The external context for framing of the 2025/26 budget is getting very complicated. In Treasury documents, including the Economic Survey, global economic conditions are usually summarised in a section referred to by the neutral sounding phrase ‘external scene’.
In the current ‘scene’, US President Trump’s tariff war is in full gear. Its stated primary purpose is to bring US manufacturing back home by reversing decades of off-shoring, a practice that accelerated with globalisation.
