The timing is what makes this notable. All of this is unfolding weeks before Xi Jinping's planned visit to the United States in September, a trip meant to symbolize "constructive strategic stability" following the Trump-Xi meeting in Beijing back in May. The diplomatic surface says stability. The actions on the ground say otherwise.
This generation of the trade war doesn't resemble 2018-2019, when the fights were over soybean and steel tariffs. The battleground now is semiconductors, AI, drones, dual-use technology. This is a long-term contest over technology regimes, and it won't be resolved with a single tariff deal the way the old disputes were. For global supply chains, that means fragmentation keeps deepening, not because markets are inefficient, but because national security calculus now overrides plain economic efficiency.
The Bank of Japan Is Fighting an Inflation Problem That Isn't Really Its Own
The BOJ held its policy rate at 1%, the highest in 31 years, while raising its growth forecast and signaling more hikes are still on the table. Not because the economy is overheating. Because inflation is projected to run well above the 2% target in the second half of the fiscal year, driven by a weaker yen, surging AI-related chip demand pushing up electronics component prices, and lingering energy risk out of the Middle East.