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Europe can’t live without Russian gas. Can this tiny Middle East country help? | CNN Business

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Europe can’t live without Russian gas. Can this tiny Middle East country help? | CNN Business


Abu Dhabi, UAE
CNN
 — 

“It’s all the time good to be needed,” Qatar’s vitality minister Saad Sherida al-Kaabi mentioned in jest throughout an unique interview with CNN’s Becky Anderson on Thursday. “Everybody in Europe is speaking to us,” he mentioned.

Qatar, one of many world’s prime suppliers of liquefied pure gasoline (LNG), has been thrust into the limelight as European states rush to search out alternate options to the Russian gasoline that has powered their economies for many years, as Moscow presses on with its brutal struggle in Ukraine.

However Kaabi warned the transition will likely be troublesome. Changing Russian gasoline provide to Europe is “not virtually potential” simply but, he mentioned. Qatar’s present gasoline capability received’t fulfill European demand, he mentioned – but it surely may sooner or later.

The European Union is dependent upon Russia for about 40% of its pure gasoline. This week, German financial system minister Robert Habeck left the Qatari capital Doha with an understanding to have Qatar provide it with gasoline. Germany at the moment has no terminals to obtain direct shipments of LNG from Qatar, but it surely plans to construct two.

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US President Joe Biden and his counterpart on the European Fee, Ursula von der Leyen, on Friday introduced a joint activity drive aimed toward discovering various provides of lLNG and decreasing total demand for pure gasoline transferring ahead.

“Europe has been a vacation spot for us, and is a vital marketplace for us,” the Qatari minister, who can be president and CEO of QatarEnergy, mentioned. “And we will likely be supplying Europe.”

Qatar has invested $28 billion into increasing its large North Discipline and expects gasoline capability to rise by greater than 60% in 4 years, he mentioned. After that, round half of its capability is anticipated to go to Europe. “Our plan is we need to be 50% east of Suez, 50%, west of Suez,” he mentioned, referring to the Egyptian waterway. Round 80% of Qatar’s gasoline at the moment goes to Asian patrons, lots of whom have signed long run contracts that don’t enable a diversion of provides to different patrons.

Right here’s what you might want to know in regards to the position Qatar can play in Europe’s efforts to wean itself off Russian gasoline:

What can Qatar do to assist cut back Europe’s dependence on Russian gasoline now?

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Russia has the world’s greatest reserves of pure gasoline, virtually double these of Qatar, and its gasoline provides account for 40% of the European Union’s utilization. Analysts mentioned it’s nearly unimaginable to switch Russian gasoline in the intervening time.

“There may be principally no spare LNG on the earth market,” mentioned Robin Mills, CEO of Dubai-based vitality consulting agency Qamar Vitality. Qatar’s personal divertible LNG is proscribed “and bidding for that may drive up costs.”

The one means Qatar can exchange Russian gasoline imports to Europe is by diverting cargoes from different prospects who’ve signed long run contracts, comparable to these in Asia, one thing it hasn’t been prepared to do. By doing so it might incur compensation claims from these patrons.

Contractually divertible gasoline provides the vendor the pliability to redirect shipments to the very best worth market in response to altering market circumstances.

As Europe tries to cut back its reliance on hydrocarbons, rising economies in Asia, like China and India, could also be extra engaging locations for Qatari gasoline, mentioned Yousef Alshammari, a senior analysis fellow at London’s Imperial Faculty.

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The US may additionally emerge as a gasoline provider to Europe.

The White Home mentioned Friday that the US will work towards supplying Europe with at the least 15 billion cubic meters of liquefied pure gasoline in 2022 in partnership with different nations.

“It’s an enormous alternative for the US,” mentioned Kaabi. “I feel, positively the US goes to be, , one of many largest suppliers, if not the biggest provider [to Europe] sooner or later,” he mentioned.

Would changing Russian gasoline with Qatari vitality face logistical points?

Russia’s gasoline provide to Europe is delivered by way of pipelines. There aren’t any gasoline pipelines from Qatar to Europe so the Gulf nation’s vitality must shipped to Europe in liquefied kind.

