Tag: Economic Conditions and Trends

The Next China Shock Is Here

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This is an edited transcript of “The Ezra Klein Show.” You can listen to the episode wherever you get your podcasts. The biggest economic story in the world right now is China’s growing dominance across advanced manufacturing sector after advanced manufacturing sector — from electric vehicles to batteries to solar panels to software like A.I. and open models, where they’ve become a world leader. What is happening here is very different than what we call the first China Shock, when China became a big exporter of things that were not…

China, Its Economy Stumbling, Signals Only Cautious Support

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Faced with weak consumer spending, persistently high youth unemployment and a tumbling stock market, China’s ruling Politburo signaled the need for stronger fiscal support and directed authorities to do more to tackle joblessness. In a broadly worded statement issued on Thursday after its annual midyear review of the economy, China’s Communist Party leadership urged the government to pursue “more proactive” tax and spending policies, and increase employment support. Politburo statements rarely detail specific policy measures, instead setting the broad direction for government action. Even by those standards, however, the statement…

China Emerges as a Relative Winner From Strait of Hormuz Crisis

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The war in Iran and the effective closure of the Strait of Hormuz have inflicted deep economic pain on many countries and sent some industries into a tailspin as they struggled with higher prices for energy, fertilizer and chemicals. It may also have given China a competitive edge. While the energy shocks and supply chain challenges stemming from the war have posed some challenges for China, the country has largely managed to avoid the kind of inflation spike and cascading economic and political effects that have afflicted many other nations.…

U.S. Will Waive Oil Sanctions That Have Long Crimped Iran

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The U.S. will lift sanctions on Iran’s oil industry when a preliminary deal is signed in what amounts to a major financial win for the country. Iran’s energy industry — the lifeblood of its economy — has been subject to financial restrictions for many years. Assuming its deal with the United States holds, Iran will probably be able to charge more for the oil it exports and sell that fuel to many more buyers. It is one area where the country appears likely to end the war on better footing…

China’s Spending Slowdown Deepens as Households Tighten Their Belts

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China’s consumer spending slowdown deepened in May as retail sales unexpectedly fell from a year earlier, in the latest sign that the country’s housing market crash has left millions of families reluctant to spend. Retail sales dropped 0.6 percent in May from the same month a year earlier, the National Bureau of Statistics said on Tuesday. It was the first year-over-year decline since December 2022, when a wave of coronavirus infections swept the country and kept consumers at home after Beijing abruptly dismantled its stringent “Covid zero” restrictions. Last month’s…

The Iran War Permanently Altered the Global Economy

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The framework deal between the United States and Iran sets the stage for an end to the bursts of violence and debilitating disruption of energy deliveries and trade in the Persian Gulf. But don’t expect economies around the globe to simply pick up where they left off before the United States and Israel began bombing Iran on Feb. 28. The war has set in motion changes that will be hard to reverse. The global energy order is being reshaped. The near shutdown in oil and gas deliveries from the Middle…

Europe Is Edging Closer to a Trade War With China. Here’s Why.

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Kaja Kallas, the top European Union diplomat, recently suggested that ending the continent’s dependence on China was like trying to cure a disease. “Chemotherapy” might be needed, she said, and it was likely to be painful. The comments were an example of the tone Europe is increasingly taking on China, the second-largest goods trading partner for the 27-nation European Union, after the United States. As Beijing adopts more aggressive trade policies and as imports from China into Europe soar, European leaders and companies are fretting over their reliance on Chinese…

What Plunging Pork Prices Say About China’s Economy

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Sun Haoyu, a hog farmer in Dalian, in northern China’s Liaoning Province, first noticed pork prices beginning to tumble late last year. With 3,000 hogs to care for, Mr. Sun said, he had “no choice but to tough it out,” relying entirely on loans and borrowed money to keep his operation afloat. But prices kept plummeting, and last month they hit a 16-year low. Now, across his region, many small farms are on the brink of collapse. “Many hog farmers can no longer hold out,” Mr. Sun said in an…

China’s Endless Housing Crisis Shows Faint Signs of Hope

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During China’s slow-moving housing crash, there have been brief stretches when prices stabilized, raising hopes that the multiyear slide was finally over. Each time, those reprieves have proved short-lived — pauses before the market resumed its decline. After housing prices in several of China’s biggest cities leveled off in the first few months of the year, the market is again at a crossroads. Analysts and economists are split over whether this constitutes a bottom for a downturn that has eroded much of the country’s middle-class savings or merely another lull…

How China’s Housing Crisis Has Global Consequences

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new video loaded: How China’s Housing Crisis Has Global Consequences <img src="https://www.chinastrategy.org/wp-content/uploads/2026/05/how-chinas-housing-crisis-has-global-consequences.png" data-testid="betamax-poster" sizes="(width Our Beijing bureau chief, Keith Bradsher, describes how China’s enormous housing crash is affecting economies all over the world. By Keith Bradsher, Rebecca Suner, Thomas Vollkommer, Joey Sendaydiego and Luke Piotrowski May 21, 2026 NYT