The Guardian view on supply chains: not only just in time, but just in case | Editorial

In 2012, shortly before becoming China’s top leader, Xi Jinping visited the Port of Los Angeles to discuss boosting trade. What then looked like a locus of cooperation has now become another site for suspicion as Sino-American relations remain tense. Last month, the Biden administration announced $20bn of funding for port infrastructure, much of it to replace cargo cranes that have almost all been made by a state-owned Chinese firm. The US is concerned because the sophisticated pieces of equipment manage information about containers and their contents, their origins and…

World economy on brink of ‘cold war two’, IMF official warns

The world economy is on the brink of a second cold war that could “annihilate” progress made since the collapse of the Soviet Union, a senior International Monetary Fund official has warned. Gita Gopinath, the IMF’s first deputy managing director, said the accelerating fragmentation of the world economy into regional power blocs – centred around the US and China – risked wiping out trillions of dollars in global output. “If we descend into cold war two, knowing the costs, we may not see mutually assured economic destruction. But we could…

The pendulum swung against globalisation in 2022 – and that’s no bad thing | Larry Elliott

This was supposed to be the year when things returned to normal. After the collapse of activity during the months of lockdown in 2020 and the supply bottlenecks of 2021, the hope was that 2022 would call time on an era of seemingly permanent crisis. It hasn’t quite turned out like that. Indeed, 2022 is shaping up to be a pivotal year for the global economy, taking its place alongside the end of the Bretton Woods fixed exchange rate system in 1971, the reunification of Germany in 1990 and the…

China’s struggle delights some – but should make us all nervous | Larry Elliott

China has been central to the story of globalisation over the past 30 years but now it is struggling. More than two years after Covid-19 cases were discovered in Wuhan, the world’s most populous country has yet to get on top of the virus. Draconian lockdowns have been imposed because China’s vaccines are less effective than those available in the west, and immunity levels are lower as well. Growth is slowing and not just because of the tough restrictions insisted upon by President Xi Jinping. Flaws in China’s economic model…

As tensions rise between east and west, will HSBC be torn apart?

When Mark Tucker arrived as HSBC’s new chairman on a cloudy London day in October 2017, he was prepared for a challenge. The former insurance boss was the first outsider to lead the now 157-year-old bank, which was in the middle of a period of intense upheaval. HSBC was slimming down its investment bank, selling poorly performing businesses and slashing thousands of jobs as it tried to adapt to the post-financial-crisis era. While Tucker was well equipped to guide the lender through that period of turmoil, he must now wrestle…