Where the math is defensible.
Long-form research on live enterprise decisions. Publication is selective. Every number traces to a named source. No takes without evidence.
Australia critical minerals 2026: lithium, rare earths, and the IRA-aligned offtake
How Canberra is repositioning Greenbushes, Pilgangoora, and Lynas inside a US friend-shoring perimeter, and what trade analytics teams should model.
Australia entered 2026 as the indispensable upstream partner for an Inflation Reduction Act supply chain that wants to detach from China without admitting how dependent it remains. Spodumene from Greenbushes and Pilgangoora, separated rare earths from Lynas, and a thickening pipeline of nickel sulfate and refined copper now sit at the cen...
Bangladesh LDC graduation 2026: GSP loss arithmetic across EU, UK, Canada, Japan
When duty free access narrows in late 2026, knit and woven apparel exporters face a tariff cliff that varies sharply by destination. We translate the schedules into landed cost deltas and three planning scenarios.
Bangladesh exits the United Nations Least Developed Country category in November 2026, ending automatic Everything But Arms duty free entry into the European Union, Least Developed Country Tariff treatment in Canada, and equivalent Generalized System of Preferences carve outs in Japan and the United Kingdom. Apparel under Harmonized Syste...
Chile's Lithium Pivot: Reading the SQM-Codelco Joint Venture Through a Trade and Tariff Lens
The Boric administration's National Lithium Strategy is reshaping how Chilean brine reaches battery cathodes. We map the public-private split, DLE pilots, and the 2026 to 2028 trade scenarios our TradeWeave engine flags for sourcing teams.
Chile's National Lithium Strategy, announced by President Gabriel Boric in April 2023 and operationalized through the SQM and Codelco partnership in the Salar de Atacama, has shifted the world's second largest lithium producer from a pure private concession model toward a state anchored public-private regime. This brief unpacks the contra...
EU CBAM in 2026: the next round of sector and scope expansion
The transition phase ended in January, the definitive phase has begun, and Brussels is already debating which sectors and scopes come next. Exposure mapping and contract repricing cannot wait for the next regulation.
On January 1, 2026, the EU Carbon Border Adjustment Mechanism crossed from reporting into a definitive phase that requires importers of cement, iron and steel, aluminum, fertilizers, electricity, and hydrogen to surrender CBAM certificates priced against the EU ETS. The political debate has already moved on to what comes next: chemicals, ...
Greenland and Nordic Critical Minerals 2026: Rare Earths, Geopolitics, and Environmental Constraint
How Greenland's REE deposits, Sweden's Norra Karr restart, Norway's seabed cycle, and Finland's battery cluster reshape Western supply security under the EU Critical Raw Materials Act.
The Nordic and Arctic basin has moved from peripheral curiosity to the centerpiece of Western critical minerals strategy in 2026. Greenland's Kvanefjeld and Kringlerne deposits are shaped by US security ambitions, Danish sovereignty calculus, and Inuit environmental veto power. Sweden's Norra Karr permit revival, Norway's contested seabed...
Iran 2026: Oil Exports Under Sanctions, China Shadow Flows, Fiscal Arithmetic
Tehran is exporting more crude than at any point since 2018, but the gap between gross barrels lifted and net dollars repatriated has rarely been wider. We map the shadow fleet, OFAC enforcement cycles, and three scenarios for 2026 to 2027.
Iran is shipping roughly 1.65 to 1.80 million barrels per day of crude and condensate in early 2026, almost all of it to Chinese independent refiners via a shadow fleet of 350 plus tankers using ship-to-ship transfers off Malaysia, Singapore, and increasingly the Sea of Oman. Discounts to Brent have widened from 8 dollars per barrel in 20...
Korean chipmakers in 2026: Samsung and SK Hynix between US export controls and China demand
Korea's twin giants face a structural squeeze in 2026 as Washington tightens advanced compute controls while Beijing remains their largest single market and Texas and Indiana fabs come online.
Korea sits at the center of the 2026 semiconductor trade map. Samsung and SK Hynix together produce roughly 60 percent of the world's DRAM and 45 percent of NAND, while SK Hynix dominates HBM3e shipments to Nvidia. They also operate large memory fabs inside China that depend on Validated End User authorizations from the US Bureau of Indus...
Mexico nearshoring in 2026: where the math actually clears
Mexico's nearshoring narrative is real in some sectors and aspirational in others. The 2026 USMCA review window, capacity ceilings, and security risk separate the contracts that close from the press releases that do not.
Mexico has captured a meaningful share of US import demand displaced from China since 2018, but the gains are concentrated in autos, machinery, and a narrow band of electronics, not in textiles or labor intensive assembly. FDI flows reported by Banxico and Secretaria de Economia confirm rising commitments, yet greenfield announcements out...
