Lina Wolff

”Promenader i natten” liknar det slags bok som är varje författares dröm att skriva, men möjligen inte varje läsares dröm att läsa. Tråkigt är det aldrig – men tråkigare än när Lina Wolff skriver romaner, tycker Greta Schüldt.

Stefan Löfven, Lina Wolff och Gert Wingårdh var bland författarna som talade om sina böcker på Bokens dag på Malmö Live på söndagseftermiddagen. Vi frågade några besökare vilken av författarna som lockat hit dem.

Vad sägs om en heldag bland författare och kloka samtal? Dygnet Runt ger er nu chansen att vinna biljetter till Bokens dag i Malmö den 10 november där ni kan möta bland andra Caroline Ringskog Ferrada-Noli, Lina Wolff, Gert Wingårdh och Stefan Löfven.

När Donald Trump var USA:s president införde han högre importskatter än någon annan president gjort på nästan ett århundrade. Hans protektionistiska hållning har spätt på inflationen och gjort USA fattigare. Inte heller har den gynnat landets exportörer, skriver The Economist. Skulle Trump bli president igen skulle det enligt tidningen innebära en protektionistisk mardröm, med upp till en tre gånger så hög genomsnittlig amerikansk importskatt. Höjda importskatter skulle inte bara skada konsumenter och de flesta producenter. De skulle också påverka USA:s relationer med andra länder och riskera att förstöra det globala handelssystemet, anser tidningen. Sequels are always worse than the original By The Economist October 31st, Washington DC Sequels are never as good as the original. And when the original was terrible, there is even more reason to dread the next episode. So it is with “Tariff Man Part Two”. In the White House, Donald Trump put more new tariffs on American imports than any president in nearly a century. His philosophy was simple: “I am a Tariff Man. When people or countries come in to raid the great wealth of our Nation, I want them to pay for the privilege of doing so.” Mr Trump’s protectionism made America poorer, did little to help exporters and fed the inflation still raging. If he wins the Republican presidential nomination (a likely outcome) and goes on to win the election (too close to call), he has vowed to ramp up things. He is mulling an across-the-board levy of perhaps 10% on all products entering America. In one fell swoop, his plans would more than triple the average American tariff. The direct costs would be bad enough, with the tariffs functioning as a tax on consumers and hurting most producers. Yet they would also tear at America’s ties with its allies and threaten to wreck the global trade system. To get a sense of the impact, look back. On January 23rd 2018, a year after Mr Trump was sworn in, he got started with tariffs, hitting washing machines and solar panels. A couple of months later he went after aluminium and steel. A few months after that, it was Chinese goods. By 2021 American duties were worth 3% of the country’s total import value, double the level when Mr Trump took office. Tariffs on Chinese imports rose from 3% to 19%, calculates Chad Bown of the Peterson Institute for International Economics, a think-tank. Mr Trump’s first aim was to slim the trade deficit. He thought tariffs would bludgeon other countries into submission, leading them to rejig policies to America’s advantage. Memorably, he declared that “trade wars are good, and easy to win.” But instead of shrinking, the deficit widened. Instead of buckling, China tripled its tariffs on America. Many allies retaliated, too. The consequences were dismal. Industries that were protected by tariffs reaped benefits, enjoying greater market share and fatter profits. Most others suffered. America’s International Trade Commission (usitc), a bipartisan agency, found that industries downstream from tariff-coddled producers faced higher input prices and lower profitability. The Peterson Institute estimated that steel users in effect paid an extra $650,000 per job created in the steel industry. Studies have calculated that almost all the costs have been borne by Americans, rather than foreign producers. The usitc found a near one-to-one increase in the price of American imports in the wake of tariffs on China. Mr Trump’s first aim was to slim the trade deficit. He thought tariffs would bludgeon other countries into submission, leading them to rejig policies to America’s advantage. Memorably, he declared that “trade wars are good, and easy to win.” But instead of shrinking, the deficit widened. Instead of buckling, China tripled its tariffs on America. Many allies retaliated, too. The consequences were dismal. Industries that were protected by tariffs reaped benefits, enjoying greater market share and fatter profits. Most others suffered. America’s International Trade Commission (usitc), a bipartisan agency, found that industries downstream from tariff-coddled producers faced higher input prices and lower profitability. The Peterson Institute estimated that steel users in effect paid an extra $650,000 per job created in the steel industry. Studies have calculated that almost all the costs have been borne by Americans, rather than foreign producers. The usitc found a near one-to-one increase in the price of American imports in the wake of tariffs on China. Mr Trump did unquestionably succeed in one respect. He helped remake politics. According to a recent survey from the Chicago Council on Global Affairs, a think-tank, 66% of Americans think the government should place restrictions on imported foreign