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“Liquefaction of pure gasoline is vitality intensive, which emits carbon and that offsets local weather advantages” of utilizing pure gasoline, mentioned Alshammari. “It will likely be exhausting for European policymakers as they set bold local weather agendas and net-zero targets.”

European nations can even want infrastructure to help these shipments, which may take time to construct, mentioned Karen Younger, senior fellow at Washington’s Center East Institute. Shifting to Qatari gasoline could also be simpler for international locations that have already got that infastructure, like the UK and Spain, she mentioned.

“The issue is that Europe is leaping into an LNG market that can’t accommodate its quick want for immense volumes,” mentioned Nikos Tsafos of the Heart for Strategic and Worldwide Research in Washington DC. “In fact, Qatar may ship extra gasoline to Europe, but it surely hasn’t but regardless of extremely excessive costs in Europe, which means that its flows to Asia is perhaps stickier than we predict.”

What would this imply for Qatar-Russia relations?

Qatar is eager to painting its gasoline offers as industrial transactions, and Al Kaabi mentioned he isn’t in favor of blending politics with vitality.

“This can be a industrial settlement between industrial entities,” Al Kaabi informed Becky Anderson, referring to potential partnering with German vitality firms to produce gasoline. “From a enterprise perspective, we don’t select sides, we act as a enterprise and we do our enterprise,” he mentioned.

Qatar would need to current it as a market-based transfer, “not a strategic alignment in opposition to Russia,” mentioned Mills.

Blinken to satisfy Abu Dhabi crown prince in Center East tour

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US Secretary of State Antony Blinken will meet Abu Dhabi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Zayed in Morocco in a tour of the Center East that begins Saturday.The 2 will talk about a spread of points together with Iran, Yemen, Syria, international vitality markets and Ethiopia.

  • Background: Blinken’s assembly will likely be a part of a go to by means of the area that features stops in Israel, Ramallah, Morocco, and Algeria. The journey is anticipated to be closely dominated by dialogue of Russia’s invasion of Ukraine.
  • Why it issues: US-UAE relations have been strained of late amid a reluctance by President Biden’s oil producing Center East allies to extend crude manufacturing to assist dive down oil costs. Saudi Arabia and the UAE have additionally been calling on extra help from the US to assist beat back assaults from Yemen’s Iran-allied Houthi rebels.

Iran’s international minister says Riyadh sending blended messages on normalization

Iran has obtained contradictory statements from Saudi Arabia on the renewal of bilateral relations, the international minister Hossein Amirabdollahian mentioned throughout a information convention in Beirut on Thursday.

  • Background: Iraq, which is brokering talks between Iran and Saudi Arabia in Baghdad, had mentioned the fifth spherical of talks would begin on March 16. However Iran unilaterally suspended talks after Saudi Arabia earlier this month executed 81 males, a few of whom had been Shiites. Iran is majority Shiite.
  • Why it issues: Saudi Arabia and Iran, that are locked in proxy conflicts all through the Center East, began direct talks final yr to attempt to include tensions however the talks haven’t progressed a lot. Any progress may considerably assist de-escalate tensions within the area.

Dubai ruler’s ex-wife will get custody of youngsters

A senior British choose awarded Princess Haya bint al-Hussein, the ex-wife of Dubai ruler Sheikh Mohammed bin Rashid Al Maktoum, sole accountability for taking care of their youngsters. The choose concluded that the sheikh inflicted “exorbitant” home abuse in opposition to his ex-wife. A press release issued on behalf of Sheikh Mohammed mentioned he liked his youngsters and would all the time present for them. “He maintains his denial of the allegations made in these contentious proceedings,” it mentioned.

  • Background: The dispute between the royals started shortly after Haya fled to Britain in April 2019, following the invention she was having an affair with a bodyguard. In December, Sheikh Mohammed was ordered to pay Princess Haya greater than $728 million in one of many largest divorce settlements ever handed down by a UK court docket.
  • Why it issues: The ruling caps the top of an costly three-year custody battle on the Excessive Court docket in London between Sheikh Mohammed and his former spouse. The rulings seem to not have affected relations between Britain, Dubai and the UAE.


