Germany sits at the center of Europe’s trade network, but it is not the only global force shaping the continent’s economy.

This map, via Visual Capitalist’s Gabriel Cohen, highlights the top trading partner of each European country based on International Monetary Fund data for Q1-Q3 2025.

Europe’s nearly $30 trillion economy is diverse and spans sectors such as energy, manufacturing, and agriculture, yet nearly half of all European countries rely on the same major trading partner for their imports and exports.

Germany: The Center of Europe

Germany is the top trade partner for 19 European countries, more than six times as many as the next closest countries, which each count just three.

This dominance reflects Germany’s central role in European manufacturing, supply chains, and intra-EU trade.

The table below shows how many European countries rely on each nation as their top trade partner, highlighting Germany’s outsized role in the region.

The Dutch, French, and Italian economies, among others, are closely linked to Germany, which is a major industrial player and consumer of primary goods ranging from crude oil to agricultural products. German cars and other high-value exports, meanwhile, have found success across European markets, especially within the 27-member European Union.

The following table shows each European country’s largest trade partner.

While Germany is Europe’s trade giant, its own largest trade partner is the Netherlands. The two countries have an annual trading relationship worth more than $200 billion, marked by extensive economic integration and joint supply chains.

The Netherlands, home to Europe’s largest seaport at Rotterdam, is also the main trade partner of neighboring Belgium, with which it forms part of the Benelux union.

Europe’s Other Top Trading Partners

Many European countries trade most with their largest neighboring country. For example, Malta’s main trade partner is Italy. Portugal’s top trade partner is Spain, while Spain’s is France.

The Baltics take this a step further: Latvia’s largest trade partner is Lithuania, while Lithuania’s is Poland. Estonia’s main trade partner is Finland, while Finland’s is Sweden. Poland and Sweden, in turn, maintain their largest trade relationships with Germany.

Some clear exceptions emerge. As the world’s largest economy, the U.S. is the primary trade partner of Ireland, the United Kingdom, and Switzerland.

The Rise of China to the East

While Germany dominates within Europe, China is expanding its influence along the continent’s eastern edge.

It is now the top trade partner for Russia, Ukraine, and Turkey, displacing traditional European partners such as Germany in some cases.

Chinese exports to Russia and Ukraine play a major role in the country’s relationship with both Eastern European nations. Beijing also imports significant amounts of primary goods from the two warring countries, including food and mineral products from Ukraine as well as hydrocarbons from Russia.

If you enjoyed today’s post, check out The $19 Trillion European Union Economy on Voronoi.

Via Remix News,

Since Ukraine’s population has shrunk dramatically, the army’s number one problem is no longer the lack of weapons, such as ballistic missiles and air defense systems, but the lack of soldiers to operate them, writes Világgazdaság.

The authorities in Kyiv, however, must bring the army size required by Commander-in-Chief Zelensky (800,000 active soldiers), and since the number of men eligible for military service (between the ages of 18 and 60) is slowly running out, the Ukrainian leadership is now trying to fill the gaps by conscripting women. 

As of early 2024, approximately 5 million men are considered to be of conscription age in Ukraine, reduced from about 8.7 million before the February 2022 invasion due to death and emigration.

And yet, many of these 5 million are exempt, unfit for service, or already serving.

Ukraine has long been shown to use forced conscription methods, with increasing violence, leading men to attempt to leave the country, often at the risk of their lives. 

Last year, Hungarian channel M1-Hirado recently ran a special compiling some of the latest footage of Ukrainians being beaten and shoved into vans in forced mobilization operations.

Citizens across the country have fought back since the war began, especially in areas populated by ethnic Hungarians, who feel they have been targeted.

As of now, there is no full mobilization of women.

According to lawyer Rostislav Kravec, the fact that women can also be included in the list of those who refuse military service or deserters could be a kind of “test” by the authorities.

This way, they can gauge how public opinion would react to the general, mandatory mobilization of women.

Meanwhile, although both sides have contended claims of territorial gains or losses, Russian armed forces are slowly pushing Ukrainians out of the fortified towns in Donbas. 

Read more here…

Authored by William Andersen via The Mises Institute,

Christianity Today recently published an article by Kristy Etheridge that was very critical of Canada’s Medical Assistance in Dying (MAID) program, something that would not be surprising, given the magazine’s evangelical Christian outlook on issues.

The article—again, not surprisingly—dealt mostly with how many Christian groups, and especially the Roman Catholic Church, have spoken out against Canada’s program and similar programs in Europe and in the US.

Wrote Etheridge:

Many Christians spoke out against assisted suicide in the 1990s when Dr. Jack Kevorkian became a household name for participating in dozens of suicides in Michigan. Since then, evangelical passion against assisted suicide seems to have waned. While evangelicals have left a void in many public spaces regarding end-of-life issues, the Catholic church has often stood in the gap. As more states and countries consider legalizing the practice, believers must raise their voices together in defense of life.

Christians who oppose assisted suicide affirm that life is sacred. God created human beings in his image (Gen. 1:27), and we do not have the right to destroy ourselves or each other.

Brad East, writing in Christianity Today, noted:

The church’s moral teaching has always held that murder—defined as the intentional taking of innocent life—is intrinsically evil. It follows that actively intending the death of an elderly or sick human being and then deliberately bringing about that death through some positive action, such as the administration of drugs, is always and everywhere morally wrong.

Promoters of assisted suicide always couch their arguments in the language of compassion for those suffering from terminal illness, and 11 US states also permit assisted suicide, all of them except for Montana being dominated by the Democratic Party. This practice always has been couched in the language of “death with dignity,” and it generally has strong support from the political left, although the hard-left socialist publication, Jacobin, recently had an article by Jeremy Appel critical the circumstances under which some Canadians choose suicide, declaring:

But the legalization of MAiD has brought to the fore some disturbing moral calculations, particularly with its expansion in 2019 to include individuals whose deaths aren’t “reasonably foreseeable.” This change opened the floodgates for people with disabilities to apply to die rather than survive on meager benefits.

