Trade

A container ship stacked high with shipping containers sails on the Savannah River at sunset, with a cable-stayed bridge and port cranes in the background.

America Imported a Record $421 Billion in August. Without Computers, Chips and Telecom Gear, Imports Are Down This Year.

The United States imported $420.8 billion of goods and services in August, the most in any month on record, and the trade deficit widened to $105.6 billion, the largest since March 2025. The last record was set by consumer goods rushed in ahead of tariffs. This one is made of capital goods. Four lines of hardware account for more than the whole rise in goods imports this year.

By Daniel Okafor 34 hours ago

A loaded container ship berthed under blue ship-to-shore cranes at a container terminal in Hai Phong, Vietnam, with a small fishing boat in the foreground.

World

China Says It Shipped America $258 Billion of Goods This Year. America Counted $158 Billion.

From January to July, China reported $258.1 billion of exports to the United States. The US Census Bureau recorded $158.3 billion of imports from China and Hong Kong. The difference, almost $100 billion, is five times its usual size, and a Peterson Institute analysis says tariff evasion is the most likely reason. Vietnam's figures run the other way.

By Alison Acosta October 3, 2026

A row of European Union flags on poles, seen against a pale sky.

The Long View

The EU Cannot Admit Canada, So It Has Invented a Category Instead

In her State of the European Union address in Strasbourg on Wednesday, Ursula von der Leyen invited Canada to become the EU's first associate member. The treaties make full membership impossible, because Canada is not a European state. What she is offering is a new category, to be negotiated, with a summit in Montreal next month.

By Daniel Okafor September 16, 2026

Stacked shipping containers at a port terminal.

The Long View

The Import Ban Is the Headline. The Services List Is the Instrument.

Britain has banned imports from Israeli settlements in the occupied West Bank and sanctioned individuals and companies involved in settlement expansion. The goods ban takes six to nine months and covers a small trade flow. The measures on construction, financing, real estate and advertising start sooner and reach further.

By Cory Chamberlain September 10, 2026

A worker guiding a crane lifting a bundle of steel tube in a distribution warehouse.

The Long View

The Number Arrived With the Coffins

Eurometal says 300,000 European manufacturing jobs will go before the end of this year, and marked the claim by carrying ten coffins around the European Commission. The stunt makes the figure easy to discount. The cost gap underneath it does not depend on the stunt being fair.

By Cory Chamberlain September 7, 2026

A red oil tanker on the horizon, seen beyond a large breaking wave in the foreground.

World

The Strait of Hormuz Has No Cape of Good Hope

When Suez closed, ships went around Africa. It cost more and took longer, and it worked. The Gulf offers no equivalent, which is why traffic through Hormuz has fallen by most of itself rather than moved somewhere else.

By Cory Chamberlain August 30, 2026

A gas processing plant lit at night, its pipework and flare stack picked out against a dark sky.

World

The Twenty-Year Gas Contract Is Being Renegotiated at Year Ten

The long-term contracts that financed the world's liquefied natural gas terminals assumed buyers who would take the volume for decades. Those buyers are now asking to be let out, and the terminals still have debt to service.

By Cory Chamberlain August 29, 2026

The red bow of a Coast Guard icebreaker pushing through broken sea ice, crew on the foredeck, an Antarctic coastline beyond.

World

One Heavy Icebreaker, Two Poles, and a Sea Route That Will Not Wait

Commercial interest in northern shipping routes is running well ahead of the capacity to escort, chart and rescue along them. The constraint is a shipyard problem that takes a decade to solve and was deferred for thirty years.

By Cory Chamberlain August 28, 2026

A FedEx truck driving past a rocky cliffside in autumn

Business

Nearshoring Moves From Conference Talk to Freight Manifest

After years of supply chain speeches, the physical evidence has arrived: factory construction, border logistics investment and trade flows reorganizing around proximity.

By Cory Chamberlain July 24, 2026

Trade

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