goods to protect jobs at home, up from 60% in 2018. On the campaign trail in 2019 Joe Biden criticised tariffs as a costly policy. In power he has rolled them back only a little. The array of levies on China remains intact. Whatever the merits of lifting tariffs, the White House appears fearful of blowback from looking soft on China. At the same time, Mr Biden has concocted an enormous industrial policy, fuelled by more than $1trn in subsidies for electric vehicles, offshore wind, semiconductors and the like. It is a more thoughtful and deliberate approach than Mr Trump’s, but it still looks likely to fail to bring about a manufacturing renaissance, is very expensive and, in lavishing subsidies on American factories, discriminates against other countries. It is, in short, rather Trumpist. How much worse could things get? If Mr Trump wins the presidential election in 2024, the world may discover that the answer is: “Rather a lot.” In August Mr Trump was interviewed on Fox Business, a television channel, by Larry Kudlow, his former economic adviser and a long-time media personality. Mr Trump put forward two ideas. First, all foreign firms selling to America would face a 10% levy. Second, if any country placed a high tariff on anything American, he would hit back with exactly the same tariff. “Call it retribution,” said Mr Trump. “Reciprocity,” interjected Mr Kudlow, using the politer label. The lineage of these ideas can be traced back to thinkers who crafted policy during Mr Trump’s presidency, and who are working on new, more detailed plans. Robert Lighthizer, United States Trade Representative under Mr Trump, recently laid out his vision in a book, “No Trade is Free”. One of his ideas is the universal tariff on all imports, to be used as a lever to bring America’s trade flows into balance, so that the country no longer runs a big deficit. Mr Lighthizer would not limit the tariff to 10%. Rather, he writes, America should impose the levy “at a progressively higher rate year after year until we achieve balance”. Project 2025, a coalition of conservative groups, published a book earlier this year with blueprints for almost every facet of government during a second Trump administration. In the trade chapter, Peter Navarro, another economic adviser to Mr Trump, bemoaned the fact that countries like China and India have higher levies on America’s goods than America does on theirs, arguing that this has led to “systematic exploitation of American farmers, ranchers, manufacturers, and workers”. In principle, reciprocity could be achieved in two ways—either by persuading other countries to lower tariffs or by America raising its own. Mr Navarro leaves no doubt as to his preference. If Mr Trump has his way, other countries will probably respond by slapping their own tariffs on America. The spread of universal tariffs would be akin to a giant tax on cross-border transactions, making international commerce less attractive. Meanwhile, Mr Trump’s hopes of shrinking the trade deficit would run headlong into the economic forces that actually determine the balance of exchanges between countries. In America’s case the crucial factor is the country’s low saving rate, which is almost certain to continue as a result of persistently high consumer spending and widening government deficits. Mr Trump has pointed to one ostensible virtue of his tariffs: they generate income. The Committee for a Responsible Federal Budget, an advocacy group, estimates that a 10% tariff may bring in up to $2.5trn in extra revenue during its first decade of implementation, which could be used to reduce America’s budget deficit. But this money could also be brought in by other methods. Raising tariffs simply means picking them as a tax over others such as, say, a higher income or inheritance tax. Every tax has pros (eg, generating public revenue or discouraging bad behaviour) and cons (eg, hurting growth or imposing costs on individuals). The cons of tariffs are big. Ahmad Lashkaripour of Indiana University estimates that a global tariff war would shrink American gdp by about 1%. Most countries would suffer falls closer to 3%. The drag on smaller, trade-reliant economies would be greater still. Tariffs are also regressive since they hurt those on lower incomes twice. They tax more of their spending, by raising the price of consumer goods, and more of their earnings, since many work in industries, such as construction, that face higher material costs. If the bulk of the tariff bill is passed on to American consumers, as occurred with the first round of Mr Trump’s tariffs, a 10% duty would cost each American household about $2,000 per year. The toll from universal tariffs would go beyond their economic impact. International commerce, and the system that enables it, built after the second world war, allows countries to challenge each other’s policies at the World Trade Organisation (wto). But the wto’s role in dispute settlement has been disabled since 2019, when the Trump administration blocked appointments to its appellate body, preventing the institution from making binding rulings. The result is that countries which object to Mr Trump’s tariffs would lack a suitable way to confront them. “The system would fall apart in a much greater way than it did even during his first term,” says Douglas Irwin of Dartmouth College. Mr Biden has not been a model free-trader. His industrial policy is built on lavish subsidies that, by incentivising