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 […]

Those who are still guessing about the new world order should look carefully at the unfolding U.S., China and Russia relations. A widely assumed world order with the United Nations at its core has lost the little relevance it ever had. Big power relations have always been the predominant form of running world affairs. With […]

The guessing game behind Beijing’s economic growth forecasts looks like a way to show China naysayers incompetent and their agenda ideologically biased. And incompetent they are, because China’s this year growth estimate between 4.5 percent and 5 percent is fully consistent with the country’s noninflationary growth potential of 4.6 percent. That potential economic growth number […]

Washington’s long overdue realignment of terms of trade with the rest of the world has not interfered with expected behavioral relationships in an open and free market economy. The GDP statistics for 2025, released February 20, 2026, show that U.S. imports of goods and services last year increased 2.8 percent, which is well in line […]

Mainstream media can be forgiven for misunderstanding the reasons of the European monetary union’s sluggish economic growth. But it is quite a different problem when European leaders call for grandiose policy programs while ignoring structural problems that are undermining their epochal project of Europe’s economic and political union. How, for example, can one talk about […]

With a rapidly increasing population of 700 million, the economic growth of the trading bloc of eleven Southeast Asian nations (ASEAN) continues to advance at an annual rate of 5 percent. The group’s flexible organizational structure helps to maintain economic, political and social cohesion – without pretensions of becoming a monetary union or a regional […]

Geopolitics have always been the main factor influencing volumes and directions of world trade. Obama administration’s “pivot to Asia” in 2011 was such a geopolitical event that reinforced existing Asian security faultlines. Ostensibly, that move was meant to increase American political and military presence in Asia-Pacific, and to strengthen alliances in one of the fastest […]