policy was always going to be necessary to redress this, once those left behind by this process became numerous enough, which is certainly now the case. Trump has chosen negative supply shocks - tariffs and deportations, with a question mark over energy supply - reversing the impact of policy on profits and risking permanently re-rating valuations around a new lower geopolitical average,” she adds.
Donald Trump’s reform agenda might yet prove to be bullish for the real economy and regular people on Main Street in the US but it comes at the expense profits and margins for corporate America, which makes it toxic for the lofty valuations prevailing in US stock markets, hence why any enduring stabilisation of global markets could yet see the Dollar role over again, to the benefit of Sterling and other currencies, if the White House continues with its current tariff strategy.
Interesting Larkswood12 thanks for posting.
Though I think her conclusion is mure hopeful than likely as corporate America is smart and certsinly hssn’t run out of ideas.
I’m more concerned about all the little countries, from the dirt poor to the relatively wealthy who are too small to withstand the shocks this will bring, and the effect on jobs, lives and industries around the world.
And when it comes back to hurt the US unfortunately there’s form in history for causing war in other places to divert attention or shore up defence oligarchs.
Last month I bought a dozen bottles in Spain - seems like it was a good move Jack is a good friend of mine! The “tour” is great fun.
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Yes I know Theresa May was a Remainer, but she became PM after Cameron stepped down, so had the responsibility of dealing with the aftermath of the Referendum.
Since the referendum was “advisory” not binding, she could legally have refused to implement it as being too close to call (it would have been better if Cameron had set a two-thirds majority as the prerequisite for Leaving) - or set the result aside on the grounds of widespread fraud and electoral malpractice.
Instead we got the meaningless tautology “Brexit means Brexit”, and a fruitless attempt to come up with some way of making the impossible work.
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The bond selloff has begun. U.S. bond values are going down and yields are increasing. China still holds the most U.S bonds and it wouldn’t surprise me if they dumped a large chunk to give two fingers to Trump. That could destabilise the market in U.S. bonds to the point of a serious downgrade or even maybe talk of a default. Trump would be powerless to stop this happening.
China has so many ways to respon to Trumps extended tariffs. Most would hurt China, but some would hurt the U.S. much more. As well as dumping U.S. bonds they could rescind business and export licenses for U.S. companies. It’s thought at least 90% of Apples products are still made in China and it’s the same for most U.S. tech products. Tesla currently manufactures in China for sale within China and the Far East. If they did that, even if it was temporary, it could cause severe harm to many U.S. companies.
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Looks like they’ve gone for increasing the tariff rates. I would have expected something a little more interesting.
Trump seems to think that there is a magic tap manufacturers can turn on to increase US production overnight and at a price competitive to imports which, even with tariffs would be difficult.
For some types of manufacturing the US does not have the infrastructure (think semiconductors) even if it wanted to ramp up production and development of that infrastructure would take years (3-5 in the case of a semiconductor fab) to get that infrastructure built. Probably longer as the expertise isn’t there either.
It probably doesn’t matter whether Trump has honourable intentions to make America less dependant on foreign manufacturing and wants to “bring the jobs home” but does not have a clue how to achieve that without wrecking the economy or has been manipulated by the Russians into collapsing the US economy. The result is going to be the same either way.
Interesting article on what US potentially faces
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For those of you who don’t want to click on a link to the cesspit that is X, here is the article
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Apparently today’s interesting quote is that according to Trump, America and Italy have been close since the time of the Roman Empire.
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Pound is absolutely tanking against the Euro - down to just over 1.16.
Is it ever going to end???
Wait till it gets close to £1=1 Euro…it’s been there before.
1.16 is a oretty good rate for recent years.
Yes, that’s absolutely true - Trump has used ChatGPT to discover some papyrus scrolls that record the Cherokee Nation signing a free trade agreement with Rome in the time of the Emperor Elagabalus in about 215 AD.
Unfortunately Elagabalus was as mad as a box of frogs and the following Thursday imposed trade tariffs of 115% on buffalo meat, so they turned around and sailed home again. 
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