James Hartley

US manufacturing construction spending has become the consensus shorthand for industrial renewal. The construction data through July 2026 argues the renewal never arrived, and what replaced it tells a more uncomfortable story than the tariff debate usually entertains.

The August 2026 jobs report landed well above what most economists had pencilled in, and the headline number will be read as unambiguous good news for the labour market. The more interesting question is what the data underneath the surface says about where the economy actually is.

Continuing with themes from the Republican National Convention, President Donald Trump doubled down on GOP's positions on border security and undocumented immigration during a stop at the National Medal of Honor Museum.

Dallas Mayor Eric Johnson took center stage with a primetime speech at the GOP's unusual midterm national convention Thursday night, sharing his

The consensus read on the China rare earth shipments halted story is that Beijing is deploying a tactical squeeze ahead of Xi Jinping’s 24 September visit to Washington, and will likely ease up around the summit to demonstrate goodwill. That reading may be too comfortable. The structural conditions underneath this dispute are considerably harder to resolve than a diplomatic photo opportunity.

The consensus read on the 10-year Treasury yield outlook is that 5% represents some kind of gravitational wall, a level where buyers swarm back and sellers retreat, just as they did on 23 October 2023. The structural conditions feeding this yield rise are different enough from that episode to make the repeat scenario less automatic than the market seems to believe.

The prevailing read on the Iran US tanker strikes is that Washington landed a clean, proportionate blow: Iran fired ballistic missiles at two Navy warships, the US disabled or destroyed three Iranian oil tankers, and the ledger is roughly balanced. The numbers underneath that tidy narrative argue something considerably more uncomfortable.

The consensus read on the stay-at-home parent subsidy being drafted by the Trump administration is that this is a culture-war policy wrapped in a cheque. That framing is not wrong, but it obscures the more durable fiscal question: what happens to a $12-billion block grant when you expand who can claim it without expanding how much money is in it.

A British sitcom set in the world of venture capital has released its pilot episode free on YouTube. No Big Deal, written and created by Andrew Dickinson, went out in London on 14 September and can be watched here.

The conventional read on DSA and MAGA economic control is that they represent opposite poles of American politics. Cato Institute analysis makes the less comfortable case: the two movements share an appetite for sweeping government command of the economy that puts them far closer together than either side cares to acknowledge.