We dove into how politics and laws can really shake up international trade. Take the Russia$-$Ukraine conflict, for instance. It's caused a bunch of countries and companies to back away from doing business with Russia. They're using sanctions, which are basically ways to penalize a country. These can include stopping all trade with Russian businesses or even freezing their money. This is hitting Russia's economy hard, especially their car industry. Avtovaz, the big company that makes Lada cars, is struggling big time. If Renault, the French company that owns a major part of Avtovaz, pulls out, it might mean no more new Lada cars. Also, we dove into how people used to think about trading between countries, there was this old idea called Mercantilism, where a country was considered rich if it had tons of gold and silver. The aim was to sell more to other countries than you buy from them. But now, things are way different. It's not just about countries anymore there are huge companies that work in lots of countries that are critically important. There$$s this modern theory from Michael Porter, and he says that a country is good in a certain industry because it's good at creating new stuff and improving things in that industry.

Do you think our current way of understanding international trade is more on point than the old gold and silver approach? In the long term, what impact do you think major conflicts, like what's happening between Russia and Ukraine, have on international trade? How much influence should giant multinational companies have in making trade rules and decisions?