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EsadeGeo Daily Digest, 08/11/2022

EsadeGeo | 8 Nov, 2022

Joe Biden rallied with fellow Democrats on Monday night, delivering a message of optimism and determination in the face of widespread concerns about his party’s showing in Tuesday’s midterm elections.
Addressing a boisterous crowd in Maryland, Biden stressed the high stakes of the races that will determine control of the US Congress for the next two years.
Painting a grim picture of a Republican-controlled Congress, Biden predicted that the opposing party would use their majorities to roll back Americans’ rights and dismantle social welfare programs.
“Our lifetimes are going to be shaped by what happens the next year to three years,” Biden said. “It’s going to shape what the next couple decades look like.”
Council on Foreign Relations – Christopher M. Tuttle / Beyond the results, the midterms can tell us a lot about how American democracy is faring

Humanity is on a “highway to climate hell”, the UN secretary general has warned, saying the fight for a liveable planet will be won or lost in this decade.
António Guterres told world leaders at the opening of the COP27 UN climate summit in Egypt on Monday: “We are in the fight of our lives and we are losing … And our planet is fast approaching tipping points that will make climate chaos irreversible.
“We are on a highway to climate hell with our foot on the accelerator.”
He said the world faced a stark choice over the next fortnight of talks: either developed and developing countries working together to make a “historic pact” that would reduce greenhouse gas emissions and set the world on a low-carbon path – or failure, which would bring climate breakdown and catastrophe.
Project Syndicate – Mariana Mazzucato / The entrepreneurial state must lead on climate change

Financial Times – Roman Olearchyk, Felicia Schwartz and John Paul Rathbone / Ukraine receives air defence systems as Russia continues air strikes

Ukraine has received its first Nasams air defence systems from the US and Aspide units from Spain, as Russia continues its missile and drone strikes on electricity infrastructure that have triggered blackouts nationwide.
“Nasams and Aspide air defence systems arrived in Ukraine!” Oleksiy Reznikov, Ukraine’s defence minister, said in a tweet on Monday. “These weapons will significantly strengthen Ukraine’s army and will make our skies safer.”
He added: “We will continue to shoot down the enemy targets attacking us. Thank you to our partners: Norway, Spain and the US.”
Nasams are a short- to medium-range surface-to-air missile defence system developed jointly by Kongsberg of Norway and Raytheon of the US.
European Council on Foreign Relations – Gustav Gressel / More tortoise, less hare: how Europeans can ramp up military supplies for Ukraine in the long war

China's exports and imports unexpectedly contracted in October, the first simultaneous slump since May 2020, as a perfect storm of COVID curbs at home and global recession risks dented demand and further darkened the outlook for a struggling economy.
The bleak data highlights the challenge for policymakers in China as they press on with pandemic prevention measures and try to navigate broad pressure from surging inflation, sweeping increases in worldwide interest rates and a global slowdown.
Outbound shipments in October shrank 0.3% from a year earlier, a sharp turnaround from a 5.7% gain in September, official data showed on Monday, and well below analysts' expectations for a 4.3% increase. It was the worst performance since May 2020.
The data suggests demand remains frail overall, and analysts warn of further gloom for exporters over the coming quarters, heaping more pressure on the country's manufacturing sector and the world's second-biggest economy grappling with persistent COVID-19 curbs and protracted property weakness
Financial Times – James Kynge, Sun Yu and Leo Lewis / Fortress China: Xi Jinping’s plan for economic independence

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