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November 9, 2024

Hi, everybody. I’m Judah Grunstein, WPR’s editor-in-chief, and this is a free preview of our Weekly Review newsletter, which recaps the highlights from our coverage this week and previews what we have planned for next week.

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Top Stories

This week, in our Daily Review newsletter, we took a look at the week’s major developments:

United States: Former President Donald Trump won a decisive victory over VP Kamala Harris in the U.S. presidential election Tuesday, meaning he will return to the White House for a second term in January. On Wednesday, we ran down what a second Trump term will mean for a range of regions and issues of relevance in global affairs. (Read more here.) Germany: Chancellor Olaf Scholz fired Finance Minister Christian Lindner on Wednesday, collapsing his three-party governing coalition. He also announced that he would submit to a vote of confidence on Jan. 15 that he is widely expected to lose, paving the way for early federal elections, likely in March but perhaps even sooner. The collapse had been a long time coming, with the coalition struggling with infighting since it took power in 2021. The latest sticking point—budget negotiations—led to political paralysis at a time when Germany’s economy has stagnated. The domestic challenges mean that Berlin, historically a major force in intra-EU policy debates, will be greatly weakened at a time when the bloc urgently needs to address a range of economic and security issues that will only be exacerbated by Trump’s return. (Read more here.) China: Beijing has approved a $1.4 trillion plan to help local governments refinance their debt, the latest in a series of measures meant to spur economic growth and boost confidence in the long-term viability of China’s growth model. The refinancing plan is in line with these other recent measures, but it is also in line with President Xi Jinping’s hostility to taking more decisive action to reform the structural aspects of China’s economy that create these problems in the first place. As a result, this plan is likely to be met with the same lackluster reaction that the other recent measures have received. That is particularly a problem for Beijing, because the need to boost confidence in China’s economy has only grown more urgent since Trump’s victory. (Read more here.)

This Week’s Highlights

An Anti-Tourism Backlash Puts Europe’s Vacation Hot Spots in a Bind. On Thursday, John Boyce looked at the growing backlash to overtourism in Europe.

The 2024 tourist season has seen a record number of vacationers flock to popular destinations across Europe. And in many locations, visitors have been greeted with protests against their presence, a sign of the growing backlash against the negative effects of mass tourism. The backlash began in the years preceding the COVID-19 pandemic, most prominently in Spain. The pandemic then gave local residents in tourist destinations a brief taste of a more peaceful life, while also creating enormous pent-up demand for travel, swelling post-pandemic tourism across the Mediterranean to unprecedented levels. This reignited the protest movement, which is now more organized and more intense than before. Upgrade to a paid subscription to get the full bulleted breakdown of the stories we highlight each week.

Oman Has Quietly Become a Vital Player in the Gulf. And also on Thursday, Jonathan Fenton-Harvey examined Oman’s role as a vital player in global and regional diplomacy.

In recent years, Gulf Cooperation Council member states have successfully balanced their relationships with competing global powers to better position themselves for the emerging multipolar world. Of them all, Oman has most leveraged its long-standing tradition of robust neutrality in a volatile region to make itself a uniquely valued partner for both global and regional powers. Washington’s continued reliance on Muscat as a vital backchannel for indirect talks with Tehran has become an enduring pillar of Oman’s foreign policy. Upgrade to a paid subscription to get the full bulleted breakdown of the stories we highlight each week.

This Week’s Most-Read Story

The War in Gaza May Be Skewing Polling in the U.S. Election. And in this week’s top story by pageviews, Charli Carpenter explained why opinion polling wasn’t telling the whole story ahead of the U.S. presidential election:

What we heard on the ground in Pennsylvania also indicates how media coverage and constant “dead heat” polls have complicated some Americans’ willingness to show their cards ahead of the election, and those that do may be communicating strategically in ways that will not reflect their actual behavior at the ballot box. The bigger point is that until pollsters find ways to acknowledge and capture these constituencies and trends— and weight polls to take into account how the reported numbers themselves influence attitudes and turnout, and how savvy citizens use survey responses to exercise influence where they feel they have none—it will be impossible to know how much the numbers can be trusted.

What’s On Tap

And coming up next week, we’ve got:

A briefing by Lyuba Zarsky on AI’s potential impact on the climate crisis. A briefing by Michael Cecire on Georgia’s legislative elections. And a briefing by Catherine Wilson on the world’s first climate migration deal between Australia and Tuvalu.

That’s it for this week. And if you have any comments or feedback, just hit reply to send them along, or contact me on BlueSky at @judah-grunstein.bksy.social.

—Judah Grunstein

This Week On WPR:

Africa

Mozambique’s Post-Election Protests Signal a New Political Landscape By Emilia Columbo Post-election protests in Mozambique signify a significant, potentially long-term shift for the country’s political landscape.

The Americas

For Latin America, the U.S. Election Has More Than Just Policy Implications By James Bosworth The U.S. presidential election matters deeply to Latin American countries. Its outcome will have implications for more than just policy. The Women Who Protect Colombia’s Amazon Need Protection Themselves By Mie Hoejris Dahl Women at the forefront of protecting nature and their communities in the Colombian Amazon often face danger for their work.

Asia-Pacific

A Weakened Ishiba Means a Less Ambitious Japan By Tobias Harris Domestic stability enabled Japan to take on an international leadership role. Those days may be over.

Europe

An Anti-Tourism Backlash Puts Europe’s Vacation Hot Spots in a Bind By John Boyce A backlash in Europe against overtourism is putting countries that rely on tourism for revenue and employment in a bind.

Middle East & North Africa

Oman Has Quietly Become a Vital Player in the Gulf By Jonathan Fenton-Harvey Oman has leveraged its long-standing neutrality in a volatile region to make itself a uniquely valued partner for both global and regional powers.

United States

Trump’s Election Win Reopens a Dark Chapter for the U.S. and the World By Judah Grunstein Donald Trump thrives on chaos and provocation. During his second term, the world will have to navigate the consequences of both. Trump’s Second-Term Foreign Policy Is Still Shrouded in Uncertainty By Paul Poast Trump’s election victory has major implications for U.S. foreign policy, but just what they are remains hard to predict. America’s National Pastime Can Offer a Model of Redemption By Alexander Clarkson Baseball can provide lessons for how the U.S. can overcome the challenges it faces in an age of polarization and populism.

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