Economics & Business Archive

Editor’s Note: Every Wednesday, WPR’s newsletter and engagement editor, Benjamin Wilhelm, curates the top news and analysis from China written by the experts who follow it. The United States Department of Justice announced the extradition of a Chinese intelligence official to the U.S. on economic espionage charges last Wednesday. It is the first time a Chinese government spy has been extradited to the U.S., according to The Washington Post. Yanjun Xu, a deputy division director in the Ministry of State Security, China’s main spy agency, traveled to Belgium last spring, believing he was set to receive “proprietary information about jet […]

In the first round of their country’s most tumultuous presidential election in recent history, Brazilians voted overwhelmingly for far-right populist Jair Bolsonaro, who fell just short of winning outright. The clear favorite heading into the runoff later this month, the former army captain has run a defiant and deeply divisive campaign—attacking women, racial minorities and LGBT rights, and romanticizing Brazil’s Cold War-era military regime. The stakes of this election are of course high for Brazilians, who are dealing with a years-long economic and political crisis that has crippled the country, on top of rising crime. But migrants fleeing the dictatorship […]

The disappearance and presumed murder of Saudi journalist Jamal Khashoggi in the Saudi consulate in Istanbul 15 days ago has focused attention on the U.S.-Saudi relationship. At the center of that relationship—and Saudi policymaking—for the past three years has been Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman. Known as MBS, the crown prince rose to prominence after his father, King Salman, took the throne in 2015. Quickly consolidating control over the Saudi economy and the kingdom’s foreign policy, MBS raised hopes with his promised program of bold social and economic reforms, while also causing alarm with rash and reckless moves like […]

Joao Lourenco marked his first anniversary as Angola’s president with his address at the United Nations General Assembly in New York late last month, promoting a “new Angola.” He was riding high, having just consolidated his power base at the party congress for his People’s Movement for the Liberation of Angola, or MPLA, in Luanda, where he stood unopposed and secured 98 percent of the votes, formally replacing Jose Eduardo dos Santos as party leader. Dos Santos’ nearly four-decade presidency came to an end last year when he didn’t stand for re-election, stepping aside in favor of his chosen successor. […]

The World Trade Organization’s woes began long before Donald Trump was inaugurated as America’s president, and many countries are to blame. The latest round of global trade negotiations has been stalled for a decade and there is still no clear way out of the impasse. India insists on resolving long-standing problems, such as trade-distorting agricultural subsidies, before the WTO can begin to negotiate any new issues. China has no interest in taking a leading role on many pressing issues, such as regulations on state-owned enterprises, which might impinge on its industrial policies. Both Presidents Barack Obama and Donald Trump undermined […]

Editor’s Note: This article is part of an ongoing series about education policy in various countries around the world. The Paraguayan government, led by freshly sworn-in President Mario Abdo Benitez, announced the launch of a national dialogue on education reform last month. Paraguay’s public schools suffer from mismanagement, corruption and rural-urban inequality, but observers doubt that the new government is serious about addressing these issues. In an interview with WPR, Andrew Nickson, an honorary reader in public management and Latin American studies at the University of Birmingham, explains why the dialogue process in Paraguay probably won’t lead to the kinds […]

Editor’s Note: In July 2019, this story won the Kevin Carmody Award for Outstanding In-depth Reporting, Small Market from the Society of Environmental Journalists. This is the first installment of a two-part series on killings of environmental activists in the Philippines, funded by WPR’s International Reporting Fellowship. The second installment ran Oct. 18. COMPOSTELA VALLEY, MINDANAO, Philippines—It was just after dawn on the southern island of Mindanao, but police officers already had a call to respond to. Winding their way through the scenic green mountains of the Compostela Valley, they approached the scene of the crime, a patch of dirt […]

Editor’s Note: Every Friday, WPR Senior Editor Robbie Corey-Boulet curates the top news and analysis from and about the African continent. When he became Zimbabwe’s interim president following Robert Mugabe’s ouster last year, Emmerson Mnangagwa immediately tried to focus the world’s attention on his ambitious economic agenda. He repeatedly declared that, following years of isolation under Mugabe, the new Zimbabwe would be “open for business.” After being named the winner of July’s presidential election, he spent part of his inauguration address urging citizens “to unite as a nation and grow our economy,” offering a vision of Zimbabwe as a middle-income […]