Veldhoven Under the Microscope: ASML, Lithography Export Controls, and the 2026 Inflection
How Dutch licensing rules, EUV scarcity, and DUV exposure to China reshape the equipment supply chain through 2028.
ASML enters 2026 as the single most strategically constrained company in the global semiconductor supply chain. Its monopoly on extreme ultraviolet lithography, combined with Dutch and allied export controls layered since 2023, has converted a commercial backlog into a geopolitical instrument. This brief decomposes the Veldhoven order boo...
Peru Mining 2026: Copper Supply, Social Conflict, and the Tax Regime Test
Peru sits at the hinge of the global copper market. Las Bambas blockades, a recalibrated royalty regime, and the second-derivative of Chinese demand will decide whether 2.7 million tonnes is a floor or a ceiling for 2026 output.
Peru is the world's second largest copper producer and the marginal swing supplier into a market that the IEA, Wood Mackenzie, and the LME term-structure all describe as structurally tight through 2028. The country's 2026 trajectory hinges on three variables that rarely move in the same direction: mine site stability across the southern c...
Russia trade isolation 2026: where the sanctions math actually bites
Four years after the invasion, the headline restrictions look porous, but the second order effects on price realization, component quality, and capital costs are reshaping Russian industrial capacity in ways the trade data only partially captures.
Russia has rerouted roughly two thirds of its pre 2022 European trade through Asia, the Gulf, and a sprawling intermediation network running through Turkey, the UAE, and Central Asia. Headline volumes have largely recovered, yet the realized economics tell a different story. Crude discounts persist, the shadow fleet is aging into insuranc...
Section 232 metals review 2026: steel, aluminum, and the next round
Eight years after Proclamations 9704 and 9705, the Section 232 framework on steel and aluminum is heading into a 2026 review that will reshape exclusions, expand product coverage, and tighten the seam with BIS export controls.
Section 232 tariffs of 25 percent on steel and 10 percent on aluminum have now operated for nearly a decade, evolving from blanket measures into a patchwork of country deals, tariff rate quotas, and product exclusions. The 2026 review window opens against a backdrop of persistent global overcapacity, sharper BIS export controls on critica...
Solar PV Manufacturing 2026: China Oversupply, US Tariff Defense, India Capacity Ramp
Module prices have collapsed under Chinese overcapacity, while Washington and New Delhi build parallel domestic supply chains behind tariff walls and production credits. We map the new geography of solar manufacturing and translate it into procurement, hedging, and policy decisions for 2026 to 2028.
The solar photovoltaic industry enters 2026 with roughly twice the module manufacturing capacity that global demand can absorb, almost all of it concentrated in China. Module spot prices have fallen below ten cents per watt, wiping out margins for integrated producers and forcing capacity rationalization. The United States has responded w...
The 2026 tariff playbook: layered overlays, real exposures
The 2026 US tariff regime is not one policy. It is six overlapping overlays stacked on top of MFN duties, with effective rates that depend on origin classification, content thresholds, and the antidumping order book. The interesting question is not the headline rate, it is which overlay binds for a given product and supplier.
By the spring of 2026 the US import-duty stack runs at least six overlays deep. Section 301 China duties remain in force at the post-September 2024 USTR review schedule, with EV duties at 100 percent and lithium-ion EV battery duties at 25 percent. IRA Section 30D and Section 48D rules have moved foreign entity of concern enforcement from...
Vietnam Apparel Substitution Post China Decoupling: The Limits of the Easy Story
Vietnam now ships more knit and woven apparel to the United States than at any point in its history, but the value chain still runs through Chinese mills, and the substitution narrative buckles under rules of origin, port congestion, and FDI absorption ceilings.
The dominant story of the 2020s decoupling cycle is that apparel sourcing has migrated decisively from China to Vietnam. The headline import shares support the claim, but the BACI HS 61 and 62 panel, Vietnamese fabric input data, and on the ground capacity diagnostics tell a more layered story. Vietnam captured assembly volume, not the up...
Bangladesh ready-made garments under 2026 tariff stress
Bangladesh's ready-made garment sector enters 2026 carrying three simultaneous shocks. The US tariff schedule has hardened, EU EBA preferences are on a graduation timer, and forced-labor enforcement is migrating from policy text to seizure data. The interesting question is which factor cohorts survive intact and which lose orders to Vietnam, India, and Cambodia.
Bangladesh exported approximately 38.4 billion dollars in HS 61 (knitted apparel) and HS 62 (woven apparel) combined in 2024 per BACI and BGMEA reconciled data, second only to China among apparel suppliers and roughly 11.5 percent of global apparel trade. The United States and the European Union together absorbed about 70 percent of those...