📰 WSJ20251104 # Before we begin: If today’s news had a soundtrack, it would be the tense, quiet hum of a machine spinning up. From Washington’s conference rooms to Wall Street’s trading floors to every one of our own bills, a set of critical switches is being flipped. Today we do more than read the news — we try to hear, behind these events, the sound of an era shifting gears.
The November 2025 issue of The Economist sketches a fractured global architecture: an escalating tech war between Washington and Beijing on one side, and defensive contraction alongside balance-sheet recession risks across major economies on the other. The Economist November 2025 cover - a deep dive into global economic trends Politics and Diplomacy: Strategic Decoupling Without Departure # US-China rivalry in semiconductors and infrastructure continues to escalate: new export controls meet supply-chain rerouting and localized component substitution. Beijing deepens bilateral ties across the Middle East and the Global South through energy and industrial infrastructure pacts. Domestic governance doubles down on preserving baseline stability amidst external containment. US-China “decoupling” is like a separation where nobody moves out: they shout about breaking up, but deep down they are still calculating chip allocations.
