EU

  In late 2025, the European Union agreed to accelerate the removal of the customs-duty exemption for imported parcels valued under 150 euros, a technical change that will take effect from mid-2026. Under the new regime, low-value parcels entering the EU from third countries will be subject to a fixed customs duty, ending a long-standing […]

  The European Council summit of March 19-20 was overshadowed by the Iranian crisis in the Strait of Hormuz and Hungary blocking a 90 billion-euro loan to Ukraine. But crucially, European leaders also chose to move forward with the Savings and Investment Union. The initiative provides high-level political backing for tapping into an estimated 10 […]

  For much of the postwar era, macroeconomic policy rested on an intuition famously formalized by the Phillips curve: Economic slack, typically associated with high unemployment, and inflation tend to move in opposite directions. Weak growth cools prices; overheating pushes them up. Monetary policy can therefore stabilize one variable by leaning against the other. Stagflation […]

  For more than two decades, the EU–Mercosur agreement remained out of reach—endlessly negotiated, periodically revived, and repeatedly declared dead. Since its launch in 1999, it has weathered financial crises, political shifts, and environmental disputes on both sides of the Atlantic. If finally implemented, it would unite the European Union and the Mercosur bloc—Argentina, Brazil, Paraguay, and Uruguay—into […]

Introduction The US is on the move and the geopolitical scenario has moved quickly away from the certainties of the last ten to fifteen years. Oil could come down to a price well below US$50-per-barrel, with prices for other petrochemical products falling in concert. That would spark an economic upswing in the USA, lowering prices […]