Economics & Business Archive

For British Prime Minister Theresa May, each hurdle cleared on the road to Brexit only seems to make the going tougher. During an emergency meeting on Wednesday, May’s Cabinet approved a draft agreement on Britain’s withdrawal from the European Union, a day after May announced that she had reached a draft deal with European negotiators. But she’s not out of the woods yet. The deal must still be approved by the British Parliament, as well as by the European Council of EU heads of state and the European Parliament. For May, whose political future hangs in the balance, the greatest […]

Tunisia’s prime minister, Youssef Chahed, announced several changes to his Cabinet last week in a bid to shore up support for his government amid a parallel political and economic crisis. The changes were approved in a parliamentary vote that the ruling Nidaa Tounes party boycotted, laying bare the deepening divisions within the Tunisian government. In an email interview with WPR, Sharan Grewal, a post-doctoral research fellow at the Brookings Institution’s Center for Middle East Policy, discusses the latest developments in Tunis and what to expect from the newly approved Cabinet. World Politics Review: What prompted Prime Minister Chahed to reshuffle […]

Japan’s relations with its neighbors have long been haunted by residual acrimony over atrocities and human rights abuses committed by the Empire of Japan during World War II. Politicians in China and South Korea maintain that Japan never properly atoned for its imperial transgressions, rankling Japanese officials. Those historical issues returned to center stage in recent weeks, due to a long-running case before the South Korean Supreme Court in which four Korean men sought damages from a major Japanese steelmaker that forced them to work without pay during World War II. On Oct. 30, the court ruled that the defendant, […]

Editor’s Note: Every Wednesday, WPR Newsletter and Engagement Editor Benjamin Wilhelm curates the week’s top news and expert analysis on China. Leaders from across the Asia-Pacific region are in Singapore this week to kick off a series of summit meetings. In the absence of any major breakthroughs on trade or security, the focus is on the competition for influence between the United States and China—a narrative driven by dueling op-eds from U.S. Vice President Mike Pence and Chinese Premier Li Keqiang. “Our nation’s security and prosperity depend on this vital region, and the United States will continue to ensure that […]

Trade policy had a high profile in the run-up to last week’s midterm elections in the United States. With a blue wave in the House of Representatives and in many states, even as Republicans added to their majority in the Senate, two obvious questions arise. Did the widening trade war with China, and the narrower disputes with Europe and others over steel and aluminum, influence the outcome? And how will Democratic control of the House of Representatives affect U.S. trade policy for at least the next two years? On the first question, it is difficult to detect a clear pattern […]

AARHUS, Denmark—To headmaster Karen Jessen, the school she runs embodies the best of Denmark. Sitting on the western edge of Aarhus, the country’s second-largest city, the school, known as Sødalskolen, or “Lake Valley School,” serves students from the ages of 6 to 16 from two starkly different neighborhoods. To the west of the school is Brabrand, a sprawling district of semi-detached and standalone homes belonging to a mostly white and affluent Danish population. And to the north is Gellerup, an area dominated by social housing in which up to 80 percent of the population are of non-Danish descent and incomes […]

The U.S. government is alarmed at the rates of cocaine production in the two countries. While it is working with the Peruvian government to tackle the problem, the issue has only further divided the United States and Bolivia. The international fight against drug trafficking continues to go poorly in South America’s Andean region, and signs suggest it won’t be improving anytime soon. New figures released this month by the United States show that Peru and Bolivia have stalled, if not taken steps backward, in their attempts to eradicate prolific cocaine production within their borders. Last year, Peru’s production of pure […]

The small Himalayan nation of Bhutan held national elections this fall for the third time since implementing multiparty democracy in 2008. As in the previous vote, in 2013, the incumbent party was ousted. Lotay Tshering, leader of the victorious Druk Nyamrup Tshogpa party, was sworn in as prime minister on Wednesday. He will now seek to follow through on campaign promises to improve social services and tackle Bhutan’s growing income gap. On the foreign policy front, the new government is expected to try to reduce its reliance on neighboring India, even as China is looking to expand its influence in […]

At the opening of a huge new trade show in Shanghai on Monday, the inaugural China International Import Expo, Chinese President Xi Jinping sought to convince increasingly skeptical observers that China wants to “help friends from around the world to seize opportunities.” Xi is aiming to boost China’s trade involvement across the globe, even as the United States under President Donald Trump retreats into protectionism. Yet the notion that Beijing is a force for global prosperity is running into a wall of doubt as Xi’s signature Belt and Road Initiative—a trillion-dollar global infrastructure behemoth that launched in 2013 as “One […]

