Videos

As part of their tariff deals with the US administration of Donald Trump, Asian countries promised to invest vast sums of capital in the US economy, with South Korea pledging US$350bn, while Japan committed to invest US$550bn. Udith discusses whether these investment commitments are realistic, how they might be structured, their potential impact on financial markets and whether failure to deliver could jeopardize the underlying deals on bilateral trade.

Donald Trump’s attempts to lean on Federal Reserve policymakers to cut US interest rates are a reminder that central bank independence is not set in stone, and that monetary policy everywhere is potentially at risk of political interference. In this week’s interview, Gavekal European economist Cedric Gemehl assesses the vulnerability of the Bank of England and the European Central Bank in an age of rising political populism.

The White House seems set on packing the Federal Reserve with figures who will deliver easier monetary policy. As such, the lead up to this week’s policy setting meeting has seen a burst of activity involving Fed personnel. In this interview, Will discusses what all this means for near-term interest rate setting and for governance at the central bank in the longer term.

With France now on its fifth prime minister in two years, and protesters aiming to block the streets of French cities, commentators are increasingly asserting that France—and more broadly Europe—is now ungovernable. That may be overstating the case. But as Charles Gave points out in this video interview, with debt now rising faster than GDP in a number of major European economies, the continent is heading into a nasty debt trap.

Wednesday’s grand military parade through Beijing and the earlier Tianjin summit of the Shanghai Cooperation Organisation, hosted by Xi Jinping and attended by both Narendra Modi and Vladimir Putin, have emphasized the growth of economic partnerships on the Eurasian landmass in defiance of the established US-led international order. In this video interview, Tom Miller assesses the depth of India’s diplomatic reengagement with China, and considers the economic implications of the strengthening Eurasian relations.

This week, US President Donald Trump met his South Korean counterpart at the White House in a summit intended to reset the two countries’ economic relations. For the American side, whose stated aim is to reestablish dominance as a maritime power, a key request has been engaging Korean specialists to invest in US domestic shipbuilding. This marks another instance of activist US industrial policy that promises to create winners and losers among the affected companies. In this interview, Kai Xian explains who is likely to benefit most from the initiative.

When Jerome Powell stands up on Friday to speak for the last time at the Jackson Hole symposium as Federal Reserve chair, he will have one eye on his legacy as principal defender of the Fed’s independence in troubled times. But investors will be focused at least as much on whether he offers any guidance on the Fed’s September 17th interest rate decision.

There is a difference between the typical story told about China in the West and the reality on the ground, says Tom, who just came back from a month-long visit. Tom lived in China from 2000 to 2015 and is impressed by the improvements made in recent years—despite several big policy errors—noting that the quality of life is approaching high-income-country status. On the flip side, the “anything goes” spirit that characterized the China of decades past, and encouraged people to take economic risks, has disappeared.

The past week has been eventful for those preoccupied with the US economy, with fairly weak data releases and the resignation of one Federal Reserve governor. In this week’s interview, Kai Xian examines what this might portend for interest rates and the performance of US equities through the rest of 2025 and into next year.

With €3trn in assets, Europe’s pension funds are investment giants. But they have long been lumbering and risk-averse giants. Now, Cedric Gemehl argues, they are about to discover a new-found appetite for risky assets, and that at the margin this shift will favor European equities over US equities and European government bonds.

The global inflationary boom for the moment remains well set, with both monetary and fiscal settings in most economies remaining loose to very loose. The result is that equity markets continue to trend higher but in an increasingly differentiated pattern. At the same time, the fundamentals for OECD bonds remain terrible and investors are thus engaged in a desperate search for solid stores of value. Our panel reviewed the macro situation and explored viable asset allocation strategies.

Laila Khawaja joins Arthur Kroeber in a conversation about the many facets of the growing US-China technology rivalry. Topics include the question of who is winning the AI race, the politics of Nvidia's chip sales in China, the significance of the deal apparently struck this week to sell TikTok to US owners, and whether Trump and Xi can forge a bigger trade and tech agreement later this fall.

The US economy looks to be at an inflection point with the labor market softening and upward price pressures fading. Unnerved by tariffs early this year, investors seem persuaded that they will not spark a rapid spike in inflation. All the while, the future of the Federal Reserve as an independent institution is in play. Our panel pick through these key topics that are likely to dictate market action in the coming weeks.

So far in 2025, the US economy has defied all the worst-case forecasts of looming stagflation. In this Gavekal webinar, US economists Will Denyer and Tan Kai Xian assess the strength and depth of this apparent Goldilocks dynamic, consider the impact of the newly passed Big Beautiful Bill on the US budget, and discuss the implications for financial markets. Gavekal head of research Arthur Kroeber offers updates on the tariff war latest.

Investors last week seemed to be betting that the United States would hold off on directly attacking Iran. Now, after the weekend’s US airstrikes and Trump's push for a ceasefire, are all parties really ready to cease hostilities? Or is this just the start of a regional war in the Middle East that could severely disrupt oil supplies and spark a surge in the crude price? Our team assesses the latest developments on the ground and consider the vulnerabilities of the major economic regions should the worst occur and the price of oil skyrocket.

The meeting focused on China's economic performance, global influence and potential future scenarios. The panelists debated the potential of the renminbi as a reserve currency, China's economic model and capital controls, and the implications of China's debt situation for global markets.

China and the US are talking again, after the first phone call between Presidents Trump and Xi since Trump took office. But the path toward a substantive trade agreement is strewn with boulders. Arthur Kroeber and Andrew Batson discussed how China will handle the trade talks, what it will do to support its economy, and how seriously we should take its policy pivot towards more consumption-led growth.

For years, all investors needed was an overweight position in big US tech stocks balanced with a holding in long-dated US treasuries. Those days are over. So far in 2025, US tech stocks and US treasuries are both down, while select asset classes in Europe, Latin America and Asia have delivered handsome double-digit US dollar returns. In this webinar, Gavekal partners Louis Gave, Anatole Kaletsky and Will Denyer considered whether US markets can regain their mojo, or whether non-US assets will continue to outperform.

Investors were rewarded on Monday for their bets that a negotiated settlement will be reached in the United States-led trade war. This follows Britain and the US agreeing an outline trade deal, and an Anglo-Indian trade deal, suggesting that the old liberal trading order is not dead. Our team picked through these developments to assess if the trade war is over before it got going.

There is a growing consensus that the age of American exceptionalism is over, and that after years of riding the US tech boom, investors should diversify their portfolios away from US markets. But geoeconomic tensions are running high around the globe, and the world’s two biggest economies are exchanging salvos in a nasty trade war. So, which non-US markets and assets should investors favor and which should they avoid?