I’ve come to realize that euthanasia in Canada represents the cynical endgame of social provisioning within the brutal logic of late-stage capitalism — we’ll starve you of the funding you need to live a dignified life, demand you pay back pandemic aid you applied for in good faith, and if you don’t like it, well, why don’t you just kill yourself?

The problem with my previous perspective was that it held individual choices as sacrosanct. But people don’t make individual decisions in a vacuum. They’re the product of social circumstances, which are often out of their control.

It is not surprising to see Jacobin blaming capitalism for something done within the confines of a socialist system, but socialists go by the mindset that says if something is bad, it is the fault of capitalism, since socialism produces only happy results. But Appel is not wrong in pointing out that what began as a way ostensibly to end the suffering of terminally ill people has morphed into a program responsible for one in 20 Canadian deaths, with more than 100,000 people killed since the program began a decade ago, as Canada’s government did away with the requirements that only those with terminal illnesses could request doctor-assisted suicide.

Indeed, the government is happy to recommend MAID to people for a variety of reasons. An 84-year-old woman who visited a Vancouver emergency room with back pain was offered MAID by an attending physician, a suggestion the woman turned down. The government is even expanding its program to cover people with mental illness, including veterans who experienced PTSD as a result of trauma suffered in combat in places like Afghanistan, with MAID eligibility for these people coming in 2027. Appel writes:

In another instance, retired corporal Christine Gauthier, who is paraplegic and competed for Canada at the 2016 Rio de Janeiro Paralympics and the Invictus Games, was offered assisted suicide, with Veterans Affairs offering to provide her with the necessary equipment.

Gauthier had been fighting for five years to have Veterans Affairs provide her with a wheelchair ramp. They wouldn’t provide the ramp, but they would give her the means to end her life.

Most Critics Fail to Recognize the Real Reason Maid Exists

There are plenty of religious and moral reasons to criticize this kind of a program. Although many libertarians have openly supported assisted suicide (with some exceptions), it is important to separate the “right to die” movement from programs like MAID in Canada and in Europe, such as the Netherlands, which has had an assisted suicide law on the books for more than 20 years. Whether or not one supports such policies, as bad as many believe they are, it becomes much worse when government healthcare agencies are the entities recommending that people have doctors put them to death, as there is no way a program like this does not become coercive.

In a country like the US, the government cannot refuse medical care to someone who does not seek another doctor to end one’s life. In Canada and most European countries, that is exactly what the government can do. While entities as far apart religiously as many religious groups and Jacobin might decry the same things—for different reasons—they are united in their support for the welfare state and state control over medical care.

The Christianity Today writers and others in the evangelical camp such as World Magazine tend to frame MAID as a purely ethical issue, and while ethics obviously play an important role in all of this, none of these writers seem to understand that Canada’s government-controlled system has made good medical care even more scarce than it should be. It should be obvious even to someone like Appel that Canada’s system reduces the amount of available care, which should surprise no one who is familiar with socialism.

As noted before, many of complaints against assisted suicide are rooted in a belief that people choose to have medical providers kill them is because they lack resources. Appel writes:

An excellent piece from Global News reporters Brennan Leffler and Marianne Dimain, headlined “How poverty, not pain, is driving Canadians with disabilities to consider medically-assisted death,” notes the “excruciating cycle of poverty” that leads disabled people to choose assisted death, rather than live a life filled with barriers to their existence.

Appel then declares more government spending as the solution:

We’ve let the MAiD genie out of its bottle. There’s no going back. We must ensure that our health care systems have sufficient resources to guarantee everyone, regardless of ability or mental health, a dignified existence.

Appel, however, has it wrong. Poverty supposedly does not matter in the Canadian system because no one pays for medical care. This isn’t a case of Joe dying of liver disease because he can’t afford a liver transplant; this is about Canada’s system having shortages of doctors, equipment, medicine, and all of the other components of healthcare, and shortages are a feature of socialism.

In other words, the way to keep people from using the medical establishment from taking their own lives is to expand medical care, and since outfits like Jacobin see government as the only legitimate provider of health care, that means pouring even more tax revenues into the medical system. Yet, it should be clear that government control of the medical system—especially in Canada—has very predictable results: shortages and denial of care. 

More than 20 years before Canada instituted its MAID program, Jane Orient—a practicing physician—predicted that the Canadian system would find that the premature death of patients would provide financial savings to the program.

Writing about government-provided care, she likened it to providing only freeways to move automobile traffic:

Wouldn’t it be wonderful to have all the medical care you needed or wanted, without ever worrying about the bill?

And wouldn’t it be wonderful to drive to work every day without ever paying a toll or stopping at a red light?

The second question usually provokes much more critical thought than the first. Before people vote the money to build a freeway through their downtown, a lot of inconvenient objections are raised.

The first is this: Do we want to tear up the main business district of town?

The idea of “comprehensive health care reform” to “assure universal access” should stimulate the same thought process. To build such a system, you start by destroying the insurance and medical system that we already have.

She continued:

When we build a freeway, we don’t necessarily destroy all the other roads. In Britain and Germany, private medicine is allowed to coexist with nationalized medicine. But in Canada, it isn’t. If you’re a Canadian and want something the government isn’t willing to pay for, or you want it now instead of three years from now, you have to go to the United States.

A lot of proponents of “universal access” want to close the private escape hatch. They want no other roads, just the freeway. Of course, there may be some back alleys or secret tunnels or special facilities for Congressmen, but those won’t provide American-class medical care to ordinary folk.

