Economics & Business Archive

DENPASAR, Indonesia — In the tussle for influence in Southeast Asia, the United States and China have long been competing for Indonesia’s affections. The strategically positioned, resource-rich archipelago is a prized partner in an era of fuel shortages and the global war on terror. But Washington and Beijing have lately expanded their courtship of Jakarta from the traditional areas of trade agreements, foreign direct investment, market access and technical assistance, to increasingly include offers of military hardware and military cooperation. This three-way dance began in 2005, when China and Indonesia announced their “Strategic Partnership.” At the same time, the U.S. […]

While the world doesn’t yet face a food crisis on par with the summer of 2008, it’s clear that the drought currently affecting the Black Sea trio of Russia, Ukraine and Kazakhstan — all big-time global exporters of wheat and barley — has suddenly made food inflation a primary threat to the somewhat fragile and decidedly uneven global economic recovery. At the very least, it reminds us just how tight global food markets are, due to the contradictory combination of rising middle-class demand and the enduring commitment by brittle governments around the world to keep prices low — at whatever […]

Global Insider is an ongoing World Politics Review interview series that examines developing trends in geopolitics. From maritime disputes and arms sales, to free trade agreements and evolving bilateral relations, Global Insider explores the foundations and implications of new developments in international affairs through the voices of preeminent experts that hail from government, academia and research institutions. Global Insider is published multiple times per week at worldpoliticsreview.com/trend-lines. On this page, and in a pdf document that is available for download by subscribers in our document center, we have collected every Global Insider interview conducted since the series began in April […]

After the Obama administration shifted gears in its strategy to stop Iran’s nuclear program, moving from diplomacy to sanctions, a sense of skepticism about its chances for success emanated from all corners. From top American generals saying they did not think the sanctions would work, to a wide variety of politicians, analysts and journalists — including your humble correspondent — a growing consensus emerged that the weak United Nations sanctions obtained by Washington with enormous difficulties would simply fail to deter Iran’s defiant push in pursuit of nuclear know-how and, most likely, nuclear weapons. Since the latest resolution’s passage, however, […]

The indefinite postponement of Saudi King Abdullah’s scheduled visit to the French capital last month does not bode well for France’s efforts to considerably raise its profile in the Gulf Cooperation Council, and it could well dampen the supposed gains made by French President Nicolas Sarkozy’s two visits to the desert kingdom last year. Reports suggest that King Abdullah, who was to open an exhibition of Saudi antiquities at the Louvre museum in Paris during his proposed July 12 visit, canceled his trip in the wake of a controversy generated by an article that appeared on the Web site of […]

Ecuador recently had its name removed from the Financial Action Task Force’s (FATF) “black list” of countries failing to effectively combat money laundering. For now, at least, this brings to an end a spat between the FATF and the government of Rafael Correa, ongoing since the Andean country was relegated to the organization’s lowest rung of noncompliance — occupied by the likes of Angola, Iran, North Korea, and Turkmenistan — in February. Correa struck a defiant tone during the episode, declaring: “This is imperialism in its most base form. . . . This has nothing to do with the struggle […]

Sex trafficking is an exceedingly grotesque, highly profitable component of contemporary slavery. In fact, no form of slavery is nearly as profitable, and it can be argued that none is as barbarically exploitive. In the course of 10 years of research across 18 countries, I have directly interviewed more than 500 slaves of all kinds, and some of the most heartbreaking tales I heard were those narrated by women and children who suffered years of sexual enslavement at the hands of traffickers and pimps. Though much has improved as a result of anti-trafficking activism, policy, law, and media coverage since […]

One reason why President Obama and other very senior U.S. officials personally met with a select group of leading columnists and opinion writers at the White House last week was to highlight the often overlooked progress his administration has achieved in securing comprehensive European support for the U.S. policy toward Iran. Although it is too early to judge the effects of the new sanctions adopted by the EU and the United States independently and collectively through the United Nations, we can begin to assess the administration’s multilateral diplomacy. At least in the case of Europe, that diplomacy seems to be […]

Few pages in the American political playbook have proven more resilient over the last decade than blaming China’s undervalued currency, the yuan, when the U.S. economy sags. When Beijing announced last month that it was unpegging its currency from the dollar and implementing a more flexible exchange rate system, it came after more than a year’s worth of constant but unsuccessful pestering from Congress and the Obama administration. Now, with more than a month of this new “flexible” regime in the books, American politicians are unimpressed with the yuan’s paltry appreciation against the dollar, and are once again calling for […]

In late-July, Secretary of State Hillary Clinton gently put China on notice regarding its increasingly aggressive claims over the near-entirety of the South China Sea by proposing a formal international legal process to resolve territorial disputes there. Naturally, the Chinese were not pleased, but the proposal was a great move by the Obama administration. Every step that China takes to build up its military power naturally triggers a strong balancing desire throughout the rest of Asia. But with none of those far-smaller economies looking to anger “rising China,” somebody needs to give voice to those fears and create vehicles for […]

Unless you have been living under a rock, the news that China has become the world’s top energy consumer should not have been surprising. For some years now, China has been steadily marching up the global energy consumer rankings, an ascension that was expedited by the severity of the recession’s impact in the U.S. The International Energy Agency (IEA), whose data confirmed the dubious milestone, called it a “new age in the history of energy.” Even if it is not entirely surprising, the news does beg further analysis because of its implications for global energy markets and international affairs. It […]

BEIJING — Over the past decade and more, China has capitalized on critical transformations in the global landscape to forge new patterns of political and economic influence and significantly further its national interests. But in so doing, it has also become exposed to a growing matrix of risks to its capacity for continued international expansion. While this exposure has rendered China more vulnerable to external actors and threats, the greatest obstacles facing the country’s future trajectory ultimately come from structural deficiencies in the domestic political economy. In the international arena, although China’s most recent gains have been impressive, much of […]

LIMA, Peru — With the entire western Amazon experiencing oil and mining booms, indigenous groups in the Amazon Basin and the Andes — already fighting encroachment by loggers and small-scale farmers, or else struggling to obtain title for their ancestral land — have now stepped up their resistance to efforts to exploit oil reserves, mineral deposits and other natural resources in and nearby their communities. In response, the region’s presidents have accused native leaders and environmentalists who help them of everything from terrorism to being U.S. lackeys. The trends cut across ideological divides. Peruvian President Alan Garcia has taken a […]

It was a shocking discovery. On July 2, agents from the Ecuadorian military and police, acting on a tip from the U.S. Drug Enforcement Agency, raided a smugglers’ camp deep in Ecuador’s jungle. Among rickety buildings and some scattered equipment lay a 100-foot-long submarine, half-submerged in a muddy channel. The diesel- and electrically powered vessel, constructed partially of fiberglass and capable of carrying six people and up to 12 tons of cargo fully underwater, was clearly designed to smuggle multi-million-dollar shipments of cocaine, most likely to the major drug markets in the U.S Smugglers have been using low-riding, hard-to-spot semi-submersible […]

Japanese Foreign Minister Katsuya Okada’s reiteration of support last week for the Iranian fuel swap proposal outlined in the Tehran Declaration is the latest sign of a strategic reorientation in Japanese international nuclear policy. That this announcement was accompanied by reports of Japan exploring the possibility of constructing quake-resistant nuclear plants in Iran is further indication that a shift in Japanese nuclear diplomacy is being effected — one that doesn’t necessarily adhere to a U.S.-led approach, but instead seeks to leverage Japan’s inherent strengths in the global nuclear renaissance to advance its own geopolitical interests. Despite being the only country […]