USA

China vs. the US: Which GDP is bigger?
19Dec mmBy Brian ThompsonNo Comments
China, USA

China vs. the US: Which GDP is bigger?

Has China yet surpassed the United States in aggregate economic power? Perhaps not. Although China’s GDP, at market prices and exchange rates, is still much lower than that of the United States, the opposite is true if the calculation is made at the international purchasing power parity (PPP) prices (using the newly updated Penn World Tables). And China has been growing much faster. If the objective is to compare national economic power (rather than standard of living), though, the PPP figure arguably overstates the power of low-income countries. A simple adjustment, relating to the Balassa-Samuelson (1964) effect, suggests that China may still be slightly behind the United States. China’s population is much larger than that of the United States, but its average living standa...
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<strong>Plata Arranges Financing for Up to US$500 Million by Nomura</strong>
19Dec mmBy Joe RodriguezNo Comments
USA, World

Plata Arranges Financing for Up to US$500 Million by Nomura

Plata, the Mexican financial technology company, has secured a new financing of up to US$500 million arranged by Nomura Securities International, Inc. ("Nomura") It is the largest funding to date for a Mexican digital financial services company. The transaction also sets an important precedent: it marks the first time a Japanese top-tier investment bank participates in a financing of this scale within Mexico's digital financial sector, reflecting the growing international interest in Plata and in Mexico's financial system. The announcement comes as Plata continues to work towards launching operations as a bank, after having received its banking license authorization in December 2024. The company embarked on this extremely rigorous process ...
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Despite tariffs, China consumer giants push into the US as domestic market stalls
18Dec mmBy Mike TrudellNo Comments
China, Market, USA

Despite tariffs, China consumer giants push into the US as domestic market stalls

Shanghai/New York Lured by the promise of richer margins, a wave of Chinese consumer brands is making deeper inroads into American retail to offset sluggish spending at home. Throughout 2025, companies including Labubu-maker Pop Mart , trinket purveyor Miniso, sportswear giant Anta and fast-fashion label Urban Revivo have announced new U.S. stores or retail expansions, trying to establish a foothold in the world’s richest consumer market despite harsh U.S. tariffs and talk of economic decoupling. The counterintuitive trend, which started to emerge in 2023 after the COVID pandemic, accelerated this year as lethargic local spending prompted Chinese consumer companies to look abroad, initially in Southeast Asia. NewYork a litmus test for broader expansion Urban Revivo, often ...
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France calls new U.S. security doctrine ‘brutal clarification’
10Dec mmBy Walter ParezNo Comments
USA, World

France calls new U.S. security doctrine ‘brutal clarification’

Europe must accelerate its rearmament in ‍response ‌to a stark shift in U.S. military doctrine, a ⁠French government official said ‌on Tuesday, calling Washington's new security strategy "an extremely brutal clarification" of its ideological posture. The U.S. National Security Strategy, made ⁠public last week, caused shock across Europe, with a broadside that ​said the continent was facing "civilisation erasure" ‌and that U.S. policy ⁠should include "cultivating resistance" within the European Union. "The new American security strategy is an extremely brutal clarification of ​the United States' ideological posture," Junior Army Minister Alice Rufo told lawmakers at the National Assembly's weekly question-and-answer session. "We live in a world of carnivores, ​Europe ‍is no is...
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Supreme Court may scrap campaign finance limit challenged by Trump, GOP
10Dec mmBy Mike TrudellNo Comments
USA, World

Supreme Court may scrap campaign finance limit challenged by Trump, GOP

The Supreme Court seems likely to eliminate one of the remaining checks on money in politics, a decision in line with recent rulings favoring First Amendment free speech rights over fears about potential corruption. In a challenge involving Vice President JD Vance, the court considered on Dec. 9 whether to scrap a rule aimed at preventing wealthy donors from bypassing limits on what they can give candidates by funneling money through political parties. The rule was passed in 1974 as part of Congress' response to the Watergate scandal and upheld by the Supreme Court in 2001. During two hours of oral arguments, the court’s conservatives did not attack the GOP’s argument that the law and the campaign finance landscape have changed since 2001. "The coordinated party spending l...
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OECD warns tariffs, AI will test resilience of the global economy
3Dec mmBy Michael SmithNo Comments
USA

