| | | | How China Could Shake Up Europe | | Italy's accession to China's Belt and Road Initiative has been controversial: This week, it signed $2.8 billion worth of deals and an umbrella agreement making Italy part of China's global infrastructure-investment plans, as the US steers allies away from China and as some European leaders have warned against the partnership. It's the first G7 country to join the initiative, though 13 EU countries have already signed investment deals with China.
Italy's move also stands to shake up the continent's internal dynamics, writes Bruno Macaes, a Hudson Institute fellow and former Europe minister of Portugal, at the Nikkei Asian Review. Chinese investment not only heightens intra-European divisions—Italy may have signed on out of discontent with German domination of European economics, he suggests—but could also reshape Europe's trade economy. China plans to build up Italy's port at Trieste, and Macaes predicts Chinese investments in Mediterranean ports could facilitate new trade routes from Asia, weaken Northern Europe's grip on shipping, and change how goods are imported and distributed on the continent.
"The economic map of Europe is ripe for a revolution," Macaes writes, predicting Europe may have to find better ways to solve internal disputes and keep its members happy, lest they turn to Chinese investment that could disrupt the continent. | | No Coal Worker Left Behind | | As countries plot their carbon-reduced futures, they're grappling with how to protect the workers and regions that could be hurt, Cynthia Elliott writes at the World Resources Institute. The buzzword is "just transition," and countries like Canada, Costa Rica, Germany, South Africa, and Spain are looking at ways to achieve it, Elliott writes.
Case in point: A German commission proposed $45.7 billion in aid to coal-mining states, as it plans to phase out coal power by 2038, and Canada's Task Force on Just Transition for Canadian Coal Power Workers and Communities recommended government funding for coal workers including "income support, education and skills building, re-employment and mobility" as Canada seeks to stop using coal by 2030.
The model sounds a bit like how America trains and compensates workers hurt by trade, and Elliott suggests carbon-transition plans could also include things like "pension schemes" for affected workers, hinting that such programs could solve the political conundrum of global warming by softening the blow on areas that stand to lose the most in a shift away from greenhouse gases. | | A Case for Optimism, Everywhere but Here | | | "The United States is still a remarkably safe great power, and the international environment is still defined by less violence, greater freedom and wealth, and more extraordinary advances in human development than at any previous point in history," Michael A. Cohen and Micah Zenko write in Foreign Affairs. Global life expectancy and literacy are on the rise, poverty is falling, and diseases are being eliminated, they point out.
But while US world leadership remains intact, the authors point to a domestic decline, as US policymakers cut access to healthcare and overlook problems like the opioid epidemic, they point out in their new book, Clear and Present Safety: The World Has Never Been Better and Why That Matters to Americans.
"[N]ot only are domestic problems getting worse, policymakers are actively pouring gasoline on the fire," they write. "This has created one of the great ironies of the present day—that while life is steadily improving in most of the developing world, the United States is moving backward." | | Europe Defends Itself—Against Copyright Infringement | | Europe has "approved new copyright laws that will change the internet," CNN's Ivana Kottasová writes, but "nobody knows exactly how." New European regulations, passed Tuesday, will most notably make online platforms responsible for preventing copyright infringement. As the tech industry criticizes the rule, Kottasová writes that one outstanding question is how, exactly, online platforms will screen out copyright-infringing material, and whether algorithms will be able to determine if a user upload is parody or theft.
The Economist puts the hotly contested regulation in political context: It's been "one fault line in [a] much wider debate, one the goes to the heart of Europe's values," over how active European government should be in the face of perceived threats, like competition from Chinese and American companies, Russian disinformation campaigns, migration, and digital privacy. In that sense, we can view it as a sign of Europe's protectionist impulse—one that will be debated more thoroughly as the European Parliament elections approach. | | | | | | |
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