Trade. 8 notes.

​Brad Setser is one of the go-to experts if you want to understand global imbalances, the political economy of China, and the complexities of currency movements. Regardless of whether you agree with him or not, he always backs up his assertions with data—which sets him apart from a lot of other commentators in…

It’s China’s world and the rest of us are living in it. One of the persistent stories of the last decade has been the relentless rise in Chinese exports and what that’s done to everyone else. Arvind Subramanian, the former chief economic adviser, has been making a version of this argument at the Peterson Institute. His…

Cool site to visualize tariffs, sanctions, and global trade deals.

This is so cool. Goes to show the extent of ancient trade links.

A path-breaking finding has shed new light on trade links between ancient Tamilagam, other parts of India and the Roman Empire. Two researchers have identified close to 30 inscriptions in Tamil Brahmi, Prakrit and Sanskrit at tombs in the Valley of the Kings in Egypt. These inscriptions are said to belong to the period between the 1st and 3rd Centuries C.E.

These inscriptions were identified during a study carried out in 2024 and 2025 by Charlotte Schmid, Professor at the French School of Asian Studies (EFEO) in Paris and Ingo Strauch, Professor at the University of Lausanne in Switzerland. The team documented them across six tombs in the Theban Necropolis. They followed the footsteps of French scholar Jules Baillet, who surveyed the Valley of the Kings in 1926 and published more than 2,000 Greek graffiti marks.

The paper was presented at this event. Haven’t yet watched it though.

YouTube · youtube.com ↗DAY 1 - A FOUR-DAY INTERNATIONAL CONFERENCE ON TAMIL EPIGRAPHYTamil Nadu State Department of Archaeology on YouTube

Hat tip to Krzysztof Iwanek for sharing this.

Interesting discussion.

We no long even pretend with the pretense of fairness.

This is just sad:

Both economists agree that growth is still possible, but the age of “hyperglobalisation” – with its extraordinary convergence of openness, technology, and trust – is unlikely to return.

“Growth miracles seem less likely because two of the key mechanisms – access to big, lucrative markets and willingness to share technology across borders – no longer seem to be here.” Goldberg

As global trade enters a new, more fragmented era, the challenge for policymakers will be to find fresh ways to generate dynamic gains – in a world where the rules, and the relationships, are shifting fast.

In 2019, two political scientists, Henry Farrell and Abraham Newman, published one of the most well-timed papers in recent memory. Titled Weaponized Interdependence: How Global Economic Networks Shape State Coercion, it argued that globalization today runs on networks, both physical and digital, that underpin…

An essay exploring the history, economics, and politics of tariffs, prompted by the re-imposition of sweeping new trade barriers. The request called for a detailed, nuanced, and fact-checked analysis covering the evolution of tariffs, their successes and failures, the spectrum of economic opinion, key research and…