Some think we don’t need other roads if we have a freeway. But remember what a freeway is: a controlled access road.

Orient continued her freeway analogy, noting that the Canadian system is not built on ensuring better care, but rather promoting equal care, even if that care might be substandard or even non-existent:

In Canada, you don’t have to pay to get medical care. In fact, you are not allowed to pay. Once the global budget is reached in Canada, that’s it. The on-ramps are closed. It doesn’t matter if you have money. Hospital beds are empty for lack of money to pay nurses, and CT scanners sit idle all night for lack of money to pay a technician. But if some people are allowed to pay, Canadians fear that some people might get better care than others.

In other words, Canadian care is more about people equally sharing scarcity than being able to get medical help for their ailments. She noted that the government systems like what we see in Canada routinely deny care for serious illnesses and medical problems, while promoting euthanasia as a solution:

The roadblocks are at the exits that lead to the hospital. The global budgeters “contain costs”—ration health care—by denying those things that you do need insurance to pay for: heart surgery, radiation treatments for cancer, hip replacements, things like that. Out of “compassion,” reformers may open another exit: the one that leads to the cemetery. Do you think it’s accidental that euthanasia and “universal access” are on the agenda at the same time? When government gets involved in providing health care, health care must be rationed.

Given that medical care is a scarce good, there always will be tradeoffs and some form of rationing. However, government systems discourage entrepreneurship and are more likely to be restrictive, increasing the scarcity problems and making it even more difficult for people to receive care that can make the difference between life and death.

Advocates of state-sponsored medical care claim that rationing by price is immoral, but rationing by bureaucratic decree is a moral imperative.

Thus, if Joe were to die because he could not afford a heart transplant, that would be immoral, but if he were to die because the government agency making those decisions denied that care, that would satisfy all moral criteria.

Conclusion

Assisted suicide is on the increase in places like Canada because it permits the government to deny medical care in the name of compassion and “dying with dignity.” It should not be surprising to see increased rates of doctor-sponsored killing running parallel with more government involvement with health care.

As we see more state involvement with medical care, the relative scarcity problems with health care will increase, and as medical scarcity increases, physician-assisted suicide rates also will rise. Death is already built into socialism, so we should not be surprised to see practitioners and advocates of socialized medicine welcoming the Grim Reaper as one of their own.

Perhaps the greatest irony is that the mainstream Christian groups (such as the Presbyterian Church USA and the Episcopal Church) that openly support the Canadian system and demand it be implemented in the U.S. are silent about the proliferation of medical suicide incidents, either ignoring the problem altogether or quietly supporting it.

Because they are blind to the negative effects of the massive state-sponsored intervention they support, their response to MAID and other assisted suicide movements is to call for more of the same.

Just as Europe’s neoliberal establishment was celebrating the downfall of Hungary’s Orban and his replacement with… another hard-line ant- immigrationist, it got some bad news on Sunday, as Bulgaria’s pro-Russian former President Rumen Radev was set for a runaway victory in the election and may even secure a parliamentary majority in the poorest EU state, ‌exit polls showed, potentially ending years of weak coalition governments and altering the European Union member’s foreign policy.

Rumen Radev, former Bulgarian president and leader of Progressive Bulgaria coalition, votes during the parliamentary election, in Sofia, Bulgaria, April 19, 2026. Reuters

An updated exit poll conducted by Sofia-based Alpha Research showed Radev’s Progressive Bulgaria with 44%, far ahead of the long-dominant GERB party, led by former Prime Minister Boyko Borissov, at 12.5%.

If confirmed, the performance, which outstripped opinion polls, would mark one of the strongest results by ​a single party in a generation, sideline a party that has ruled on and off for decades, and may see an end to the ​instability that has resulted in eight elections in five years.

“Progressive Bulgaria won decisively. This is a victory of hope over ⁠distrust, a victory of freedom over fear, and finally, if you will, a victory of morality,” Radev said of the exit poll results during a press conference.

Radev, ​a eurosceptic and former fighter pilot who opposes military support for Ukraine’s war effort against Moscow, stepped down from the presidency in January to run in the parliamentary election, ​which comes after mass protests forced out the previous government in December.

According to Reuters, Radev rode a wave of frustration with political instability in the Balkan country of 6.5 million people, where voters are sick of corruption and veteran parties that have dominated politics for decades. Alpha Research put turnout at 47% with one hour of voting to go, up from the 39% total in ​the last election in October 2024.

“There is now an opportunity for the things people have been hoping to see change to actually become visible,” Evelina Koleva, a ​manager at digital marketing company in Sofia, told Reuters.

Final election results are expected on Monday.

In his campaign, Radev drew comparisons with Hungary’s pro-Kremlin former Prime Minister ‌Viktor Orban ⁠when he talked about improving relations with Moscow and resuming the free flow of Russian oil and gas into Europe. He also criticized the EU for relying too heavily on renewable energy.

It is not clear how much his views will impact the foreign policy of Bulgaria, a NATO member on the EU’s southeastern flank which joined the euro zone in January – a move Radev has criticised.

He said he would be willing to work on judicial reform with the pro-European reformist We Continue ​the Change-Democratic Bulgaria (PP-DB) coalition, which came third ​in the Alpha Research exit polls ⁠with 11.3%. A minority government was also an option in the 240-seat parliament, Radev said.

“Bulgaria will make efforts to continue its European path,” he said. “But a strong Bulgaria and strong Europe… needs pragmatism because Europe has fallen victim to its own ​ambition to be a moral leader in a world without rules.”

