News round-up, April, 14, 2023
Editor's thoughts…
In fact, has globalization failed?
Regarding yesterday's statements, in Shanghai, Brazil's President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva assents to common BRICS currency to counter US dollar dominance.
Brazil's President, Lula da Silva, called his BRICS counterparts, including Russia, India, China, and South Africa, other than Brazil, to replace the US dollar with their currencies. Lula's comments come amid efforts by India, China, and Russia to set up streams for trade in their money and expanding calls amongst BRICS nations to launch a potential common currency mechanism to trade amongst themselves. "Why can't we do trade based on our currencies," he added. "Why can't a bank like that of the BRICS have a currency to finance trade relations between Brazil and China, between Brazil and other countries? It's difficult because we are unaccustomed [to the idea]. Everyone depends on just one currency," Lula said further, adding an apparent Brazilian consent to the calls for a common BRICS currency for trade amongst themselves.
Bloomberg and wionews, today ——————————————————-
In this matter, Professor of Harvard Kennedy School, economist Dani Rodrik says policymakers must rethink neoliberal economic orthodoxy to build a more resilient, equitable, and sustainable global economy. For more than a quarter century, economist and Harvard Kennedy School professor Rodrik has been ringing alarm bells about the dangers of globalization. And for a long time, it didn’t seem like a whole lot of people were listening. Now as record economic inequality, a climate in crisis, and global financial shocks from to the COVID pandemic and Russia’s invasion of Ukraine have exposed the vulnerabilities and shortcomings of unchecked globalism and neoliberal orthodoxy about the primacy of markets, Rodrik may be having the world’s least-satisfying “I told you so” moment.
FEATURING DANI RODRIKJUNE 30, 2022www.hks.harvard.edu/faculty-research/policycastheMost read…
Global Economic Chiefs Split Over Rich-World Call for Resilience
-- Global finance chiefs, gathering in Washington little more than a year after the shock Russian invasion of Ukraine, are drawing sharply different conclusions about the biggest risks to the outlook, in a split showcasing the rising role of geopolitical struggles in the world economy.
Bloomberg by Enda Curran, Fri, April 14, 2023Brazil's president wants to end dollar dominance and backs calls for BRICS nations to use their own currency
"Why can't we do trade based on our own currencies?" , he said.
BLOOMBERG, Filip De Mott, Apr 13, 2023What we know about 21-year-old accused of leaking top-secret documents
The FBI arrested Jack Texeira, a 21-year-old member of the Massachusetts Air National Guard, on suspicion of leaking classified information…
TWP By Ben Brasch, April 13, 2023 Why Latin American Leaders Are Obsessed With TikTok
Several leaders use the app to publish brief videos of their travels, interactions with the public, and public addresses, frequently putting to songs currently trending on the social media
TIME BY VERA BERGENGRUEN, APRIL 13, 2023 OPEC+ cuts risk oil supply deficit, threaten economic recovery - IEA
The outlooks for global oil production and consumption have recently been a point of contention between OPEC+ and the IEA…
REUTERS By Noah Browning, editing Germán & Co
“We’re living in a volatile world…
it’s easy to get distracted by things like changeable commodity prices or a shortage of solar panels. But this wouldn’t be true to our purpose – we can’t allow ourselves to lose sight of our end goal; said Andres Gluski, CEO of energy and utility AES Corp
Today's events
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Today's events 〰️
Global Economic Chiefs Split Over Rich-World Call for Resilience
-- Global finance chiefs, gathering in Washington little more than a year after the shock Russian invasion of Ukraine, are drawing sharply different conclusions about the biggest risks to the outlook, in a split showcasing the rising role of geopolitical struggles in the world economy.
Bloomberg by Enda Curran, Fri, April 14, 2023The key takeaway among rich, democratic nations: the need for more “resilience” in supply chains, to ensure their economies are better insulated from risks ranging from war and pandemics to attempts at coercion by authoritarian regimes. But others, including the International Monetary Fund, are warning against a “fragmentation” of the global economy into competing blocs that hurts growth.
Group of Seven finance ministers and central bank governors invoked the terms “resilient” and “resilience” a total of 15 times in their joint statement after meeting on Wednesday.
