West Texas Intermediate (WTI) crude futures climbed to $62.4 per barrel on Tuesday, notching a fourth consecutive daily gain and reaching a two-week high. The short-term rally in oil prices is primarily driven by the 90-day tariff truce between the United States and China, the world’s two largest oil-consuming nations.

On May 13, 2025, the U.S. stock market experienced a powerful rally across all major indices, primarily driven by a surprising yet temporary rollback of trade tariffs between the United States and China.

The 2008 crisis was the culmination of many converging factors, decades in the making. It was not a singular event but rather a systemic meltdown fueled by macroeconomic imbalances, political and cultural emphasis on homeownership, financial innovation outpacing regulation, and a long period of deregulation and risk-taking.

The UK–India FTA, finalized in May 2025, represents the largest and most comprehensive bilateral trade agreement for the UK post-Brexit. Slashing tariffs on 90% of UK exports to India and liberalizing services trade, the deal is projected to boost UK GDP by £4.8 billion annually, raise wages by £2.2 billion, and expand bilateral trade by £25.5 billion.

Australia’s macro-economic narrative in early 2025 is defined by two seemingly contradictory signals. On the one hand, employment continues to rise—32 000 additional positions were created in March—yet the unemployment rate has ticked up to 4.1 per cent.

India and the United Kingdom have dramatically expanded their economic ties since 1990. In the early 1990s, bilateral trade was relatively modest – on the order of only a few billion USD – as India was just beginning to liberalize its economy. By the mid-2010s, total goods trade had grown to around $15 billion annually, and by the mid-2020s the inclusion of services trade pushed total bilateral trade to roughly $50 billion per year.

On 25 April 2025 the World Bank’s chief economist cautioned that “more than half of 150 developing economies are already in—or perilously close to—debt distress.”

The 2024-25 Commonwealth Budget marks a decisive policy pivot after two consecutive surpluses, projecting an underlying cash deficit of A$27.6 billion (-1.0 per cent of GDP) and signalling the Albanese Government’s intention to put cost-of-living relief ahead of short-term fiscal consolidation.

May 2025, global supply chains are navigating a complex landscape marked by geopolitical tensions, climate-related disruptions, and technological transformations.

The S&P 500 lost 10.5 percent in the two trading sessions of 3–4 April, the index’s fifth-largest two-day percentage fall since 1950, wiping roughly US $3 trillion in market capitalisation. 

Summary of foreign & domestic investor activity in the stock markets of the world’s top 10 economies over the past 14 days.

Supply chain disruptions are significantly impacting the world’s top 20 economies, driven by escalating trade tensions, geopolitical conflicts, labor shortages, and climate-related events.

When the Reserve Bank of Australia (RBA) left its cash‑rate target unchanged at 4.10 per cent this month, most mortgage holders breathed a sigh of relief. But the decision reverberates far beyond repayments due on the first of May.

Over the past month, international financial markets have undergone significant turbulence, catalyzed by abrupt policy recalibrations in the United States and an intensifying climate of geopolitical volatility.

The past three years have redrawn the energy map faster than at any time since the 1970s oil shocks.  Russia’s invasion of Ukraine shattered the assumption that pipeline gas is apolitical; U‑S liquefied natural‑gas (LNG) cargoes now meet half of Europe’s LNG demand and more than one‑third of its total gas needs, while the European Union (EU) has cut Russia’s pipeline share from 40% in 2021 to roughly 11% in 2024.

In February, the White House instructed the U.S. Trade Representative to explore punitive tariffs against any country that dares levy a unilateral Digital Services Tax (DST) on Big Tech.

Income and wealth disparities have become the central fault‑line of twenty‑first‑century economics.

Semiconductors underpin almost every system that makes a modern economy function: smartphones, data‑centre GPUs, grid‑level renewables, avionics, autonomous vehicles, medical diagnostics, hypersonic missiles. The industry’s value is US $697 billion in 2025.

A tug‑of‑war over critical materials—and the food that sustains entire regions—now defines the global economic security agenda.

The United States and the European Union – two of the world’s largest economies – have clashed in high-profile tariff wars in recent years. In 2018, tariffs that sparked immediate retaliation from the EU, straining transatlantic trade relations. A few years later, in 2025, a new round of U.S. tariffs (largely a revival and expansion of the earlier measures) reignited tensions.