GERB’s Borissov appeared to concede in a post on ​Facebook, but added a ⁠note of caution: “To win the elections is one thing; to govern is quite another. Elections decide who comes first, but negotiations will decide who governs.”

Bulgaria has developed rapidly since the fall of communism in 1989 and joined the European Union in 2007. Life expectancy has risen sharply, unemployment is the lowest in the EU, and the economy has ⁠greater safeguards ​since joining the euro zone in January. But it lags behind other EU countries in many metrics, ​and graft remains endemic, including in elections, where vote-buying is rife.

The cost of living has become a particular issue since Bulgaria adopted the euro. The previous government fell amid protests against a new ​budget proposing tax increases and higher social security contributions.

Authored by Andrew Korybko,

Both benefit from this since the US wants to avoid India sliding into turmoil amidst the global energy crisis and possibly offsetting its envisaged role as a counterweight of sorts to China while more energy revenue from India preemptively averts Russia’s potentially disproportionate dependence on China.

The Treasury Department renewed the US’ Russian oil sanctions waiver on Friday two days after Secretary Scott Bessent said that this wouldn’t happen.

It remains unclear what exactly accounts for this flip-flop, but it’s possible that Trump 2.0 concluded that a deal with Iran might not be reached as soon as some optimists expected, so it’s better to keep Russian oil on the global market for another month to maintain global economic stability. Russia and the US’ shared Indian partner gains the most from this.

The IMF recently assessed that India will remain the world’s fastest-growing major economy for this year and the next at 6.5% growth in both, and maintaining this is imperative for both Russia’s and the US’ interests. That’s because India balances between both, having been perceived as tilting a bit closer towards the US in February after the interim Indo-US trade deal was agreed to but then recalibrating back to Russia last month due to the global systemic consequences of the Third Gulf War.

As was explained here in March when the US issued its Russian oil sanctions waiver for India before making it global, “The new world order that it envisages has India playing a prominent geo-economic and geopolitical role, especially vis-à-vis China, ergo why it temporarily waived the sanctions on Russian oil purchases in order to avoid India sliding into turmoil and possibly offsetting this scenario if it didn’t.” As for Russia, it supplies India not just to make a profit, but also to advance its own strategic goals.

These relate to relying on India as an alternative pressure valve from Western sanctions pressure for preemptively averting potentially disproportionate dependence on China and bolstering India’s new tri-multipolarity balancing act for accelerating the global systemic transition to complex multipolarity. Far from feeling like India “betrayed” it as Pepe Escobar falsely claimed last month, Russia recently offered to supply India with as much energy as it wants, which it obviously wouldn’t do if it felt “betrayed”.

On that topic, India had scaled back its import of Russian oil in January to 1.06 million barrels per day amidst speculation about its compliance with US sanctions as its trade talks with the US were nearing their end, but then nearly doubled this last month. According to the Times of India citing Kpler, “India’s purchases of Russian crude reached 1.98 million barrels per day in March”. April’s were 1.57 million barrels per day but are expected to rise next month after maintenance at a major refinery is completed.

India is therefore expected to remain the primary beneficiary of the US’ renewed sanctions waiver, which advances the US’ and Russia’s goals that were earlier described, but the US is also expected to end this policy and resume its secondary sanctions threats against Russia’s oil clients in the event of peace with Iran. Lavrov warned the world last month about Trump 2.0’s plans for global dominance, especially in the energy industry, which could take the form of pushing through the “DROP Act” in pursuit of this goal.

It’s premature to predict whether India would comply with future US pressure to once again scale back its import of Russian oil since it’s required to fuel its economic rise much more than the interim Indo-US trade deal is. At the same time, if Pakistan helps mediate a US-Iranian peace deal, India might want to remain in the US’ good graces to prevent the US from pivoting to Pakistan at its expense.

The interplay between these four and China, the US’ strategic rival, will determine the future of regional geopolitics.

Authored by Christoph Gisiger via themarket.ch,

Economist Barry Eichengreen is one of the foremost experts on the global financial system. His new book examines 2,500 years of international currency history. In this interview, he discusses the fading hegemony of the dollar, outlines the coming global monetary order, and explains his growing concerns.

King Dollar is staging a comeback. Since the start of the Iran war, the greenback has been in demand as a safe-haven asset. The losses following the price slide at the beginning of the year against the Swiss franc, euro, and other major currencies have been recuperated.

Yet, although the dollar accounts for around 60% of global foreign exchange reserves and dominates more than half of world trade, its hegemony appears more fragile than ever.

“From the war in Iran to the tariff chaos and domestic political uncertainty, I fear that the Trump administration’s actions are prompting the rest of the world to reduce its dependence on the dollar; “most obviously in Europe but elsewhere as well”

– Barry Eichengreen.

This is the conclusion reached by Barry Eichengreen. In his new book, “Money Beyond Borders: Global Currencies from Croesus to Crypto” , the US economist examines the long history of international currencies, from ancient coins to blockchain technology. He demonstrates that the same factors contributing to the widespread use of a dominant currency ultimately lead to its replacement.

As the professor at the University of California, Berkeley, and profound expert on the global monetary system argues, the dollar is now on the downside of this cycle. A major reason for its downturn is that political institutions in the US are weakened, including high public debt and attacks on the independence of the central bank. Likewise, America is no longer a reliable partner for international alliances.

“To me, the argument that the dollar is in a secular decline as the dominant global currency remains intact,” says Eichengreen.

In this wide-ranging interview, which has been lightly edited for length and clarity, he applies historical examples of leading currencies to the present and identifies potential winners and losers should intensify the flight from dollar assets.

Contrary to increasing doubts, the dollar has proven itself as a safe haven since the start of the Iran war. From a historical perspective, what are the central characteristics of a global reserve currency ?