“All countries are going to want to have more resilient supply chains in a much less stable world — the lesson of Ukraine was that energy dependence on Russia was probably a mistake,” UK Chancellor of the Exchequer Jeremy Hunt told reporters Thursday. “We want to make sure that it’s not just energy dependence, but technology dependence, critical-minerals dependence, all sorts of other dependences” that are addressed, he said.
Hunt’s G-7 colleague, German Finance Minister Christian Lindner, described the danger as “cluster risk” — where there’s over-reliance on trade and investment in one location. Trade relations with China, for example, “must not become a cluster risk — which is why diversification is necessary,” he told reporters Thursday.
But the danger of this new push by democratic economies to shift supply chains toward themselves — something US Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen calls “friendshoring” — is a separation of the global economy into blocs, leading to less efficiency and ultimately less development.
That was the warning sounded by Kristalina Georgieva, managing director of the IMF, which together with the World Bank is hosting spring meetings of world economic policymakers this week in the US capital.
The security of global supply chains “is taking a new higher priority” in economic discussions and decision making, Georgieva told reporters on Thursday. “The question is, can we be more determined to enhance security of supplies but not push the world that far that we are into a second cold war.”
While “resilience” is the new mantra of the US and its allies, “fragmentation” is the feared result among observers including Georgieva. “Getting on a path of less fragmentation in the world economy is good for everybody,” she said last week.
‘Fracturing’ Ties
The key source of that fragmentation risk is the ever-escalating tensions between the US and China, the world’s biggest and second-largest economies.
“That’s the key relationship in the world” and “that is fracturing,” Raghuram Rajan, a former IMF chief economist, said on Bloomberg Television Thursday on the sidelines of the meetings. “That is important for the rest of the world — because if you have to choose sides, countries will be in a very, very difficult position.”
That position wasn’t lost on Moroccan Finance Minister Nadia Fettah Alaoui.
“Countries like Morocco will suffer from fragmentation,” she said Thursday. “We have to push to avoid this.”
No More ‘Chinas’
Making things all the worse is a much weaker trend-growth rate for the global economy. Part of that is because major nations including China, Japan and some euro-zone members are seeing working-age populations shrink. Productivity growth rates have weakened compared with past decades. And the IMF also this week warned that high levels of debt leave the world more vulnerable.
While this year, China’s reopening will offer a burst of growth that may help support the world expansion, its medium-term trend pace of 5% or weaker is notably down from pre-pandemic rates.
“We don’t have any Chinas anymore that are growing at very high rates,” Gita Gopinath, who’s now Georgieva’s top lieutenant after previously serving as IMF chief economist, said on Bloomberg TV. “So for the global economy as a whole, we don’t have very large engines of growth.”
“The IMF is exactly right, longer-term growth looks a lot worse,” Rajan said.
So much worse that the IMF says the five-year outlook for the world is the worst in their projections, which date back to 1990. That year was effectively the book-end of the last Cold War: a year before the collapse of the Soviet Union, which helped to usher the rapid integration of once-Communist nations into a new, rapidly globalizing economy.
Today, intensifying geopolitical competition is seen also in the battle for investment dollars and disputes over debt.
The Washington meetings featured limited progress over resolving debt overhangs for Zambia and other frontier economies, with China — the world’s largest official creditor to the developing world — reluctant to accede to terms that G-7 members are insisting on.
China’s Moves
China instead is focused on strengthening its own supply chains and financial ties with the developing world — a push on display this week as it plays host to Brazil’s president, Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva.
Amid the impasse in debt talks in Washington, Shanghai witnessed the swearing in of one of Lula’s predecessors, Dilma Rousseff, as head of the New Development Bank. The NDB is one of a number of multinational institutions and forums China has built as it places less emphasis on legacy organizations set up in an era of US domination.
Back in the US capital, the fracturing of the world order was also seen in the G-20 finance ministers failing to issue a communique — continuing the discord faced by the group since the Russian invasion of Ukraine.
Some developed-world policymakers are attendant to the risks even as they seek to shift supply chains. French Finance Minister Bruno Le Maire said, “We need a common strategy to avoid that fragmentation and to keep the door open for stronger cooperation.”