investment in America, are unfair to other countries. Yet even if somewhat hamfisted, he has worked to cobble together supply chains and trade networks that bring America and its allies closer together. This is part of an attempt, still in its infancy, to lessen dependence on China. Mr Trump’s tariffs would reverse Mr Biden’s progress. It would no longer be America and (occasionally reluctant) friends versus China—it would be America versus the world. “Trump would view it as a badge of honour if other countries were upset. He’d say, ‘See, I’m fighting for you and we’re sticking it to them’,” predicts Mr Irwin. Mr Trump would lack outright authority to implement a universal tariff. The constitution gives Congress the power to regulate commerce; the president can intervene only by using special justifications. Mr Trump previously drew on two statutes: section 232 of trade law allows the president to restrict imports in order to protect national security (the dubious basis for tariffs on steel and aluminium); section 301 allows a president to impose tariffs against a country with discriminatory trade behaviour (the more reasonable basis for actions against China). But both require time-consuming investigations, which would cut against the desire of Mr Trump and his advisers for rapid executive actions. Another option would be to invoke the International Emergency Economic Powers Act, which Mr Trump used in 2020 to order the removal of TikTok and WeChat, Chinese social-media goliaths, from American app stores. In this scenario Mr Trump would declare a national emergency and then announce a universal tariff as the response. “It is less clear exactly what national emergency would be declared,” says Jennifer Hillman, a former general counsel with the us Trade Representative. “Perhaps that the trade deficit is threatening American competitiveness? Or that the size of the trade deficit is unsustainable?” Few economists would endorse such thinking. Far from being a weakness, appetite for imports comes from America’s strength. The country has run deficits for the past half-century, a period of economic dominance. More crucially, legal experts would also take a dim view of a declaration. “Trump would be bending the law in a direction that it was never intended to apply,” says Alan Wolff, a veteran of trade law. “There would be court challenges, and they might well be successful.” Reciprocal tariffs might seem tidier, but even an attempt to impose tit-for-tat duties would get messy. Mr Navarro loves to point out that American tariffs on cars are just 2.5%, whereas the European Union charges 10%. What he omits is that America has long placed a 25% tariff on imports of pick-up trucks, not to mention hefty duties on some imports of lumber and some foods. Any line-by-line examination of tariffs would turn up scores of examples where American levies are higher than those of other countries. Indeed, a guiding principle of the wto is that countries can negotiate across different product categories to set tariffs that protect politically sensitive sectors, so long as they keep tariffs down overall. Letting countries hammer out unique tariff regimes is a core part of diplomacy. Pure reciprocity would descend into absurdity. Politically, Mr Trump would also face opposition. Despite his embrace of protectionism, many in the Republican Party are less committed. Consider Project 2025, the coalition drawing up policy plans for Mr Trump’s second term. It is quite clear in all of its positions—except for that on trade. Its chapter on trade is split in two: Mr Navarro’s plea for tariffs is set against a free-trade argument by Kent Lassman of the Competitive Enterprise Institute, a think-tank. Mr Lassman lays out what he dubs a “conservative vision for trade”, calling for tariff cuts to reduce consumer prices, as well as more ambitious trade deals. Mr Trump’s domestic opponents would receive support from abroad. A trade official with an American ally says that his government is braced for tariffs at the start of a new Trump administration, and that he and his colleagues have a damage-limitation playbook, honed during Mr Trump’s four years in office. They would work with firms and politicians in Republican districts that enjoy the benefits of trade—from Iowa’s corn-growers to Tennessee’s car industry—and try to persuade Mr Trump to carve out exceptions. Yet both legal challenges and lobbying would take months, if not longer, to play out. In the meantime, the global trade system would be plunged into uncertainty. Other governments would slap retaliatory tariffs on America. Mr Biden’s work to repair ties with America’s allies would be torn apart. As firms try to assess the risks, they could well turn more cautious in their investment, which would weigh on economic growth. Companies with border-straddling operations would face pressure to retrench. Smaller countries that are dependent on trade would be vulnerable. One of the lessons of Mr Trump’s first stint in the White House is that he can cause great damage with the stroke of a pen, and that the damage is not easily reversed. Most of his tariffs are still on the books. The wto remains neutered. The America-first ethos that he preached, once a fringe preference, is now a force in the political mainstream. The consequences of a second Trump presidency for global trade would be grave and enduring. © 2023 The Economist Newspaper Limited. All rights reserved.

