The numbers
behind the narrative.
Data-driven analysis of trade, finance and economics. We take the stories everyone repeats and run them through the numbers.
Fresh analysis, every week.
Long-form pieces built on primary data, written to change how you read the headlines.
One country at a time, every number checked.
Scorecards, market share and value chains for the world's biggest exporters. Each audit ships with a full interactive.
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Trade Audit 004 · France
France's trade deficit collapsed from a record €161.7 billion in 2022 to €69.2 billion in 2025 — a 57% improvement in three years. The current account is essentially balanced.
Trade Audit 003 · Brazil
Brazil's trade surplus hit $59 billion in 2025 and is tracking toward $100 billion in 2026.
Trade Audit 002 · Australia
Australia sells rocks and gas to China, and buys cars and electronics from China. The trade structure has produced the fastest export growth of any advanced economy since 1990 — an 8.5× increase that generated a $30…
World Trade Hit $34.7 Trillion in 2025. Someone Forgot to Tell the Peak-Globalization Theorists.
The "peak globalization" thesis — that world trade has stopped outpacing GDP growth and the era of hyper-globalization is over — has been declared at least four times since 2008. Each time, trade has rebounded to new highs. The $34.65 trillion in goods and services traded in 2025 is the largest volume in history. The thesis persists because it conflates a noisy ratio with a structural shift, and because it misses a transformation happening on two fronts: what is being traded (services, growing at 8% a year) and who is doing the trading (intra-Asia and South-South flows are growing twice as fast as the global average).
China Would Need $150 Billion a Year to Halve Its Trade Surplus
The "boost Chinese consumption" prescription has become orthodox. Run through the numbers, it is directionally correct — but the mechanism it implies is structurally incoherent. A combined approach of import liberalization and targeted export rebalancing is the only arithmetic that works. It is slow, expensive, and politically uncomfortable in both Beijing and Washington.
Beyond the Cold War frame
Five essays testing whether the US and China really are replaying the last century.
- 1China Is Not the Soviet Union. That Is the Problem.
- 2The Rigidity Trap
- 3AI Is Not the Space Race. A Better Analogy Is Electrification.
- 4The Leadership Gap
- 5The Containment Trap
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