South Korea has unveiled a near-$1.2 trillion, decade-long push into semiconductors, AI and data centres led by Samsung and SK Hynix, in a state-orchestrated bet that towers over the EU's Chips Act.
China's commerce minister, Wang Wentao, held two days of talks in Brussels with EU trade chief Maroš Šefčovič as rows over rare-earth export curbs, electric-vehicle tariffs and a record trade deficit pushed the bloc's most fraught economic relationship toward a possible confrontation — with consequences for open, trade-dependent economies such as Luxembourg.
Outgoing IMF chief economist Pierre-Olivier Gourinchas says globalisation is being transformed rather than dismantled, as supply chains adapt and the EU strikes deals that bypass the US. For Luxembourg — the world's most trade-open economy and second-largest fund centre — how global commerce is rewired is an existential question.
China placed 10 US firms on its export-control list and barred 46 from government procurement on 22 June 2026, retaliating for the Pentagon's expanded list of 'Chinese military companies' and raising the temperature of a trade war that reaches export-dependent economies like Luxembourg's.