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Economies Global Economy Industry Sectors

Manufacturing’s Two-Speed Reality: Why Global Factories Are Flat While AI Surges Ahead

The global manufacturing landscape in 2025 is marked by an unusual contradiction: factories across major economies remain subdued, while investment in technology, AI hardware, and critical infrastructure is booming. This divergence is not merely cyclical—it represents a structural realignment of industrial priorities that began after the 2008 financial crisis and…

December 24, 2025
Economies GDP USA

The US Economy in 2025: A Surge, a Slowdown, and a Strategic Crossroads

The United States entered late-2025 on a surprising note: GDP growth accelerated to 4.3% (annualized) in Q3, the strongest pace in two years and far above market expectations. This resurgence—impressive on the surface—comes after a volatile period marked by policy reversals, tariff redesigns, and recession anxieties. Historically, such late-cycle surges…

December 23, 2025
Banking and Finance Economies Global Economy monetary policy Policy

Monetary Policy at an Inflection Point

The global monetary system is entering a slow, asymmetric transition phase rather than a clean policy pivot. After the most aggressive tightening cycle in four decades, central banks are now balancing three competing forces: cooling inflation, softening labour markets, and fragile growth. This moment resembles earlier inflection points—such as the…

December 23, 2025
Economies Energy Global Economy international trade logistics and supply chain

Energy Trade at an Inflection Point

For more than a century, global energy trade was essentially a story of fuels—crude oil flowing from resource-rich regions to industrial centers, coal feeding power stations, and natural gas moving through fixed pipelines that locked countries into long-term geopolitical relationships. That era is not ending overnight, but it is unmistakably…

December 22, 2025
Economies Global Economy Metals and minerals

Critical Minerals & Rare Earths: From Trade Goods to Strategic Power

For much of modern economic history, minerals were treated as inputs—extracted, traded, priced, and consumed largely through market mechanisms. Coal fueled industrial revolutions, iron ore fed steel mills, and copper wired the modern world. Price cycles mattered, but geopolitics remained mostly peripheral. That era is ending. Critical minerals and rare…

December 21, 2025
Economies Global Economy international trade

Global Trade at an Inflection Point: From Open Markets to Conditional Access

Global merchandise trade today sits at a decisive historical inflection point. After decades in which expanding volumes, falling tariffs, and efficiency-driven global value chains defined international commerce, the post-pandemic world has ushered in a more constrained, fragmented, and policy-heavy trade regime. While trade has not collapsed, it has unmistakably slowed—growing…

December 21, 2025
Artificial intelligence Digital Economy Economies Electronics

Productivity Without Jobs: The Paradox of Advanced Manufacturing in Developed Economies

Manufacturing in advanced economies has undergone a profound transformation over the last four decades. Once the backbone of mass employment, it has evolved into a capital-, technology-, and knowledge-intensive sector where output growth is increasingly decoupled from job creation. The experience of developed countries demonstrates a critical paradox: manufacturing productivity…

December 20, 2025
Economies Industry Sectors

The Age of the Two-Speed Industrial Economy

Global industry is entering a structural phase shift rather than a cyclical slowdown. What we are witnessing today is not simply uneven recovery across sectors, but the emergence of a two-speed industrial economy. On one side sits legacy manufacturing—capital-intensive, energy-hungry, and optimized for scale in a world that no longer…

December 20, 2025
Banking and Finance Economies Indian economy

India’s Microfinance Moment: From Financial Inclusion to Financial Fragility

Microfinance in India was born with moral ambition. It promised to democratise credit, liberate households from moneylenders, and convert the poor into micro-entrepreneurs. In its early decades, the narrative carried the glow of social transformation—small loans, collective responsibility, and women-centric empowerment were presented as antidotes to exclusionary banking. Yet, by…

December 19, 2025
Energy Global Economy Industry Sectors Metals and minerals

Carbon, Not Cost, Is Becoming the New Trade Currency

For most of modern industrial history, global trade in metals and heavy manufacturing was governed by a familiar equation: price competitiveness, scale, and logistics efficiency. Carbon emissions were treated as an externality—an unfortunate by-product of growth, rarely embedded into trade rules themselves. That era is now decisively ending. Carbon intensity…

December 18, 2025