Vietnam set records on both sides of its ledger in 2025: the largest surplus any country but China runs with America, and record imports from China of $186 billion. A 20% tariff, a 40% transshipment clause, and one Korean company worth 13% of GDP later, the balancing act is the economy.
Aug 15, 2026 · 7 min read
The 2018-19 trade war produced a rare thing in economics: an unusually clear answer. Import prices did not fall; the tariff landed on US firms and households. Now the effective rate is 16.8%, the highest since 1935, the average household is out about $1,700 a year, and the same measurements are being made again.
Aug 15, 2026 · 8 min read
78 gigawatts of reactors are under construction worldwide, the most in decades, and half the capacity is Chinese, approved at a metronomic ten reactors a year. The West, meanwhile, finished two projects a decade late and started selling reactors to data centres. An audit of the revival.
Aug 15, 2026 · 7 min read
Washington restricts what China can buy; Beijing restricts what America can make it from. Gallium, 98% Chinese, and germanium, majority Chinese, went from licensing in 2023 to an outright US ban in December 2024. Germanium has quintupled since 2023. The tonnages are tiny, but the precedent reaches much further.
Aug 15, 2026 · 8 min read
In February 2025 the DRC suspended cobalt exports outright; since October it rations them by quota, at roughly half the old volume. The price of the metal rose 130% in a year. What the world's most concentrated mineral supply does when the supplier starts acting like one.
Aug 15, 2026 · 9 min read
BNEF's 2025 survey puts the average pack at a record-low $108 per kilowatt-hour, China at $84, and North America and Europe 44% and 56% above that. Two companies install a majority of the world's EV batteries. The cost gap is the industrial policy question of the decade, quantified.
Aug 15, 2026 · 7 min read