Européer får allt mindre kvar i plånboken på grund av en åldrande befolkning, kvardröjande effekter från pandemin, kriget i Ukraina och en rad andra faktorer, skriver Wall Street Journal. Löneökningarna har minskat, konsumtionen sjunker och ekonomin försvagas i många länder. Samtidigt försöker hushållen anpassa sig och göra uppoffringar i krisen. Bank of Englands chefsekonom Huw Pill varnade britterna i våras att de måste acceptera att de är fattigare och sluta eftersträva högre löner, som riskerar att driva på inflationen. – Ja, vi har det alla sämre ställt, konstaterade han. An aging population that values its free time set the stage for economic stagnation. Then came Covid-19 and Russia’s war in Ukraine. By Tom Fairless

The Wall Street Journal, 17 July 2023 Europeans are facing a new economic reality, one they haven’t experienced in decades. They are becoming poorer. Life on a continent long envied by outsiders for its art de vivre is rapidly losing its shine as Europeans see their purchasing power melt away. The French are eating less foie gras and drinking less red wine. Spaniards are stinting on olive oil. Finns are being urged to use saunas on windy days when energy is less expensive. Across Germany, meat and milk consumption has fallen to the lowest level in three decades and the once-booming market for organic food has tanked. Italy’s economic development minister, Adolfo Urso, convened a crisis meeting in May over prices for pasta, the country’s favorite staple, after they jumped by more than double the national inflation rate. With consumption spending in free fall, Europe tipped into recession at the start of the year, reinforcing a sense of relative economic, political and military decline that kicked in at the start of the century. Europe’s current predicament has been long in the making. An aging population with a preference for free time and job security over earnings ushered in years of lackluster economic and productivity growth. Then came the one-two punch of the Covid-19 pandemic and Russia’s protracted war in Ukraine. By upending global supply chains and sending the prices of energy and food rocketing, the crises aggravated ailments that had been festering for decades. Governments’ responses only compounded the problem. To preserve jobs, they steered their subsidies primarily to employers, leaving consumers without a cash cushion when the price shock came. Americans, by contrast, benefited from inexpensive energy and government aid directed primarily at citizens to keep them spending. In the past, the continent’s formidable export industry might have come to the rescue. But a sluggish recovery in China, a critical market for Europe, is undermining that growth pillar. High energy costs and rampant inflation at a level not seen since the 1970s are dulling manufacturers’ price advantage in international markets and smashing the continent’s once-harmonious labor relations. As global trade cools, Europe’s heavy reliance on exports—which account for about 50% of eurozone GDP versus 10% for the U.S.—is becoming a weakness. Private consumption has declined by about 1% in the 20-nation eurozone since the end of 2019 after adjusting for inflation, according to the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development, a Paris-based club of mainly wealthy countries. In the U.S., where households enjoy a strong labor market and rising incomes, it has increased by nearly 9%. The European Union now accounts for about 18% of all global consumption spending, compared with 28% for America. Fifteen years ago, the EU and the U.S. each represented about a quarter of that total. Adjusted for inflation and purchasing power, wages have declined by about 3% since 2019 in Germany, by 3.5% in Italy and Spain and by 6% in Greece. Real wages in the U.S. have increased by about 6% over the same period, according to OECD data. The pain reaches far into the middle classes. In Brussels, one of Europe’s richest cities, teachers and nurses stood in line on a recent evening to collect half-price groceries from the back of a truck. The vendor, Happy Hours Market, collects food close to its expiration date from supermarkets and advertises it through an app. Customers can order in the early afternoon and collect their cut-price groceries in the evening. “Some customers tell me, because of you I can eat meat two or three times per week,” said Pierre van Hede, who was handing out crates of groceries. Karim Bouazza, a 33-year-old nurse who was stocking up on half-price meat and fish for his wife and two children, complained that inflation means “you almost need to work a second job to pay for everything.” Similar services have sprung up across the region, marketing