1. China's beggar-thy-neighbour trade policy, titanium dioxide edition.
LB Group produced titanium dioxide at $1,500 a tonne in China, including subsidies, nearly half the estimated $2,800 a tonne cost to produce in the UK... China became a net exporter of titanium dioxide after 2010, with exports rising from just 48,000 tonnes that year to more than 1.7mn tonnes in 2025, creating a global glut of excess production that coincided with a wave of factory closures outside China. Over that 15-year period, factories with a combined capacity of nearly 1.3mn tonnes were shut down in Asia, Europe and the US, according to data compiled by industry analyst Reg Adams, who has tracked titanium dioxide markets since 1993. Chinese capacity hit 5.7mn tonnes at the end 2025.
2. John Burn-Murdoch points to the aspiration gap among today's youth, or the gap between their actual incomes and their expectations.
Even though today’s young adults, and graduates in particular, are over-represented in the top quartile of the earnings distribution, they are also far more likely to be at the bottom than the top for earnings relative to reasonable expectations. In both the UK and US, even though only 10 percent of graduates are in the lowest earnings quartile, one in three is in the bottom bracket for earnings relative to expectations.
The average thirty-something university graduate in the UK today sits at the same rank of the earnings ladder as the average high school graduate did in 1995 and the average high school graduate today sits at the same rank as someone who never completed school in 1995.
Are today’s twenty- and thirty-somethings earning more than their parents did at the same age? Yes. But their relative position in society is lower than their parents’ was, and their position relative to their peers and expectations is significantly lower. Since it’s the latter that drives satisfaction, young adult malaise should come as no surprise.
3. The US AI spending estimates pale in comparison to the money spent on railways in the late nineteenth century.
By 1890 railway companies in the US alone had issued about $5bn worth of bonds. Adjusting for inflation that equates to about $180bn in today’s money. However, this understates the enormous scale of the undertaking, because the US economy was much smaller then. In 1890, $5bn was about one-third of America’s GDP, so the investment spree was arguably the equivalent of spending over $10tn today. It also resulted in an epic, generation-defining crash. In 1873, Jay Cooke & Co, the premier investment bank run by America’s dominant financier at the time, suddenly collapsed under the weight of unsold railway bonds. This caused a giant financial crisis and ushered in what was long known as the Great Depression, until the even larger one in the 1930s.
4. McKinsey Global Institute have identified 18 future arenas of growth.
They added about $18 trillion in market capitalisation in the last three years.
5. The 2 hour mark in a marathon is broken as Sebastian Sawe of Kenya wins the London marathon.
Both Sawe and Assefa were wearing Adizero Pro Evo 3 shoes, which were only unveiled a few days before the race. Known as “supershoes”, such ultralight, high-tech trainers cost hundreds of dollars a pair, but are worn only once in competition races by elite runners. Since the release of the Nike Vaporfly, the first supershoe, in 2017, the number of men and women breaking new time barriers has risen sharply. Based on a UK size 8.5, the new shoes worn on Sunday by Sawe and Assefa weigh just 97 grams, according to Adidas, making them 30 per cent lighter than the German sportswear company’s previous design. They also cost $500 a pair.
Also this.
6. Power subsidy facts of the week.
7. Ajay Shah points to an important opportunity in the Gulf as the post-war reconstruction starts.
The region of the Persian Gulf will have capital expenditure for massive construction and engineering projects, expanding to perhaps $150 billion annually. Simultaneously, the geopolitical environment dictates investment in military capability. Procuring new defence systems to protect against drone and missile attacks will require approximately $100 billion annually. We may then envision this combination of engineering and defence procurement as a new pathway for demand of $250 billion a year into the global economy from the GCC... A lot of the projects in West Asia will be done by global firms, using Indian workers. Remittances from Indian workers will do well. Renewables, drones and missiles, oil and gas engineering: These three areas are important in export markets. The domestic environment in these areas is relatively subdued. Indian firms will do well by trying to obtain revenues from the coming engineering boom in the West Asia, and from the global boom in renewables and defence.
8. So far Apple has ploughed back its massive cash surpluses to buyback more than 40% of its outstanding shares!
This is an important moat for Apple (its profit after tax is set to touch $125 bn this year!).
Around 40 per cent of Apple’s profits now come from services, led by App Store commissions and Apple’s cut of the revenue Google makes on its gadgets. This makes it look less like an innovative tech leader and more like a powerful gatekeeper able to extract tolls from those who want to reach the estimated 1.5bn people with iPhones... Apple’s shares are still close to their all-time highs, reflecting the market’s generally sanguine view that it doesn’t need to join the ruinously expensive AI race that is consuming much of the tech world. Instead it can just sit back and take a cut from distributing the AI services of others to its massive user base.
9. Xiaomi is trying to compete with Tesla et al in the European premium brand market.
Just two years after building its first car, China’s largest smartphone maker has already delivered 650,000 electric vehicles — on par with the number of Tesla vehicles sold last year in the world’s largest automotive market. Xiaomi founder Lei Jun, who has earned comparisons with Steve Jobs, now aims to take on Elon Musk’s company in Europe with its premium EVs known for their breakneck acceleration and advanced features... Since Lei announced his plan to build a car in 2021, Xiaomi stunned the global car industry with the launch of its first model — the Speed Ultra 7 sports sedan — just three years later... After the SU7 became one of China’s best-selling cars, its second model, the $35,000 YU7 that rivals Tesla’s Model Y with designs resembling Ferrari’s Purosangue model, received 200,000 pre-orders in just three minutes at last year’s launch...Xiaomi established an EV research and development centre in Munich last year, hiring more than 75 engineers. Many Chinese brands have rapidly expanded into Europe with prices roughly double those in China, yet they remain affordable due to advanced software... At its only EV factory in China, Xiaomi has deployed its own manufacturing methods and materials to bring down production costs while strengthening the durability of its vehicles. The plant, which produces a car every 76 seconds, has a 91 per cent automation rate with hundreds of robotic arms to assemble the cars while “autonomous mobile robots” carry car parts around the factory.
10. Announced Vs actual Trump tariffs.
Prices for lithium-ion batteries, the primary type used for E.V.s, have fallen to around $100 per kilowatt-hour in 2025, from $1,000 in the early 2010s, according to BloombergNEF. Battery density has gone up too. As battery costs fell and manufacturers built more E.V.s, ranges rose and prices fell. Tesla’s cheapest Model 3 climbed to a range of 321 miles this year, up from 220 when it was launched in the late 2010s, while its inflation-adjusted price decreased. Or consider the Leaf, which debuted 15 years ago. By 2016, the cheapest Leaf had 84 miles of range and cost around $30,000, the equivalent of $40,000 today. Nissan’s $32,000 2026 Leaf has a range of more than 300 miles.
12. Facts about German rearmament.
After loosening its constitutional debt brake last year to unlock virtually unlimited spending on the sector, Berlin intends to allocate €779bn to defence between 2026 and 2030 — more than double the previous five years. By the end of the decade — more than five years ahead of the 2035 target date — the country would surpass Nato’s goal of spending 3.5 per cent of GDP on the military, with an annual budget reaching almost €190bn.
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