Regiona
l: #Saudi_League

Saudi Arabia certified for the FIFA World Cup for the primary time since 2006, that means the Gulf state will compete at its sixth finals. Saudi Arabia drew 1-1 with China within the crew’s penultimate group recreation on Thursday however had already certified for the 2022 match when Japan beat Australia in Sydney earlier that day. Saudi Arabia and Japan have now booked their spots for the World Cup as automated qualifiers.

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Regional: #Psychological_support

Arab social media customers on Friday known as for psychological help and psychological wellbeing, with many posting quotes or photos aimed toward boosting morale. In a 2021 psychological well being report that sampled responses from Iraq, Saudi Arabia, the UAE and Yemen, knowledge confirmed that near 40% of respondents aged 18-24 had been both “distressed or struggling.” Psychological well being consciousness is slowly gaining traction within the Center East, with a number of on-line platforms and hotlines now providing assist to these in want.

Oman: #Buy_from_Omani_shops

Omani social media customers are calling on residents to buy native merchandise and help the nation’s many nook outlets forward of the Muslim fasting month of Ramadan, the place conventional sweets and fruits are widespread delicacies are widespread amongst worshipers. Many posted pictures of Oman’s colourful markets, saying it’s a nationwide responsibility to help native merchants. The inflow of main grocery store chains within the nation has seen footfall in smaller outlets fall over the previous decade.

By Nadeen Ebrahim, CNN

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Best books of 2024: Roula Khalaf, Janan Ganesh and other FT journalists pick their favourites

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Best books of 2024: Roula Khalaf, Janan Ganesh and other FT journalists pick their favourites

Roula Khalaf

Editor

The shortlisted titles for the FT and Schroders Business Book of the Year Award are, by definition, some of the most compelling reads of 2024. For readers who missed the announcement of the shortlist, I recommend every one of the six books. Since I chair the judging panel, I can’t reveal my personal favourite and we have yet to decide on the winner. Stay tuned. I do most of the reading of the longlist over the summer. My rule, however, is to read one novel before I start. My pick this year was Claire Messud’s This Strange Eventful History, an epic tale of three generations of a Franco-Algerian family. It has everything I love about a novel — sensitive character studies and the sweep of history.

Janine Gibson

FT WEEKEND EDITOR

If you are alive in 2024 you will know that X (né Twitter) is either haemorrhaging users or was the most important and influential spreader of misinformation during the US election campaign. Elon Musk, who bought the world’s 12th most popular social media platform for $44bn just two years ago, is either a delusional posting-addict in thrall to RTs or the man who won it for Donald Trump. And as one of X’s most enduring memes says, why not both? In 2024, where major newspapers do not bother to endorse their preferred candidates in public, a platform that does not officially at least consider itself media dominated another election campaign and its owner claimed victory. Let that sink in, as he likes to say. The ballad of Elon and Donald doubtless has a few more verses to go, but in Character Limit: How Elon Musk Destroyed Twitter, tech reporters Kate Conger and Ryan Mac have produced a deeply reported, revealing and slightly terrifying book that is considerably subtler than its subtitle. 

Frederick Studemann

Literary Editor

Much has been written about the chilling realities of Putin’s Russia. Yet, in a very crowded field, Patriot by Alexei Navalny is in a class of its own. This haunting autobiography ranges from vivid, often funny accounts of growing up in the lie-infested Soviet Union through the hopes of the post-communist years and on to Navalny’s emergence as the opposition leader prepared to stand up to state power for which he was hounded, imprisoned and poisoned. Unflinching, defiant and even hopeful, the book was published after Navalny’s death in unexplained circumstances earlier this year in a penal colony in the Arctic Circle. It is — to borrow the author’s own description — a shocking and extraordinary “memorial”.

On a very different note, I enjoyed Long Island by Colm Tóibín. Sequels are often best avoided. But in this follow-up to his celebrated novel Brooklyn, Tóibín elegantly brings the story back to Ireland where he unfurls a poignant tale of paths not taken and opportunities lost.

