W15 - Dia and the Second Trade War

The Browser Company is a company I’ve been watching closely; in plain terms, 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 an invite-only testing phase. Learning from Arc’s mistakes, Dia’s goal is to “make the first 90 seconds effortless,” lowering the barrier for users to switch to a new browser. Many bloggers have reviewed Dia already, and most describe it as clean, elegant, and innovative.

The Browser Company is cool largely because of its founder, Josh Miller. He places extreme emphasis on product design—true to Jobs’s notion that design is the soul of a product, and the soul expresses itself through appearance. His view of values is distinctive as well: the company website includes a page titled “Value” that reads like a road-trip essay, full of idealism.

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I haven’t written about macro for a long time; I may be out of practice but still eager—this feels like an epic moment worth noting some thoughts.

First, a book: The Battle of Trade, published in 2019 at the outset of the first wave of trade wars. It traces changes in U.S. trade policy over more than 200 years since the nation’s founding, and examines the drivers behind those shifts. Viewed over a long horizon, protectionism and isolationism have actually been the U.S. mainstream for much of its history. The highest historical tariff once reached 62%; of course, 2025 reset that record.

For us it’s hard to say whether this is blessing or misfortune. Ten years ago we proposed the Made in China 2025 plan; after the first trade war in 2018 we persisted and pushed forward, and this year we’ve achieved nearly 90% of the targets, with several advanced manufacturing sectors leading globally and many supply-chain bottlenecks eased. Now, with a second trade war, we’re again forced to revive demand. If a high–purchasing-power unified domestic market takes shape, we will shift from a production-centric country to one with both strong supply and demand—producing at the frontier while sustaining robust domestic consumption. Historically, economies like that have been rare—perhaps only Britain during the Industrial Revolution or the United States after World War II.

For individuals, the effects are choices about which industries to join and an ongoing repricing of asset values. I’ve been reflecting on a line: valuation is a valuation of the driving dimension, and the driver is the evolution of valuation contradictions. Every asset’s valuation is undergoing a metamorphosis—gold, the dollar, U.S. Treasuries, and U.S. equities all exemplify this.