The number came in better than forecast and settled nothing. China’s official manufacturing PMI rose to 49.8 in August from 49.2, above the 49.6 consensus but below 50 for a second consecutive month.

The non-manufacturing index covering services and construction stalled at 49.0, unchanged from July and against expectations of a slight improvement, leaving it at its weakest since December 2022. The improvement follows an exceptionally weak July and interpreted as stabilisation at a low level rather than the beginning of a robust recovery.

The first lithium cycle was about cars, and it ended badly. Prices collapsed from 2022 peaks as supply built faster than electric vehicle demand absorbed it, producers wrote down assets, and mines were mothballed. The recovery now underway rests on something else entirely.

Albemarle reports global lithium demand up 45 percent year on year through May, driven largely by battery energy storage rather than vehicles, and the producers who survived the bust are posting their best results in three years.

The voyage from Neuquén province to Yokohama is one of the least efficient crude routes anyone could design. Oil travels by pipeline across Argentina, loads at an Atlantic port, sails south around Cape Horn or through the Strait of Magellan, then crosses the entire Pacific.

It takes weeks longer than a Gulf cargo and costs more in freight. Japanese, Korean and Chinese refiners are buying it anyway, and the reason is contained in a single characteristic: the route passes through no chokepoint at all. No Hormuz, no Bab el-Mandeb, no Suez, no Panama Canal.

American trade policy toward China has been unilateral for eight years. Washington raised barriers, Beijing retaliated, and the rest of the world watched, occasionally complained, and quietly absorbed the goods that stopped crossing the Pacific.

Scott Bessent’s message ahead of the Asheville G20 finance meeting is that this arrangement has run its course, and that the countries who declined to act are now out of options. The world cannot have a China with a 1.2 trillion dollar trade surplus, he said, adding that the Chinese economy is quite weak, that Beijing is trying to export its way out of it, and that it needs to rebalance.

There are two accounts of what was agreed between Washington and Caracas, and the gap between them is the story. Trump announced on Friday that the United States had secured majority control of more than 65 billion barrels of Venezuelan proven reserves through a partnership with private business.

Interim President Delcy Rodríguez told Venezuelans on state television the following night that her country retains ownership of and sovereignty over its natural resources. Both statements describe the same 25-year agreement, and the reason both can be made is that the deal separates legal title from operational control and revenue.

Chinese manufacturing is expected to have contracted for a second consecutive month in August, with a poll of 17 economists forecasting the official PMI at 49.6 against 49.2 in July. That would be an improvement and still a contraction, which is roughly the right description of the Chinese economy at present.

The National Bureau of Statistics releases the data on Monday, and the private RatingDog survey follows on September 1, expected at 51.0 against 50.9. The gap between those two forecasts is more informative than either number. The official survey weights heavily toward large state-owned enterprises and heavy industry.

Central bankers leave Wyoming for North Carolina, American payroll data will settle whether July’s contraction was a fluke, two smaller central banks move in opposite directions on the same day, and euro zone inflation is heading toward a three-year high.

Underneath all of it runs a question that has quietly become the market’s dominant theme: whether the American Treasury can suppress its own borrowing costs without paying for it in the currency.

Brussels imposed duties of up to 45 percent on Chinese battery-electric vehicles in November 2024 to prevent a flood of cheap imports. The flood arrived anyway, through a gap the legislation left open.

Chinese brands reached a record 11.2 percent of European new-car sales in July, with sales up 107 percent year on year, and a record third of all plug-in hybrids registered came from manufacturers like BYD and Chery’s Jaecoo brand. Plug-in hybrids carry no additional tariff. The wall was built around one powertrain, and the traffic simply changed powertrain.