themselves as a way to reduce food waste as well as save money. TooGoodToGo, a company founded in Denmark in 2015 that sells leftover food from retailers and restaurants, has 76 million registered users across Europe, roughly three times the number at the end of 2020. In Germany, Sirplus, a startup created in 2017, offers “rescued” food, including products past their sell-by date, on its online store. So does Motatos, created in Sweden in 2014 and now present in Finland, Germany, Denmark and the U.K. Spending on high-end groceries has collapsed. Germans consumed 52 kilograms of meat per person in 2022, about 8% less than the previous year and the lowest level since calculations began in 1989. While some of that reflects societal concerns about healthy eating and animal welfare, experts say the trend has been accelerated by meat prices which increased by up to 30% in recent months. Germans are also swapping meats such as beef and veal for less-expensive ones such as poultry, according to the Federal Information Center for Agriculture. Thomas Wolff, an organic-food supplier near Frankfurt, said his sales fell by up to 30% last year as inflation surged. Wolff said he had hired 33 people earlier in the pandemic to handle strong demand for pricey ecological foodstuffs, but he has since let them all go. Ronja Ebeling, a 26-year-old consultant and author based in Hamburg, said she saves about one-quarter of her income, partly because she worries about having enough money for retirement. She spends little on clothes or makeup and shares a car with her partner’s father. Weak spending and poor demographic prospects are making Europe less attractive for businesses ranging from consumer-goods giant Procter & Gamble to luxury empire LVMH, which are making an ever-larger share of their sales in North America. “The U.S. consumer is more resilient than in Europe,” Unilever’s chief financial officer, Graeme Pitkethly, said in April. The eurozone economy grew about 6% over the past 15 years, measured in dollars, compared with 82% for the U.S., according to International Monetary Fund data. That has left the average EU country poorer per head than every U.S. state except Idaho and Mississippi, according to a report this month by the European Centre for International Political Economy, a Brussels-based independent think tank. If the current trend continues, by 2035 the gap between economic output per capita in the U.S. and EU will be as large as that between Japan and Ecuador today, the report said. On the Mediterranean island of Mallorca, businesses are lobbying for more flights to the U.S. to increase the number of free-spending American tourists, said Maria Frontera, president of the Mallorca Chamber of Commerce’s tourism commission. Americans spend about €260 ($292) per day on average on hotels compared with less than €180 ($202) for Europeans. “This year we have seen a big change in the behavior of Europeans because of the economic situation we are dealing with,” said Frontera, who recently traveled to Miami to learn how to better cater to American customers. Weak growth and rising interest rates are straining Europe’s generous welfare states, which provide popular healthcare services and pensions. European governments find the old recipes for fixing the problem are either becoming unaffordable or have stopped working. Three-quarters of a trillion euros in subsidies, tax breaks and other forms of relief have gone to consumers and businesses to offset higher energy costs—something economists say is now itself fueling inflation, defeating the subsidies’ purpose. Public-spending cuts after the global financial crisis starved Europe’s state-funded healthcare systems, especially the U.K.’s National Health Service. Vivek Trivedi, a 31-year-old anesthesiologist living in Manchester, England, earns about £51,000 ($67,000) per year for a 48-hour workweek. Inflation, which has been about 10% or higher in the U.K. for nearly a year, is devouring his monthly budget, he says. Trivedi said he shops for groceries in discount retailers and spends less on meals out. Some colleagues turned off their heating entirely over recent months, worried they wouldn’t be able to afford sharply higher costs, he said. Noa Cohen, a 28-year old public-affairs specialist in London, says she could quadruple her salary in the same job by leveraging her U.S. passport to move across the Atlantic. Cohen recently got a 10% pay raise after switching jobs, but the increase was completely swallowed by inflation. She says friends are freezing their eggs because they can’t afford children anytime soon, in the hope that they have enough money in future. “It feels like a perma-freeze in living standards,” she