Udit Misra

6 days ago | indianexpress.com | Udit Misra

On Thursday (April 17), the European Central Bank (ECB) cut interest rates by 25 basis points. The ECB is essentially the body that is responsible for maintaining price stability in the euro area, and it acted because, it said, “inflation is on track to settle at around our 2% target”. Central banks the world over cut interest rates when they think inflation is either at their desired level or on track to be on their desired level.

1 week ago | indianexpress.com | Udit Misra

It was yet another bruising day for the markets as they reeled under the effects of US President Donald Trump’s tariff regime. Leading the negative news was Nvidia — an American firm that manufactures cutting edge semi-conductors used in Artificial Intelligence (AI) and high-end computing. The company announced it will suffer losses after the US government restricted the export of Nvidia’s H20 chip to China.

1 week ago | indianexpress.com | Udit Misra

At a time when China is fast becoming the primary target of United States President Donald Trump’s punitive tariffs, the latest economic growth data have provided some relief to Beijing. China’s gross domestic product (GDP) grew by 5.4% in the first quarter of 2025, according to a press release by the country’s National Bureau of Statistics (NBS). In other words, China’s GDP in the months of January, February and March (2025) was 5.4% more than the GDP in the same three months of 2024.

1 week ago | indianexpress.com | Udit Misra

The whole episode is reminiscent of the fall from grace of Liz Truss, the former PM of the UK. Many of you may recall how on October 20, 2022, a rebellion within Truss’ Conservative Party forced her to leave office in ignominy, becoming the shortest-serving prime minister in British history with a tenure lasting only 45 days. Story continues below this ad The Tory rebellion, however, was not for any political reasons.

2 weeks ago | indianexpress.com | Udit Misra

Leaving aside the wisdom of slapping every country in the world with “reciprocal tariffs”, there are now growing concerns about the methodology that the United States used to arrive at country wise tariff rates. When Donald Trump first spoke about reciprocal tariffs, his idea was fairly straightforward: the US would simply levy the same tariffs on imports from a particular country as the tariffs levied by that country on imports from the US. This is not how the US has actually gone about things.