Geoeconomics on TikTok season 1

I think it is power that excites people about economics stories.

For this series, a team at DW put together visual first, 3 Minute TikTok videos; stories of “geoeconomcis”.

The term is a catchphrase. I think of it as a refocussing on what Susan Strange did. The journalist brought a practicioner’s perspective to studying International Political Economy.

The initial season ran for five episodes.

Why the US is loosing to China at sea

This series wouldn’t have been possible without an amazing team of creative people, designers, editors, authors, planners.

Mentally, my first episode is our “shipbuilding”-piece. It’s a story about a stark realisation within the White House since at least Biden, that the United States is loosing to China at sea. Chinese shipyards are continuously pumping out larger shares of the global market for boats – container ships, the like.

To counter, U.S. administrations have taken steps in the past to finance further capacities and had at some point threatened to put levys on docking Chinese ships. As of right now, this threat is off the table as far as I can tell – as part of the China-US trade war truce of October 2025.

Why the EU’s energy dependence on the US is quirky

We fell in love with sounds for this series and realized how much atmo work creates a whole multimedial space to explore a story.

The “LNG”-episode added props to the storytelling. Shoutout to Anna and Jorana for »Regie« and everything else. This story starts in Zeebrugge, on Belgium’s coast. Structures in the sea there form a vital entrance point into Europe’s gas market.

Since shunning Russia’s energy, European Union countries increasingly bought LNG from the United States. A dependence, that is more fragile than Europe’s dependence on Russia.

How Europe became dependent on China for rare earths

This story starts at a rare earths trader in Berlin. Very exciting for me, because I hadn’t seen rare earths before but written about them a couple of times.

We wanted to have “on-the-ground” elements for this series because we believe, reporters should see things with their own eyes. How do you make Terbiumoxide palpable? It looks kind of like cocoa powder.

Special treat that the TV-version of the piece, shoutout to my colleague Katharina, was featured in late night show Heute Show in October.

The TikTok piece traces the supply chain for some rare earths: From the trader’s place in Berlin to the mountains of Myanmar.

The boxes making US trade uneasy

The problem in a series on geoeconomics is: How can audiences connect to the thing we talk about. For this one, my colleague Kristie chose cardboard boxes.

As an early warning indicator, her piece in September forshadowed a structural recession in the United States. At time of writing this in November 2025, we’re looking spot on.

One thing I love about this series is to play with data. Kristie and Jorana in this piece wonderfully show how data on cardboard box production develops over time by flying through the timeline. It’s the chart below.

Source: FRED

This time travel idea gave me an idea. I thought, what happens if we go back in time? The blow chart shows the same indicator but how it developed since 1972.

Source: FRED

I want to now know: What did this day in November 1997 look like, when cardboard box production soared highest to 126.1693.

Here’s from the St. Louis Fed blog on the downward trend:

“Sustainability requirements, lightweighting technology, and consumer preferences have yielded significant changes in the industry, including a shift from virgin to recycled capacity. Many companies also factor-in packaging size to try to minimize impact on landfills, shipping, and warehouse inventory. Despite its recyclability and decomposition properties, cardboard takes up more space than, say, a plastic bag or other flexible packaging that incorporates both foil and plastic.

Also consider inventory positions and the economy in general: Back in 2020-21, there were shortages of virtually everything. Manufacturing played catch-up, eventually exceeding demand. Customers overbought based on inflated demand signals, resulting in full warehouses and stores in an economy with consumers purchasing less due to inflationary pressure. This may partly explain the large dip in 2022. Put simply, if fewer products are being produced, purchased, and shipped, then less cardboard is needed and thus produced.”

There’s something else, I’d like to throw into the ring for the structural reversal of paperbox production: I’d argue our lives in general have become more digital. Since the nineties, early 2000s we buy digital things. In the beginning it was ringphones for you cell. Now its apps and yoga classes.

The German company at a forkroad for Chinese chipmaking

Like no other company, Zeiss optics sits at the core of making the most advanced microchips in the world. Together with Dutch company ASLM, they are the crucial tool to make thin silicon wavers that later allow to calculate data.

The piece seemed to have hit a nerve. I think Siemens due to their nuclear tech and Boeing are close contenders to be covered next.