In Liberia, one of the surest signs that a news story has captured the attention of the general public is when someone starts singing about it on the radio. In August 2014, the Auto-Tune-heavy hit “Ebola in Town,” by Samuel “Shadow” Morgan and Edwin “D-12” Tweh, caught fire right around the time the World Health Organization began describing the West African epidemic as an international emergency. During the most recent presidential campaigns, in 2011 and 2017, the candidates’ catchiest theme songs saturated the airwaves as Election Day approached. Recently, to the consternation of President George Weah, a new topical jam […]

In the wake of Russia’s aggression against Ukraine in 2014, the United States embarked on a two-pronged policy of sanctions and isolation to punish Moscow. At the time, some Russian analysts predicted it would be impossible to isolate Russia, and that those seeking to do so would only isolate themselves. That has proven to be right in more respects than those analysts and the Kremlin may have realized. While Russia has suffered significant economic harm from the U.S.-led international sanctions regime—a collapse in the ruble, near stagnant GDP growth, exclusion from international credit markets—it has nonetheless expanded its exports, deepened […]

Much of the world’s waste used to wind up in China and Southeast Asian countries like Thailand and Vietnam, but in recent years, they have all cracked down on imports of waste and recyclables. This has caused a major disruption in the global waste trade, leading to massive accumulations of plastic, cardboard and electronic waste in developed countries like the United States. According to Derek Kellenberg, an environmental economist at the University of Montana, this may be a turning point that forces the world’s major producers to finally reckon with the true social costs of waste. In an interview with […]

In a speech last week that seemed as much an effort to catch up to recent events as a formal declaration of policy, Vice President Mike Pence put Beijing on notice that “the United States of America has adopted a new approach to China.” The address, delivered at the Hudson Institute think tank in Washington, for the most part covered familiar ground in terms of American grievances with the bilateral relationship. Having spent the past 20 years seeking to invite China into the international order as a “responsible stakeholder,” the U.S. has now run out of patience over Beijing’s unfair […]

Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan’s state visit to Berlin last month came at a turbulent time for both Turkey’s relationship with Germany and Erdogan’s personal relationship with German Chancellor Angela Merkel. While the visit has been billed as a sign of rapprochement, the reality is that Germany and Turkey need each other and are willing to work together on a transactional basis despite persistent irritants in the bilateral relationship. In an email interview with WPR, Lisel Hintz, assistant professor of international relations at the Johns Hopkins School of Advanced International Studies, discusses the backdrop to Erdogan’s visit and how it […]

The disappearance of the prominent Saudi journalist Jamal Khashoggi has focused much attention in Washington, D.C., where Khashoggi had been living in self-imposed exile, on the stream of bad news coming out of Saudi Arabia in recent months. Ever since Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman returned from a month-long trip abroad in March and April, with stops in Egypt, the United Kingdom, the United States, France and Spain, a succession of developments have cast serious doubt on the credibility of the reform narrative the crown prince and his entourage were so energetically pushing, to often eager applause. Given the opaque […]

“It’s not NAFTA redone. It’s a brand new deal,” U.S. President Donald Trump declared triumphantly at the White House last week, announcing the revised free trade agreement with Mexico and Canada. Don’t tell Trump, but his brand new deal is really just the Trans-Pacific Partnership with a few tweaks, and many fewer countries than the 12 that signed on before Trump withdrew. American negotiators won concessions in a few areas that were important to them, and made concessions in a few that were important to Mexico and Canada. But the new NAFTA, which Trump clumsily renamed the United States-Mexico-Canada Agreement, […]

The collapse of a dam this summer in southeastern Laos, which triggered massive flooding that killed dozens and displaced thousands of people, has brought a renewed focus on hydroelectric dams in mainland Southeast Asia. Proponents of hydroelectric dams argue they will bring benefits in the form of national revenue and power generation for local communities, but they also threaten the food security and livelihoods of millions of people in the riparian countries that make up the Lower Mekong region: Laos, Cambodia, Vietnam and Thailand. In an email interview, Diana Suhardiman, a senior researcher at the International Water Management Institute’s office […]

In this week’s Trend Lines podcast, WPR’s editor-in-chief, Judah Grunstein, and managing editor, Frederick Deknatel, discuss rising tensions and the risk of conflict between the U.S. and China. For the Report, Emmanuel Freudenthal talks with WPR’s senior editor, Robbie Corey-Boulet, about why the situation in Cameroon’s Anglophone region is a greater threat to President Paul Biya’s grip on power than the country’s presidential election this Sunday. If you like what you hear on Trend Lines and what you’ve read on WPR, you can sign up for our free newsletter to get our uncompromising analysis delivered straight to your inbox. The […]