But others were direct about the threats they see. Canadian Finance Minister Chrystia Freeland in a Wednesday speech underscored, “These strategic vulnerabilities to authoritarian economies put our own security in jeopardy.”
--With assistance from Christopher Condon, Maria Tadeo, Brian Platt, Eric Martin, Tom Keene, Jonathan Ferro, Lisa Abramowicz, Toru Fujioka, Kamil Kowalcze, Viktoria Dendrinou, Jorge Valero and Philip Aldrick.
Image: Germán & Co by Shutterstock, São Paulo, São Paulo, Brasil - 08, 20, 2022Brazil's president wants to end dollar dominance and backs calls for BRICS nations to use their own currency
"Why can't we do trade based on our own currencies?" , he said.
BLOOMBERG, Filip De Mott, Apr 13, 2023Brazil President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva has urged developing nations to find an alternative currency to the dollar, denouncing the central role of the greenback in global trade.
Thursday's comments, from a speech made during this week's state trip to China, lend another voice to growing de-dollarization rhetoric from leaders of BRICS countries — Brazil, Russia, India, China, and South Africa.
"Why can't we do trade based on our own currencies?" he said, per The Financial Times. "Who was it that decided that the dollar was the currency after the disappearance of the gold standard?"
Speaking at the New Development Bank of Shanghai, Lula called for BRICS nations to establish a common currency to with which they could transact.
"Why can't a bank like that of the BRICS have a currency to finance trade relations between Brazil and China, between Brazil and other countries? It's difficult because we are unaccustomed [to the idea]. Everyone depends on just one currency."
Last year, BRICS countries were reviewing a new currency based on a basket of member currencies. The idea sprung out of incentives to move away from dollar dependence, which proved detrimental after Russia was cut off of its dollar reserves, due to its invasion of Ukraine.
And in January, in another bid to move away from the dollar's dominance, Lula announced that Brazil and Argentina were looking into the development of a common currency.
His stance also represents warming ties between China and Brazil, as Lula attempts a multilateralist approach to foreign affairs. For instance, while maintaining good relations with the US, Brazil has recently agreed to using the yuan in cross-border transactions with China.
Though it's been floated that such changes imply an important shift in the currency regime, a number of analysts have found the so-called de-dollarization of global trade highly improbable. While the dollar may weaken as the world's go-to currency, there are no likely alternatives that would be able to completely replace it.
Even the Chinese yuan, whose role in trade finance has more than doubled since the Ukraine war, is a poor contender. Not only is it virtually pegged to the dollar, China's tight control of it keeps it from adhering to free market flows.
The prospect of Brazilians casting the dollar off in the near future is also unlikely, FT reported, as the currency holds a crucial role in commodity markets and industries that Brazil is heavily involved in.
Undated image of Jack Teixeira. Officials say Teixeira, a National Guard technology support staffer, is suspected of mishandling U.S. military security secrets. (Obtained by The Washington Post), editing by Germán & CoWhat we know about 21-year-old accused of leaking top-secret documents
The FBI arrested Jack Texeira, a 21-year-old member of the Massachusetts Air National Guard, on suspicion of leaking classified information…
TWP By Ben Brasch, April 13, 2023 Authorities on Thursday arrested a 21-year-old member of the Massachusetts Air National Guard suspected of leaking a trove of classified military intelligence in a case that has transfixed much of official Washington for the past week.
The arrest of Jack Teixeira follows The Post’s account of how detailed intelligence documents about an extraordinary range of subjects found their way onto Discord, an online chat platform popular with gamers, before they circulated across the internet.
Here’s what you should know about Teixeira.
Undated image of Jack Teixeira. Officials say Teixeira, a National Guard technology support staffer, is suspected of mishandling U.S. military security secrets. (Obtained by The Washington Post)
Who is Jack Teixeira?
Teixeira is stationed at Otis Air National Guard Base in Cape Cod, Mass., according to his military records.
The base is home to the 102nd Intelligence Wing, whose website describes the 102nd’s mission as to “provide world wide precision intelligence and command and control along with trained and experienced Airmen for expeditionary combat support and homeland security.”
