#geopolitics #markets #analysis


Talking Business: #podcasts from @acast @ShaneOliverAMP analyses how geopolitical events led by Donald Trump are shaping markets this year https://www.acast.com/talkingbusiness/talkingbusiness------?autoplay

REALITY CHECK
The #geopolitics of global #oil has changed, explains GPF Chairman George Friedman. Saudi supplies are still extremely important to the world, but the Saudis could not pull off an oil embargo today, and they no longer control the price of oil.

#markets #Tillerson #geopolitics


Talking Business: #podcasts from @acast Looking at how the markets are responding to geopolitical events like the sacking of Tillerson https://www.acast.com/talkingbusiness/talkingbusiness-----?autoplay

The #Geopolitics of #Targeting #Russia
By Global Research News Global Research, March 21, 2018 Url of this article: https://www.globalresearch.ca/selected-articles-the-geopolitics-of-targeting-russia/5632889 Global Research’s work is critical in the face of mainstream media disinformation. See o...

China’s #debttrap diplomacy.
+The Guardian: “China’s penetration of south Asia is the biggest game changer in 100 years,” says Constantino Xavier, a fellow at the thinktank Carnegie India. “The Russians tried, the Americans tried. This is the first time since at least world war two you have a massive power contesting the Indian state.”

Chinese money has gushed into south Asia and especially Pakistan in the past decade, and billions more has been promised as part of the Belt and Road Initiative, Beijing’s ambitious bid to create a new Silk Road of trade routes around the world.
In the Maldives the Chinese government or state-owned enterprises have provided loans or investment for more than 20 projects, according to new analysis by thinktank Gateway House, with the largest three projects alone worth nearly 40% of the Maldivian GDP.

Nepal, which shares an open border with India, is hosting at least two dozen Chinese investments. Beijing’s interests in Bangladesh are estimated to be worth up to $35bn. But few regions in the neighbourhood have been transformed as dramatically as Hambantota, about five hours’ drive from the Sri Lankan capital, Colombo.

Surrounded by acres of paddy fields and banana trees, between fishing villages and food stalls, enormous pieces of modern infrastructure now line the Hambantota landscape. They are ghostly sites. More cows than cars ply a new expressway. A convention centre that hosted the Commonwealth heads of government meeting in 2013 now offers cheap rates to wedding parties. A newly built hospital has never admitted patients, instead providing accommodation to Chinese migrant workers.

They were built in the fury of development that followed the end of the Sri Lankan civil war, fuelled by $8bn borrowed from China by the previous president, Mahinda Rajapaksa, who dreamed of turning his ancestral home into a tourism and business powerhouse.

“There was this sense that China would write us blank cheques,” says one Sri Lankan government economist, not authorised to speak publicly.

The rates on Chinese loans were often no better than those on international capital markets, he says. The difference was China asked fewer questions. “There was no rigour applied to, how are you going to make this work, what’s the business model here?”

“It took a while for folks to realise we might be in trouble.”+

‘An acute crisis’
Not every Hambantota project is deserted. *In 2010 Sri Lanka agreed to pay a Chinese state-owned corporation $1.5bn to build a new port. Last December, struggling to make repayments, the government agreed to lease the port – and 15,000 acres surrounding it – to the same Chinese company for 99 years.

The lease has alarmed Indian and western policymakers who worry China has won a strategic foothold in the Indian Ocean. It has also angered locals, who fear Sri Lanka is caught in a debt trap and will be forced to lease even more assets in the future.

On 9 December a Chinese flag was raised over Hambantota port in place of Sri Lanka’s. It lasted seven days. “I went to the port administration office and told them I was willing to be shot to take down this flag,” says Bergama Gnana Thilaka, the chief priest at a Buddhist temple near the site.

Thilaka has led hundreds of monks in resistance to the lease of the port, which he likens to a colonial invasion. “When Sri Lanka was colonised by the British there were Buddhist monks who played a pivotal role against them,” he says.

‪‘The biggest game changer in 100 years’: Chinese money gushes into Sri Lanka https://www.theguardian.com/world/2018/mar/26/the-biggest-game-changer-in-100-years-chinese-money-gushes-into-sri-lanka‬

#ChineseDebtTrap #ChineseLoans #corruption #SriLanka #Pakistan #Bangladesh #Nepal #Maldives #geopolitics #economics #BeltandRoad #SilkRoad #tradewars

#US Treasury Secretary #SteveMnuchin has said he was optimistic America could reach an agreement with China that will avert the need for President Donald #Trump to impose tariffs on goods from the country. Mnuchin said the two countries agreed on reducing the deficit to some degree and were trying to 'see if we can reach an agreement as to what fair trade is for them to open up their markets, reduce their tariffs, stop forced technology transfer'.

Both Mnuchin and US Trade Representative Robert Lighthizer detailed a list of specific requests for #China in a letter late last week to Vice-Premier Liu He, according to The WSJ. The list includes a reduction of Chinese tariffs on US cars, more Chinese purchases of US semiconductors and greater access to China’s financial sector by #Americancompanies.


#WorldEconomy #Protectionism #America #Globalisation #GlobalTrade #TradeWars #EconomicRisk #Economy #TradePolicy #InternationalTrade #TradeTariffs #Geopolitics #InternationalRelations
Treasury chief Steven Mnuchin ‘hopeful’ US and China can reach agreement over trade
http://www.scmp.com/news/china/diplomacy-defence/article/2138906/treasury-chief-steven-mnuchin-hopeful-us-and-china-can

President #Trump was not bluffing when he ordered $60bn in tariffs on #China, in an apparent attempt to balance trade between nations, and he fully intends to impose the extra charge on the imports, according to Treasury Secretary #SteveMnuchin. He also downplayed (Mar 25) stock markets fluctuating sharply since at least early-March when Trump imposed tariffs on imported steel and aluminum.


#WorldEconomy #Protectionism #America #Globalisation #GlobalTrade #TradeWars #EconomicRisk #Economy #TradePolicy #InternationalTrade #TradeTariffs #Geopolitics #InternationalRelations
Mnuchin: Trump will impose China tariffs, not worried about recent market losses
http://www.foxnews.com/politics/2018/03/25/mnuchin-trump-will-impose-china-tariffs-not-worried-about-recent-market-losses.html

"A widening conflict between herdsmen and farmers is redefining #Nigeria’s #geopolitics"

#Unstable #Geopolitics in #Asia and the #MiddleEast
By Global Research News Url of this article: https://www.globalresearch.ca/selected-articles-unstable-geopolitics-in-asia-and-the-middle-east/5625157 Thanks to the contributions of our readers, we have been able to maintain complete independence. You can he...