Three news stories summarized & contextualized by analytic journalist Colin Wright.
Russian finance flows slump after US targets Vladimir Putin’s war machine
Summary: A fresh round of US sanctions and bans have prompted many lenders to avoid working with anyone or anything even tangentially connected to Russia, which has triggered a slump in trade volumes between Russia and some of its largest trade partners.
Context: The US, EU, and other primarily western nations have been slapping sanctions on Russia and Russia-related things since Russian President Putin decided to full-scale invade Ukraine a few years ago, and while some of those initial bans and threats worked decently well, Russia’s economy continued to do okay as its government figured out ways around some of the most significant limitations; more recent efforts have been aimed at the financial service backing for such trades, essentially cutting off the flow of resources required to buy and sell goods at an international level, and while this isn’t foolproof or loophole-less, dodging these restrictions now requires a lot of middlemen and a fair bit of risk for anyone dealing with Russia, which means they have to work harder and spend more to get what was previously cheaper and more easily accessed.
—Financial Times
UK's Lib Dems to submit motion of no-confidence in Rishi Sunak's government
Summary: The UK Liberal Democratic party said on Monday that it will submit a motion of no-confidence in Prime Minister Sunak’s government in order to force a general election in June—earlier than the election Sunak has previously said he plans to hold in the second half of 2024.
Context: Sunak’s Conservative party lost 474 local council seats in last week’s elections, while Labour and the Lib Dems gained 186 and 104 seats, respectively; the Conservatives are expected to handedly lose the next wave of Parliamentary elections, though Sunak has said that he believes the eventual outcome will be closer than polls currently predict; the last time such an election was forced by a no-confidence motion in the UK was in 1979.
—Reuters
EV makers get two-year reprieve on tax-credit restrictions
Summary: The US Treasury Department has announced that electric vehicles containing graphite from China will still be eligible for EV tax credits through 2026.
Context: This is a pivot from the department’s previous stance, which would only provide these credits for vehicles that were built almost entirely using US-oriented supply chains; China currently dominates the global EV market, including the materials required to build these vehicles and their batteries, and the US government is hoping to flesh-out and bulwark its own version of the same by providing monetary incentives and resources for car companies to refocus appropriately—but under current conditions, few, if any cars would be eligible for a completely US-made EV tax-credit, and this wiggle-room is meant to help address that supply chain shortfall in the interim, giving them a few more years to get their non-Chinese graphite supplies locked-in.
—The Wall Street Journal
Recent data indicate that the Panama Canal’s water shortage, which has led to dramatically lower ship-passage numbers than is typical (even during the region’s rainfall low-season) is primarily attributable to the now-waning El Niño phenomenon, rather than climate change; water levels have since stabilized a bit, the regional drought subsiding, and traffic is picking back up as a consequence.
—Financial Times
1.6 million
Estimated number of people who attended a free concert put on by Madonna on Copacabana beach in Brazil last weekend.
This performance capped her retrospective Celebration Tour, and far surpasses her previous largest audience size of around 130,000 back in 1987, in Paris.
—The Associated Press
One Sentence News / May 8, 2024