Last Friday (July 31), the World Trade Organization reported that global merchandise trade increased at a surprisingly vigorous annual rate of 3.2 percent during the first quarter of this year, despite widespread energy shortages caused by Middle East hostilities. That indeed was a surprising result in view of pessimistic trade forecasts by official international organizations, […]

China has been the main trade partner of emerging and developing Asia for nearly two decades. During that time, the ASEAN -- association of eleven countries of Southeast Asia -- became the fastest growing segment of the world economy and China’s by far the largest market for its goods and services. In the first half […]

Asset prices in the trans-Atlantic community are changing according to market conditions created by monetary and fiscal policies. In the United States, the key policy interest rate – the effective federal funds rate – is 3.62 percent while the current inflation rate is 4.2 percent. Corrected for inflation, the interest rate reflecting American monetary policy […]

Last year, 89 percent of global foreign exchange transactions were executed in U.S. dollars. That important statistic was reported last February by the Bank of International Settlements (BIS), also known as the bank of world central banks. The BIS acts in that capacity by offering international cooperation in support of central banks’ mandate for monetary […]

As BRICS founding members and active partners in the Shanghai Cooperation Organization (SCO), China and India share interests and ties that transcend a difficult colonial legacy along the 4056 kms of contested borders they call the Line of Actual Control. BRICS is an intergovernmental organization founded in Yekaterinburg, Russia, on June 16, 2009. It consists […]

The two Asian neighbors divided by a strip of water but united for thousands of years by history and culture are now criticizing each other about military buildups and “unprecedented … strategic challenges.” That tense discussion is underlied by contested maritime borders and overlapping territorial claims in East and South China Seas – all of […]

The summit meeting of G7 allies (Canada, France, Germany, Italy, Japan, United Kingdom and the United States) in Évian-les-Bains, France, on June 15-17, 2026, has an unusual agenda of military conflicts weakening their structurally unbalanced economies. A particularly precarious situation is observed in the members of the European monetary union (the euro area) where interest […]

The world energy market is experiencing declining supplies and a prospect of an unprecedented magnitude and duration of severe energy shortages. The European Union (E.U.) was the first region to face those problems in 2014, after the violent change of Ukrainian government and the ensuing unrest in Donbas. That situation markedly deteriorated with the beginning […]

The 11 members of the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN) remain the bright spot in a slowing global economy. It is estimated that they will grow this year at an annual rate of 5 percent while advanced economies continue their slowdown. The four countries accounting for nearly three quarters of ASEAN economy – Indonesia, […]

American and European monetary authorities are facing sharply rising inflation pressures, widening budget deficits, increasing public debt, slowing economic growth, soaring energy prices, uncontrollable fighting in the Middle East, and an outburst of European military hostilities. The question is not whether the U.S. Federal Reserve (the Fed) and the European Central Bank (ECB) should be […]

A good preview of next week’s U.S.-China summit in Beijing (May 14-15, 2026) is a discussion China’s Premier Li Quiang had on May 7, 2026, with visiting American senators, led by Steve Daines, a Republican from Montana. According to China’s official media, Premier Li told the American delegation that the two governments should be implementing […]

Bilateral trade and investment flows are the most reliable indications of the current state and likely future directions of U.S.-China relations. Last year, the U.S. trade deficit with China declined 31.6 percent from 2024, with Chinese exports to America falling 29.7 percent and U.S. exports to China contracting 25.7 percent. The total U.S.-China trade in […]

A relative stability of the European single currency over the last twelve months has more to do with the dollar’s weakness than with an appropriate policy mix followed by the European Central Bank (ECB). Based on the trade-weighted exchange rate during the last twelve months, the value of the euro has been moving withing a […]

Halving its exports to the US in the first two months of this year, while raising total export sales by 22 percent is a result of China’s successful trade diversification policy. The way Beijing has achieved that trade adjustment process deserves particular attention. For the first time, one can see that China’s total foreign trade […]

Independent monthly business surveys offer the most reliable evidence of the economy’s business cycle position and its short-term growth outlook. Survey data collected by the U.S. purchasing agents about production, sales, inventories, employment, prices and intangibles, such as business and consumer “sentiment,” are observations that allow estimates of where the economy is and where it […]