OECD warns tariffs, AI will test resilience of the global economy

The organisation warns that President Donald Trump has put US fiscal policy on an unsustainable trajectory. Global growth is holding up better than expected as an artificial intelligence (AI) investment boom helps offset some of the shock from United States tariff hikes, according to the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD). The Paris-based organisation, however, warned on Tuesday that global growth was vulnerable to any new outbreak of trade tensions, while investor optimism about AI could trigger a stock market correction if expectations are not met. In its Economic Outlook, the OECD forecast global growth would slow modestly from 3.2 percent in 2025 to 2.9 percent in 2026, leaving its forecasts untouched from its last estimates in September. It pre...
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The U.S. Economy Is Growing, but Faces Much Uncertainty
2Dec mmBy Michael SmithNo Comments
USA

The U.S. Economy Is Growing, but Faces Much Uncertainty

A quarterly review finds that the U.S. economy’s increasingly K-shaped nature is making American consumption patterns uneven and unpredictable. Despite continued growth, this and several other data points suggest a precarious economic situation could soon emerge. Roger W. Ferguson Jr. is the Steven A. Tananbaum Distinguished Fellow for International Economics at the Council on Foreign Relations. Maximilian Hippold is a research associate for international economics at CFR. More From Our Experts The longest government shutdown in U.S. history ended after weeks of political gridlock, but the impasse has already taken a toll on the U.S. economy. Federal employees and contractors missed paychecks, and many working-class Americans started to feel the effect of reduced funding for ...
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Does the fate of the US economy now hinge on one company?
29Nov mmBy Mike TrudellNo Comments
USA, World

Does the fate of the US economy now hinge on one company?

The entire stock market, and therefore the entire economy, depends on it maintaining pretty impossible growth metrics. As the price of almost everything has increased, and American workers’ wages have all but stalled, politicians like President Donald Trump have tried to ease our minds by telling us that the economy is “doing great” and that the stock market is booming. “Record high, record high, record high,” Trump said at an event earlier this month in Florida. Still, despite what has been a good year for the stock market, it’s hard to find a day in which a podcaster, influencer, or economist isn’t warning that the AI boom that’s powering the economy could be a bubble — one that is about to burst. The company that’s driving Wall Street’s positive movement is Nvidia, the mos...
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Has the US Economy Become Dependent on AI Investment?
28Nov mmBy Michael SmithNo Comments
USA

Has the US Economy Become Dependent on AI Investment?

The US economy is relying on AI capex by Microsoft, Amazon, Alphabet, Meta and Nvidia, as traditional sectors stagnate, risking recession if the boom ends AI has grown from a useful tool, to something driving economic growth. Investment in data centres and computing infrastructure now represent a huge portion of GDP in developed economies.  In the US, this dependence has reached a point where economists are questioning what happens if the boom ends. Recent volatility in AI stocks has exposed how tied the US economy has become to AI-related investment and wealth creation.  The numbers show that business investment in AI may have accounted for half of the growth in gross domestic product, adjusted for inflation, during the first six months of this year...
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An unusual trend in the economy is worrying the Fed
24Nov mmBy Michael SmithNo Comments
USA, World

An unusual trend in the economy is worrying the Fed

Something in the US economy isn’t adding up, and it’s rattling the people charged with wrangling inflation and keeping the labor market intact. US companies have sharply slowed their hiring this year, hesitant to invest without knowing the full effects of President Donald Trump’s sweeping economic policies. The economy lost jobs in June and August, and the average pace of job gains for the three months ending in September was only around 62,000, according to the Labor Department. Yet workers’ productivity, a key driver of economic output, remains high. And gross domestic product, which captures all the goods and services produced in the economy, has stayed robust. That dichotomy of an expanding economy and a softening labor market presents a conundrum for policymakers at...
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