The Trivium China Podcast

• Ep 50 - Breaking down the Central Economic Work Conference

  At the end of each year, China's top economic policymakers get together for the Central Economic Work Conference (CEWC) to discuss their goals for the year ahead.This year's CEWC wrapped up on December 11, and in this podcast, Trivium Co-founder Andrew Polk and Dinny McMahon, Head of Markets Research, get together to discuss the ins-and-outs of the meeting's official readout.Warning: The readout from the CEWC is invariably a big-picture policy document that's frustratingly thin on detail.Deciphering what the leadership means takes a little bit of reading between the lines.And that's exactly what the gents do!They start off with their 30,000-foot takeaways (TL;DR: Beijing envisions 2026 looking a lot like 2025).Then they get into:Where we might expect extra government spendingWhether Beijing will double-down on the consumer goods trade-in programHow Beijing intends to boost consumption

  --------  

  37:44

  --------

  37:44
• Ep 49 - I say overcapacity, you say involution, let’s call the whole thing off

  In mid-2024, Beijing rebranded its overcapacity problems as “involution.” Does it matter? As the bard would say, a rose by any other name…And yet, over time it’s become clear that this was more than just a rebranding exercise. Along with the change in name came a subtle shift in how Beijing perceives its overcapacity problems – a shift that has important policy implications.In this podcast, Trivium Co-founder Andrew Polk and Dinny McMahon, Head of Markets Research, talk all things involution. The gents discuss:How the concept of involution differs from that of overcapacityWhy Beijing doesn’t think overcapacity can exist in a global free marketWhat Beijing’s anti-involution efforts look likeAnd what it all means for the rest of the worldThen, Andrew wraps things up with a brief rundown of the most recent developments in the US-China trade truce.

  --------  

  42:42

  --------

  42:42
• Ep 48 - How Xi Jinping thinks about the rule of law + explaining why capital investment is tanking

  On this week’s Trivium China Podcast, your loyal Trivium team digs into China’s key domestic and regional developments from the past few days.First, Trivium Co-founders Andrew Polk and Trey McArver discuss:The Party’s latest conference on law-based governance – and what it tells about how Xi Jinping views China’s legal and regulatory systemsXi’s motivations in refreshing and solidifying the various rules that govern Party and government behaviorChina’s related efforts to build out its foreign-facing legal toolkitThe gents then move on to examine the intensifying diplomatic row between China and Japan – and why both sides are unlikely to climb down.Then, in the second half of the pod, Andrew is joined by Trivium’s lead macro-econ analyst Joe Peissel to discuss:The recent, and curious, drop-off in fixed asset investment (FAI) in China, why it’s happening, and what it means for the wider macro-economic growth trajectory heading into 2026Fair warning: This one gets pretty wonky!

  --------  

  50:38

  --------

  50:38
• Ep 47 - China Shock 2.0: the trade implications of China’s new economic growth model

  With the US and China having agreed to a détente over trade, now is a good time to take a step back from the day-to-day back-and-forth of measures and countermeasure, and look at the longer term implications of China’s new economic model for trade.In this podcast, Trivium Co-founder Andrew Polk and Dinny McMahon, Head of Markets Research, kick off by discussing China’s surprisingly bleak October economic data, before wading into big picture trade issues.They discuss:How China intends to maintain export growth in the face of rising trade tensionsWhether the world is facing a China Shock 2.0, and how it will differ from the first China ShockAnd how countries might adapt to expanding exports of Chinese advanced manufactured goods

  --------  

  50:46

  --------

  50:46
• Ep 46 - What China really agreed to on rare earths + assessing US capability to end reliance on China

  Confusion around what China has officially agreed to in terms of pausing its rare earths, and other critical mineral, export controls persists – even as we are a week out from Donald Trump and Xi Jinping’s trade agreement in South Korea.Significant discrepancies remain between official statements from the White House and China’s Ministry of Commerce on the issue.Meanwhile, officials and commercial players on both sides of the Pacific are reporting significant differences around their expectations for how quickly, and abundantly, rare earths and other critical minerals will flow from China.In this week’s Trivium China podcast, host Andrew Polk is joined by his colleague Cory Combs to lay out their latest understanding of the issue. The two discuss:The key discrepancies between US and Chinese statements on the export control pauseHow political messaging from the White House is adding to the confusion for businessesAnd whether the political will exists for both sides to fully align on the details – and to maintain the trade ceasefire for a full yearAndrew and Cory then move on to examine the growing debate in Washington around how quickly the US can fully end its reliance on China for rare earth supplies. Cory gets into:What a realistic timeline for ending reliance on China would look likeThe reasons the US found itself in this situation in the first placeBenchmarking how quickly China can build new rare earths processing facilities – as a baseline for the potential US build outThe highly technical aspects of rare earths processing that will ultimately determine success or failureIt’s another fascinating discussion from the fine folks on the Trivium team – you won’t want to miss it!Also, check out this excellent paper by Jessica DiCarlo, Cory Combs, and Raphael Deberdt that Cory mentions in the show: Fractured Extraction: Mining Firms, Provinces and Municipalities in the Decentralized Politics of China’s Rare Earth Production

  --------  

  1:05:07

  --------

  1:05:07

More News podcasts

Trending News podcasts

About The Trivium China Podcast