Last year, lefty corporate media outlets pushed the narrative that President Trump's trade war with the world could trigger a 1929-style economic collapse. However, a new UBS report presents a markedly different picture: global trade growth is running at historically high levels, supported by AI-related demand and rising export prices.
Let's take a trip in the "wayback machine" and look at Bloomberg's headlines when Trump was ratcheting up the trade war with China in early 2025. The outlet pumped out an ungodly number of headlines about "recession" and impending economic doom.
MSM's 'Doom-Maxxing' Headlines:
Roughly 1.5 years later, UBS's latest data show continued growth in global trade, despite the recession risks economists highlighted when the tariff war broke out in the first half of 2025.
UBS chief economist Arend Kapteyn wrote Tuesday morning that global export values are rising about 19% from a year earlier, placing growth in the 84th percentile of the past 25 years. Higher volumes account for roughly 8.8 percentage points of that increase, while rising prices contribute another 10.3 percentage points.
Asia accounts for 71% of global export growth. The region, with China particularly prominent, generates about 95% of the technology-related contribution, highlighting its major role in the AI supply chain.
Separately, Emmanuel Sharef, who oversees Pacific Investment Management Co.'s flagship Balanced Income and Growth Fund, told Bloomberg last week that he was seeking opportunities among Asian suppliers benefiting from the AI boom.
The report suggests that global trade remains resilient, but its core strength is concentrated in technology and Asia. That leaves the expansion heavily sensitive to the AI and power grid investment boom. It seems that all the doom-maxxing forecasts lefty corporate media outlets made last summer have fallen flat on their faces.
Tyler Durden Tue, 09/08/2026 - 17:20Authored by Kevin Stocklin via The Epoch Times,
A coalition of 25 state attorneys general called on federal agencies and Congress to defund the National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine (NASEM), charging that the organization had used taxpayer dollars to produce reports that supported plaintiffs in climate lawsuits against energy companies.
In an Aug. 27 letter, the state attorneys general urged the federal government to "end grants to an organization [NASEM] that uses taxpayer money to prop up litigation theories that have been rejected by courts from Maryland to Mississippi to California."
Much of the conflict stems from a chapter on climate science in the Federal Judicial Center's Reference Manual on Scientific Evidence for federal judges that was written by NASEM, together with the Federal Judicial Center (FJC).
This manual provides essential background and technical information for judges who are presiding over thousands of lawsuits in which states and cities across the United States are seeking billions of dollars in damages from energy companies as compensation for alleged harm from global warming.
Allegations of BiasCritics allege that information NASEM produced for the manual supports the plaintiffs' claims while ignoring contrary views that favor the defense.
President Donald Trump stated in a July 19 Truth Social post that NASEM had "published fraudulent, biased, and misleading Manuals on Climate Change" and that "taxpayers should not be funding Climate Fraud, and Judges should never have relied upon it."
In January, Reps. Jim Jordan (R-Ohio), chairman of the House Judiciary Committee, and Darrell Issa (R-Calif.), chairman of the Subcommittee on Courts, Intellectual Property, and the Internet, told the FJC in a letter that the manual appeared to include "biased programming" with the "underlying goal of predisposing federal judges in favor of plaintiffs who allege injuries from the manufacturing, marketing, use, or sale of fossil-fuel products."
In response, the FJC removed the chapter from its manual. Initially, NASEM kept the chapter on its website but removed it on Aug. 7, pending an internal review.
"That chapter has received considerable scrutiny," NASEM stated. "[NASEM] has determined that questions about the processes used to develop the chapter warrant an independent review, and the chapter will not appear on our website while that review is underway."
However, attorneys general from the group of 25 states, led by Montana, Nebraska, Tennessee, and West Virginia, say they have concerns regarding that review process.
"Now, over five months later, after presidential criticism and increasing public scrutiny, NASEM has temporarily removed the chapter from its website for an 'independent review' of the 'processes used to develop the chapter,'" the attorneys general wrote in their letter. "This review appears to be a sham, as demonstrated by NASEM's secrecy around all aspects of the review process."
The attorneys general charged that the chapter in the reference manual that NASEM helped write "materially misquotes the [Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change], directly contradicts the manual's statistics chapter, was apparently substantially ghost-written by climate plaintiffs' attorney Michael Burger, and had funders, authors, and reviewers that included climate funders, activists, and litigation participants."
One of the co-authors of the Reference Manual's climate chapter, Columbia Law School professor Jessica Wentz, defended the work in a Wall Street Journal op-ed, stating that it had undergone a rigorous review process, that Michael Burger had not contributed to it, and that it was "objective and rooted in settled science."
In addition to the chapter in the reference manual for judges, NASEM produced a report in July titled "Attribution of Extreme Weather and Climate Events and Their Impacts 2026," which critics say bolstered plaintiffs' arguments that harm from extreme weather events could be attributed to energy companies' production of fossil fuels.
That NASEM report supported "extreme event attribution" (EEA), the legal theory underpinning climate lawsuits, which claims that damage from extreme weather can be attributed to fossil fuel emissions, as plaintiffs assert. NASEM stated in a summary of the report that "the scientific tools, observational datasets, and methods developed and used for EEA have advanced considerably over the past decade and increased the confidence in EEA results for some types of weather events."
"[NASEM says] that these attribution studies have more prominence in the press and in legal proceeding and they say attribution methodology is getting better, but saying something is getting better is nowhere near the same as saying it's any good," Steven Koonin, physicist at Stanford University and former undersecretary for science under President Barack Obama, told The Epoch Times. "You would expect to see graphs throughout the report comparing the results of attribution with what the actual data is, and there is virtually none of that in the report."
The NASEM report also provides a methodology and causal link between greenhouse gas emissions, changes in climate, extreme weather, physical impacts on communities, and societal and economic harm.
Among the climate lawsuit cases currently moving through the courts is a pending Supreme Court case, Suncor Energy v. County Commissioners of Boulder County, which could set a precedent for many other similar cases.
Calls to Defund NASEMBesides the attorneys general, other critics have also called for the government to defund NASEM.
"Federal agencies shouldn't need another minute to cut off funding to an organization laundering climate activism through the National Academies' name," Jason Isaac, CEO of the American Energy Institute, said in a statement.
"The National Academies took taxpayer money and used it to manufacture a scientific-sounding basis for climate lawsuits courts have already rejected, then timed a follow-up report to help plaintiffs in the Suncor case while locking out any rebuttal. Calling their own secret internal review 'independent' is a punchline."
The letter from the state attorneys general said "a truly independent review" would feature an external panel, exclude NASEM employees, activists, and litigation participants, and be made available to the public.
NASEM received hundreds of millions of dollars from federal agencies in 2024, including more than $84 million from the Transportation Department, $32 million from the Defense Department, and $23 million from the Department of Health and Human Services, the Aug. 27 letter stated. Signatories of the Aug. 27 letter also included attorneys general from Alabama, Alaska, Arkansas, Florida, Georgia, Idaho, Indiana, Iowa, Kansas, Kentucky, Louisiana, Mississippi, Missouri, Ohio, North Dakota, South Dakota, Oklahoma, Texas, South Carolina, Wyoming, and Utah.
The Epoch Times contacted NASEM for comment but did not receive a response as of press time. However, a spokesperson from the organization said in a statement to media outlets that its mission was "to provide independent, objective scientific advice."
Tyler Durden Tue, 09/08/2026 - 17:00