The global economy is on a two-way track

Depuis 2010, environ, on sait que la Méditerranée orientale est une nouvelle province gazière. Des ressources gazières ont en effet été découvertes au large de quatre pays ou territoires, l’Égypte, Israël, Chypre et Gaza. Deux d’entre eux sont devenus producteurs et exportateurs de gaz naturel, l’Égypte et Israël. Au large de Gaza, le champ gazier de Gaza Marine n’a jamais été développé et il est très peu probable qu’il le soit prochainement en raison des très fortes tensions entre ...

The African Union Summit of February 2026 instructed the African Continental Free Trade Area (AfCFTA) Council of Ministers to negotiate a Protocol on Industrial Policy and Development. This work, handled without adequate preparation, is likely to reproduce the weaknesses it is meant to remedy. This paper is a conceptual mapping exercise, written to raise the preparatory questions before drafting begins, rather than to prescribe outcomes.It proceeds in five sections:1. It works towar ...

Various competing cross-border payment networks have become vehicles for geopolitical competition. As tensions have risen, many countries want to secure access to cross-border payment systems by joining with like-minded countries to form interoperable networks, either via tokenization or Instant Payment Systems (IPSs). Three major projects are under development, serving the strategic interests of the US, China and the Rest of the World—corresponding to the three trading spheres taki ...

This Paper was originally published on cgdev.org. Escalatory attacks on multilateral rules and institutions in this era of raw power politics have plunged international politics into uncharted territory. Traditional alliances have been fractured and new partnerships between unlikely bedfellows are emerging. No longer in transition, the post-World War II world order is in rupture. This paper examines international cooperation under these conditions and argues that a new "flexi-l ...

Predictions of American decline have become increasingly prevalent. The United States has run persistent trade deficits for decades, but its public debt now exceeds its annual economic output. Meanwhile, and new centers of industrial and technological power continue to emerge across Asia. Yet despite these developments, no country has so far replaced the United States as the main organizing power of the international economy. Conventional explanations explain this in terms of U.S. m ...

Les crises récentes au Moyen-Orient, notamment les attaques ciblant les navires commerciaux en mer Rouge et les tensions autour du détroit d'Ormuz, ont mis en évidence la vulnérabilité des principaux corridors stratégiques du commerce mondial. Plus qu'un bouleversement de l'organisation des échanges, elles accélèrent une transformation déjà engagée, fondée sur la recherche de chaînes de connectivité plus résilientes, la diversification des itinéraires commerciaux et le développement ...

Recent crises in the Middle East, particularly attacks targeting commercial vessels in the Red Sea and tensions surrounding the Strait of Hormuz, have highlighted the vulnerability of the main strategic corridors of global trade. Rather than fundamentally disrupting the organization of trade flows, these crises are accelerating an ongoing transformation driven by the search for more resilient connectivity chains, the diversification of trade routes, and the development of logistics ...

This Opinion was originally published in Project Syndicate and republished by The Edge Malaysia, DT Next, and The Japan Times. Data from a period in which both China and India pursued deliberate industrial policies show that neither country's development route is accessible to other countries. At best, their experience can alert policymakers to structural limitations and coordination problems that will require their own homegrown solutions.RABAT—What is the most reliable develo ...

This policy paper explores how China’s economic development model—rooted in pragmatism, long-term planning, and civilizational renewal—has become its most compelling soft power asset, particularly in the eyes of the Global South. While critically engaging with Joseph Nye’s original conception of soft power as a primarily cultural and normative force, the paper argues that China’s ability to transform itself from an impoverished postimperial state into the world’s largest trading nat ...

Thanks to the AI investment boom, the U.S. economy has performed well at the macroeconomic level. However, it is on an unsustainable fiscal and debt path. Mr. Trump’s fiscal policy in his second term has aggravated this trajectory. In turn, Mr. Trump’s tariff-based trade policy has failed to address what he sees as U.S. economic problems associated with the trade balance. Besides explaining why this has been the case, and what its implications are for the U.S. economy and the r ...