MarketWatch (March 8)
“Car makers are facing a perfect storm of trade tariffs, slumping demand in the crucial Chinese market, and a backlash against diesel, which are together having a seismic effect on businesses. A shift toward electric and autonomous vehicles has not helped. They require vast investment and a different way of thinking.” Instead of the usual “corporate grins” at the Geneva Motor Show, there is “a collective grimace.”
Tags: Backlash, Car makers, China, Diesel, EVs, Geneva Motor Show, Grimace, Investment, Perfect storm, Slumping demand, Trade tariffs
New York Times (November 9)
Brazil “had been on an upward trajectory, that seemed to have shaken off the legacy of instability.” Instead, it “suffered a terrible recession and is experiencing a very slow recovery.” The nation “appears to have been hit by a perfect storm of bad luck and bad policy: The global environment deteriorated sharply…. Domestic private spending also plunged… Policy, instead of fighting the slump, exacerbated it.”
Tags: Bad luck, Bad policy, Brazil, Instability, Perfect storm, Recession, Recovery, Spending
Reuters (December 13)
“In time, Syria may be seen to define the early 21st century the way the Spanish Civil War did the 1930s – a perfect storm of all the worst trends in global politics and conflict. If it is, then Aleppo will be its Guernica, the Spanish town carpet bombed by Nazi aircraft in 1937 in a savage precursor to the horrors of the coming World War Two.
Tags: Aleppo, Carpet bombed, Conflict, Global politics, Guernica, Nazi, Perfect storm, Spanish Civil War, Syria, Worst trends, WWII