What was once a narrow question of whether storage would be full enough to get through winter has become a political litmus test for EU energy independence. That sense of urgency drove Brussels to impose strict requirements two years ago mandating storage levels of 90% by November, rules that distorted prices, triggered frantic bidding wars for LNG, and strained relationships with Asian buyers.

Those rules have since been softened, and unlike the panicked scrambles of 2022 and 2023, no such crisis looms this year. As of late August, EU storage stood at 76% of capacity, equivalent to about 85 billion cubic metres of gas. That is slightly below last year’s 92% but broadly consistent with the 10-year average.

Vietnam has just taken a decisive step in its long-debated nuclear strategy by openly signaling that small modular reactors (SMRs) will be part of its future power mix. In a newly released directive, the Communist Party’s Politburo, the country’s most powerful policymaking body, called for the creation of a “flexible nuclear power development plan” centered on SMRs and encouraged private-sector involvement in building nuclear plants.

This is a significant shift. For years, Vietnam has struggled with stalled nuclear ambitions: plans for large reactors, first announced with Russian and Japanese partners in the 2000s, were shelved in 2016 due to financing constraints and safety concerns. Now, SMRs; cheaper, scalable, and deployable with fewer upfront costs, offer Hanoi a politically and economically viable way back into the nuclear club.

While U.S. President Donald Trump’s sweeping tariff offensive has jolted global markets and shaken key U.S. trading relationships, a handful of countries are beginning to see opportunity amid the chaos. For some emerging markets and smaller economies that have avoided the harshest of Trump’s so-called “reciprocal tariffs,” the global reshuffling of trade flows could offer rare openings — though the specter of a tariff-induced recession looms large.

Among the clearest early beneficiaries is Brazil, which escaped with the lowest tier of Trump’s new tariff regime — a baseline 10%. That’s significantly less than the 20% to 46% duties facing major U.S. trading partners like the European Union, Japan, Vietnam, and South Korea. Brazil’s status as a net importer from the U.S. and its massive agricultural base — especially soybeans and corn — could once again make it a favored partner for China, which is already retaliating with tariffs of its own on U.S. goods.