Gold’s latest surge to a fresh record, spot prices briefly pushing above roughly $4,440/oz and settling solidly higher on the day, reflects a familiar pattern in which a geopolitical catalyst arrives when positioning and momentum are already primed.

The immediate trigger was a renewed flight to safety as U.S.-Venezuela tensions escalated following President Donald Trump’s stated “blockade” of sanctioned oil tankers linked to Venezuela. In thin, year-end liquidity, that kind of headline risk can amplify moves that might otherwise have been more incremental.

Japan is preparing a new, explicitly industrial-policy-led push to increase the domestic “pull” for renewable electricity by subsidizing capital investment for companies that commit to running on fully decarbonized power.

Under the plan outlined by the Ministry of Economy, Trade and Industry’s Green Transformation (GX) policy group, the government intends to allocate a total of ¥210 billion (about $1.34 billion) over five years beginning in fiscal 2026, with qualifying firms able to receive support covering up to half of eligible capital expenditure. Data center operators can also qualify if they meet the same conditions.

China has moved to levy provisional anti-subsidy duties on selected dairy imports from the European Union, with rates ranging from about 22% to just under 43%, effective from Tuesday. The covered products include unsweetened milk and cream and a range of cheeses, fresh and processed, capturing emblematic European varieties such as Roquefort and Camembert.

Beijing’s commerce ministry says its preliminary findings indicate EU support measures amount to subsidization that is injuring Chinese producers, while the European Commission rejects the evidentiary basis and argues the action is not justified under a credible investigation record.

In 2025, the crude market offered a pointed rebuttal to the long-standing assumption that OPEC+ is the single dominant “price setter” through supply management. OPEC+ still matters, but the year’s more operationally consequential stabilizer was on the demand-and-inventory side: China’s ability, as the largest crude importer, to vary how much oil it diverts into storage versus how much it runs through refineries.

The practical effect was a quasi “buffer stock” policy that tended to absorb barrels when prices softened and ease off when prices spiked, helping to anchor Brent in a relatively narrow trading corridor for much of the second half of the year.

The European Union is preparing a package of measures designed to shore up a plastics-recycling industry that officials now describe as being in acute distress, after a wave of plant shutdowns and worsening economics for recyclers.

Central to the proposals is a plan to tighten scrutiny of imported plastics, especially materials marketed as “recycled”, through checks intended to verify that the imported content is genuinely recycled rather than virgin polymer relabeled to meet buyer requirements or exploit regulatory definitions. The initiative is expected to be presented imminently.

Wall Street’s grip on European investment banking proved far more resilient in 2025 than many policymakers and even some bank executives expected when President Donald Trump unveiled his “Liberation Day” tariff package in April. A common assumption at the time was that European corporates and governments, facing a new layer of U.S. trade friction, might shift advisory and underwriting mandates toward domestic lenders as a matter of political optics or strategic autonomy.

Instead, client behavior largely stayed commercial rather than political: U.S. banks maintained their dominant share of investment banking fees across Europe, the Middle East and Africa (EMEA), and in some fee pools, especially equity issuance and M&A, they actually increased their share.

The Trump administration’s decision to suspend federal leases for five large offshore wind projects under construction off the U.S. East Coast is a material escalation in Washington’s campaign against the sector, but it is structured as a regulatory “stop” on forward progress rather than a blanket prohibition on offshore wind as a technology.

The Interior Department framed the action as an immediate pause to give federal agencies time to work with leaseholders and affected states on mitigating what it described as national security risks, specifically the risk that turbine blades in motion and highly reflective towers can generate radar “clutter” that complicates detection and tracking of threats.

The FCC’s decision to place DJI, Autel, and, more broadly, all foreign-made drones and “critical components” on its national security “Covered List” is best understood as a regulatory choke point rather than an immediate confiscation-style ban.

In practical terms, it cuts off the equipment-authorization pathway that most wireless devices need before they can be imported, marketed, or sold in the United States. Once a category of equipment is on the Covered List, it is ineligible for new FCC equipment authorizations, meaning manufacturers cannot obtain approvals for new drone models or key parts that require FCC sign-off.