| | | | |  | | By Ryan Heath | Check out the weekly Global Insider podcast | Follow Ryan on Twitter.
| | | The master of wreaking havoc on markets for personal gain has done it again: Elon Musk says his purchase of Twitter is temporarily on hold, "pending details." Musk claims to be worried about the number of fake accounts on Twitter — which is hardly news. Conveniently for Musk, Twitter's stock plunged 18 percent in pre-market trading on the news, potentially allowing him to shave billions off the $44 billion purchase price in a reworked deal.
| | | Secretary of State Antony Blinken will travel to Germany and France from Saturday to Monday to attend the meeting of NATO Foreign Ministers in Berlin and the U.S.-EU Trade and Technology Council in Paris. The U.S. and EU are considering coordinated trade policy action against China's non-market practices, according to the latest draft ministerial statement , obtained by POLITICO, ahead of the transatlantic Trade and Technology Council meeting Sunday and Monday. Cast: Blinken, Commerce Secretary Gina Raimondo and Trade Representative Katherine Tai, with European Commission Vice Presidents Margrethe Vestager and Valdis Dombrovskis. The Council has driven this group of officials closer together: they text each other, meet bilaterally and connect their respective legislators. While they may not yet have a long list of concrete achievements attributable to the group — these relationships help stop dumb things from happening. What we know so far: There will be a lot of talk about combating Russia, and praise for coordinating strategies on export controls against Moscow. There will be pledges to work jointly on everything from artificial intelligence and platform rules to investment screening and 5G funding for the developing world. There are also efforts to bridge the transatlantic divide on telecommunications equipment: the TTC is expected to "promote the use of trusted vendors" (read: anyone but Huawei) in critical telecom infrastructure projects.
| | | LEBANON — NATIONAL ELECTION, SUNDAY: Lebanon has been rocked by literal, monetary and political explosions since 2015. The vote will be the first since government negligence led to the deaths of 220 people in the Beirut port explosion. Since then, the currency has lost 90 percent of its value, three out of four people now live below the poverty line and Hezbollah continues to operate as a state within a state. In that environment: Who wants to invest? It's not even clear that more than half the population wants to vote. So: no Global Insider predictions for what's next, but we'll keep you updated. INDIA — PREVIEWING THE NEXT DECADE: The Economist has a briefing on the rewiring of the Indian economy. The country of 1.4 billion is a permanent disappointment to foreign investors, and yet also the only place firms could "find half a million new engineers a year" or participate in a "renewable-energy investment spree." NORTH KOREA — A GRISLY COVID WAVE IS COMING: The isolated dictatorship has admitted its first deaths from Covid and the government also says 350,000 people show "signs of fever." In a country without vaccines, that isn't going to end well. CANADA — CONSERVATIVE LEADERSHIP CANDIDATE WANTS TO FIRE CENTRAL BANKER: In Wednesday's first official Conservative party leadership debate, Pierre Poilievre matter-of-factly committed to "replace" Tiff Macklem as governor of the Bank of Canada, and then sharpened his language to say he would "fire" Macklem, who he accuses of operating as Prime Minister Justin Trudeau's debt printing press. CHINA — IT'S RED SMOKE: Hong Kong's national security police, answerable to Chinese authorities, arrested Catholic cleric Joseph Zen. Aged 90, he's one of the 200-odd cardinals who are eligible to pick popes, and now faces 10 years in jail accused of foreign collusion for managing a fund to help arrested protesters with legal aid. The Vatican press office would dare only say it is following the case with "extreme attention." The Vatican is the only country in Europe that still officially recognizes Taipei instead of Beijing. TRADING UP, TRADING SIDEWAYS Tailwind for Biden's Japan and South Korea trip: New data from Morning Consult on U.S. and China favorability ratings globally shows that "public sentiment toward the U.S. both globally and among Quad countries is sharply skewed in favor of the U.S.," said Jason McMann , head of geopolitical risk analysis for Morning Consult. The headwinds come with this week's U.S.-ASEAN summit: "U.S. and China are neck-and-neck in several markets including Indonesia, Malaysia, Singapore and Thailand. If the U.S. wants its Indo-Pacific Strategy and Economic Framework to resonate beyond the Quad, it's going to take some work," McMann said. In a summit fact sheet, the White House listed 32 initiatives it considers as anchors of the U.S.-ASEAN relationship, and Thursday made around $150 million in minor announcements ranging from clean energy to digital partnerships, but made no mention of its planned Indo-Pacific economic framework, which it plans to launch when President Joe Biden visits Japan later this month. China already has a long-standing trade deal with ASEAN. Pro tips for the Indo-Pacific Economic Framework: How Latin America's MERCOSUR bloc has overcome tensions within its integration process over three decades. CALL FOR G-7 TO TAKE ON FOOD SECURITY ROLE: With World Food Programme chief David Beasley warning my colleague Meredith Lee that the current closure of Ukrainian ports is "going to devastate millions of people around the world," the Rockefeller Foundation and Munich Security Conference convened a roundtable this week to propose responses to that risk. The group concluded that inflation and food export restrictions are aggravating the supply chain disruptions caused by Russia's war, and urged the G-7 to take on a coordinating data-driven role