| | By Elliot Waldman, editor-in-chief |
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| Hello and welcome back to the Daily Review. | Today at WPR, columnist Mary Gallagher looks at the rift within Taiwan’s main opposition party over how to handle defense issues and ties with China. And Liam Taylor reports from Nairobi on young Kenyan activists’ efforts to go from street protests to the corridors of power. | Scroll down for more on those items. But first, here’s today’s top story: |  | Sultan Ahmed al-Jaber, the Emirati minister of state and the CEO of the UAE’s main state-run oil company, at a conference in Abu Dhabi, United Arab Emirates (AP photo by Kamran Jebreili) |
| The United Arab Emirates’ decision to withdraw from OPEC happened in much the same manner as Hemingway’s famous description of the way people go bankrupt: gradually, then suddenly. | Abu Dhabi joined the cartel of oil-producing nations in 1967 and had stayed for decades despite a number of internal disputes. But it had been increasingly sidelined within the organization since 2016, when Saudi Arabia, the de facto leader of OPEC, brought Russia into an enlarged grouping known as OPEC+. | The subsequent series of aggressive quotas and production cuts put the UAE at a disadvantage, as it was unable to utilize the additional production capacity resulting from new investments by its national oil company, ADNOC. According to a 2023 report from the Baker Institute for Public Policy at Rice University, “As a share of total capacity, the UAE’s unused excess is by far the largest within OPEC—a lopsided burden that is likely to grow.” The report estimated that quitting OPEC could generate a windfall of up to $50 billion in additional annual oil revenue for the UAE. | At the same time, geopolitical tensions have been growing between … Purchase a subscription now to read the rest and get the full top story in your Daily Review email every day. |
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| | Will you take five minutes and complete our reader survey? It will help us better serve you, and 10 survey respondents will win a free one-year all-access subscription. | | While the rest of the world has been understandably preoccupied with the war in the Middle East, an important meeting took place that could have far-reaching implications for another global hot spot and potential conflict zone. In early April, the leader of Taiwan’s main opposition party, Cheng Li-wun, made a dramatic visit to China. Cheng represents the faction of the KMT that strongly emphasizes Taiwan’s Chinese identity and advocates for friendlier policies toward Beijing, but not everyone within the party agrees, Mary Gallagher writes. | | | Nearly two years after massive demonstrations swept across Kenya, the activists who caught the imagination of a nation are still trying to learn lessons from what happened. They were very successful at mounting a challenge to the ruling structure, but failed to fill the governance vacuum afterward. Liam Taylor reports from Nairobi on how these activists reflect on their protest moment—and how they are absorbing the lessons from outcomes elsewhere. | | | Global: There has been a fivefold increase in export restrictions on critical raw materials since 2009, but advanced economies have made little headway in reducing their vulnerability to supply chokepoints, according to new research from the Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development. The OECD’s trade chief noted that while the curve of rising export restrictions is flattening, it has climbed for 15 consecutive years, dating back to when China imposed a de facto rare earth embargo on Japan in 2010 in response to a diplomatic row between the two countries. Last year, Beijing temporarily cut off rare earth supplies to U.S. and European manufacturers in response to the Trump administration’s tariff hikes. | Seeking alternative suppliers of critical minerals, Trump has courted African nations. But the U.S. policy amounts to a strategy of “transactional dominance”—maximizing U.S. gains with little regard for African states’ development needs—Lesley Anne Warner warned in WPR in January. Warner argued that as individual African governments compete to attract Washington’s attention by offering resource concessions, the continent's collective bargaining leverage is fragmenting at precisely the moment it is most needed. | China: BYD, the world’s leading electric vehicle maker, reported a 55 percent drop in first-quarter net profit and an 11.8 percent decline in revenue compared to the same period a year ago. A boost in exports driven by rising global demand for electric vehicles did not offset a sharp slowdown in Chinese EV sales following the phase-out of government purchase subsidies. The results underscore the fierce domestic competition BYD faces from rivals including Geely, Xiaomi, Leapmotor and Huawei, a dynamic known in China as “involution”—a destructive cycle of price wars and overcapacity fueled by state subsidies. | As Mary Gallagher wrote in WPR last June, a similar pattern of subsidy-driven overproduction and cutthroat competition among state-backed firms roiled the domestic economy in the 1990s, and was only resolved through painful consolidation. As long as Beijing remains unwilling to impose that kind of discipline on today’s automotive sector, Gallagher argued, Chinese firms will continue flooding overseas markets with excess inventory. | | Colombia: A wave of attacks by rebel groups has heightened … Purchase your all-access subscription now to make sure you don’t miss important news and analysis. | U.K.: The government has appealed a High Court ruling that struck down its ban on … Purchase your all-access subscription now to make sure you don’t miss important news and analysis. | | More from WPR | Orlando J. Pérez on how Washington is enabling the consolidation of a hybrid regime in Venezuela. James Bosworth on the Trump administration’s misguided search for a “Cuban Delcy.” Paul Poast on JD Vance’s misunderstanding of just war theory in his spat with the Pope. John Calabrese on the determinants of success in Gen Z protests.
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Welcome to my geopolitics blog site. This is a Hawaii Island news site focusing on geopolitical news, analysis, information, and commentary. I will cite a variety of sources, ranging from all sides of the political spectrum.