Geopolitics and Markets Review – 17th April 2023

Sections:

1) Poland and Hungary Stop Importing Ukrainian Grain

2) Pentagon Leaks

3) Gold Run, Bitcoin Run, The Delay of Further Contagion

4) Qatar and Bahrain Resume Diplomatic Ties

5) Germany Shuts Its Last 3 Nuclear Power Plants

6) UK's Tory Party Priorities

7) Other News

8) Thoughts of the Week

9) Current Reading

10) Important Links

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Poland and Hungary Stop Importing Ukrainian Grain

Poland and Hungary have decided to ban importing Ukrainian grain and dozens of other types of food into their countries. The reason is that Ukrainian grain has contributed to the income dropping for local farmers.

Photo by Chris Ensminger on Unsplas

We saw the further strain on farmers' abilities to profit during protests a few months ago, most notably in the Netherlands. Plans to cut nitrogen emissions in half by 2030 will limit the livestock that farmers can hold and hence profit from.

I’d recommend watching Clarkson’s Farm. It’s fantastic at demonstrating what farmers are up against when it comes to profits and obeying regulations. It’s a massive uphill battle and that’s for a farm with a TV show created by Amazon backing it up. For smaller farmers, the battle is even more severe.

If governments plan to control every necessity we need as humans, then destroying small farmers' abilities to profit and buying them out will allow greater centralised government control of food production and distribution. In the Netherlands, the government announced farmers reluctant to cut their livestock numbers by a third would be subject to compulsory buyouts. So people who are trying to feed the entire planet could be forcibly removed from the farming industry. Couple that with digital currencies, and you might only be allowed to buy a specific number of certain foods.

I’m not saying we continue to produce harmful farming practices that contribute to global warming. But if we are going to address global warming and climate change, can we do it without completely destroying ourselves in the process?

Humanity is inventive, and we usually travel forward and continue to innovate to solve our problems. The current attitudes to fossil fuel energy sources and farming will contribute to humanity moving backwards. Energy and food are two of the necessities of life on Earth. A lack of investment in both industries and attempting to centralise power more towards governments will lead to bigger gaps between the 1% and the rest of us.

Gaps in wealth and values between the few and the majority grow signify that the countries in question are in decline. Not only are these countries shooting all the world in the foot, but they are also shooting themselves too.

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Pentagon Leaks

Military documents were released online in the past week discussing American intelligence about other countries. A 21-year-old, Jack Teixeira has been arrested. He worked in cyber security for the Air National Guard.

The leaks detailed that the U.S. is spying on everyone, enemy or ally. The U.S. monitors how its allies interact with Russia and China. I wonder how they reacted to Macron’s epiphany of not wanting to be a part of the U.S. sphere of influence in Western Europe as heavily after his trip to China. Another country noted as increasing its relations with Russia was the United Arab Emirates. The UAE hosted Syria’s Assad in March and was a key part of Saudi Arabia and Iran's recent peace deal. So does the U.S. have reason to attempt to target the UAE like this?