Teixeira’s military record indicates that he enlisted in the National Guard on Sept. 26, 2019.
Teixeira was mobilized for federal active duty last fall, Nahaku McFadden, a spokesperson for the National Guard Bureau, told The Post.
His family lives in Dighton, Mass. — about 35 miles south of Boston.
Some members of the Discord group showed The Post video of Teixiera shouting racist and antisemitic slurs before firing a rifle.
A friend who spoke with The Post described Teixeira as patriotic, a devout Catholic and a libertarian with an interest in guns and doubts about America’s future.
What kind of information was leaked?
The leaked documents included the whereabouts and movements of high-ranking political leaders and tactical updates on military forces along with geopolitical analysis and insights into foreign governments’ efforts to interfere with elections.
The leak, per The Post, revealed how the United States gathers foreign intelligence — not just on Russia’s military and spy agencies but also partners like Ukraine and Israel in addition to key allies in Asia, such as South Korea.
Who leaked the documents?
Jack Teixeira, a young member of the Massachusetts Air National Guard, was arrested Thursday in the investigation into leaks of hundreds of pages of classified military intelligence. The Washington Post reported that the individual who leaked the information shared documents with a small circle of online friends on the Discord chat platform.
What do the leaked documents reveal about Ukraine?
The documents reveal profound concerns about the war’s trajectory and Kyiv’s capacity to wage a successful offensive against Russian forces. According to a Defense Intelligence Agency assessment among the leaked documents, “Negotiations to end the conflict are unlikely during 2023.”
What else do they show?
The files include summaries of human intelligence on high-level conversations between world leaders, as well as information about advanced satellite technology the United States uses to spy. They also include intelligence on both allies and adversaries, including Iran and North Korea, as well as Britain, Canada, South Korea and Israel.
What happens now?
The leak has far-reaching implications for the United States and its allies. In addition to the Justice Department investigation, officials in several countries said they were assessing the damage from the leaks.
Where did the documents go?
Documents were initially posted to a Discord server named “Thug Shaker Central.”
Roughly two dozen mostly men and boys formed the invitation-only group on Discord in 2020 with a shared love of guns, military gear and God.
What about Teixeira’s time with the Massachusetts Air National Guard?
The Post has reported that Teixeira’s military record shows him as an Airman 1st Class with no commendations except for an Air Force Achievement Medal — a routine award given widely to airmen.
How would he allegedly have access to such sensitive information?
Teixeira’s security clearance level isn’t clear, but he did have access to an internal Defense Department computer network for top secret information called the Joint Worldwide Intelligence Communications System (JWICS), a U.S. official familiar with the matter who spoke on the condition of anonymity as the investigation proceeds told The Post.
Access to JWICS would have given Teixeira the ability to read and potentially print records classified at the same level as many of the leaked documents, per the official.
Teixeira told members of his online group that he worked as a technology support staffer at a base on Cape Cod, and that this was how he was able to access classified documents, one member of the Discord server told The Post.
National Guard units perform some support services for active-duty units, including intelligence support for the Joint Staff, one U.S. official told The Post.
Who can access classified information?
Thousands of military personnel and government employees, working entry-to-low-level positions, could plausibly have access to classified documents like the ones he allegedly shared, according to U.S. officials and experts who have seen the documents reported in the media.
The military regularly entrusts young people with classified information and elevated responsibilities, Pentagon spokesman Brig. Gen. Patrick S. Ryder said Thursday. “Think about a young combat platoon sergeant, and the responsibility and trust that we put into those individuals to lead troops into combat,” he said. “It’s called military discipline.”
Devlin Barrett and Shane Harris contributed to this report.
Seaboard: pioneers in power generation in the country
…Armando Rodríguez, vice-president and executive director of the company, talks to us about their projects in the DR, where they have been operating for 32 years.
More than 32 years ago, back in January 1990, Seaboard began operations as the first independent power producer (IPP) in the Dominican Republic. They became pioneers in the electricity market by way of the commercial operations of Estrella del Norte, a 40MW floating power generation plant and the first of three built for Seaboard by Wärtsilä.