Janan Ganesh

International politics commentator

Of the great 20th-century politicians, Zhou Enlai is probably the least documented, at least in the form of English-language biographies. In Zhou Enlai, author Chen Jian plugs the hole, perhaps too exhaustively at times. Whether the long-serving Chinese premier was Mao’s accomplice, or a bridge to modern China, is teased out over more than 700 scrupulous pages.

Nilanjana Roy

FT Weekend columnist

“Friend. What a word. Most use it about those they hardly know. When it is a wondrous thing.” Hisham Matar’s profoundly moving and unsettling novel My Friends haunted my year. He writes of exile, of friendships woven from “great affection and loyalty” but also “absence and suspicion”, and you walk with him through a London filled with the whispers of writers’ ghosts, memories and betrayal. Unforgettable.

Rana Foroohar

Global Business Columnist

I’ve long thought that most of the world’s biggest problems — from climate change to rising inequality to the challenges of autocracy and oligarchy in a post-Washington Consensus world — will require more systems thinking. This is an area that is generally the wonky purview of engineers and the military, but in his very readable book The Unaccountability Machine, Dan Davies looks at how discrete problems, from bad business management to disastrous political decisions, are often a failure of faulty systems. A great way to think about our current moment.

Camilla Cavendish

Contributing editor and columnist

Not the End of the World is the most uplifting book I’ve read this year. Hannah Ritchie, lead researcher at Our World in Data, charts the progress being made on reducing global per capita carbon emissions and tells us what to stop stressing about and what to focus on. A call for action which is also an antidote to gloom.

Tim Harford

Undercover Economist

Meditations for Mortals by Oliver Burkeman contains 28 concise essays on how to live our brief lives with less anxiety and more joy. Do you rarely see friends because the prospect of a dinner party is intimidating and exhausting? Read his note on “scruffy hospitality”, cook some pasta, and enjoy your imperfect existence with some company.

Robert Shrimsley

UK chief political commentator

Clever, funny and tragic, James is the superb retelling of The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn from the perspective of the runaway slave, Jim. Percival Everett wittily but devastatingly employs the literary device of elevating a secondary character from a famous novel into the lead to flesh out both Jim and the truer horrors of American slavery. Jim is not only given a full name but a rounded personality, revealed to be an intelligent, well-read man hamming up a slave patois to comfort white owners. You do not need to have read Huck Finn to enjoy this but it is a good excuse to do so.

Alice Fishburn

OPINION EDITOR

While devouring The Garden Against Time, Olivia Laing’s beautifully told tale of literature, politics and horticulture, I started three lists: people to give it to immediately; writers to read immediately; plants to purchase immediately. Her account of the rigours of restoring a Suffolk walled garden is really a glorious meditation on what humanity’s Eden obsession tells us about ourselves.

Robin Harding

Asia Editor

An exemplar of the LitRPG (or Literary Role-Playing Game), a strange new literary sub-genre spawned by the internet, Dungeon Crawler Carl by Matt Dinniman includes an AI with a foot fetish and sentient cat called Princess Donut who sends text messages in ALL CAPS. It’s very funny and was published in print for the first time this year.

Brooke Masters

US Financial Editor

If you are a big fan of books that tie together narratives across time, Elif Shafak has written a great one. There Are Rivers in the Sky uses rainfall to link the stories of the last great Assyrian king, a 19th-century Dickensian waif turned pillaging archeologist, a Yazidi refugee from the 2014 Iraqi purge and a modern-day London hydrologist.

Henry Mance

Chief features writer

The best royal memoir of recent years is Prince Harry’s Spare (seriously). Yet I was also moved by A Very Private School, an account by Charles Spencer, Harry’s uncle, of an English boarding school in the 1970s. The education was excellent, but the teachers were abusive and the separation from his parents amounted to “an amputation”. The book made me reflect on the damage done to generations of posh kids, including today many from overseas.

John Burn-Murdoch

Chief Data Reporter

With rightwing populism on the march on both sides of the Atlantic, Vicente Valentim’s The Normalization of the Radical Right presents a striking argument: that what has changed in the past decade is not the rise of reactionary views, but the breakdown of norms that kept these always-dormant views suppressed. This book more than any other has changed how I think about the seismic political and social shifts of recent years, and what might reverse them.

