Hello,
Here are the five things you need to know today:
CHINA. UNITED STATES. The rules are broken, and so is the game.
CANADA. Outreach to Mexico earns caution from Washington.
IRAN. Sanctions are promised, but the threat could be empty.
AFGHANISTAN. A US return would be costly and distracting.
SRI LANKA. The India-China bidding war resumes.
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CHINA. UNITED STATES. Stacking the odds
The rules are broken, and so is the game.
US stocks hit a record Thursday after Nvidia took a $5 billion stake in Intel. Donald Trump said "it sounds like" China had approved a deal on TikTok. Huawei said "competition has undeniably arrived" as Chinese customers shifted from Nvidia.
INTELLIGENCE. The tie-up between Nvidia, Intel, and the US government would have once been blocked, but in a world of bifurcating tech supply chains, Trump is engineering a stack of national champions (many with him in the UK, with more deals announced). They look set to entrench dominance of the West but not far beyond. Huawei's new Ascend chips seem as good as Nvidia's Blackwell or Intel's Jaguar Shores for most use cases. And they're cheaper.
FOR BUSINESS. US strategy oscillates between fighting China on performance and market barriers. China is mostly focused on cost. Stealing IP no longer seems so central. This extends beyond semiconductors. DeepSeek claimed Wednesday to have trained its R1 AI model on just $294,000 of older Nvidia H800 chips. Chinese energy costs are falling as the US self-limits its investment in renewables. As the US continues to lose cards, it may need a new game.
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CANADA. Still blamed
Outreach to Mexico earns caution from Washington.
Mark Carney and Claudia Sheinbaum vowed closer ties at a joint press conference Thursday. US Ambassador Pete Hoekstra said Canada had not been "constructive" in trade talks as Washington commenced a review of the USMCA.
INTELLIGENCE. Hoekstra's comments, where he also said he was "disappointed" in
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