There are some commonplace arguments about the foundations of an international currency. They typically center around the importance of economic size, commercial trading, preeminence, and economic and financial stability, including the stability of the currency itself. In my book, however, I also advance some unconventional arguments; domestic factors such as rule of law, separation of powers, central bank independence as well as representation for investors and creditors. Furthermore, I examine the role of international politics and the importance of alliances, which until recently haven’t gotten the same attention.

What can be derived from this for the future of the dollar? Does the current recovery mark a sustainable turnaround? Or does the long-term downward trend that began in autumn 2022 remain intact?

I would anticipate a further decline because we have learned something new and important from the last year and a half: that those domestic political institutions in the United States are weaker. They’re more fragile than we had concluded in earlier, more complicated years. Consequently, I think the foundations of dollar dominance are weaker than previously anticipated, and that the dollar is likely to continue ceding market share globally over time.

Why are aspects like the rule of law and strong, independent institutions important for a global reserve currency?

They are a key pillar of every dominant global currency in history, all the way back to the Roman Republic where the senate was composed of property owners and other elites who were interested in monetary stability. In political democracies, citizens maintain the power to vote out governments that fail to preserve monetary stability. So I worry that observers look at the United States and ask: if Donald Trump chooses to put his signature on dollar bills today, and then seeks to debase or devalue the US currency tomorrow, who is going to stop him? Will Congress stand up to him? Or the courts? It’s very worrisome.

Within the Trump administration, however, it is argued that the dollar’s function as a global reserve currency is a burden for America. How did this play out with previous leading currencies?

History suggests that widespread global use of a currency can have negative side effects. The currency tends to be stronger than it would otherwise be, which can create headwinds for domestic industry and exporters. You saw this in 13th- and 14th-century Florence, in the 17th-century Netherlands, and arguably in early 20th-century Britain. So I wouldn’t dismiss it entirely, but a currency’s value on the foreign exchange markets ranks about tenth on the list of fundamental factors determining the competitiveness of a country and its economy. Far more important are education and training of the workforce, investment in the capital stock and infrastructure, the innovative capacity of the economy, and the legal framework as I just mentioned in the context of the United States today.

What consequences does this have for the financial markets ?

At the beginning of 2025, all the discussion was about a “Mar-a-Lago accord,” the “debasement trade,” and the idea that the US might do something to devalue the dollar. This undermined the dollar’s appeal to foreign central banks, corporations, and investors because they faced the risk of capital losses on their dollar-denominated assets. More recently, the discussion has shifted toward geopolitical uncertainties. For Europe, for example, it has become increasingly important to be more self-sustaining, more sovereign over its money and finances. This includes reducing dependence not only on the dollar itself, but also on the US correspondent banking system and the SWIFT network.

Nevertheless, the dollar’s recovery has surprised many market participants in recent weeks .

The point I would make regarding the dollar’s apparent recovery so far in 2026 is that in the first two trading days following the outbreak of the war in Iran, the currency strengthened by approximately 1.5%. That reaction was typical of the dollar’s role as a safe haven, but 1.5% was a small gain by historical standards given the magnitude of the shock. Against the backdrop of this geopolitical and military turbulence, the surprise is that the dollar has not strengthened any more. So to me, the argument that the dollar is in a secular decline as the dominant global currency remains intact.

You mentioned at the beginning that military supremacy was one aspect of a leading currency in the past. How important is this factor?

Looking back at the 2500-year history of international currencies – from ancient Greece to the Roman Republic to the Dutch Republic to when Britannia ruled the waves in the 19th century –, economic or commercial power and military security have always gone together. They have always combined to support the cross-border use of the currency of that preeminent commercial and military power. Today, it seems that this kind of geopolitical leverage has two elements: first, you must possess a vast arsenal of planes and missiles; Second, you must also have a coherent military strategy. For instance, the Dutch East India Company was not only a trading power but also, de facto, a military power that secured the Low Countries’ ports in the Dutch East Indies.

How does that stand today, considering the US actions in the Middle East?

It is evident that the US government lacks a solution for ensuring safe maritime traffic through the Strait of Hormuz. So the fact that the US has a lot of planes and missiles is not sufficient. You have to have a coherent strategy, and that strategy should have, number one, a coalition of countries behind it – that’s where alliance politics come in again – and a coherent objective. It’s clear the US lacks those two elements in the present instance.

What is a historical example of how a reliable alliance policy promotes the status of a global reserve currency?

The best example is the United States itself after World War II, when the dollar durably became the dominant global currency. We provided dollars to our allies through the Marshall Plan and helped to build NATO in order to strengthen our political relations with those partners. So in the 1960s, when the dollar pegged to gold at $35 an ounce came under pressure, the governments in Japan and Germany supported the dollar because they were our alliance partners, relying on the US for military and geopolitical support. That underscores the intersection of geopolitics and global finance in cementing international alliances. We were a trustworthy alliance partner which solidified the dollar’s role.

Today, that is no longer so certain. President Trump describes NATO as a paper tiger and threats that the US could withdraw from the alliance. As an economist, what do you think about that?

The importance of not succumbing to the temptation to think like an economist. We are trained to look for a coherent strategy on part of the US administration; and that also applies to maintaining the global role of the dollar. At one point last year, Trump has threatened the risk of increased tariffs on other countries if they moved away from the dollar. But almost the next day, he reiterated his desire for the Fed to cut interest rates and suggested how a weaker dollar would be good for the US. So I don’t think there is really a coherent strategy here. From the war in Iran to the tariff chaos and domestic political uncertainty, I fear that the Trump administration’s actions are prompting the rest of the world to reduce its dependence on the dollar; most obviously in Europe but elsewhere as well.

