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- PerspectivesIndustrial Policy
Each instrument of economic statecraft has its own published series and the doctrine meant to rank them has none
Construction spending on manufacturing plant ran at 75 billion dollars a year in 2020 and 215 in 2025, while manufacturing output on a 2017 base of 100 ended the window at 97.3. Every instrument of statecraft has a published series, and the ranking that says which instrument yields when two collide has none.
- CommentaryStrategic Technology
An export control can close a sale and it cannot close a dependency
Goods imports from China averaged 45 billion dollars a month in 2022 and 26 billion a month in 2025, and goods exports to mainland China fell to 9 billion a month, the lowest of six readings. Over the same years the balance in goods and services widened from minus 75 billion a month to minus 78, the widest of its own six.
- CommentaryTrade & Investment
Trade policy built for containers is missing a trillion dollars of exports
Services exports run at $1.2 trillion on the Bureau of Economic Analysis measure. Tariff schedules, rules of origin and customs lines cannot see them, which means neither the protection nor the retaliation lands where a growing part of the exposure sits.
- CommentaryTrade & Investment
A trade agreement is worth the terms it fixes and not the exports it is credited with
Exports of goods and services rose at every step from 2021 to 2025, from 2.57 trillion dollars to 3.32, and any instrument in force across those years can be credited with a line that was rising regardless. The same window also prices what an agreement actually sells: the broad dollar index moved 8.7 percent between the low and high of six annual averages, and nobody negotiated that.
- CommentaryCapital Markets
A country should build its export credit agency for speed, because it does not set the terms
The base an export credit is priced against moved 3.40 points on the ten-year Treasury between 2020 and 2025, and the policy rate moved 3.34 points from one year to the next. Those are larger than any margin an agency concedes, which leaves the signing date as the one term it owns, and a fast agency is worth having only if it can also refuse quickly.