Our Insights

Ecuador's economy has had a rough 2024, but one of the bright spots has been international demand for the nation's tropical crops and farmed seafood.

When it comes to exchange rates, fund flows continue to send strong predictive signals. Recently, international asset-allocation trends are pointing to a "Trump factor" that might weaken the Malaysian ringgit.

South Korea shocked the world when President Yoon Suk Yeol declared martial law for the first time since the country's transition to democracy in the 1980s. The incident lasted only six hours as legislators voted unanimously to overturn the declaration.

As we move into mid-December, the economic narrative for 2024 appears clear in retrospect: inflation was mostly tamed, and most central banks could start easing.

Predicting "transitory" inflation went wrong for some of the world's central bankers earlier this decade, but this might be a safer call for India -- where a spike in food prices is reversing itself in real time.

Latin America's economies are diverging lately. Unlike the positive trends seen in Brazil and Peru recently, Chilean growth is facing a few wobbles; a pickup in business bankruptcies is the latest data point.

China is the world's biggest iron-ore producer, and it imports most of this key steelmaking ingredient by sea. Once we consider how much iron ore is in the holds of vessels calling at Chinese ports, we can get an early sense of iron-ore imports – and a signal about the economy more broadly – by monitoring shipping traffic.

Donald Trump's threat to impose tariffs on Canada and Mexico made the headlines beyond North America; manufacturing imports from Mexico had long been in Trump's crosshairs, but in Canada, the president-elect is now calling out a major energy exporter whose free-trade deal with the US predated NAFTA.

Inflation was a factor in this month's presidential election, but Americans gathering for the Thanksgiving holiday might note that their turkey dinner has become easier to afford.

Thailand has benefited from a steady stream of foreign direct investment since 2021. A sector to watch is manufacturing - and China, in particular, has emerged as a key source of capital.

Peru's economy is on a roll, recovering strongly after four consecutive quarters of contraction in 2023, and its businessmen think things will only get better. With inflation under control, its borrowing costs are the lowest in Latin America and GDP growth is exceeding expectations.

As President-elect Donald Trump approaches his inauguration in January, his administration might have to grapple with an increasingly regular feature of US political life: a crisis involving the federal debt ceiling.