In your book, you also explain how superpowers in the past overextended themselves financially with military spending, which ultimately led to the decline of their currency. How great is this risk for the US, especially as President Trump wants to massively increase the military budget in the next fiscal year?

In 2021, I published a book with co-authors called «In Defense of Public Debt» . Between then and now, my view of the debt situation in the US has grown darker. I’ve modified my views in light of interest rates that are significantly higher today, as they make the US debt situation increasingly problematic. And now, we’re on top of that more military spending. Given the deep political polarization, Congress is unable to reach a durable compromise that would begin closing the budget deficit. On all those grounds, continued high polarization, increased military spending, and higher interest rates, the debt trajectory is more troubling. This will be a powerful factor affecting the decisions of central bank reserve managers and others as they determine which currencies to hold in their portfolios.

But then the question arises: what are the alternatives? China, for example, is investing heavily in expanding its military power, but the renminbi’s share of global foreign exchange reserves remains low and has even declined slightly recently.

The Chinese economy is continuing to grow faster than the US economy, and other countries use the renminbi in their trade with China. However, politics are an obstacle to China’s aspirations to internationalize its currency and establish it as a true first-class rival to the dollar. So the questions regarding US politics apply to China even more powerfully. China lacks the separation of powers, and the rule of law is subject to whatever the Politburo and the president decide tomorrow morning it should be. Furthermore, there is no central bank independence. Since I don’t see China’s political system changing anytime soon, I doubt central banks and corporate treasurers around the world feel comfortable about parking their reserves in renminbi in Shanghai, in Chinese banks.

The independence of monetary policy is also a hot topic in the US right now. What can be expected from Kevin Warsh as the next head of the Federal Reserve?

I don’t have expectations yet because he has a mixed track record, and his signals have been conflicting. He urged the Fed to tighten early during the global financial crisis, which would have been premature. He also had questions about quantitative easing during the global liquidity and deflation crisis when it was essential. More recently, he has flipped from supporting higher interest rates to calling for lower ones. Assuming he gets confirmed, he will be caught between a rock and a hard place. The hard place is that inflation will be going up to more than 4%, if you believe the OECD, and the rock is Donald Trump.

Which is the greater risk for the Fed regarding the rise in energy prices: an inflationary surge or a slowdown in economic growth?

The answer depends on your view of whether the energy shock and the rise in inflation are temporary or persistent. If the shock is temporary, the Fed should look through it and refrain from raising interest rates because inflation will subside. However, if the shock persists due to the war, the Fed must raise interest rates to dampen down inflation and preserve its credibility. It can’t achieve anything else, including fighting unemployment, if it doesn’t maintain its anti-inflationary credibility first in the face of a permanent price shock.

Let’s try to look a bit further ahead. What can be learned from 2,500 years of international currency history about the future of the financial system?

If we have enough time, a few decades, I could envision a smooth transition in which the dollar’s dominance declines toward a more multipolar global monetary and financial system. The dollar might then share its global role with other major currencies such as the Chinese renminbi as China opens its financial markets and deepens its financial systems’ liquidity. The euro could also gain prominence, if the European Union achieves three objectives: completing the capital markets union, building a defense capability commensurate with dominant currency status, and moving towards the issuance of EU bonds, serving as the bedrock of euro-denominated portfolios. The third step, issuing more EU bonds, would require amending the Treaty of the European Union, which is hard to do. Additionally, digital technologies can make non-traditional reserve currencies better tradable. This includes the Swiss franc, the South Korean won, the Australian dollar, the New Zealand dollar, the Singapore dollar, and the Scandinavian currencies. These could complement the currencies of the major economies, at least on the margin.

In this context, what are the prospects for cryptocurrencies like Bitcoin?

Blockchain and distributed ledger technology represent an important innovation, offering alternatives to the dollar by providing payment rails that can be used to move tokens denominated in various currencies across borders for international transactions. The question is: what will run on those rails? Will it be plain vanilla cryptocurrencies like Bitcoins, stable coins, central bank digital currencies, or tokenized bank deposits? I would bet on a combination of central bank digital currencies and tokenized deposits. For example, there are lots of deposits in Swiss banks that can be tokenized and used for cross-border transactions through efficient distributed ledger technologies.

And what about gold? Central banks have been increasingly diversifying their reserves with the precious metal for several years.

Gold is there, although I would not expect its role to grow. You can only use it in financial transactions when it’s stored at the Bank of England, the London Metal Exchange or the New York Fed. Yet, many central banks have been repatriating their gold for security reasons. Once repatriated, gold becomes sterile: it cannot be swapped or used as collateral for international financial transactions. So, we’ve learned in the last few weeks that the price of gold can go down, not only up; that it’s a volatile asset and risky to hold.

What happens if there isn’t enough time for a smooth transition to a more broadly diversified monetary system?

This is where my book ends. If confidence in the dollar is lost abruptly, there will be no alternative at scale, at which point interest rates will rise sharply and the liquidity needed for cross-border trade and finance will dry up. Essentially, 21st-century globalization would be at risk under such a scenario.

What probability would you assign to such a scenario?

The dollar’s dominance is much like a massive iceberg melting slowly due to global warming. This process typically occurs at the edges and proceeds gradually, but a large chunk can suddenly break off. Figuratively speaking, the danger lies in the possibility that this melting could accelerate dramatically in response to external events, triggering a collapse. I cannot provide you a probability or a date, but I can share my feeling that we’re closer to this nightmare scenario than at any other time in my life. I think we should all be much more worried than we have been in the past.

What should investors take away from this conversation?

