MSI

The economy will be the central issue in the next week’s leadership election of Japan’s governing Liberal Democratic Party (LDP) that has almost continuously held power since 1955. The frontrunner is Sanae Takeichi, Japan’s former internal affairs minister. This is her third attempt to win the...

About one-fifth of India’s trade is currently conducted in East Asia. China and ten countries of Southeast Asia (ASEAN) account for most of those trade transactions. And that’s where India should concentrate efforts to integrate its economy with the fastest growing part of global demand and outp...

With its economic growth of 1.65% in the first half of this year, the European Union is hitting the physical limits to its demand and output. That partly explains the European Central Bank’s reluctance to ease credit conditions to offset fiscal tightening in several major member country economies....

America’s “trade tariffs war,” universally denounced by mainstream media, is a simpler version of provisions in the IMF’s original charter imposing symmetric obligations on deficit and surplus countries to adjust their external trade accounts. In the early years of IMF’s operation (1944-45...

With an economy of $4 trillion and a population of 670 million, the ten Southeast Asian nations (ASEAN*) are expected to grow about 5% this year. That is by far the highest growth rate of any similar regional trading blocs, and more than three times faster than the world’s most advanced economies....

With a budget deficit of 3.1% of GDP, an inflation rate of 2%, the euro’s effective appreciation of 7% since the beginning of this year and a trade surplus of $114 billion, the European monetary union has plenty of room to offset a recessionary shock to its weak economy in case of problems with ex...

Based on data for the first five months of this year, ASEAN (ten Southeast Asian countries), Japan and South Korea accounted for nearly one-third of China’s foreign trade. Adding to that the remaining nine BRICS members, ten partner countries, and steady trade relations in Central Asia, Africa and...

The news last week that a trade agreement with China was finalized, and that similar deals would soon be reached with ten major trade partners, drove American stock market valuations to their record high level. That is exactly the opposite of what happened in early February when Washington announced...

Driven by an exceptionally strong fiscal stimulus and a supportive monetary policy, American domestic demand (consisting of household consumption, residential investments, business investments and government spending) soared 3.5% in the first three months of this year from the same period of 2024. T...

Malaysia chaired last week (May 26, 2025), an ASEAN (ten South-East Asian nations) annual summit in Kuala Lumpur. That was followed by a trilateral summit with China and the Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC, consisting of Bahrein, Kuwait, Oman, Qatar, Saudi Arabia and United Arab Emirates). What’s at...