Enuma Okoro

Life & Arts columnist

All Fours, is a funny, quirky and fantastically mischievous and necessary novel by Miranda July. I was not always sympathetic to the main character, “a semi-famous artist” but I loved the provocative questions about how women in mid-life might consider and boldly renegotiate what they want, what they desire and what they allow themselves to create.

Tell us what you think

What are your favourites from this list — and what books have we missed? Tell us in the comments below

Anne-Sylvaine Chassany

Companies Editor

With Houris, a brutal and poignant account of the Algerian civil war, Kamel Daoud has this year become the first author from the former French colony to win the Prix Goncourt. But France’s top literary prize has come at a high personal cost: Daoud has had to flee the country, where he risks criminal charges for daring to tackle the subject.

Madhumita Murgia

Artificial Intelligence Editor

Samantha Harvey’s diminutive and dreamy Orbital, which won this year’s Booker Prize for fiction, couldn’t have felt more otherworldly when I read it in a rustic Tuscan farmhouse this past summer. This luminous novel about the lives of six astronauts as they orbit the Earth in a spacecraft is a series of snapshots of the bonds that form in strange circumstances, the joys and sorrows of being human, and a love letter to our unique planet.

Gillian Tett

Columnist and member of the editorial board

Little unites the right and left today — except, perhaps, a sense of despair about the quality of information. The right rails against the allegedly liberal bias of the “mainstream media”; the left accuses the right of deliberately unleashing mass disinformation. So, is the answer to seek more information? Nexus, Yuval Noah Harari’s thoughtful book, suggests not. He argues that more knowledge alone will not solve our problems, since so much rests on the social and political channels that it passes through. Not everyone will like Harari’s grandiose approach, and his conclusions about AI are unnerving. But it is an important perspective at a time when the info-wars seem likely to only get worse.

Books of the Year 2024

All this week, FT writers and critics share their favourites. Some highlights are:

Monday: Business by Andrew Hill
Tuesday: Environment by Pilita Clark
Wednesday: Economics by Martin Wolf
Thursday: Fiction by Laura Battle
Friday: Politics by Gideon Rachman
Saturday: FT Critics’ choice

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Trump announces picks for FDA, CDC; Novartis seeks bolt-on deals, raises guidance; RFK Jr., Elon Musk may find banning ads difficult; and more

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Trump announces picks for FDA, CDC; Novartis seeks bolt-on deals, raises guidance; RFK Jr., Elon Musk may find banning ads difficult; and more
President-elect Donald Trump announced leadership picks for health agencies: Marty Makary for FDA, Dave Weldon for CDC, and Janette Nesheiwat for surgeon general. Novartis raised sales guidance and acquired Kate Therapeutics for $1.1B. Amgen named Howard Chang as new CSO. Merck’s subcutaneous Keytruda passed Phase 3 testing.
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Donald Trump picks Scott Bessent as Treasury secretary

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Donald Trump picks Scott Bessent as Treasury secretary

Donald Trump has picked Scott Bessent to be his US Treasury secretary, nominating one of his biggest financial backers as the top economic official of his second administration.

Bessent will be responsible for overseeing the president-elect’s most prominent economic pledges, including sweeping tax cuts, while maintaining the stability of the world’s largest economy, its most important bond market as well as the dollar.

The hedge fund manager’s economic philosophy seeks to bridge traditional free-market conservatism with Trump’s populism. He has defended the president-elect’s repeated threat of raising tariffs against accusations that they would upend relations with US allies and raise consumer prices, saying they are a trade negotiating tool and a way to raise government revenue.

In a statement on Friday, Trump described Bessent as “one of the world’s foremost international investors and geopolitical and economic strategists”, who was “widely respected”.

“He will help me usher in a new golden age for the United States, as we fortify our position as the world’s leading economy, centre of innovation and entrepreneurialism, destination for capital, while always, and without question, maintaining the US dollar as the reserve currency of the world.”

