China’s Long-Term Strategy vs The West’s Civil War and Short-Termism While the effectively bankrupt West is tearing itself apart and undermining its society, economy and science, China is not just getting on with it, but forging ahead. A good starting point in understanding what is happening now, with all the…
Read MoreDer Spiegel, Germany’s prestigious weekly news magazine, broke a story today that takes dieselgate to a completely new level and calls into question the idea that Germany could assume the global leadership left by American’s turn inwards and President’s Trump’s withdrawal from the Paris Accord on climate change. Germany’s green…
Read MoreLess than a month after the hysteria and sheer bad thinking levelled at the decision of U.S. President Donald Trump to withdraw from the Paris Agreement on climate change, some sanity and common sense have returned to some of the climate change community. As we wrote at the time, if…
Read MoreMuch hot air has been expended since President Trump announced on 1 June 2017 that the USA would withdraw from the December 2015 Paris accord. As is often the case, Trump is at least partially right, but in the welter of hype and hysteria, it is easy to overlook the…
Read MoreIan Pryde takes part as Expert Speaker on Yukos Case Round Table at the Energy Arbitration Conference: Challenges and Opportunities for the Next Decade: Lessons from Recent Awards The conference is being organised by the Centre for Energy, Petroleum and Mineral Law and Policy (CEPMLP), University of Dundee. Principal sponsors…
Read MoreMichael Harms, Chairman of the German-Russian Chamber of Commerce, is bullish on doing business in Russia, but encourages foreign investors to take the long view of working in the country. What are some of the general challenges of working on the Russian market? There are both current issues and strategic challenges. Since about 2009 and the financial crisis, the Russian economy has been largely…
Read MoreAccording to a survey on the Russian business climate carried out by the German-Russian Chamber of Commerce in September 2013, two-thirds of German companies working in Russia remain affected by trade restrictions despite Russia’s accession to the W.T.O. Even though import duties have fallen from between 7.8 and 10 percent, the Russian government introduced tariff and non-tariff trade barriers to protect domestic industry immediately…
Read MoreI noted in my last blog that Russia had imprisoned hundreds of thousands of entrepreneurs and that it finally needed to start trusting its own people. And lo! President Vladimir Putin’s speech at the annual St. Petersburg International Economic Forum on Friday June 21, 2013, included an admission that under current laws, many would not be in jail at all, talk about…
Read MoreOn June 18, 2013, President Putin warned that government revenues would be less than previously expected and that the budget policy for 2014-2016 had to be planned accordingly. He also said that while revenues from natural resources were decreasing, financing from other industries was so far limited. In its annual review of the Russian economy, the International Monetary Fund has just…
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