What actually happens when the internet stops working? Not the brief flicker-of-wifi kind, but a real digital pandemic - solar storms, satellite collisions, and heat waves taking out the servers holding your bank account, your health records and your group chats hostage.

That's the world ITU Deputy Secretary-General Tomas Lamanauskas has been mapping in the International Telecommunication Union's new Digital Risk Report, and it turns out digital resilience is now squarely a trade and infrastructure story, not just an IT problem. Ardian and Rob talk to Lamanauskas about why the ITU is borrowing pandemic language to describe outages, the mechanics of Kessler Syndrome (yes, the Gravity/Armageddon scenario), why submarine cables need their own 42-expert international advisory board, and why "analog skills" - like knowing how to function without WhatsApp for an afternoon - are suddenly a policy conversation.

Before the interview, Ardian and Rob run through this month's "What Went Wrong": why the FT thinks Swiss manufacturing faces a harder question than tariffs alone - namely, what "Swiss made" actually means once companies like Bernina start moving production to Thailand while keeping the engineering at home. They also cover Switzerland's newly upgraded free trade agreement with China, which pushes Swiss duty-free access to the Chinese market from roughly 50% to 99.8%, and the US-Canada trade collapse that the Wall Street Journal has dubbed "the stupidest trade war ever" - 50% tariffs on Canadian goods and cars, retaliatory tariffs starting September 8th, and China's opportunistic pitch to Ottawa as the more predictable trading partner.

Plus: listener feedback on sustainable aviation fuel and greenwashing, Silicon Valley's new favorite recession indicator (limited-edition AI-branded Tudor watches), and a bridge in France that gives oversized vehicles a very unwanted haircut.

Listen to episode 92 of Trade Splaining wherever you get your podcasts, and let us know what you think at tradesplaining@gmail.com.

Everyone weaponized trade policy at once this month, and the targets weren't always the obvious ones. Trump's latest tariff threats landed on the EU in retaliation for European fines on tech firms, which makes this a regulatory fight dressed up as a trade fight - and means every EU competition decision is now a potential tariff-triggering event. Add a threatened 100% tariff on generic drugs, and the low-cost end of the US supply chain starts looking fragile.

Meanwhile the bill from the Iran war is arriving late but arriving. Strategic reserves are thinning, diesel and jet fuel are tight, and the Houthis are now vowing a maritime blockade on Saudi Arabia, which puts the other oil export route in play alongside Hormuz. The New York Times Peter S. Goodman takes the diesel crisis all the way down to Bangladeshi smallholder farmers who need it to pump water, which is a useful corrective to the European trucking angle. Heat is doing macro damage too: Europe's grids were built for a different climate, and retrofitting Switzerland alone for cooling carries a price tag in the hundreds of billions of francs.

Then there's China, which is quietly running the export control playbook it spent five years complaining about. Beijing is tightening controls on outbound investment by companies and citizens, Huawei has engineered its way around US export controls with chip stacking and other workarounds, and the emerging assessment is that China came through the trade war in better shape than most of us assumed. Ardian and Rob get into whether export controls actually do anything beyond forcing innovation, whether the "Chinese model is collapsing" story is analysis or politics, and what it means for an export machine if the rest of the world eventually can't afford to buy.

Which leads to Europe. The EU is talking tougher on Chinese overcapacity and subsidies, but China can retaliate faster through rare earths and critical inputs. Brussels keeps signing rules-based agreements - Mercosur, Switzerland, the post-Brexit deal - covering tariffs, services, labour and environmental standards, digital rules and investment protection, while US deals go transactional and bilateral. The awkward part: Europe hasn't actually used any of those agreements against subsidized Chinese manufacturing yet.

Plus: TS correspondent Michelle returns from six months inside the Walmart employees subreddit with a report on drone cages in the parking lot, stolen Zebra scanners, and Walmart's two podcasts. There's a global whey protein shortage, a Geneva perch bumper crop, a man who allegedly stole a Sea-Doo in Canada and livestreamed his illegal border crossing, and an Air Canada pilot who spent 17 years in the cockpit without a licence.

🎧 Listen here: [link]

In Episode 90 of Trade Splaining, Ardian Mollabeqiri and Robert Skidmore are back to unpack how geopolitics, energy markets and global shipping disruptions are finding their way into the everyday economy — from oil prices and port congestion to pain au chocolat, ice cream cones and Aperol Spritzes.

We start with the Strait of Hormuz, where fears of an oil price shock ran into a more complicated reality. China’s role as a “swing importer,” existing oil supply gluts, demand destruction, rerouting and refinery adaptation all helped explain why markets did not quite melt down — even as the risks around energy security and logistics remain very real.

Then we follow the supply chain into breakfast and dessert. Why is a pain au chocolat more expensive? Why can an ice cream cone cost $8? The answer is not one input but many — wheat, butter, cocoa, diesel, refrigeration, labour, packaging and energy all moving in uncomfortable directions at once. Globalization, it turns out, is now coming for your snack budget.

This episode also features a conversation with Jan Hoffmann, Global Lead for Maritime Transport and Ports at the World Bank, on the latest Container Port Performance Index. Jan explains what the CPPI actually measures, why port rankings can get political, how rerouting through the Red Sea, Hormuz and beyond affects port performance, and why the global shipping map is changing in ways that are more about friend-shoring than near-shoring.

We also get into MSC vs Maersk, port ownership, shipping line-linked terminal operators, the geopolitics of port concessions, and — naturally — Jan’s ongoing haircut index and his Washington, DC kebab recommendation.

Plus: Gen Z’s anti-AI nostalgia, the World Cup heat dome, Bosnia’s unofficial theme song, Geneva’s Aperol Spritz problem, and why 320 kilos of meth is probably over the “personal use” threshold.

Listen now for a trade, shipping and geopolitics episode that connects the Strait of Hormuz, China’s energy leverage, port performance, global inflation and your next overpriced ice cream cone.