PESTLE & MORTAR

This week’s edition spotlights the intensifying global tensions and power shifts driven by economic, political, and strategic pressures: China has abandoned diplomatic engagement for a “wartime footing” against U.S. tariffs, while a spate of politically motivated fires and bombs in the U.S., Greece, and elsewhere underscores rising domestic and transnational violence. In the United States, the Trump administration’s populist campaign has escalated into threats to withdraw vast federal funds from elite universities and a landmark FTC antitrust trial aiming to unwind Meta’s Instagram and WhatsApp acquisitions, even as erratic tariff policies sap the dollar’s strength and imperil small‐business supply chains. Hollywood’s shrinking access to China’s market and proposed deep NASA budget cuts signal an erosion of U.S. cultural and scientific leadership, just as India aggressively courts new arms customers—offering subsidized financing to supplant Russia and positioning itself as a major defense‐manufacturing hub. Together, these developments paint a picture of a more confrontational, fragmented global order in which old alliances fray and new power centers emerge.