President Donald Trump has postponed until at least April the supposed deadline for concluding the United States’ trade negotiations with China. A good outcome for both sides would be reached if China agreed to protect property rights better and reduce the state’s role in its economy; the US agreed to strengthen national saving and public investment; and both sides agreed to reverse their recent tariff increases. Unfortunately, this is not the deal that is likely to materialise.

Radical ideas are not unusual in the early stages of a US presidential election campaign, but many of the Democratic candidates for 2020 are advocating unrealistic policies. Just because a new idea seems more exciting does not make it better than an established, more practical one.

Since its introduction two decades ago, the euro has faced serious challenges. So far, it has survived intact. Yet, on the common currency’s 20th anniversary, it is worth identifying problems that have been encountered and, one hopes, to learn from past mistakes.

I realize that compiling a list of one’s own past forecasts is self-indulgent.  But perhaps there are readers who will indulge me too, as I run through six predictions that – it seems to me – were mostly proven right this past year.

I was asked for 2 or 3 end-of-year book recommendations.  My choices are Pinker, Irwin & Clausing.

When President George H.W. Bush was laid to rest earlier this month, the remembrances appropriately remarked on his general decency and competence.  In public commentary, the encomiums tend to be followed by a “but.”  For journalists and historians, it is “but he was only a one-term president.”  He lost the election of 1992, in part because of the recession of 1990-91.  For members of his own political party, the “but” is, “but he broke with the legacy of Ronald Reagan and with his own ‘no new taxes’ pledge.”  They have always blamed his failure to win re-election on that perceived betrayal.

But President Bush’s mistake was making the anti-tax pledge in 1988 in the first place and sticking to it in the first part of his presidency. The 1990 reversal on fiscal policy set the stage for a decade of economic growth that eventually achieved budget surpluses.