The WTO Cut Its 2025 Trade Forecast. The Numbers Matter More Than the Headline
April's forecast revision showed merchandise trade contracting — and the gap between container rates and real volumes is where the policy story lives.
Valentina Sokolov
How the Belt and Road Restructures Its Loans
Chinese state lending to the developing world has shifted from building megaprojects to collecting and rolling over what it already lent.
Gabriela Montoya
How Friendshoring Is Rewriting Global Supply Chains
Trade within blocs is growing faster than trade between them — a measured fragmentation whose costs land first on the countries being routed around.
Valentina Sokolov
How Economic Sanctions Actually Work
Designations, blocked property, and secondary exposure — the instruments are legal mechanics, not rhetoric, and their enforcement record is mixed.
Gabriela Montoya
How Critical Minerals Agreements Reshape Trade Blocs
Minerals diplomacy is the new trade architecture: narrow deals over lithium and nickel quietly define who counts as an ally in industrial policy.
Gabriela MontoyaAnalysis & Opinion
How Weekly Jobless Claims Numbers Get Made
Developing Countries' Debt Payments Hit A 50-Year High
The Legal Mechanics Behind a Government Shutdown
How Countervailing Duty Investigations Actually Work
A joint inquiry by two federal agencies decides whether a foreign subsidy justifies a new U.S. tariff — and the process runs on fixed deadlines, not politics.
Policy
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The EU Carbon Border Levy Starts Charging Importers
Valentina SokolovHow Cost-Benefit Analysis Shapes U.S. Rules
Since 1981, every economically significant federal regulation has carried a price-benefit ledger — and the 2023 rewrite of the government's manual changed how every entry is counted.
Valentina SokolovAffairs
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The 90-Day Clock Behind US Foreign Deal Reviews
Christopher LeeHow International Election Observation Actually Works
Real observation is a months-long methodology with checklists and statistics — not the photo-op delegations its critics mistake it for.
Christopher LeeGeoeconomics
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How Central Bank Swap Lines Move Dollars Across Borders
Gabriela MontoyaHow the EU Carbon Border Mechanism Phases In
CBAM is Europe's answer to carbon leakage: importers pay the carbon price domestic producers pay — and 2026 is the first year with real invoices.
Gabriela MontoyaEconomy News
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How a Central Bank Digital Currency Would Change Payments
Editorial StaffHow the IMF Assembles Its World Economic Outlook
The WEO is a 190-country forecasting machine on a strict calendar — and its own error tables are the best guide to how much to trust it.
Lena FischerBusiness News
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How Climate and ESG Disclosure Rules Land in U.S. Markets
Henrik LarsenWhat Freight Indexes Signal About the Economy
Trucking is the economy's rawest real-time gauge — no revisions, no surveys, just rates — and the freight recession told the goods slowdown first.
Henrik LarsenMacro Policy Dashboard
Explore the data · Source: Federal Reserve Bank of St. Louis