Full 2025 Chinese trade data now out. Headline is clearly a historical global record $1.2 trillion surplus with the world What of Europe? 📈China's trade surplus with the EU: +18.1% 📈 with Germany: +108% 📈 with France: +23.9% 📈 with Italy: +32.6% 📈 with Netherlands: +1.4%

“X, the deepfake porn site formerly known as Twitter” Thank you FT for presenting the directors running the circus. In clown face. www.ft.com/content/ad94...

So many European nations could stop the shadow fleet (hi 🇳🇱) - and all of them should. If we would, we would suddenly have huge leverage over Russia - immediately becoming a strategic superpower in current "negotiations". Our apathy is literally Europe CHOOSING to be an irresponsible sidelined victim

Young Europeans will make Europe more united! For them, a European Army is more attractive than national armies or even NATO. That is what today’s politicians need to have in mind! ⬇️ www.politico.eu/article/unit...

Never forget

1/Leaders are abducted/allies are threatened but pundits and governments are scratching their heads on what the US is doing. Danish PM on Greenland "It makes absolutely no sense". Why? Because actors using old IR models when we need a new lens. Enter neo-royalism. abcnews.go.com/Internationa...

Brilliant thread that names and explains the new world order that Trump seeks to create.

Dieser Post vom österreichischen Bundespräsidenten ist ein tolles Beispiel für die aktuelle EU-Aussenpolitik: korrekte Analyse, völlig ungenügende Schlussfolgerung. Der erste (analytische) Satz ist korrekt. Der zweite Satz macht aber keinen Sinn, wenn man den ersten als neue Realität anerkennt.

After carefully monitoring the situation in Venezuela for the last 24 hours, the EU has found out that the water bottle of Maduro did not have the EU-regulation approved attached cap…

Nobody ever said the death throes of the fossil age would be pretty or peaceful

China hat sich in einem halben Jahrzehnt vom Importeur von Autos zum massiven Exporteur gewandelt. Aber im Autoland Nr. 1 führen wir die wirtschaftspolitische Debatte immer noch so, als wäre unser Hauptproblem zu viel Regulierung aller Art.

The problem is that pro-European parties and the EU institutions are still communicating and acting in a very US-friendly or even submissive way. So it's very unclear if they can benefit from the anti-Trump sentiment among voters.

#France has a very weak government with an uncertain future, yet it remains a dominant force in EU policy-making. How does one explain this paradox? 🇪🇺 🇫🇷 New @centreeuropeanref.bsky.social insight by @cergrant.bsky.social Read here: buff.ly/vrFwWbE

This is remarkably outspoken by EU Defence Commissioner Kubilius andriuskubilius.lt/en/what-real...

The fact that four hostile drones tried to hit Zelenskyy’s plane & it’s barely a blip in the news cycle should terrify everyone. We’ve been dragged so deep into the chaos era that an attempted strike on a world leader doesn’t even break through. When this becomes normal, the world is in real danger.

Es ist sicher nur Zufall, dass Populismus und Faschismus aufblühen, wenn in einer Marktwirtschaft der Wert des Kapitalstocks schrumpft ... Deutschland 1932/33 Italien 2010–2021 Deutschland 2024 ...

cant unsee once you get this, the only thing you want in your country is FAR more public investment

Today's migration stats illustrate the migration doom loop in action... (from my presentation at the IMF last week)

If I haven’t lost count entirely, this was the fourth time Europe was fooled. So yes it’s about time to finally figure out our own strategy instead of putting all energy into humouring Trump.

I wish I didn’t have to share this. But the BBC has decided to censor my first Reith Lecture. They deleted the line in which I describe Donald Trump as “the most openly corrupt president in American history.” /1

Lutnick was quite explicit today in Brussels: kill your digital rules, then we can talk about steel tariffs. The EU would be quite shortsighted to give in to this extortion, but given past performance, we should probably consider this as the most likely outcome.

(Once again) this is a Brexit reflection. ‘Global’ Britain was meant to mitigate losses from Brexit and surpass EU membership. That ‘vision’ was based on trade deals and liberalised ‘fair’ immigration. The latter is now being dismantled and the former relies on no defunct liberal multilateralism.