France's nuclear push is raising hackles with other EU countries — led by Germany — that want the power source eliminated | Guillaume Souvant/AFP/ Editing by Germán & CoParis to Berlin: Stop fighting nuclear and help save the planet
Renewables won’t win the war on climate change alone, says the man Macron has tasked with overseeing an atomic energy revival.
POLITICO. EU BY GABRIEL GAVIN, APRIL 11, 2023Efforts to block nuclear energy from the EU's green power plans could undermine the fight against climate change, France's atomic energy czar warned as Germany prepares to shut down its final three nuclear reactors this weekend.
Joël Barre, who was announced in October as the boss of France's effort to build new nuclear plants, said building more reactors and extending the lives of existing ones is essential to cutting down on the use of fossil fuels — a job that has seen him dubbed “Monsieur Nuclear” by the press.
“If we don’t invest, we clearly face a cliff-edge as our reactors currently in service will see the end of their life between 2040 and 2050,” Barre told POLITICO.
Last year, French President Emmanuel Macron pledged as many as 14 new reactors would be built as part of a “renaissance” of the atomic energy industry, which generates around 70 percent of the country’s electricity. Barre’s team is now working on the construction of six advanced EPR2 reactors, to be built between 2035 and 2042 — ensuring that gas and coal-fired electricity doesn't surge when old reactors are shut down.
That's leading to frequent showdowns between the pro and anti-nuclear camps; March saw two such scraps.
One was over the EU's flagship Net-Zero Industry Act, setting targets for technologies deemed necessary to decarbonize the bloc’s economy. The spat over nuclear delayed the proposal and the end result was a fudge, with atomic power not included in a list of “strategic net-zero technologies” while elsewhere in the text, the definition of net-zero technologies included "advanced technologies to produce energy from nuclear processes with minimal waste from the fuel cycle" and "small modular reactors."
A similar battle overshadowed the EU's call to boost renewable energy targets by 2030, with France winning a marginal victory that allows nuclear in limited circumstances.
Nuclear push
Barre made it clear Paris isn't going to give up the fight.
“We want to have a strategy for nuclear in Europe,” he said. “And on the other hand, countries, mostly Germany, but also Austria and Luxembourg, are opposed to nuclear energy and this is a pity. We need to continue to try to overcome such opposition within the EU.”
He argued that atomic energy does have a role to play as the Continent races to decarbonize.
“I don’t understand the position of Germany because I don’t believe at all that up to the middle of the century they will be able to carry out a zero-carbon strategy based solely on renewable sources,” Barre said.
French President Emmanuel Macron pledged as many as 14 new reactors would be built as part of a “renaissance” of the atomic energy industry | GUillaume Souvant/AFP via Getty Images
However, critics say the French argument is undermined by the problems facing EDF, the government-controlled utility that runs the country's nuclear fleet.
“Just looking at France, half the French reactor fleet has been offline in 2022; EDF is essentially bankrupt — it’s €64 billion in debt and Macron has been forced to fully nationalize it,” said Paul Dorfman, an associate fellow at the University of Sussex’s Science Policy Research Unit.
EDF has been hit by a number of technical problems this year after faults were found at a number of its power plants. More than a dozen reactors have been taken offline while engineers carry out inspections and conduct emergency repairs and, in March, a major crack was reported at its Penly plant in the north of the country triggering a wave of new repairs that required specialists to be brought in from the U.S.
Clean power
Those championing investing more in renewables say that problems with existing reactors, plus delays and cost-overruns in building new ones, don't make it an attractive option, and nuclear should be seen as a transition technology rather than the future of clean power.
“Renewables can be put down much quicker than reactors. The key problem for nuclear is it’s too late — we don’t have the time, we don’t have the resources,” said Dorfman.
But scrapping nuclear power — especially existing plants, as Germany has done — carries its own problems, said Leon Cizelj, professor of nuclear engineering at University of Ljubljana and president of the European Nuclear Society.
"The 20 years long and very costly experiment with renewables without nuclear in Germany did not reduce the carbon footprint of German electricity production,” he said.
He also warned that unless the EU starts to invest in research and develop supply chains for new and existing nuclear power, the bloc's atomic industry will decay.
Barre insisted that nuclear does have a future.
