This Week in The Lens

The tariff clock is ticking, and the US’s trading partners are running out of time.

With the July 9th deadline approaching, the temporary pause on Trump’s sweeping “reciprocal” tariffs is set to expire and countries, big and small, are scrambling to avoid the impact. While India edges toward a deal, talks with Japan, the EU, and Canada remain tense. Trump’s threat to impose 35% duties on Japanese goods has rattled Tokyo, while Brussels is bracing for a breakdown.

The result: a wave of last-minute diplomacy, rising uncertainty for cross-border trade, and growing risk of a new inflationary shock. For multinationals, the final days before the deadline bring more than just policy risk – they bring about an environment where trade terms can shift overnight, and contingency planning becomes core strategy.

What began with Israeli strikes on Iranian nuclear sites last week quickly spiraled into a broader crisis, culminating in direct US strikes on Iran’s nuclear infrastructure over the weekend. And yet, just 48 hours later, Trump was on camera announcing a ceasefire, claiming both Israel and Iran had agreed to “stand down.” Oil markets responded in kind: Brent surged past $81 on Monday, only to fall back to below $70 after the ceasefire was confirmed, erasing most of the geopolitical risk premium in a matter of days.

The volatility may have faded, but the underlying risk has not. The crisis revealed just how quickly US policy can escalate – and de-escalate – without warning, leaving multinationals scrambling to adjust their strategy. For now, the Strait of Hormuz remains open and Iran’s retaliation muted, and diplomacy appears to be back at the forefront. But the choreography of this episode suggests that the next flare-up may not be so neatly contained.

“I may do it, I may not do it. Nobody knows what I’m going to do”.

Such were the words of Donald Trump when asked if the US would get involved militarily in Iran – a policy that seems to be less about “maximum pressure”, and more about “maximum ambiguity”.

As Israeli strikes escalate inside Iran, the world teeters on the edge of a broader Middle East conflagration. Regional governments brace for fallout, while civilians fear a return to the chaos of past decades. In the US, the crisis has exposed deep fractures within Trump’s base, between interventionist hawks and “America First” isolationists. And for the global economy, the implications are immediate: rising oil prices, heightened shipping risks, and a renewed bout of geopolitical volatility that multinationals cannot afford to ignore.

Rare earths break the ice. But détente still feels thin.

This week, the US and China unveiled a preliminary framework aimed at rebooting their fragile trade truce, reinstating US access to Chinese rare earth minerals in return for easing US export restrictions and preserving Chinese student visas. President Trump declared it “done,” pending signoff from Xi Jinping – but details are scarce and key structural tensions persist. The stock market shrugged: relief was priced in, not celebrated.

For multinationals, this signals a temporary thaw in supply chain risks. Yet without clarity on tariffs, export controls, or follow-up commitments, the deal feels more like a policy patch than a long-term agreement. The real test: can the next 90 days turn this framework into durable peace, or will tensions return with a vengeance?

When Donald Trump brandished his now infamous placard on April 2nd 2025, announcing blanket tariffs on all US imports, businesses, analysts, and policymakers knew that the world had reached a turning point, and that the global economy would never look the same again.

That was the easy part. The not-so-easy part since then has been to answer the question of: just what will the global economy look like? Amid tariff escalations, retaliatory threats, and legal reversals, the picture is constantly in flux, making planning nigh-on impossible for multinationals.

Our newly released Global Tariff Scenarios for 2025-26 help resolve that issue: the report lays out four plausible futures for US trade policy, and the resulting impact on the global economy – each anchored in a different combination of protectionism and predictability. From the chaos of “Red Light, Green Light” to the recalibrated (but high tariff) order of “Structured Protectionism”, the scenarios offer multinationals a framework to stress-test assumptions, plan contingencies, and spot early signposts of change. You can read it here.