W15 - Dia and the Second Trade War

The Browser Company is a company that attracts continual attention; bluntly put, its vision is to disrupt Chrome. Last year they abandoned Arc 2.0 and shifted to developing an AI-native browser called Dia, which is now in invite-only testing. Learning from Arc’s lessons, Dia’s goal is to “make the first 90 seconds effortless” to lower the barrier for users to switch to a new browser. Many bloggers have already reviewed Dia, and the consensus is typically that it’s “clean, elegant, and innovative.”

The Browser Company is cool largely because of its founder, Josh Miller. He places extreme emphasis on product design—worthy of Jobs’s claim that design is the soul of a product, with the soul expressed through its appearance. His take on values is also distinctive: the company website has a page titled “Value” that reads like a road-trip journal, full of idealism.

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I haven’t written about macro topics in a long time; I’m inexperienced but eager, and I want to record my thoughts on this epic moment.

First, a book: The Clash of Trade, published in 2019 at the outset of the first trade war. It traces changes in U.S. international trade policy over the country’s 200-plus-year history and the forces driving those shifts. Viewed over a long span, trade protectionism and isolationism have been the United States’ long-term mainstream. The highest historical tariff reached 62%—and of course 2025 has rewritten that record.

For us it’s hard to say whether this is a blessing or a curse. Ten years ago we proposed the Made in China 2025 plan; after the first trade war in 2018 we quietly pushed forward, and by this year nearly 90% of the plan’s goals have been achieved in succession. Several advanced manufacturing sectors now lead the world, and many supply-side chokepoints have eased. Now, with a second trade war, we’re being forced to revitalize the demand side. If a large, unified market with high purchasing power can also take shape, we would shift from a primarily productive nation to one that has both supply and demand—leading in production and enjoying strong domestic demand. Historically, economies like that have been rare—perhaps only Britain during the early Industrial Revolution or the United States after World War II.

For individuals, the effects concern which industry to join and the ongoing revaluation of asset prices. I’ve been parsing a phrase lately: valuation is valuation along driving dimensions, and the drivers are the evolution of valuation tensions. Every asset’s valuation is undergoing a metamorphosis—gold, the dollar, U.S. Treasuries, and U.S. equities are all being transformed.