I have to have two bits of advice. The first is that investors should read more history with an eye toward understanding the differences between the present and the future from the past. History repeats in different ways; studying it allows investors to discern unique shifts in economic structures and politics within the current conjuncture. The second bit of advice comes from my dissertation advisor, who was James Tobin at Yale. He won the Nobel Prize in the early 1980s for his contributions to portfolio theory. During his press conference on winning the prize, a reporter asked him to explain portfolio theory in non-technical terms. Tobin responded simply: “Don’t put all your eggs in one basket.”

While quantifying the total number of surveillance cameras in the world remains an almost impossible task, IHS Markit suggested that there would be around 1 billion surveillance cameras worldwide

This visualization, via Visual Capitalist, ranks major global cities by the number of CCTV cameras per 1,000 people using data from Comparitech, showing where surveillance is most concentrated.

China is the most-surveilled nation overall, with 700 million cameras (494 per 1,000 people), though per-city data is unavailable. That’s almost one camera for every two people.

While China yet again dominates this study for its vast surveillance tactics, there are other countries whose surveillance tactics are of growing concern, including several Indian, Russian, and South Korean cities, Lahore, Kabul, Singapore, London, Istanbul, New York, and Los Angeles.

Indian cities dominate the rankings, with Hyderabad (79 cameras per 1,000 people) leading globally.

Eight of the top 10 cities are Asian.

The other two most surveilled cities are in Russia.

London is the top ‘western’ nation on the list with 13.4 cameras per 1,000 people) with New York City topping the list for American cities with 10.12 cameras per 1,000 people).

A number of cities have added (or are adding and/or are encouraging businesses/private residents to add) private surveillance cameras to police networks as part of crime-fighting initiatives. In some cases, these cameras are mapped so police can see where security cameras are and can request footage accordingly. In other cases, police are being given direct access to live feeds from these cameras.

So, where cameras had previously been used for private security purposes only, thousands of these are now being accessed by police, which poses a significant risk to civilians’ privacy.

Authored by Bryan Jung via PJMedia.com,

U.S. Transportation Secretary Sean Duffy declared the Federal Aviation Administration’s (FAA) campaign to recruit video gamers as air traffic controllers “wildly successful,” after over 6,000 applicants submitted forms within the first twelve hours of the program’s launch.

The FAA is reporting thousands of applicants applied after its unconventional new recruitment initiative launched on April 17, with the application portal reaching its cap at 8,000 candidates.

The Trump administration is currently looking to address a persistent nationwide shortage of air traffic controllers, as many of the most experienced have retired in recent years.

“To reach the next generation of air traffic controllers, we need to adapt,” Duffy said in a statement. 

“This campaign’s innovative communication style and focus on gaming taps into a growing demographic of young adults who have many of the hard skills it takes to be a successful controller.”

The recruitment drive features a high-energy promotional video and messaging that frames job requirements as “mission objectives,” which is designed to appeal to Gen Z applicants. 

Duffy said that skills common among gamers, such as rapid decision-making, sustained concentration, and the ability to manage multiple inputs simultaneously could be applied to directing air traffic.

“If you think about what gamers are doing on screens, they’re talking, reacting, and managing a lot at once — that’s very similar to what happens in a control tower,” Duffy said during remarks in Washington.

The push comes as the FAA confronts a shortfall of roughly 3,500 air traffic controllers, a gap that has developed over the past decade amid rising demand for air travel. 

Federal data shows the number of controllers has declined even as flight volume has increased, placing additional strain on existing personnel and raising broader concerns about system resilience.

To attract candidates, the agency is highlighting the role’s long-term earning potential, noting that certified controllers can earn more than $155,000 annually within three years, but stress that certification remains highly selective and rigorous.

Applicants must be U.S. citizens under the age of 31 and fluent in English, while those who accepted face a multi-stage evaluation process, including the Air Traffic Skills Assessment, medical examinations, and security clearances. 

Even then, only about 2 percent ultimately complete the training pipeline, which can take between two and five years.

Industry stakeholders have largely welcomed the campaign as a creative way to broaden the applicant pool. 

The air traffic controllers union has expressed support for the program, citing the need to bring in new talent amid ongoing staffing pressures, but cautions that it is not a quick fix due to the significant time required to complete training and certification.

Some aviation experts caution that the influx of applicants will not immediately resolve the shortage, as the lengthy training process and high attrition rates mean that even a successful recruitment effort may take years to translate into fully certified controllers in control towers and radar facilities.

The initiative arrives at a time of heightened scrutiny of aviation safety and operations, with recent incidents drawing attention to a decline in highly trained personnel. 

While aviation officials maintain that the system remains safe, they acknowledge that staffing remains a critical issue.

For now, the FAA’s gamer-focused outreach appears to be achieving its immediate goal: capturing the attention of a new generation of potential recruits. 

Whether that interest translates into a sustained expansion of the controller workforce will depend on the agency’s ability to guide candidates through one of the most demanding training pipelines in the federal government.

A U.S. appeals court on April 17 put on hold a lower court order that had halted construction of the White House ballroom, allowing the project to proceed for now.

Previously, U.S. District Judge Richard Leon issued a preliminary injunction blocking above-ground construction of the ballroom but allowed “below-ground” construction of national security facilities to continue.

Leon had said the project cannot continue without authorization from Congress.

But now, as Aldgra Fredly reports for The Epoch Times, a three-judge panel of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit on April 17 blocked Leon’s injunction and scheduled a June 5 hearing to decide on whether the project should be halted.

The Epoch Times reached out to the National Trust for Historic Preservation, which filed the lawsuit last year, but did not receive a response by publication time.

The White House first announced the project in July 2025, saying it would span 90,000 square feet.

The construction phase began in September 2025, and the ballroom is expected to be completed before President Donald Trump’s presidency ends in early 2029, according to the White House.

The National Capital Planning Commission approved the ballroom project on April 2.

