Economics & Business Archive

World Politics Review’s Maria Savel had the opportunity to speak with Dr. Javier Solana regarding the European Union’s relations with China, ASEAN and Asia as a whole. Dr. Solana is president of the ESADE Center for Global Economy and Geopolitics and previously served as the European Union high representative for the common foreign and security policy, NATO secretary-general and Spanish foreign minister. The following is a condensed version of their conversation. World Politics Review: Germany-China ties indicate a lot of the fault lines in the European Union and its approach to China in terms of balancing national and European interests. […]

Last week, the Community of Portuguese Speaking Countries (CPLP) held its 10th Summit of Heads of State and Government in East Timor. The meeting produced several resolutions regarding scientific and cultural topics, as well as a number of political statements linked to Guinea Bissau’s elections and mutual political support in international institutions. But perhaps the most important decision made at the summit was the acceptance of Equatorial Guinea, currently the third-largest oil exporter in sub-Saharan Africa, as a full member of the CPLP. The four-year process that led to last week’s outcome was far from smooth, as Portugal vetoed Equatorial […]

After a run of good years, Peru’s government faces mounting economic challenges. Bolstered by booming commodities demand in China and other emerging markets, the Andean nation’s gross domestic product expanded at an annual rate of almost $15 billion over the past decade. Inflows of foreign direct investment nearly doubled between 2009 and 2012. But the economy has cooled since, with annual growth sliding from 8.5 percent in 2010 to 5.8 percent last year. While Peru continues to lead its South American peers in terms of economic expansion, the country’s Central Bank significantly cut its growth forecast from 5.5 percent in […]

It is axiomatic that almost any foreign policy action taken by President Barack Obama will be reflexively criticized by the Republican opposition. What is striking is how, in recent months, congressional Democrats and former Obama administration officials have been more willing to publicly voice their own critiques of the president’s performance. Even his first-term secretary of state, Hillary Clinton, now positioning herself for a possible 2016 run to succeed him as chief executive, has begun to lay out her differences with Obama on how he has handled the national security portfolio. Most of the critiques follow a common narrative: that […]

Last week, Japan’s Foreign Minister Fumio Kishida met with his Central Asian counterparts in the Kyrgyz capital, Bishkek, as part of the fifth Central Asia Plus Japan (CAPJ) Dialogue. Initiated in 2004, the dialogue has served as the foundation for recent ties between Tokyo and five countries in Central Asia: Kyrgyzstan, Uzbekistan, Kazakhstan, Tajikistan and Turkmenistan. This year’s meeting focused on enhancing economic cooperation in the agricultural and energy sectors, while also discussing potential security collaboration. Prior to the CAPJ Dialogue, Japan channeled its engagement with the region through its so-called Silk Road Diplomacy, which it launched in 1997 to […]

Argentina signed a nuclear energy deal with Russia last week, the latest step in Argentina’s push to expand its nuclear industry. Irma Arguello, chair of the NPSGlobal Foundation, discussed Argentina’s nuclear energy policy in an email interview. WPR: How much of Argentina’s energy do the country’s nuclear plants currently produce? Irma Arguello: Argentina’s two fully operational nuclear power plants—Atucha I and Embalse—jointly produce 930 megawatts of electricity, or about 4.7 percent of the country’s total electricity output. A third power plant, Atucha II, which came online this year, will be capable of producing 692 MW once it becomes fully operational. […]

Although Russian President Vladimir Putin’s visit to South America earlier this month was overshadowed by events in Ukraine and the Middle East, it did garner considerable attention in the South American and Russian media. Even in Washington, commentators saw Putin as seeking to circumvent the Western opposition to his policies in Ukraine as well as retaliate for U.S. involvement in Moscow’s neighboring states with a tit-for-tat display of influence in Washington’s strategic backyard. Putin began his visit in Cuba on July 11, where he finalized plans to eliminate 90 percent of Cuba’s Cold War-era debt to Russia—more than $30 billion […]

The United States, Guatemala, Honduras and El Salvador are frantically trying to address the humanitarian crisis unfolding on both the U.S. border and in Central America’s Northern Triangle. Children and families have been fleeing from that region to the United States in record numbers since 2009, although the numbers have spiked dramatically in the past two years. Approximately 60,000 unaccompanied minors—children under 18 traveling without an adult—have been apprehended at the U.S. border since Oct. 1, overwhelming an immigration system designed to handle 6,000 to 7,000 in that time. Another 39,000 families, mostly women and children, have been taken into […]

