(Bloomberg) — Liz Truss is set to become UK prime minister this week with her plan to “turbo-charge” the economy by slashing taxes already worrying investors amid double-digit inflation.
The foreign secretary is the front-runner to replace Boris Johnson, and Conservative Party members are expected to name her as their leader on Monday.
She would take office after declaring a willingness to run up the budget deficit just as the Bank of England is raising interest rates and selling its own holdings of government bonds. She also has indicated she will review the central bank’s mandate.
Markets have already signaled concern about a Truss premiership as bond traders fret that a flood of gilts may be too much to absorb, triggering higher debt-servicing costs.
Since July 7 when Johnson decided to step aside, borrowing costs on 10-year government bonds have risen faster than those of any of the other 22 major bond markets. The pound has also trailed 132 of the world’s 150 top currencies.
“We have a number of concerns about the dependence on the kindness of strangers to fund the UK when the public finances are likely to deteriorate materially,” said Mark Capleton, strategist at Bank of America Corp.
Few leaders have taken charge of the UK with the economy in as dire a state. The most comparable moment is the early 1970s, when Labour’s Harold Wilson entered Downing Street after an oil-shock and miner strike that left industry on a three-day week.
Should Truss win, she’d inherit inflation at 10.1% and on track to breach 20% for the first time since 1974, according to Goldman Sachs Group Inc. Investors are betting interest rates rise to 4.75% by May, threatening misery for mortgage borrowers more familiar with rates below 1%.
Energy costs are set to absorb as much as a 10th of household spending, pushing as many half of the UK’s 28 million households into fuel poverty.
With the BOE expecting a recession by the end of the year, industry has also been told to prepare for orchestrated blackouts this winter. And labor groups are talking about the first nationwide strike since 1926.
Truss’s view is that cutting taxes and regulations will unleash the nation’s productive potential and take advantage of the opportunities opened when Britain left the European Union.
Her plan is to make the public sector “more efficient” and bring the public finances under control by raising the UK’s average growth rate to 2.5% — a level not consistently achieved since before the 2008 financial crisis. That will fix the public finances by bringing debt as a share of GDP down in the longer term.
She’s been deliberately vague about the details, but in broad terms it has three prongs:
Tackle the immediate cost-of-living crisis with support for households and business
Kick-start growth with £30 billion of personal and business tax cuts
Lift the productive potential of the economy with supply side reforms. The details, though, remain largely a mystery
What Bloomberg Economics Says …
“Staking out a libertarian position, Truss’s plan to cut taxes will offer little support to those hardest hit by the deepening energy crisis, while creating additional long-term pressure on the public finances.”
–Ana Luis Andrade, Bloomberg Economics. Click for the INSIGHT.
Read more: Even Liz Truss Supporters Worry She Could Wreak Havoc for the UK
Economists, opposition politicians and even some in the ruling Conservative Party worry that her tax cuts will be inflationary and loosen fiscal restraints too much, turning the market downturn into a crisis. She has pledged “no new taxes” to pay for the giveaways and says she does “not want to cut public spending” either.
Former Bank of England Deputy Governor Charlie Bean, who was also a member of the government’s fiscal watchdog, the Office for Budget Responsibility, believes launching a policy experiment in the middle of a crisis is unwise.
“I could see investors starting to think the UK doesn’t look such a good place to invest,” Bean told Bloomberg Television. “You’ll see a risk premium re-emerging on gilts, which is just starting to happen.”
His fear that investors could lose faith in the UK is shared by Nicholas Macpherson, the Treasury’s former permanent secretary, who tweeted this week that “a rising cost of borrowing and a falling pound” is the Treasury’s “worst nightmare.”
Plans to review the BOE mandate are causing further unease. The Treasury handed the central bank authority over interest rates in 1997, but Truss has suggested the government needs more directive powers. If she follows through, it could dent investor confidence in the institution.
Taken individually, none of Truss’s policy proposals are extraordinary. Her promise to reverse April’s increase in national insurance and scrap next year’s planned rise in corporation tax merely put tax policy back where it was at the start of 2020. The UK has reviewed the BOE mandate before, and Canada does it regularly.
But in the context of the current energy and inflation shock, and set against populist language about breaking from “economic orthodoxy,” Truss has people worried.
“UK government finances are a source of worry,” said Lauréline Renaud-Chatelain, a fixed income strategist at Pictet Wealth Management. “The deficit is very likely to rise meaningfully going forward.”
