Things Are Moving Fast All Over

By Michael Every of Rabobank

Do You Get The Points?

First, we had a surprise 28-point US plan for Ukraine; then Europe responded with a 27-point plan, a separate 24-point plan from the E3 (UK, France, Germany), and vague 6-points from EC President von der Leyen. Now we have a revised 19-point US-Ukraine plan, following bilateral discussions, which reportedly doesn’t favor Moscow and leaves the most contentious issues for direct Trump-Zelenskyy talks to be held imminently. Apparently, it proposes a ceasefire along current lines; a raised cap on the size of the Ukrainian army; restrictions on heavy weapons near the border; an Article 5-modelled US security guarantee; no automatic territorial concessions; no automatic veto on EU or NATO membership; and plans for reconstruction. The floated removal of sanctions on Russia and its return to the G8 may or may not be part of it, along with the release of its frozen assets which the US and Europe hold.

The key points are this: the US is in a hurry to get this done so it can focus elsewhere; and Europe continues to be left out of what it sees as its loop. That reflects its shrunken geopolitical status. Europe could already tell Ukraine it will provide it with unlimited funding and weaponry if the US won’t, but it isn’t; and if it is to rearm now, it can’t use frozen Russian assets to fund it.

As such, Europe’s geostrategic –so geoeconomic, so market— environment will continue to be shaped by others. As Euractiv puts it, ‘The Ursula Doctrine: Brussels’ bid to promote an ‘Economic Security Doctrine’ epitomises the EU Commission chief’s grand strategy: to repeatedly churn out vacuous grand strategies’; as the South China Morning Post has it, ‘As US-China rivalry redefines economic warfare, Europe scrambles for its dictionary.’ Except that for far too long it thought economic statecraft terms were rude words.

Another key point to note is this is not happening in a vacuum: things are moving fast all over.

The US is already shifting its military from Ukraine towards Venezuela, where the Trump admin just formally designated President Maduro as a member of a foreign terrorist organization. While a poll at The Hill says most Americans oppose US military action there and Trump says he’s ready to talk with Maduro, Axios can only report that, “”Nobody is planning to go in and shoot him or snatch him – at this point. I wouldn’t say never, but that’s not the plan right now,” according to one official.” We just published a report on the topic and the potential impact on energy markets: Vene(zuela), vidi, vici?

In Asia, fears are growing that the Japan-China divide could grow: Hong Kong is also questioning its ties. In tandem, as Bloomberg puts it, China is trying to force countries to pick a side over Taiwan. Indeed, in an extremely unusual development, China’s Xi just called Trump to discuss Taiwan and Ukraine. On one hand, this call clarified that Trump will visit China in April and host Xi next year. On the other, this looks an attempt to go round PM Takaichi to ‘the boss’.

As such, with moves in LatAm, Europe, and Asia –and the Middle East– all happening in tandem there is a distinctly Tehran-Yalta-Potsdam, FDR-Stalin-Churchill atmosphere – as we had warned was looming for years. If you aren’t at that table, you are likely to be on it. That includes Europe, it seems, much as it was used to doing the carving in the past.

In geoeconomics, neo-mercantilism continues to be the trend. Yes, stalled Canada-India trade talks are going to be restarted, but a US-India deal is still elusive, and Brussels is unsure if its India deal can land this year.

However, the EU is going to tighten investment rules for foreign firms, insisting on greater benefits for local workers and tech transfers: that’s as DM = EM as it gets, but comes as EU car parts firms warn of massive job losses from “Darwinian” competition from Chinese rivals in Europe – yet China is reportedly pitching closer ties to Germany in strategic industries to ease at least its rare earth strains. Historically, divide and rule has always worked well in such circumstances.

US Commerce Secretary Lutnick said the EU must relax its digital rules for lower steel and aluminium tariffs, and USTR Greer said the EU must slash levies on US exports before getting tariff relief. And Politico notes that “Ursula von der Leyen says African countries should benefit from resource extraction – but Brussels has yet to deliver on that promise.”

UK Chancellor Reeves reportedly hopes trade deals can save Britain’s budget as cheap Chinese wind turbines are set to flood British waters (says the Telegraph) but the UK and Indonesia agree a landmark £4bn deal to develop a maritime capability for Jakarta.

In the economy, besides constant concerns over “affordability”, which the Wall Street Journal says there is nothing we can do about, all is also change.

Trump just used an executive order to launch a moon-shot “Genesis Mission” on AI research “to solve the most challenging problems of this century.” It aims to build an integrated AI platform to harness federal scientific datasets –the world’s largest– to train scientific foundation models and create AI agents to test new hypotheses, automate research workflows, and accelerate scientific breakthroughs. This will all sit under the Secretary of Energy, with a deadline of 270 days to at least have the foundations in place. The target is to “strengthen national security, secure energy dominance, enhance workforce productivity, and multiply the return on taxpayer investment into R&D, thereby furthering America’s technological dominance and global strategic leadership.” We’ll have to wait and see what this means for advanced manufacturing, biotech, critical materials, nuclear fission and fusion energy, quantum information science, and semiconductors and microelectronics.

Meanwhile, India’s PM Modi also plans a reform blitz to try “to turbocharge” his economy. Things are not standing still.

Yet neither are they necessarily moving in a direction all will enjoy.

As markets seize on the latest Fed-speak from Daly and Waller to think “rate cuts!”, it misses the structural shifts underway at that institution, which will ripple globally. Indeed, if 2025 was the year of the tariff, 2026 might see the same shift in the financial architecture.

That’s as the ECB just warned that stablecoins could siphon off euro zone bank deposits. That’s something we warned about months ago – and now do EM as well as DM.

Not that we don’t have things to focus on in the current iteration of the global architecture.

The Australian Financial Review says, ‘Jamie Dimon is right. Alarm bells are ringing about the next GFC’ and “The changes under way in the global financial system will be more consequential than the distortions wrought by Donald Trump.”

The real point is you can’t point to where things are going using the same old playbooks when tectonic plates are shifting in geopolitics, geoeconomics, economics, and even science. Well, you can… but it’s pointless.

As @hendry_hugh noted yesterday, “Models die in regime shifts. Not because the math is bad. Because the assumptions are old. Trade 2025 with 1995 maps and your stop is prewritten.”

ᴍᴏᴅᴇʟꜱ ᴅɪᴇ ɪɴ ʀᴇɢɪᴍᴇ ꜱʜɪꜰᴛꜱ

ɴᴏᴛ ʙᴇᴄᴀᴜꜱᴇ ᴛʜᴇ ᴍᴀᴛʜ ɪꜱ ʙᴀᴅ
ʙᴇᴄᴀᴜꜱᴇ ᴛʜᴇ ᴀꜱꜱᴜᴍᴘᴛɪᴏɴꜱ ᴀʀᴇ ᴏʟᴅ

ᴛʀᴀᴅᴇ 2025 ᴡɪᴛʜ 1995 ᴍᴀᴘꜱ
ᴀɴᴅ ʏᴏᴜʀ ꜱᴛᴏᴘ ɪꜱ ᴘʀᴇᴡʀɪᴛᴛᴇɴ

— Hugh Hendry Acid Capitalist TV (@hendry_hugh) November 24, 2025

I agree; and would add that 1895 is arguably of more use to you as a map than 1995.