Tag: China
Confluence of Ideas – #28 “The 2023 Geopolitical Outlook” (Posted 12/19/22)
Bi-Weekly Geopolitical Podcast – #20 “Reflections on the 20th Party Congress” (Posted 11/7/22)
Bi-Weekly Geopolitical Podcast – #12 “The 2022 Mid-Year Geopolitical Outlook” (Posted 6/21/22)
Bi-Weekly Geopolitical Report – The 2022 Mid-Year Geopolitical Outlook (June 21, 2022)
by Bill O’Grady and Patrick Fearon-Hernandez, CFA | PDF
(N.B. Due to the Fourth of July holiday, our next geopolitical report will be published on July 18.)
As is our custom, we update our geopolitical outlook for the remainder of the year as the first half comes to a close. This report is less a series of predictions as it is a list of potential geopolitical issues that we believe will dominate the international landscape for the rest of the year. It is not designed to be exhaustive; instead, it focuses on the “big picture” conditions that we believe will affect policy and markets going forward. They are listed in order of importance.
Issue #1: The Russia-Ukraine War
Issue #2: Xi as China’s President for Life
Issue #3: The Global Food Crisis
Issue #4: Weather Disruptions
Issue #5: Latin American Politics
Issue #6: The U.S. Midterms
Issue #7: Fed Policy and the Dollar
Quick Hits: This section is a roundup of geopolitical issues we are watching that haven’t risen to the level of the concerns described above but should be monitored.
Don’t miss the accompanying Geopolitical Podcast, available on our website and most podcast platforms: Apple | Spotify | Google
Bi-Weekly Geopolitical Podcast – #11 “Mineral Commodities in the World’s New Geopolitical Blocs” (Posted 6/6/22)
Bi-Weekly Geopolitical Report – Mineral Commodities in the World’s New Geopolitical Blocs (June 6, 2022)
by Patrick Fearon-Hernandez, CFA | PDF
For many years, we’ve discussed how the United States has been backing away from its historical role as global hegemon, setting the stage for deglobalization and a fracturing of the world into separate geopolitical and economic blocs. In our Bi-Weekly Geopolitical Report from May 9, 2022, we provided a detailed, comprehensive forecast of which countries are likely to end up in either the U.S.-led or China-led bloc, which countries will lean toward one or the other, and which ones will try to be neutral. As a follow-up to that analysis, this report looks at the distribution of key mineral resources among those camps and what the different endowments might mean for geopolitics, the global economy, and financial markets in the future.
With China and Russia becoming ever more threatening from a military and geopolitical standpoint, and with the coronavirus pandemic demonstrating the vulnerability of supply chains even in peacetime, investors have become more sensitive to the security of commodity supplies and the way nations might try to monopolize or weaponize them. As such, we conclude with a discussion of the ramifications for investors.
Don’t miss the accompanying Geopolitical Podcast, available on our website and most podcast platforms: Apple | Spotify | Google
Bi-Weekly Geopolitical Podcast – #9 “Parsing the World’s New Geopolitical Blocs” (Posted 5/9/22)
Bi-Weekly Geopolitical Report – Parsing the World’s New Geopolitical Blocs (May 9, 2022)
by Patrick Fearon-Hernandez, CFA | PDF
For more than a decade, we at Confluence have been tracking and writing about the waning commitment of the U.S. to its role as global hegemon. We’ve shown how U.S. retrenchment and protectionism have helped erode globalization. Factors like deregulation, falling transportation costs, improved technology, and easing geopolitical tensions following the end of the Cold War may have promoted political and economic integration for decades. Now, however, governments across the globe are erecting barriers to trade, investment, and migration, leaving authoritarian strongmen emboldened to assert themselves. The latest example of that has been Russian President Putin’s invasion of Ukraine.
Amid these developments, we’ve argued the world will fracture into at least two main political and economic blocs: a U.S.-led bloc consisting mostly of liberal democracies and a China-led bloc of mostly authoritarian states. This report discusses which nations are likely to join each bloc, which will merely lean toward one bloc or the other, and which may try to stay neutral. Based on our predicted makeup of each bloc, we describe their differing political, economic, and financial characteristics. As always, the analysis also includes ramifications for investors.