"We cannot carry out consolidated, strong energy policy in Europe without being based on a mix of energy sources — on one side renewables and on the other side nuclear," he said. "We have to oppose efforts to say there is just one solution — we need a mix."
Screenshots of videos posted On TikTok in March by President Nayib Bukele of El Salvador, President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva of Brazil, and President Nicolas Maduro of Venezuela/ EDITING BY GERMAN & COWhy Latin American Leaders Are Obsessed With TikTok
Several leaders use the app to publish brief videos of their travels, interactions with the public, and public addresses, frequently putting to songs currently trending on the social media
TIME BY VERA BERGENGRUEN, APRIL 13, 2023 Hands held behind their heads, the prisoners in the video sprint down metal steps and into a massive concrete building. As dramatic music plays, the camera pans over thousands of men, arrayed in neat rows, clad only in white shorts, their heads shaved and bodies tattooed. High definition close-ups show their eyes glinting as they press their foreheads to their knees, before they are herded out by armed guards.
The footage shows the round-up of thousands of gang members in El Salvador’s newly opened “mega prison.” It’s not typical fare for TikTok, the video-sharing app that first became popular with teenagers for its viral dance challenges. But a pair of highly produced videos, posted by El Salvador President Nayib Bukele, showing the #GuerraContraLasPandillas—the war on gangs—have garnered 25 million views on the app since being posted in the past two months, with thousands of comments in more than a dozen languages expressing their admiration. “I wish you were the president of the entire world,” one user wrote in a comment liked 16,000 times.
Bukele’s use of TikTok is part of a regional trend. While President Joe Biden and his European counterparts have stayed away from TikTok, blocking it from government devices and weighing an outright ban due to national security concerns about its Chinese ownership, Latin American heads of state are embracing the massively popular platform more than ever. As of April 12, six of the top 10 world leaders on TikTok are from Central and South America. “Almost every single Latin American leader is on the app, and you can see the impact in the figures,” says Matthias Lüfkens, a former head of digital media at the World Economic Forum who tracks world leaders’ social media accounts.
“They’re not following the U.S. lead of banning TikTok. They’re all in, [and] embracing the songs and the memes, which is very rare for any European politicians.”
Latin American heads of state have long been early adopters of new social-media platforms. Now they have seized on TikTok as a less formal, more effective tool for all sorts of political messaging. In Venezuela, Nicolas Maduro has been using the platform to share bite-sized pieces of propaganda on the alleged successes of his socialist agenda, among dozens of videos of himself dancing salsa. In Ecuador, Argentina and Chile, presidents use the app to give followers a view behind the scenes of government. In Brazil, former President Jair Bolsonaro and his successor Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva have been competing for views in the aftermath of a contested election. Many leaders use the app to post short clips of their public speeches, interactions with citizens and travels, often set to songs trending on the app.
While politicians in the U.S. and Europe have raised concerns about the app, Latin American leaders don’t see China as an adversary in the same way, says Iria Puyosa, a senior research fellow at the Atlantic Council’s Digital Forensic Research Lab who is an expert on social media and political conflict in Latin America. China has invested heavily in the continent over the past two decades and forged close economic and security ties with most Latin American countries. It’s South America’s top trading partner, as well as a key source of both lending and direct foreign investment.
“They see China as a partner,” Puyosa says. “This a way to reach people where the people are—people who distrust the news and are disengaged by electoral politics.” In much of the West, TikTok is the subject of political suspicion; in Latin America, it’s a cornerstone of political strategy.
None have done this more effectively than El Salvador’s Bukele. With 5.6 million followers, he is the most popular head of state on the app—no small feat for the leader of a Central American country with a population of 6.3 million. The son of a wealthy businessman, Bukele started his career in public relations, working for his family’s advertising firm. Since being elected in 2019, at age 35, he has set up a slick digital operation to manage his image and publicize his policies, from an experiment to adopt Bitcoin as the national currency to the declaration of a state of emergency to crack down on the gangs that have terrorized the country for decades. It has helped Bukele notch an approval rating that hovers around 90%.
