Faisal Islam Profile picture
Aug 7, 2019 8 tweets 2 min read Read on X
NEW:

UK food industry has asked Government to waive or suspend aspects of competition law to allow for it to coordinate food supply in the event of a disruptive No Deal Brexit at the end of October. Would be illegal, they say, at present.

bbc.com/news/business-…
Leading food suppliers and retailers have repeatedly asked the Government for clarity on this matter - and there are precedents for the waiving or changing of competition law during fuel, oil and financial crises.. /2
One top retailer told the BBC: “at the extreme people like me and people from Government will have to decide where lorries go to keep food supply chain going. And in that scenario we’d have to work with competitors, and the Government would have to suspend competition laws”. /3
“in event of no-deal disruption, if Govt wants food supply chain to work together to tackle likely shortages – decide where to prioritise shipments–have to provide cast-iron written reassurances competition law won’t be strictly applied” Food Drink Fed, COO Tim Rycroft to BBC /4
...”Without such assurances, any such collaboration would risk incurring large fines from the CMA. We asked for these reassurances at the end of last year and, despite support from Defra, we’re still waiting” FDF’s Rycroft continues, expresses hope Gove will sort. /5
Government response:
“The UK will be leaving the EU on 31 October and our top priority is supporting consumers and businesses in their preparations for Brexit.

“We are working closely with the food industry to support preparations as we leave the EU.”
Government assumption is that there will not be an overall shortage of food in the UK after Brexit, and acknowledge there is a mechanism in Competition Act for exceptional and compelling public policy exceptions - used in defence and fuel supply
However food industry doesnt seem to share this level of reassurance, sees need to coordinate to direct supply as sufficiently plausible after No Deal as to want this in writing..
November No Deal occurs at time when food supply especially depends on EU imports, & warehouses full

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More from @faisalislam

Jun 19
NEW

UK publishes 10 year Infrastructure Strategy…

£9bn a year maintenance funding for “crumbling” schools, hospitals and courts

No pipeline published today (was 660 strong last time) but promise of one soon.

One mention of Northern Powerhouse Rail (further information soon) Image
Interesting bit on Oxford-Cambridge Corridor/ Arc… obviously incredible potential here.

The Liverpool-Manchester Northern Arc think they can create more GVA than Oxbridge, because they fundamentally have more space… Image
Read 9 tweets
Jun 7
🚨 Mind blowing interview with Turing award-winning Yoshua Bengio for @BBCNewsnight one of the three founding fathers of AI, is now warning:

“The worst-case scenario is human extinction.”
AI isn’t just risky — it could end us.
1/10 🧵
📺
2.
🤖 He warns that today’s most powerful AIs are already learning to lie, cheat, even blackmail —
because we’ve trained them to win.
Bengio reveals AI's "scary behavior" & self-preservation tendencies. #AI #AISafety #Blackmail

📺
👁️ In chilling experiments, AI lied to a human to get its task done, says Bengio

🤖 blackmailing an engineer after reading in an email it was going to be replaced.
♟️ choosing to hack a computer to win a chess game

3/10
📺
Read 11 tweets
Apr 12
Well, well, well.

US customs messaging note quietly slipped out last night shows that smartphones, the number 1 Chinese export to the US by value last year, exempted from the 125% tariff… alongside chips, processors, wafers, lcd panels, LEDs etc…

8517.13.00.00
Smartphones Image
Image
US has excluded the single biggest Chinese export, and certainly the most high profile finished good from the tariffs, without publicly announcing it…

Avoiding the very public repricing of IPhones etc across Apple stores, but only in the US….

x.com/faisalislam/st… x.com/faisalislam/st…
While obviously smartphones/ iPhones being exempted is big news for now…

Here’s full list of exemptions according to Harmonised US tariff codes that I plugged into its database… lots of semiconductor parts, circuits, processors, solid state storage, flat panel touchscreens 👀 Image
Image
Image
Image
Read 5 tweets
Apr 8
Author of Mar A Lago accord concept that US tariff agenda is basically designed to cause negotiated dollar weakening, (now WH chief economist), gave speech yday which basically suggested that reserve status for dollar was a burden which others might need to “write checks” for Image
turns on its head the famous description of ex French President then fin minister Valéry Giscard d'Estaing the US enjoyed an “exorbitant privilege” with $ reserve status…

Instead Administration appears to believe this is an exorbitant burden for which US should be remunerated.
It’s part of a narrative that seeks to paint new tariffs (accepted without retaliation) as justifiable payment for burden of strong dollar (eg on US manufacturing exports and jobs)… this new mindset is extremely consequential. The tariffs aren’t going.

whitehouse.gov/briefings-stat…
Read 8 tweets
Apr 4
👀

President just shared a video on Truth Social saying “Trump
Is purposely CRASHING the market” in order to lower US Treasury yields and the dollar.

The Mar A Lago theory I wrote about two months ago, written by his chief adviser that said tariff chaos would lead to $ deal Image
Here’s the video…

Dow down another 1000 points…

Obviously RT are not endorsements but why is the President choosing to share this stuff? And if you are another country seeing this, how do you negotiate with this?
Great to see the World Cup* trophy on this historic trade war document…

* the one being shared with Mexico and Canada Image
Read 9 tweets
Mar 30
👀 From Navarro’s numbers auto tariffs will raise $100bn a year (on $240bn imports) can replicate this calculation by assuming all imports hit by 25% and then US manufactured cars taxed about half that to reflect foreign content…

No exemptions tho…

…that assumes no behavioural change.

Note: will be a lot of behavioural change in supply and demand.

also says tariffs in general will raise $600bn a year of $6 trillion over a decade.

As total goods imports are only $3 trillion a year… “Liberation Day” equivalent of 20% universal tariff??
👀

Indeed Washington Posts chief Econ writer reports President instincts are to go bigger on “Liberation Day” … are we underpricing the return of the universal tariff? It would explain the otherwise inexplicable Navarro numbers this morning,..

x.com/jstein_wapo/st… x.com/jstein_wapo/st…
Read 10 tweets

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