responding to these interconnected problems, including the initiation of debt relief. More here. TECH — USING SENSOR TECHNOLOGY TO CLEAN UP OUR AIR: A new report looks into how 11 cities are using high quality air sensors to pinpoint where dangerous levels of air pollution are affecting vulnerable populations, helping local administrations to reduce the danger. Cities covered in the report from the C40 city governments coalition are: Addis Ababa, Dar es Salaam, Denver, Lima, Lisbon, London, Los Angeles, Mumbai, Paris, Portland and Quezon City. COVID — BIDEN'S GLOBAL HEALTH WORKER INITIATIVE: The Biden administration has joined with the Pan American Health Organization, the African Union and France to push a new initiative to strengthen the global health care workforce. The White House is requesting $1 billion in fiscal year 2023 to bolster the global health workforce, including by training more workers, investing in tech for them to deploy in the course of their work, and bringing specialists in different fields together to manage risks at the intersection of human, animal and environmental health.
| | | | INTRODUCING DIGITAL FUTURE DAILY - OUR TECHNOLOGY NEWSLETTER, RE-IMAGINED: Technology is always evolving, and our new tech-obsessed newsletter is too! Digital Future Daily unlocks the most important stories determining the future of technology, from Washington to Silicon Valley and innovation power centers around the world. Readers get an in-depth look at how the next wave of tech will reshape civic and political life, including activism, fundraising, lobbying and legislating. Go inside the minds of the biggest tech players, policymakers and regulators to learn how their decisions affect our lives. Don't miss out, subscribe today. | | | | | NEW PODCAST EPISODE DOES THE U.S. NEED TO TAKE LESSONS FROM THE EU ON REMOVING MARKET BARRIERS? Trevelyan's message about the U.K. negotiating for mutual recognition of standards will be music to the ears of this week's Global Insider podcast guests, political scientists Matthias Mathijs (Johns Hopkins and Council on Foreign Relations) and Craig Parsons (University of Oregon) — who say the U.S. has been coasting for decades on market reform, and could take a leaf out of the EU's book.
| | | Parsons told Global Insider " this notion of mutual recognition just really doesn't exist in American jurisprudence and legislation. It's a really extraordinary invention of the European single market: this principle that if you want to have relatively easy movement, across jurisdictions, you don't necessarily have to sit down and draw up single common standards; you can have an alternative where you just all agree that anything that meets anybody's standard is acceptable across all the jurisdictions." The European Union has spent 60 years tearing down commercial and migration barriers between its member countries — and yet the flow of people, goods and services between California and Texas is still much larger than between Germany and France. Mathijs and Parsons say that's not a sign of EU failure, but instead indicates that the EU has removed regulatory barriers while failing to tear down cultural ones — leaving the continent with an underused single market. Americans, on the other hand, are enthusiastic about working, buying and selling across state lines. And yet they face innumerable and pointless barriers — from local standards for elevators to different state hairdresser licensing rules. The payoff from U.S. state and federal governments doing some EU-style market reforms could be huge. UKRAINE FRONTS WHAT UKRAINIANS THINK ABOUT THEIR FUTURE PARTNERSHIP OPTIONS: The International Republican Institute has conducted a survey, which President Daniel Twining calls "an unprecedented effort to interview thousands of people in every part of a nation at war." The findings include 94 percent support for President Volodomyr Zelenskyy, and that 97 percent believe Ukraine will win the war. Four in five respondents want to join the EU, and 59 percent want to join NATO. Ukrainian Commander in Chief on what victory looks like: Valeriy Zaluzhnyy posted on Telegram today that — in response to a question from Gen. Mark A. Milley in a phone call Thursday — he said: "for me, victory is the destruction of the enemy who is on our soil and the liberation of all the territories seized by him … our mood is combative and we are focused only on Victory." "I also emphasized the enemy's continued use of strategic cruise missiles. On a daily basis, the enemy fires 10 to 14 cruise missiles at civilian infrastructure facilities. Recently, Russia has resorted to the tactics of massive use of supersonic anti-ship cruise missiles of the Kh-22 type on these facilities … One of the reasons for the enemy's transition to this tactic is the refusal to use aviation, which suffers vast losses," Zaluzhniy wrote. OPINION: The case for Austrian NATO membership, by Gunther Fehlinger, who advocates for EU and NATO in Central and Eastern Europe. PLAYBACK: Watch speeches from Atlantic Council Distinguished Leadership awards, which took place Wednesday night in Washington, D.C., featuring Zelenskyy, House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, Italian Prime Minister Mario Draghi, Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen, former secretaries of state Condoleezza Rice and Hillary Clinton, and Ukrainian Eurovision winner Jamala. WHERE TO JOIN GLOBAL INSIDER NEXT WEEK: Join us in-person on Wednesday for POLITICO's 2nd annual sustainability summit to explore the policies, strategies and innovations that can get the U.S. to a sustainable future faster. U.S. Energy Secretary Jennifer Granholm, Gov. Jay Inslee, Rep. Nancy Mace (R-N.C.), Sen. Debbie Stabenow (D-Mich.), Rostin Behnam, chair of the Commodity Futures Trading Commission are among the confirmed speakers. You can RSVP to attend in-person or watch live.