Interesting post. Again, what Europe needs is not super radical, but the timidity of the EU Commission and the stubbornness of member states will make these proposals for tax reform look outlandish.

Wonderful write-up by @erikfossingnielsen.bsky.social on a fascinating fiery debate at CERs annual economics conference this weekend (so fast Erik!) Should Europe use incentives to pull some of our capital exports back home rather than fund Americas deficits? independenteconomics.substack.com

Important - in a global order in which international rules are losing importance, one part of the emerging replacement is this neo-royalist approach involving interlinked states and companies. Once again, put away the deglobalisation simplisms.

Was die Schweizer Sozialdemokraten gegenüber vielen europäischen Schwesterparteien auszeichnet, ist m.E., dass sie nicht so verliebt in den Status quo ist und nicht so eingeschüchtert wirkt von potenziellen politischen und wirtschaftlichen Turbulenzen.

The good thing about the slowness of the EU and its savings and investments union project is that significant amounts of savings will probably only start flowing into capital markets after the AI bubble bursts (if ever).

At the same time, this means that I will be available for new projects. So if you have an exciting idea that requires the expertise of someone specialising in supranational democracy, EU institutional reform, and the why and wherefore of European integration in general: please get in touch!

The problem from their point of view is that rapid decarbonization requires public, collective decisions about the organization of production, in a way that threaten capital-owners' authority over both the production process and the political system.

This is also one of MY favorite things that’s ever happened on the internet!

“Bill Gates and his pals were never going to be anything but fair-weather-friends to the climate movement, because they lack the political vision to imagine that the problems of global climate change are also problems of the global social hierarchy that they sit comfortably atop.”

On my morning commute, I’ve started noticing these small black lockboxes mounted beside doorbells or hanging from fences. They’re easy to miss, but once you spot one, you start seeing them everywhere.

If a man is not a socialist by the time he is 20 he has no heart. If he is not an idiosyncratic mix of borrowed principles mostly based on disagreeing with whoever has annoyed him recently by the time he is 35 he has no head.

Metsola seems to suggest that, because the European Council has said so, Parliament will have no choice but to push through the omnibus with votes from the far right after Wednesday’s failed vote. This is a worrying stance and a puzzling view of the EP’s relationship with EU leaders

The car crisis tops today’s EU summit but leaders keep staring at the wrong problem The issue isn’t the 2035 engine ban - it’s demand falling off a cliff today With @sandertordoir.bsky.social and @lucasguttenberg.bsky.social, we show why flipping regs won’t help - and what the EU can do instead.

High time to get rid of the 'bazooka' framing. The ACI is not a magic weapon. It's a new procedural way of threatening retaliation and then imposing it. The effect really depends on the threats the EU is willing to make. Currently we're mainly deterring ourselves with the military analogies.

It is depressing to see the centre right and left ignore decades of political science only to walk into the trap of the far right. Again and again.

“Digital dreamstate” is pretty good

BREAKING big step toward eventual approval of the new EU–Switzerland deal🇪🇺🇨🇭: center-right FDP has just approved the deal, while also deciding that a simple majority of citizens shall suffice (rejecting the Ständemehr requirement of both citizens+cantons which would have posed a much higher hurdle)

New - Europe’s 3-body problem: collapsing global order sparks hunt for new trajectory I got to write about one of my favourite Chinese sci-fi novels. Europe, realising it can’t fix systemic chaos, is instead trying to shift its own orbit.

Sadly, German ordoliberals remain unable to think about demand as an important factor.

🔥 Finally an EU leader says it out loud: “We have been incredibly naive in entrusting our democratic space to social networks that are controlled either by large American entrepreneurs or large Chinese companies, whose interests are not at all the survival or proper functioning of our democracies.”

Really nice gesture by the German government to prepare the chat control groundwork for when the AfD will come to power.

In a digital world, talking to sensitive sources is nearly impossible without encryption. The EU’s #ChatControl plan is an attack on accountability journalism - and a gift to surveillance

So much for the European single market

For WTO wonks - The European Commission has now given up trying to justify the deal with the US as being compatible with article 24. “It isn’t credible that we can turn this into an FTA” Sabine Weyand said today. This is a change from what they were saying before