Alan Beattie writes the Trade Secrets newsletter every Monday and an opinion column each Thursday, covering international trade, globalisation, the intersection of geopolitics and economics and the world financial system. Sign up for the newsletter here.
Based in London, he was previously the FT's international economy editor and world trade editor and has been also been based in Washington and Brussels for the FT. He is the author of False Economy (Penguin, 2009), a popular economic history of the world, and Who's In Charge Here? (Penguin, 2012), an account of governments' mishandling of the global financial crisis. Before joining the FT, Alan was an economist at the Bank of England.