Nonrival

Expert analysis from think tanks and academia, on public policy, economics, and technology.
Human experts. AI summaries.

Global trade's new frontier is offices, not factories — and America dominates it the way China dominates manufacturing

nber

• The center of gravity in global trade is shifting from manufactured goods to digitally delivered services, with service trade growing far faster than manufacturing trade and generating all net export-linked job creation between 2008 and 2022.
• The geography of this 'Global Office' looks very different from the 'Global Factory': it's star-shaped and U.S.-dominated rather than bloc-shaped and China-dominated, and time zones matter more than physical distance.
• Most developing economies are struggling to ride this wave — their service exports are growing but aren't yet large enough to drive GDP growth the way manufacturing export booms once did.

French Public Mood Was Already at Record Lows Before the Riots — and the Data Show Why

gallup

• A Gallup survey conducted just before France's recent riots found French pessimism at near-record levels: 73% say the economy is getting worse, and for the first time, more than one in five adults report struggling to afford food.
• Confidence in core institutions has collapsed — trust in the judiciary fell 21 points in two years to 38%, and fewer than half of French adults now believe their elections are honest.
• With the political center fragmenting and far-right and hard-left euroskeptics leading polls ahead of the next election, Macron is set to leave office with France roughly as disillusioned with the EU as when he arrived.

The U.S. Is Blaming 'Transshipment Scams' for Its Trade Problems With China, but the Real Culprit Is Macroeconomics

csis

• The Trump administration's 2026 report accuses China of orchestrating a broad transshipment scheme to dodge U.S. tariffs, but new CSIS analysis finds that for most connector economies like Mexico and Vietnam, trade overlap with China hasn't meaningfully grown — suggesting genuine supply chain restructuring, not fraud, explains most Chinese-origin goods reaching the U.S.
• The deeper driver of the U.S.-China trade imbalance is macroeconomic: China's export-led growth model and undervalued currency on one side, and low U.S. household savings and surging AI infrastructure investment (which pulls in imports) on the other.
• Cracking down on transshipment won't fix these fundamentals — and the White House's push for an 'AI Detective Border' and new rules of origin will impose heavy costs on trading partners while steering supply chains against market logic, without addressing the underlying imbalance.

In the News

The Ebola Outbreak in Congo Is Already the Second Largest Ever — and It's Getting Worse

think_global_health

• An Ebola outbreak in the Democratic Republic of Congo has killed nearly 5,000 people and is on pace to surpass the catastrophic 2014 West Africa epidemic, with cases already spreading to Uganda, Kenya, and Nigeria.
• The outbreak is unusually hard to contain: the virus strain is one for which no proven vaccine exists, the affected region has suffered decades of conflict and mistrust of health workers, and the US withdrawal from the WHO has disrupted global response networks.
• While Kenya and Nigeria have so far contained their spillover cases thanks to well-trained local health teams, experts warn the DRC outbreak will keep seeding neighboring countries until a new vaccine — not expected until early 2027 — or better conditions allow for real containment.

Analysis

When Leaders Can't Run Again, They Use Financial Crises to Reward Banks — and Themselves

promarket

• New research finds that term-limited political leaders respond to financial crises by passing policies that benefit banks — raising entry barriers, nationalizing troubled lenders — at roughly three times the rate of leaders who still face voters.
• The effect is strongest in countries with revolving doors between politics and finance: finance ministers and central bank governors who served under term-limited leaders during crises were 30 percentage points more likely to land senior private-sector finance jobs afterward.
• Crucially, the bank-friendly policies don't actually improve bank stability or performance, suggesting they serve insider interests rather than any genuine economic rationale.

Also Worth a Look

• The US Is Running a Massive Financial Deficit with the World, and Fixing It Could Trigger Global Shockwaves (nber)
• Soaring Health Insurance Costs Are Quietly Eating Workers' Wages (employ_america)
• Americans Feel Bad About an Economy That Looks Good on Paper — and Inequality May Be Why (the_conversation)
• Mexican migrants fleeing drug war violence actually created jobs for American workers, a new study finds (upjohn)
• Spoiler candidates are as old as American democracy — and the law has almost never stopped them (the_conversation)
• Trump's Tariff Truce Is Ending, and the AI Boom Could Be the Biggest Casualty (equitable_growth)
• Latin American Cartels Are Running a Criminal Air Force — and the U.S. Should Pay Attention (csis)