The Treasury is facing extreme strains. Support for households may top £50 billion, according to Sanjay Raja, UK economist at Deutsche Bank. Others suggest more than £100 billion will be needed to save businesses from bankruptcy and offset the rise in household bills.
As rates and inflation rise, the cost of servicing the national debt will jump to around £100 billion this year — twice the sum spent on transport.
Truss’s real test will come as investors respond to the new prime minister’s first remarks in the next few days. As Bean, the former BOE economist put it, “Markets are the mechanism that punish bad policies.”
Read more:
Even Liz Truss Supporters Worry She Could Wreak Havoc for the UK
Liz Truss Is On Course for a Collision With UK Economic Reality
Liz Truss Tax Cuts May Push Rates Closer to UK’s Pain Threshold
UK’s Outsider Economists Question Radicalism of Trussonomics
Truss vs. Sunak: Where UK Leadership Contenders Stand on Economy
OTTAWA – The federal government is expected to boost the minimum hourly wage that must be paid to temporary foreign workers in the high-wage stream as a way to encourage employers to hire more Canadian staff.
Under the current program’s high-wage labour market impact assessment (LMIA) stream, an employer must pay at least the median income in their province to qualify for a permit. A government official, who The Canadian Press is not naming because they are not authorized to speak publicly about the change, said Employment Minister Randy Boissonnault will announce Tuesday that the threshold will increase to 20 per cent above the provincial median hourly wage.
The change is scheduled to come into force on Nov. 8.
As with previous changes to the Temporary Foreign Worker program, the government’s goal is to encourage employers to hire more Canadian workers. The Liberal government has faced criticism for increasing the number of temporary residents allowed into Canada, which many have linked to housing shortages and a higher cost of living.
The program has also come under fire for allegations of mistreatment of workers.
A LMIA is required for an employer to hire a temporary foreign worker, and is used to demonstrate there aren’t enough Canadian workers to fill the positions they are filling.
In Ontario, the median hourly wage is $28.39 for the high-wage bracket, so once the change takes effect an employer will need to pay at least $34.07 per hour.
The government official estimates this change will affect up to 34,000 workers under the LMIA high-wage stream. Existing work permits will not be affected, but the official said the planned change will affect their renewals.
According to public data from Immigration, Refugees and Citizenship Canada, 183,820 temporary foreign worker permits became effective in 2023. That was up from 98,025 in 2019 — an 88 per cent increase.
The upcoming change is the latest in a series of moves to tighten eligibility rules in order to limit temporary residents, including international students and foreign workers. Those changes include imposing caps on the percentage of low-wage foreign workers in some sectors and ending permits in metropolitan areas with high unemployment rates.
Temporary foreign workers in the agriculture sector are not affected by past rule changes.
This report by The Canadian Press was first published Oct. 21, 2024.
OTTAWA – The parliamentary budget officer says the federal government likely failed to keep its deficit below its promised $40 billion cap in the last fiscal year.
However the PBO also projects in its latest economic and fiscal outlook today that weak economic growth this year will begin to rebound in 2025.
The budget watchdog estimates in its report that the federal government posted a $46.8 billion deficit for the 2023-24 fiscal year.
Finance Minister Chrystia Freeland pledged a year ago to keep the deficit capped at $40 billion and in her spring budget said the deficit for 2023-24 stayed in line with that promise.
The final tally of the last year’s deficit will be confirmed when the government publishes its annual public accounts report this fall.
The PBO says economic growth will remain tepid this year but will rebound in 2025 as the Bank of Canada’s interest rate cuts stimulate spending and business investment.
This report by The Canadian Press was first published Oct. 17, 2024.
OTTAWA – Statistics Canada says the level of food insecurity increased in 2022 as inflation hit peak levels.
In a report using data from the Canadian community health survey, the agency says 15.6 per cent of households experienced some level of food insecurity in 2022 after being relatively stable from 2017 to 2021.
The reading was up from 9.6 per cent in 2017 and 11.6 per cent in 2018.
Statistics Canada says the prevalence of household food insecurity was slightly lower and stable during the pandemic years as it fell to 8.5 per cent in the fall of 2020 and 9.1 per cent in 2021.
In addition to an increase in the prevalence of food insecurity in 2022, the agency says there was an increase in the severity as more households reported moderate or severe food insecurity.
It also noted an increase in the number of Canadians living in moderately or severely food insecure households was also seen in the Canadian income survey data collected in the first half of 2023.
This report by The Canadian Press was first published Oct 16, 2024.
