Goldman Sachs: South Korea’s full-year exports are on track to exceed $1 trillion; multiple institutions project divergent global inflation paths amid Middle East shocks.

Goldman Sachs’ latest report notes that the AI capital expenditure (capex) boom is driving Korea’s chip cycle with greater intensity and duration than expected, and the AI-fueled massive trade surplus will persist through the end of the year. The bank projects Korea’s full-year exports to exceed $1 trillion, with the current account surplus rising to 15% of GDP. On the U.S. front, a new study from the Federal Reserve Bank of Dallas shows that oil prices surging above $120 per barrel this spring trimmed U.S. economic output by roughly 0.3 percentage points, though the impact is far milder than similar oil shocks in the 1980s, reflecting the U.S. economy’s vastly improved resilience to oil price shocks. For the Eurozone, ING analysts point out that June PMI data still signals business activity in contraction territory, but the easing of inflation pressure from cooling energy prices is encouraging, with growth in input costs for both manufacturing and services slowing. Weak growth paired with fading inflation concerns will deter the European Central Bank from implementing large interest rate hikes. On the Australia front, Westpac has maintained its forecast for the Reserve Bank of Australia (RBA) to raise rates in August, while warning that "second-round effects" from Middle East supply shocks are spreading: rising costs for fuel, transportation, and chemicals have started to spill over into more sectors beyond energy, wage cost pressures could further stoke inflation in the second half of 2026, and the withdrawal of policy support measures will also keep inflation risks lingering beyond the August policy meeting.