The Guardian (November 19)
“The Home Office has announced another set of measures designed to signal ever more ferocious intent to control the nation’s borders.” This is a mistake, apparently to appease “the irate chorus that fulminates against perceived inundation by foreigners.” It overlooks the reality of declining migration and logical outcomes. “With migration patterns simply following the current [downward] trajectory,” undesirable consequences need to be addressed. Who will provide social care when the already “struggling sector” is facing “a mounting recruitment crisis”? Without students from overseas, “many universities… will be pushed over the brink.” On top of it all, the contracting ratio of working-age adults will make growth ”harder to achieve” and decrease “Treasury revenues… with painful fiscal consequences.”
Tags: Borders, Consequences, Control, Ferocious, Foreigners, Home Office, Migration, Overseas, Recruitment crisis, Revenues, Social care, Students, Treasury, Universities, Working-age
Washington Post (February 5)
“Freaked out by the prospect of a plunging stock market, President Donald Trump backed off his plan to slap 25 percent tariffs on goods from Mexico and Canada. He covered up his retreat with the assertion that his threat had prodded America’s neighbors into sending resources to combat drug trafficking at its borders — something, it turns out, they were already doing.”
Tags: 25%, Borders, Canada, Drug trafficking, Freaked out, Mexico, Plunging, Retreat, Stock market, Tariffs, Threat, Trump
The Economist (May 11)
“The prioritisation of national security above unfettered investment is reshaping the movement of capital across borders. Global capital flows—especially foreign direct investment (fdi)—have plunged, and are now directed along geopolitical lines.” This benefits non-aligned countries, who “play both sides.” Ultimately, however, “as geopolitical blocs pull further apart, it is likely to make the world poorer than it otherwise would be.”
Tags: Borders, FDI, Geopolitical, Geopolitical blocs, Global capital flows, Investment, National security, Non-aligned countries, Plunged, Poorer, Prioritisation, Reshaping, Unfettered
Nikkei Asia (October 31)
“A record sell-off of China stocks has revealed investors’ fears over the country’s largest companies after Xi Jinping secured his third term,” cementing his grip on leadership. Any hopes “that China’s down-beaten tech sector would revive” or that more open borders might “boost the economy were apparently dashed” when the CCP’s national congress affirmed a Politburo Standing Committee most “notable for a lack of reform-minded top leaders.”
Tags: Borders, CCP’s, China, Companies, Dashed, Down-beaten, Economy, Fears, Grip, Hopes, Investors, Leadership, Politburo Standing Committee, Record, Reform, Sell-off, Stocks, Tech sector, Xi
New York Times (May 25)
The U.S. State Department’s warning for Americans to avoid travelling to Japan due to the rising incidence of Covid-19 “has little practical effect, as Japan’s borders have been closed to most nonresident foreigners since the early months of the pandemic. But the warning is another blow for the Olympics, which are facing stiff opposition among the Japanese public over concerns that they could become a superspreader event as athletes and their entourages pour in from around the world.”
Tags: Athletes, Blow, Borders, Closed, COVID-19, Foreigners, Japan, Olympics, Opposition, Pandemic, State Department, Superspreader, U.S., Warning
Foreign Policy (March 18)
“Sorry, America, the full lockdown is coming. Politicians won’t admit it yet, but it’s time to prepare—physically and psychologically—for a sudden stop to all life outside your home.” As borders shut, it’s time to ask, “Where, and with whom, do you want to spend the next six to 12 weeks of your life, hunkered down for the epidemic duration?”
Tags: Borders, Life, Lockdown, Physically, Politicians, Psychologically, U.S.
Reuters (February 19)
“With no deal in sight as Britain’s March 29 exit date approaches, supermarkets are stockpiling, working on alternative supplies and testing new routes to cope with an expected logjam at the borders but say they face insurmountable barriers.” One of the biggest is that you simply can’t stockpile fresh produce and other perishables. “Intense competition and slim margins in the British supermarket sector have also made contingency planning more complicated.”
Tags: Barriers, Borders, Brexit, March 29, Produce, Stockpiling, Supermarkets, Supply routes, UK
The Atlantic (November Issue)
China is “intensifying efforts to remake the maritime borders of” the South and East China Seas, “just as surely as Russia is remaking Europe’s political map in places like Crimea and Ukraine—only here the scale is vastly larger, the players more numerous, and the complexity greater.”
Tags: Borders, China, Complexity, Crimea, East China Sea, Europe, Map, Maritime, Russia, South China Sea, Ukraine
Washington Post (October 9)
The “Ebola virus is a sobering reminder that we live in a world more connected and fluid than at any time in human history…. Viruses and bacteria do not stop at passport control.”
Los Angeles Times (October 3)
“Fear of China is not a Western machination.” China likes to blame the West for stirring up trouble, but this year’s “massive protests in Taipei and Hong Kong show that fear of China is most acute along its own borders…. It is the inhabitants of greater China—the ones whom Beijing hopes one day to incorporate into a unified motherland—who fear China the most. They are protesting Chinese encroachments in far greater numbers than either the Vietnamese or Japanese.”