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Trump added that with Bessent at the helm, his administration “will reinvigorate the private sector, and help curb the unsustainable path of federal debt”.

Bessent will also be responsible for steering the administration’s sanctions policy, including on Russia over its full-scale invasion of Ukraine, as well as the rules that govern Wall Street. His appointment will need to be confirmed by the US Senate, which will be controlled 53-47 by Republicans next year.

Trump on Friday evening also selected Russell Vought to once again lead the Office of Management and Budget. “Russ knows exactly how to dismantle the Deep State and end Weaponized Government, and he will help us return Self Governance to the People,” Trump wrote. The president-elect also picked Lori Chavez-DeRemer, a Republican Congresswoman from Oregon, to be his labour secretary.

Wall Street bankers across the political spectrum were digesting the news of Bessent’s appointment. They pointed out that a lot would depend on how much independence he would have to manage the economy. 

A dealmaker at a large bank said Bessent had a strong pedigree managing complex financial situations but was concerned that he would be a “puppet” of Trump.

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“Bessent is a very skilled investor, he has a great track record over decades but I fear he won’t have much autonomy,” the dealmaker said.

The 62-year-old Bessent is a Wall Street veteran who has been among Trump’s most vocal advocates and closest economic advisers in recent months.

It will be his first government position. He currently runs the hedge fund Key Square Capital Management. Bessent previously worked closely with billionaires George Soros and Stanley Druckenmiller.

Trump also went with a Treasury secretary who had Wall Street experience during his first term, when former Goldman Sachs banker Steven Mnuchin held the post.

“There’s nobody with a better understanding of markets [than Bessent] to manage $36tn in debt, who’s a vocal advocate of the president-elect’s economic agenda, and has the stature around the world to navigate the global economic challenges we need to confront,” said Michael Faulkender, a finance professor at the University of Maryland’s Smith School of Business and chief economist at the Trump-aligned America First Policy Institute.

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A top corporate lawyer and longtime Democratic donor said that Trump’s decision was encouraging. “[It is a] sensible choice that will reassure the financial community. The Treasury functioned well under Mnuchin and I would expect Bessent to provide similar stability,” the lawyer said.

Apollo Global Management chief executive Marc Rowan and former Federal Reserve governor Kevin Warsh were candidates for the Treasury role, travelling to Mar-a-Lago this week for interviews with Trump. So was Howard Lutnick, Cantor Fitzgerald’s chief executive, who is also co-chair of the Trump transition team. John Paulson, another billionaire hedge fund manager, had also been in the running before dropping out.

In a statement on Friday, Paulson called Bessent an “outstanding pick”.

“He has the market experience and financial acumen to successfully implement President Trump’s economic agenda.”

The nomination of Bessent, who is seen as a pragmatic pick, is among the most important of Trump’s cabinet picks and follows a number of controversial appointments, including Fox News host Pete Hegseth for defence and vaccine-sceptic Robert F Kennedy Jr as health secretary. The president-elect had also nominated former Florida congressman Matt Gaetz to run the justice department, but he withdrew his name from consideration for the role.

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Bessent, a Yale University graduate who grew up in South Carolina, will take the helm of a US economy that is on solid footing. After the worst cost of living crisis in decades, inflation has steadily declined following a period of high interest rates. Unemployment remains historically low at 4.1 per cent, keeping consumer spending strong.

Many economists have warned that Trump’s protectionist economic plans, and his pledge to deport millions of immigrants and slash taxes, could reignite inflation and dent growth — criticism that Bessent has strongly rejected.

In an interview with the Financial Times in October, Bessent framed tariffs as a “maximalist” threat that could be pared back during talks with trading partners. He also denied that the Trump administration would devalue the dollar.

“My general view is that at the end of the day, he’s a free trader,” Bessent told the FT, referring to Trump. “It’s escalate to de-escalate.”

But Bessent has floated more unorthodox ideas, including taking steps that would infringe on the long-standing independence of the Fed.

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Speaking to rightwing ideologue and Trump ally Steve Bannon recently, he also floated cutting government spending by $1tn over the next decade.

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