Editor’s note: The following article is one of 30 that we’ve selected from our archives to celebrate World Politics Review’s 15th anniversary. You can find the full collection here. China’s post-Mao generation, born since Mao Zedong’s 1976 death, has had formative life experiences that fundamentally differ from China’s older generations. Unlike their elders, Chinese born in the post-Mao era have not suffered the trauma of civil war, revolution, collectivization, starvation or the chaos of Mao’s Cultural Revolution. They also have been far more geographically mobile than older generations, whose ability to move freely was highly constricted by the government’s strict residential […]

On July 14, Xi Jinping began his second official visit to Latin America as president of China. The trip touches off with Xi’s participation in the sixth BRICS summit in Fortaleza, Brazil, which begins today. After this meeting of emerging market leaders, Xi will attend a Community of Latin American and Caribbean States (CELAC) meeting in Brasilia, followed by visits to Argentina and Venezuela, where China maintains substantial energy-related interests. Xi’s Latin America tour will conclude on July 23 after a stop in Cuba. Xi’s trip is largely consistent with China’s previous state visits to Latin America. Brazil, Argentina, Venezuela […]

West Africa’s Niger River Basin has been the location of many high-profile conflicts in recent years, including the decades-long violence in the river’s delta region and the Boko Haram insurgency in Nigeria, and another Islamist insurgency in neighboring Mali. However, another form of conflict has also gripped the region: Violence between farmers and herders has already killed over 1,000 people this year in Nigeria alone, according to Human Rights Watch, and it is increasing. At the root of many such incidents is the issue of access to land and water resources. In the western Sahel region, climate and demographic changes […]

German Chancellor Angela Merkel was in China last week, where she visited Chengdu, in the west of the country, and Beijing. This marks Merkel’s seventh official trip to China since she took office in 2005, a further sign of the growing importance of Berlin’s special relationship with Beijing. Germany and China have been steadily boosting ties since the late 1990s, when Gerhard Schroeder was chancellor. In 2012, then-Chinese Premier Wen Jiabao, while visiting Berlin, announced the goal to increase bilateral trade with Germany from $180 billion to $280 billion by 2015. Trade between the two reached $193 billion in 2013, […]

The high cost of major military programs, like the F-35 Joint Strike Fighter and the next-generation ballistic missile submarine, is a continuous source of headaches as the Obama administration struggles to balance the books. Successive administrations and Congresses have tackled the ways in which the U.S. military buys things, often with little effect. Yesterday the Pentagon made the case to Congress for a different approach for keeping costs down: empowering the people who actually purchase weapons and equipment for the military. Testifying before the House Armed Services Committee, Frank Kendall, the undersecretary of defense for acquisition, technology and logistics, acknowledged […]

After the end of the Cold War, there was a palpable sense of optimism that the Euro-Atlantic community could be expanded at little risk and without significant cost. It was assumed that Russia would either itself seek to join the West or be too weak to oppose the process if it soured on the project. U.S. and European policymakers, however, had not considered the possibility of a Russia both hostile to Western expansion and with sufficient strength to stymie such plans. Now the unfolding end game in Ukraine is challenging the core assumptions of European security that have guided policymakers […]

Last month, in Brussels, Ukraine’s newly elected President Petro Poroshenko signed an association agreement with the European Union. This was the same agreement his predecessor, Viktor Yanukovych, declined last November, triggering mass demonstrations in Kiev, Yanukovych’s flight from the country and the ongoing conflict with Russia over Ukraine’s southern and eastern regions. Poroshenko pointedly signed the agreement using Yanukovych’s pen. While integration with the EU has long been unpopular in Ukraine’s contested east and in the Russian-annexed Crimea, the mood in the country’s west is far more enthusiastic. Western Ukraine, a loosely defined area centered on the major city of […]

Australia’s new senate is working to repeal the country’s unpopular carbon tax. In an email interview, Shi-Ling Hsu, the Larson Professor of Law at the Florida State University College of Law and author of “The Case for a Carbon Tax: Getting Past our Hang-ups to Effective Climate Policy,” discussed the role of carbon taxes in national climate change policies. WPR: What successful steps have governments taken around the world to limit carbon emissions, either through a carbon tax or other regulations? Shi-Ling Hsu: Governments have taken a wide variety of steps to limit greenhouse gas emissions, but most have been […]

Like it did with the crisis in Ukraine, China is trying to keep out of the chaos in Iraq. But as the central government in Baghdad confronts the Sunni militants spearheaded by the Islamic State of Iraq and Syria (ISIS), an al-Qaida splinter group that aims to create an Islamic caliphate from eastern Syria to northwestern Iraq, it will be hard for China to preserve a policy of noninterference. This time around, unlike what happened in Ukraine, China cannot keep out of another sovereign nation’s internal affairs—until now a cornerstone of its diplomacy—given Beijing’s huge economic and commercial interests in […]