In December 2025, the National Trust for Historic Preservation filed a lawsuit alleging that construction of the White House ballroom is unlawful and requested that the court halt the project.

Leon ruled in favor of the National Trust for Historic Preservation on March 31, ordering that “the ballroom construction project must stop until Congress authorizes its completion.”

The judge later clarified in an April 16 ruling that below-ground construction, including “the construction of any ‘top-secret excavations, bunkers, bomb-shelters, protective partitioning, military installations, and hospital and medical facilities,’ as well as such above-ground construction strictly necessary to cover, secure, and protect such facilities” may proceed.

Trump criticized the judge in a Truth Social post on April 17, calling his ruling “a mockery to [the U.S.] court system.”

“Everybody knew that it was planned, and going to be built. This highly political Judge, and his illegal overreach, is out of control, and costing our Nation greatly,” he wrote.

“The Ballroom is deeply important to our National Security, and no Judge can be allowed to stop this Historic and Militarily Imperative Project.”

The project is expected to cost about $400 million, all of which is expected to be funded by private donors.

According to a list provided by the White House to The Epoch Times, donors contributing funds to the new ballroom include Amazon, Apple, Google, Caterpillar Inc., HP Inc., Lockheed Martin, Meta Platforms, Microsoft, Palantir Technologies, and the Union Pacific Railroad.

Authored by Steve Watson via Modernity.news,

A prominent physicist has put forward a striking proposal: our universe may not be limited to the four dimensions of space and time we experience every day. Instead, it could operate with seven dimensions in total, with three compact extra layers folded so tightly they remain invisible.

This idea emerges not from science fiction, but from an attempt to resolve one of modern physics’ most enduring puzzles—the black hole information paradox first highlighted by Stephen Hawking in the 1970s.

Richard Pinčák, a senior researcher at the Slovak Academy of Sciences’ Institute of Experimental Physics, leads the team behind the new model. The work, published in the journal General Relativity and Gravitation, explores how extra dimensions arranged in a specific geometric structure could prevent black holes from fully evaporating.

Stephen Hawking’s theory of black hole evaporation clashes with the laws of quantum mechanics. A new paper finds a way around this paradox, provided that the universe has seven dimensions. https://t.co/NR5a0HoFXQ

— Live Science (@LiveScience) April 16, 2026

The four dimensions we know—three of space and one of time—form the basis of everyday experience and Einstein’s general relativity. But Pinčák’s framework adds three more.

“We experience three dimensions of space and one of time — four dimensions in total,” Pinčák explained. “Our model proposes that the universe actually has seven dimensions: the four we know, plus three tiny extra dimensions curled up so tightly that we cannot directly perceive them.”

These hidden dimensions take the form of highly symmetrical G?-manifolds. In this geometry, a property called torsion creates a twisting effect in spacetime. At the extremely small scales reached as a black hole shrinks through Hawking radiation, this torsion generates a repulsive force.

The proposal directly confronts the information paradox. Hawking showed that black holes emit radiation and slowly lose mass, eventually evaporating completely. Yet quantum mechanics insists that information cannot be destroyed—only scrambled.

“Imagine you throw a book into a fire,” Pinčák said. “The book is destroyed, but in principle you could reconstruct every word from the smoke, ash, and heat — the information is scrambled, not lost.”

In a completely evaporating black hole, however, the information about everything that fell inside appears to vanish forever, creating a fundamental conflict between general relativity and quantum theory.

Pinčák’s seven-dimensional model offers an escape. As the black hole approaches its final stages, the torsion-induced repulsive force acts like a brake.

“This repulsive force acts as a brake, halting the evaporation before the black hole vanishes completely,” Pinčák noted.

What remains is a stable microscopic remnant, roughly 10 billion times smaller than an electron in mass. This remnant can encode the lost information through subtle oscillations known as quasinormal modes.

The same geometric structure also connects to particle physics. The torsion field in the extra dimensions produces a potential energy landscape that mirrors the one responsible for giving mass to the W and Z bosons via the Higgs mechanism.

“The same torsion field… generates a potential energy landscape that is identical in form to the one responsible for giving mass to the W and Z bosons — the carriers of the weak nuclear force,” Pin?ák said.

This suggests that particle masses could have a geometric origin tied to the hidden dimensions themselves.

The researchers emphasize that their approach does not pretend to solve quantum gravity outright. Semiclassical approximations break down near the Planck scale, where full quantum-gravity effects dominate.

“As the black hole shrinks toward the Planck scale, all existing models — ours included — must eventually confront the transition into the deep quantum-gravity regime,” Pin?ák acknowledged.

“What distinguishes our approach is that we do not claim semiclassical evaporation operates all the way down to the remnant mass,” he added. “At that point, a new physical effect … takes over and stabilises the configuration.”

The model makes testable predictions, such as the expected masses of hypothetical Kaluza-Klein particles associated with the extra dimensions—far beyond current accelerator reach but potentially falsifiable in principle.

“The important point is that the predictions are concrete — the model can be wrong, which is what makes it scientific,” Pinčák said.

While direct experimental confirmation lies well in the future, the idea builds on concepts familiar from string theory and M-theory, where extra dimensions play a central role in unifying forces. It also ties into earlier work by Pinčák’s team exploring G? geometries and their implications for symmetry breaking and particle properties.

For now, the proposal stands as a creative theoretical bridge between gravity, quantum mechanics, and particle physics. It invites fresh thinking about the hidden architecture of reality and whether the universe’s deepest secrets might be woven into dimensions we have yet to perceive.

Whether future observations of primordial black holes, gravitational waves, or high-energy particle collisions lend support remains to be seen. But the elegance of deriving both black hole stability and particle masses from the same geometric framework offers a compelling new lens on long-standing mysteries.

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