TikTok is a large part of the alternative media landscape Bukele has built since his inauguration, tightly controlling and often manipulating the information disseminated through TV shows, video streaming sites, social media, and paid Internet trolls, experts say. TikTok can be easier to manipulate than other social platforms, says Alberto Escorcia, a Mexican social media analyst whose analysis of Bukeke’s profiles found an “overwhelming” amount of manipulation to shape public opinion. “A small army of operators can quickly inflate the statistics to appear in the TikTok recommendations algorithm.” (TikTok did not return a request for comment.)
This isn’t a new tactic in Latin America. Ecuador became an early pioneer in Twitter troll farms in 2013, when a company tied to then-president Rafael Correa began to monetize them by hijacking trending topics. Since then, digital armies have become a lucrative business from Brazil to Mexico, especially around presidential elections. Digital staffers who worked for other Latin American campaigns, including former Mexican President Enrique Peña Nieto, “helped advise Bukele in the creation of this massive communications strategy,” says Escorcia.
His counterparts across the continent are using the app in different ways. The drama of Brazil’s contested presidential election has given way to a split-screen of TikTok accounts, with Bolsonaro (5.3 million followers) and Lula (4.3 million followers) both highly active in different ways. During his three-month self-imposed exile in Florida, Bolsonaro released a stream of videos, set to emotive music, that showed lines of supporters waiting to shake his hand or take a photo. In others he is giving speeches at right-wing events in the area, touting his accomplishments and vowing to return to his country. But mostly he posts humanizing, light-hearted videos—getting a haircut, cooking hot dogs in a suburban kitchen, playing with dogs and children.
“Bolsonaro was the first Brazilian president to adopt a 100% online communication strategy,” says Karina di Nubila, a lawyer and researcher at the University of Valladolid in Spain. He is using TikTok as the “soundtrack” of his comeback, says Di Nubila. “He is creating a plot: the story of the hero, the populist leader, charismatic, loved by Brazilians, who lost the election in an unfair, coup-like and fraudulent way, but who, despite everything, will not abandon his people.” On March 30, a video of his return to Brazil was viewed almost two million times.
Since his inauguration, Lula’s account has been posting frequent videos of him fulfilling presidential duties: waving atop a Brazilian-made submarine, opening health clinics, showing off tropical produce, meeting world leaders. Many of them are set to TikTok trends and popular songs, with one describing his agenda of “putting food on the table of the Brazilian people” and “job opportunities for all” as his “vibe.”
Across Brazil’s northwestern border, Venezuela’s Maduro has posted more than 90 videos on TikTok this year alone. Some are short political sound bites set to music; others show ordinary antics, like playing with a 360-degree camera in his office, or feature the president dancing. In one recent video that garnered 3.4 million views, he’s being smothered by four golden retrievers as he fruitlessly commands them to sit. The Venezuela shown through Maduro’s TikTok is vibrant and thriving—a far cry from the reality of an economy in shambles, rampant hyperinflation, and an ongoing humanitarian crisis in which most of the country struggles to afford food or access basic medicines. “We have to win the battle every day, with intelligence,” Maduro said in a speech last month. “You know how one wins this? On TikTok.”
Other Latin American leaders use the app to showcase their policies. Ecuadorian President Guillermo Lasso, who has 1.3 million followers, speaks directly to the camera, showing the opening of housing projects and hospitals. Colombian President Gustavo Petro’s videos largely consist of clips of his speeches set to music and scenes from his daily activities. Chilean President Gabriel Boric has an account with 638,000 followers with a more somber tone, in which he shows himself visiting disaster zones and meeting with citizens. Boric, who won the presidency in 2021 at just 35, “is doing this very serious, staid thing, talking about his policy in a very formal way,” says Puyosa.
“I guess he doesn’t need to overdo it—he’s already cool.”
Latin American governments’ embrace of TikTok stands in increasingly stark contrast to the U.S. and Europe, where leaders have never had much enthusiasm for the platform. The U.S. government is clearly aware of its reach: Americans make up the world’s largest TikTok audience, with 150 million users. When the war in Ukraine broke out last year the White House hosted TikTok influencers for a briefing, acknowledging the app as a dominant source of news and information. Biden’s staff also plans to enlist hundreds of TikTok creators as part of the digital strategy for his expected re-election campaign in 2024.
