By Andre Nicola
The outcome of Brazil’s 2026 presidential election will have massive implications for its domestic policies and will also shape how Brazil engages with partners in Washington, Beijing, and the rest of the world.
By Piyush Verma
As decarbonization extends beyond electricity into transport, manufacturing, steel, and chemicals, the share of world trade untouched by clean energy accounting is likely to shrink. So the useful question is not where clean trade begins and ends.
By Medha Prasanna
As countries race to connect renewable generation, expand transmission, and meet surging demand from data centers, electricity grids are being built at unprecedented speeds. Building quantum-safe cryptography while equipment is being designed and procured is far easier than retrofitting it later.
By Anit Mukherjee
In the 20 years since BRICS was formed as a loose agglomeration of developing countries, the New Delhi Summit demonstrated that its value lay in providing a space for some overlapping approaches to economic management and development. The challenge is one of coordination, reconciling national priorities with the wider objectives of balanced trade, efficient cross-border payments, and effective development finance.
By Anit Mukherjee
In the 20 years since BRICS was formed as a loose agglomeration of developing countries, the New Delhi Summit demonstrated that its value lay in providing a space for some overlapping approaches to economic management and development. The challenge is one of coordination, reconciling national priorities with the wider objectives of balanced trade, efficient cross-border payments, and effective development finance.
By Marta Bengoa
Tariffs can be withdrawn by proclamation as quickly as they were imposed, and the September 8 measures may well be traded away in the review that begins next summer. The conclusion Canada has reached about the reliability of its largest customer will take considerably longer to reverse.
By Anit Mukherjee
The current crisis in the Middle East has demonstrated that ensuring energy security will remain a challenge for policymakers in the foreseeable future, especially for countries like India. At the same time, the current disruption provides an opportunity to initiate and build on energy sector reforms to make sure that countries are better prepared to deal with such shocks in the future.
By Marta Bengoa
Using outdated balance-of-payments provisions designed for fixed exchange rates makes no sense under current monetary arrangements. Trump can continue imposing tariffs within constitutional boundaries, but the constraints now bind more tightly. Whether this leads to a more sensible trade policy or simply shifts chaos to different legal authorities remains to be seen.
By Anit Mukherjee
Lula’s state visit to India will underscore the important role of Brazil and India as leaders of the Global South helping countries navigate geopolitical uncertainty, rebalanced global trade and supply chains, rapid diffusion of transformational technologies, and accelerating impact of a changing climate. With the United States hosting the G20 this year, a strong relationship between the two countries will be critical to consolidate the achievements and keep the priorities of the Global South on the agenda.
By Udaibir Das
When finance is discussed in the context of India’s trade agreements, the debate polarizes: either India is genuinely opening, or it remains stuck in defensive regulation. But neither captures what is happening: India is selectively binding regulatory discretion, exporting specific platforms, and keeping control over balance-sheet risks.
By Anit Mukherjee with Dhruba Purkayastha, Arya Roy Bardhan, Srijan Shukla, and Jhanvi Tripathi
The “reciprocal tariffs” announced by the United States in early April disrupted the global trade flows and unsettled the multilateral system built over several decades. As a result, global players are adjusting to this new reality and altering their behavior beyond tariff measures to safeguard their own interests.
By Marta Bengoa
The India-EU free trade agreement will connect over two billion people across a market representing nearly a quarter of global GDP. But the real story isn't about size. It's about timing. After seventeen years of false starts and negotiations, both parties finally grasped what's at stake: in a world fragmenting between Washington's capricious tariffs and Beijing's economic coercion, this deal is economic insurance.
By Marta Bengoa
Speaking at Davos, Trump first ruled out using military force to acquire Greenland (after weeks of refusing to do so), then hours later announced what he called a "framework of a future deal" with NATO on Arctic security. Whether the framework leads to substantive Arctic security cooperation or remains another example of Trump declaring victory without achieving objectives, the damage to transatlantic economic relations has been done.
By Marta Bengoa
Rather than reviving American manufacturing and boosting employment, the data from Trump’s “Liberation Day” tariffs tell a story of job losses in manufacturing, stagnant productivity in that sector, higher inflation across the economy, and economic uncertainty on a scale not seen in decades.
By Anit Mukherjee
The fact is that there have been few concrete proposals to address the twin challenges of debt sustainability and the rising demands for additional resources for sustainable development. In a world coming to terms with the radical changes in the development finance landscape over the past months, the leadership of the developing world to advance sustainable development is more critical than ever.
By Marta Bengoa
The current situation demands acknowledgment that trade and monetary policy operate as interconnected systems, not isolated levers that can be pulled independently. A coherent approach would acknowledge that the United States’ economic strength derives from its integration into global supply chains, not isolation from them.
By Anit Mukherjee and Caroline Arkalji
The consecutive presidencies of Indonesia, India, Brazil, and South Africa within the G20 offers a blueprint for how the Global South can continue shaping global governance at a time of geopolitical uncertainty and a rapid rebalancing of the globalization process itself.
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