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- PerspectivesTrade & Investment
Foreign delegations come to Washington to meet a counterparty that is not there
Twenty of the fifty-one jurisdictions in the federal collections file levy all five of the taxes it names, and two levy only two of them. The body that decides whether a foreign project works is usually a state, and it is not in the room.
- PerspectivesEconomic Security
Tell a ministry where to look, not where to go
Advice that names a destination expires the day the evidence moves. The six files behind any recommendation about the American economy carry six different as-of dates, and a ministry that was handed the conclusion cannot tell which one broke.
- PerspectivesEconomic Security
Openness and security are being reconciled by narrowing one channel at both ends rather than by closing the economy
Two-way U.S. goods trade with mainland China ran at 58 billion dollars a month in 2022 and 35 billion in 2025, a fall of 39.7 percent, while total imports and exports of goods and services both rose across the same three years. The channel narrowed at both ends, and no series cited here records whether a screen decided any of it.
- PerspectivesStrategic Technology
Technical standards decide admission where a tariff only sets a price, and nothing in the record counts admission
Goods exports to mainland China fell from 13 billion dollars a month in 2022 to 9 in 2025, and imports from 45 to 26. The series record that both legs shrank and attribute the fall to nothing, which is why a rulebook written years earlier cannot be told apart from a duty imposed last quarter.
- PerspectivesTariffs & Trade Agreements
A bilateral arrangement locks in a counterparty, which is the part of a trading position most likely to change
Goods imports from China fell from a monthly average of 45 billion dollars in 2022 to 26 in 2025, and exports to it from 13 to 9, while total imports and exports of goods and services each rose by 0.28 trillion dollars across the same three years. No series on this site describes an arrangement of either kind, so what each locks in is argued here and not measured.
- PerspectivesTrade & Investment
A foreign ministry cannot spend attention on fifty states, and should not try
California holds 39,431,263 residents and Wyoming 587,618, and each sends the same two senators to Washington. A ministry with a finite diary has to decide which of those two facts it is optimising against, because the rankings they produce are not the same.