| | | | DON'T MISS CONGRESS MINUTES: Need to follow the action on Capitol Hill blow-by-blow? Check out Minutes, POLITICO's new platform that delivers the latest exclusives, twists and much more in real time. Get it on your desktop or download the POLITICO mobile app for iOS or Android. CHECK OUT CONGRESS MINUTES HERE. | | | | | | | | OBAMA TO HEADLINE COPENHAGEN DEMOCRACY SUMMIT: The conference takes place June 9-10, and the headline speakers this year include former President Barack Obama, Ingrida Šimonytė , prime minister of Lithuania, and Roberta Metsola, president of the European Parliament. GROOMING LEADERS: Johns Hopkins School of Advanced International Studies (SAIS) will host a U.S.-ASEAN Institute for Rising Leaders. Starting in 2023, the Institute will bring approximately 30 mid-career public service professionals — up to three from each of the 10 Southeast Asian Nations — to Johns Hopkins SAIS annually for a multiweek leadership development program. EUROVISION, EXPLAINED Saturday is Europe's favorite night of the year: the final of the Eurovision Song Contest. It's an event so enchanting and bizarre that it launched ABBA, Celine Dion and Olivia Newton John onto the world stage, spawned a Will Ferrell movie and enticed Australia to participate. Unlike the technocratic EU, Eurovision celebrates difference and emotion … through brutal competition and popular voting. Forged in the shadow of the Cold War and never far from political drama, Eurovision is now 67 years old and bills itself as the world's largest non-sport event, generating affection political leaders can only dream of. Political leaders are jealous . Per one member of the European Commission president's team: "There is no European public sphere. Everyone goes home and watches their own national news, except two nights of the year — Eurovision and the Champions League (soccer) final." There's often a political undertone: Yes, viewers often vote for competitors from neighboring countries. But not when there's a war or other social conflict: Then the crowd swings behind a competitor who represents something more their voice. In 2014, Austrian drag artist Conchita Wurst won a tug of war between progressives and traditionalists. In 2015 Sweden knocked down Russia in a titanic battle in the wake of Moscow's 2014 Crimea invasion. Then in 2016, Jamala, singing about the parallels between Nazi treatment of Ukrainians, and Putin's treatment of her compatriots, took home the prize. Where to watch Eurovision live and in replay in the United States. Eurovision in three maps and one chart. BRAIN FOOD SHORT READ: "Boosting Space Diplomacy at State ." Foreign Service Officer David Epstein on why the State Department should improve its knowledge and policymaking functions for engaging in space. LONG READ: The Coup in the Kremlin, Nina Khrushcheva (yes, former Soviet Premier Nikita Khrushchev's great-granddaughter) on how Putin and his security services "captured the Russian State." PODCAST: I could talk to you all day — a podcast on what it's actually like to be a leader in an organization, by John Spears and Lauren Lefkowitz Thanks to editor John Yearwood, Carmen Paun, Daniel Payne, Mark Scott, Stuart Lau and producer Hannah Farrow. SUBSCRIBE to the POLITICO newsletter family: D.C. Playbook | Brussels Playbook | London Playbook | ParisPlaybook| EU Confidential | D.C. Influence | EU Influence | London Influence | Digital Bridge | China Direct | Berlin Bulletin | Living Cities
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