But long-held fears over the app’s data access and Chinese ownership have mounted in recent months. In a high-profile hearing in March, FBI Director Christopher Wray warned that TikTok “screams national security concerns.” Since then, the app has been banned from government devices in the U.S., U.K., Canada, the European Union, and an expanding list of other European countries. Several European government officials deleted accounts, including the Czech government, the European Commission, and Latvia’s foreign minister, who cited “security reasons.” Despite having an account set up under former Prime Minister Boris Johnson, the U.K.’s official 10 Downing Street account hasn’t posted since last summer.
One exception is French President Emmanuel Macron, who launched his TikTok account in July 2020 and has amassed 4 million followers with well-lit videos where he speaks to the camera and answers user comments. Even so, France banned TikTok on government devices last month.
“In the U.S. and in Europe, there is this disconnect right now, where you have the government saying no TikTok on government phones, and there’s a conversation around national security, but we still haven’t addressed the fact that governments are pretty out of touch with populations and the public,” says Jiore Craig, who oversees election research at the Institute for Strategic Dialogue, a think tank that focuses on online disinformation. “Are you doing social media because you have to, or are you doing social media because you understand why it’s important?”
For many leaders in Latin America, the answer is clear—and already yielding results. In recent months, Bukele has begun adding English subtitles to his videos as he works to grow a global audience of admirers and uses the app to hit back at critics abroad. “Where did they get this sudden love for El Salvador?” he says in one TikTok, translated into English on the screen, addressing human rights organizations’ concerns over the sprawling new prisons he has highlighted in his videos.
“Up until recently, they couldn’t find it on a map.”
Image: Germán & CoCooperate with objective and ethical thinking…
The OPEC logo pictured ahead of an informal meeting between members of the Organization of the Petroleum Exporting Countries (OPEC) in Algiers, Algeria, September 28, 2016. REUTERS/Ramzi Boudina/File Photo/ Editing by Germán & CoOPEC+ cuts risk oil supply deficit, threaten economic recovery - IEA
The outlooks for global oil production and consumption have recently been a point of contention between OPEC+ and the IEA…
REUTERS By Noah Browning, editing Germán & CoLONDON, April 14 (Reuters) - Output cuts announced by OPEC+ producers risk exacerbating an oil supply deficit expected in the second half of the year and could hurt consumers and global economic recovery, the International Energy Agency (IEA) said on Friday.
OPEC+ and the IEA have jousted in recent months over their outlooks for global oil supply and demand.
Consumer countries represented by the IEA have argued that tightening supplies drive up prices and could threaten a recession, while OPEC+ blames Western monetary policy for market volatility and inflation which undercuts the value of its oil.
"Oil market balances were already set to tighten in the second half of 2023, with the potential for a substantial supply deficit to emerge," the IEA said in its monthly oil report.
"The latest cuts risk exacerbating those strains, pushing both crude and product prices higher. Consumers currently under siege from inflation will suffer even more from higher prices."
Global oil supply/demand
Supply/Demand BalanceOPEC+ called its surprise cut decision a "precautionary measure" and in a monthly oil report published on Thursday OPEC cited downside risks to summer oil demand from high stock levels and economic challenges.
The IEA said it expected global oil supply to fall by 400,000 barrels per day (bpd) by the end of the year citing an expected production increase of 1 million bpd from outside of OPEC+ beginning in March versus a 1.4 million bpd decline from the producers bloc.
Rising global oil stocks may have influenced the OPEC+ decision, the IEA added, noting the Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD) industry stocks in January hit their highest level since July 2021 at 2.83 billion barrels.
The demand picture will be skewed between lacklustre growth in OECD countries and rebounding demand led by China after the relaxation of its COVID-19 restrictions, the IEA said.
World Total Oil DemandMeanwhile Russian oil exports in March hit their highest levels since April 2020 on robust oil product flows, the IEA said, despite a seaborne import ban from the European Union and a price cap sanctions policy spearheaded by the United States.
Russia's March revenue rose by $1 billion month on month to $12.7 billion, but was still 43% lower than a year earlier partly due to capped prices on its seaborne oil exports.