The sharp fall in EU exports to the United States in early 2026 looks dramatic, but it does not mean transatlantic trade has suddenly collapsed by a quarter in a clean, straightforward way. The February drop of 26.4%, following a 27.8% fall in January, is real, and it contributed to a 60% contraction in the EU’s trade surplus with the US.

But those figures are being measured against an unusually inflated base in early 2025, when exporters front-loaded shipments ahead of tariff changes. In January and February 2025, EU exports to the US had jumped 16.0% and 22.4% respectively, which exaggerates the apparent scale of the 2026 reversal.

The war in the Middle East is badly damaging LNG’s credibility as the fuel that was supposed to power the next stage of growth in emerging economies. Before the conflict, 2026 had been expected to mark a breakout year for LNG, with new supply from the US and Qatar finally easing prices enough to win long-term buyers across Asia and other developing markets. The IEA’s January gas outlook had pointed to accelerating LNG supply growth in 2026 and a stronger increase in global gas demand.

That outlook has now been badly undermined. The war disrupted roughly a fifth of global LNG flows moving through the Strait of Hormuz, and damage to Qatar’s export system has turned what was meant to be a year of supply expansion into one of renewed scarcity.

A group of mostly blue and purple US states is racing to lock in utility-scale solar, wind, and storage projects before federal tax credits begin to phase down, turning climate policy into a near-term affordability and reliability play.

California, Colorado, Minnesota, New York, New Jersey, and Oregon are among the states moving faster on procurement, permitting, or approvals so projects can qualify for the 30% investment tax credit. For utility-scale wind and solar, projects generally need to begin construction by July 4, 2026 and then meet a four-year completion safe harbor to preserve eligibility.

Critical Metals’ move to raise its stake in the Tanbreez rare earth project to 92.5% is significant because it tightens control over one of the few large rare earth assets outside China that could plausibly be aligned with a US- and allied-oriented supply chain. The company increased its holding by acquiring the 50.5% interest it did not already own from Rimbal Pty Ltd. Critical Metals said separately that Greenland’s government approved the transfer, while the remaining 7.5% stake stays with European Lithium.

The background is that Greenland has become much more important in the geopolitics of critical minerals than it was even a few years ago. Its appeal is not just geological. It sits inside a broader Western effort to find rare earth and critical mineral sources that are not dependent on Chinese mining, processing, or financing.

The new anxiety around the Strait of Malacca is really about what the Hormuz crisis has done to strategic thinking in Asia. The immediate fear is not that Malacca is about to close tomorrow, but that the war has reminded governments how vulnerable Asian trade and energy systems remain when so much depends on a narrow maritime corridor.

Malacca links the Indian and Pacific Oceans, narrows to about 2.7 kilometers at its tightest point, and handles roughly 40% of global trade and around 82,000 vessel transits a year. It is therefore not just another chokepoint. It is the central artery for Asia’s manufacturing and energy economy.

The striking divergence between the US crude market and the physical oil markets in Europe and Asia shows how differently the Iran war is being transmitted across the world. In Europe and parts of Asia, the loss of Gulf barrels has turned prompt crude into a scarcity asset, sending physical prices to records. In the United States, by contrast, the domestic crude system has been partly insulated by policy intervention and by the specific kinds of barrels available to American refiners.

That is why Mars crude, a medium-sour Gulf of Mexico grade, has fallen back to around $97 a barrel after peaking near $129 earlier this month, even as European physical crude prices have hovered near $150 and Dubai-linked crude in the Middle East reached unprecedented levels near $170.

Commodity-linked currencies are benefiting from a deeper change than a simple wartime oil spike. The Iran war has sharpened a broader geopolitical repricing in which energy security, critical minerals, and supply-chain resilience matter more to investors than they did a few years ago. In that setting, currencies tied to politically stable exporters of energy and raw materials, especially Norway, Australia, Canada, and to a lesser extent New Zealand, look better positioned than many larger peers.

One recent market snapshot showed the Norwegian krone and Australian dollar both up more than 7% against the US dollar this year, while strategists at several firms argue the move may still have room to run because commodity currencies have lagged the strength of the underlying commodity complex.

China’s latest energy-security message is that the country intends to respond to the Iran war not with panic, but with a more deliberate hardening of its supply system.

Wang Changlin, vice chair of the National Development and Reform Commission, said Beijing will continue diversifying energy imports, expand reserves, and push domestic production more aggressively so the country is better prepared for what he called an “emergency situation.” He also said China’s energy market has remained broadly steady because of government intervention since the war began.