said. Huw Pill, the Bank of England’s chief economist, warned U.K. citizens in April that they need to accept that they are poorer and stop pushing for higher wages. “Yes, we’re all worse off,” he said, saying that seeking to offset rising prices with higher wages would only fuel more inflation. With European governments needing to increase defense spending and given rising borrowing costs, economists expect taxes to increase, adding pressure on consumers. Taxes in Europe are already high relative to those in other wealthy countries, equivalent to around 40-45% of GDP compared with 27% in the U.S. American workers take home almost three-quarters of their paychecks, including income taxes and Social Security taxes, while French and German workers keep just half. The pauperization of Europe has bolstered the ranks of labor unions, which are picking up tens of thousands of members across the continent, reversing a decadeslong decline. Higher unionization may not translate into fuller pockets for members. That’s because many are pushing workers’ preference for more free time over higher pay, even in a world of spiraling skills shortages. IG Metall, Germany’s biggest trade union, is calling for a four-day work week at current salary levels rather than a pay raise for the country’s metalworkers ahead of collective bargaining negotiations this November. Officials say the shorter week would improve workers’ health and quality of life while at the same time making the industry more attractive to younger workers. Almost half of employees in Germany’s health industry choose to work around 30 hours per week rather than full time, reflecting tough working conditions, said Frank Werneke, chairman of the country’s United Services Trade Union, which has added about 110,000 new members in recent months, the biggest increase in 22 years. Kristian Kallio, a games developer in northern Finland, recently decided to reduce his working week by one-fifth to 30 hours in exchange for a 10% pay cut. He now makes about €2,500 per month. “Who wouldn’t want to work shorter hours?” Kallio said. About one-third of his colleagues took the same deal, although leaders work full-time, said Kallio’s boss, Jaakko Kylmäoja. Kallio now works from 10 a.m. to 4.30 p.m. He uses his extra free time for hobbies, to make good food and take long bike rides. “I don’t see a reality where I would go back to normal working hours,” he said. Igor Chaykovskiy, a 34-year-old IT worker in Paris, joined a trade union earlier this year to press for better pay and conditions. He recently received a 3.5% pay increase, about half the level of inflation. He thinks the union will give workers greater leverage to press managers. Still, it isn’t just about pay. “Maybe they say you don’t have an increase in salary, you have free sports lessons or music lessons,” he said. At the Stellantis auto factory in Melfi, southern Italy, employees have worked shorter hours for years recently due to the difficulty of procuring raw materials and high energy costs, said Marco Lomio, a trade unionist with the Italian Union of Metalworkers. Hours worked have recently been reduced by around 30% and wages decreased proportionally. “Between high inflation and rising energy costs for workers,” said Lomio, “it is difficult to bear all family expenses.”

Det är med ”fullt allvar och lågmäld humor” som författaren Lina Wolff i sitt sommarprat berättar om sitt arbete som översättare, skriver DN:s Josefin Olevik. Närmare bestämt kretsar programmet kring den besatthet Wolff upplevde i arbetet med den colombianska författarens Gabriel García Márquez storverk ”Hundra år av ensamhet”. Det kan låta smalt, skriver Olevik, men för alla som längtar efter den spanska världen är det här helt rätt lyssning. Visst är det smalt, skriver Oisín Cantwell i Aftonbladet, men ”livet är ju ändå ett för stort ämne för detta format”. Att Wolff i princip uteslutande berättar om det arbete som tog henne fyra år att avsluta är klokt, tycker han och menar att resultatet både är fascinerande och lärorikt. Det intressanta med Wolff är just att hon avslöjar så lite om sig själv, skriver Hanna Johansson i SvD och refererar till hur författaren i sitt sommarprat berättar om sin fascination för professorn på tolkskolan som aldrig berättar något om sig själv. ”Det är just tystnaden som gör henne så intressant, och på ett motsvarande vis avslöjar Wolff enbart saker om sin egen biografi i förbigående.”

▸ OISÍN CANTWELL Lina Wolff tar med oss till översättarens besatthet

Författaren Lina Wolff ger oss inte den typiska självutlämnande berättelsen i sitt sommarprat. I stället avslöjar hon saker om sig själv bara i förbigående – och just detta gör henne så intressant.