The shock election of 93-year-old Mahathir Mohamad for a second stint as Malaysia’s prime minister last May generated a sense of unease in the corridors of power in Beijing. In tough rhetoric on the campaign trail, Mahathir had accused his predecessor, Najib Razak, of ceding Malaysia’s sovereignty to China by accepting billions of dollars in Chinese loans to finance large-scale infrastructure projects. Mahathir warned that Malaysia’s “freedom would be affected if we are going to owe such a large sum to any one country,” and he voiced fears that Najib appeared willing to “give up” the nation’s territorial claims in […]

Editor’s note: This article is part of an ongoing series on food security around the world. Ensuring an adequate and balanced food supply has never been easy for Gulf Arab nations, which are both extremely water-scarce and reliant on food imports. The situation will only get more difficult in the coming decades, as climate change threatens global agricultural production and energy demand shifts away from fossil fuels—the Gulf region’s primary export. In an interview with WPR, Eckart Woertz, a senior research fellow at the Barcelona Center for International Affairs and author of “Oil for Food: The Global Food Crisis and […]

MEXICO CITY—Last week, the spokesperson for Mexico’s president-elect, Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador, announced the cancellation of a lavish new airport in Mexico City, a $13.3 billion project that was already under construction. The decision came after an informal four-day referendum in which 70 percent of voters backed scrapping the project. “The decision taken by the citizens is democratic, rational and efficient,” Lopez Obrador said. “The people decided.” Yet it hardly reflected the full Mexican electorate, as less than 2 percent of Mexico’s eligible voters participated in the ballot, which Lopez Obrador’s own party and its allies had organized. The announcement […]

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. President Xi Jinping’s opening speech to the first-ever China International Import Expo in Shanghai on Monday was loaded with promises and reassurances. Seeking to convince the world of China’s openness to foreign goods and services, Xi portrayed himself as a staunch advocate for globalization. The address was delivered to an audience that included political and business leaders from 172 countries, but it was just as notable for who was missing in Shanghai and what […]

From 2004 to 2012, the rate of deforestation in the Brazilian Amazon dropped more than 80 percent, even as Brazil’s agricultural production continued to grow. But that progress in protecting a fragile and essential ecosystem reversed in recent years, before the outlook got even worse. First, U.S. President Donald Trump launched a trade war with China, shifting more Chinese demand for soybean products from the United States to Brazil, potentially leading to more deforestation to meet the demands of Brazilian agriculture. Then, last month Brazilians elected the far-right Jair Bolsonaro as president, a major supporter of agribusiness who has vowed […]

The Arab countries of the Persian Gulf are in a period of unusual turbulence. It’s not their declared enemy, Iran, that is causing the trouble, but the secondary effects of overly ambitious and high-risk policy choices by a new generation of leaders from Riyadh to Abu Dhabi. Their major security partners, including the United States, are worried that regional coordination and cooperation have become harder, with each Gulf state distracted by local crises, while Russia and Iran are benefiting from the disarray. It raises longer-term concerns about the future of their regional bloc, the Gulf Cooperation Council, which has never […]

The threat of new water wars grows across the globe. Can we resolve the causes of water conflicts before it’s too late? Although alarmist headlines often announce imminent water wars over scarce resources, the truth is that cooperation over shared waterways, particularly rivers, is historically more common than conflict. In fact, even among bitter enemies, the historical record shows that water conflicts around the world do get resolved, even to the point that international cooperation often increases during droughts. However, common causes of water conflicts remain a concern. Unilateral actions to construct a dam or river diversion in the absence […]

In this week’s Trend Lines podcast, WPR’s managing editor, Frederick Deknatel, and associate editor, Elliot Waldman, discuss why Asia’s two main economic rivals, China and Japan, are now trying to improve their ties. For the Report, Obi Anyadike talks with WPR’s senior editor, Robbie Corey-Boulet, about his reporting from Nigeria, where in the past six months, an estimated 600 Nigerian soldiers have been killed in the fight against Boko Haram. Soldiers are poorly equipped and overstretched, and their morale is dangerously low. If you like what you hear on Trend Lines and what you’ve read on WPR, you can sign […]