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중도 성향
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Top seeds Siniakova, Townsend win French Open women’s doubles
The Czech and American duo beat their second-seeded Kazakh and Serb opponents 6-2, 7-5 in just over 90 minutes on Court Philippe Chatrier.
"SEEDS" · 총 28건
필터 보기현재 지수
50.3
0 = 부정 우세
50 = 중립
100 = 긍정 우세
최근 7일 기준 88,598건을 분석한 결과, 뉴스 심리지수는 50.3(균형)입니다. 긍정 4,465건(5.0%)·중립 82,034건(92.6%)·부정 2,099건(2.4%)이며, 중립 비중이 뚜렷하게 높습니다. 성향 지수는 종합 15.0(중도 균형)입니다.
The Czech and American duo beat their second-seeded Kazakh and Serb opponents 6-2, 7-5 in just over 90 minutes on Court Philippe Chatrier.
Paramedics, police cars and a 'hazardous area response team' descended on Jesse Gray Primary School in West Bridgford, Nottinghamshire at around 2pm on Wednesday.
Iran’s Supreme Leader Ayatollah Mojtaba Khamenei said on Thursday that his country’s adversaries had turned to “hybrid warfare”, aimed at creating divisions among Iranians, after receiving a “decisive blow”. Mojtaba, who has not appeared publicly since being named as the supreme leader on March 8, made these remarks in his message on the death anniversary of Iran’s founder, Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini. The message shared on his official X account and reported by the Iranian media. Mojtaba’s message stated, “The malicious enemy has been defeated in its confrontation with the armed forces. Since it has received a decisive blow both in military combat and in Iran’s public squares and streets, it’s experiencing a profound and significant humiliation. “The enemy has focused its schemes in hybrid warfare on two points: the resilience of the Iranian people and trying to create errors in the assessments of the country’s officials. The instrument it’s using for both is sowing the seeds of doubt, despair, fear, mistrust and discord.” “In confronting these ill intentions, everyone must, through steadfastness, insight, preserving unity and cohesion … neutralise their sinister plot,” his message said. He further said, “Imperialism, led by the US, has built a military base called Israel over the past 80 years. And they don’t accept the existence of a strong, independent Iran on the eastern border of the false, illegitimate geography of ‘Greater Israel’ — that is, east of the Euphrates River.” Mojtaba also highlighted the role of Iranian authorities in this regard, saying that “any act that causes pessimism and disappointment among the people is considered a kind of aid to the enemy of this country and its people”, Press TV reported. The remarks by Iran’s third supreme leader were read out by a prayer leader at the mausoleum of Khomeini, on the 37th anniversary of his death. After Khomeini’s death in 1989, Ali Khamenei succeeded him as supreme leader until he was assassinated on February 28 this year during US and Israeli attacks that triggered a regional war. The conflict was halted with a ceasefire deal on April 8, followed by direct and mediated talks for a permanent end that have failed to reach an agreement. Every June 4 since 1989, Ali Khamenei had delivered a speech at the commemoration. This year, an empty chair bearing his portrait stood at the mausoleum, according to footage broadcast from the site. Portraits of Mojtaba and the two previous supreme leaders were displayed at the mausoleum in southern Tehran, according to the live broadcast. Attendees waved the flag of the Islamic republic and banners of the Lebanese group Hezbollah.
TOKYO -- Seeds from a cloned successor of a single pine tree that initially survived a massive tsunami following the 2011 Great East Japan Earthquake
While drought expands through Cunen as the spectre of El Niño climate instability approaches, one fear has seized this indigenous Guatemalan village — death from hunger. The rains still haven’t come here, where local farmers fear the lack of water could ruin the subsistence crops on which they depend to survive. “If there isn’t rain, (the crops) won’t come … If there isn’t anything, we’re going to die of hunger,” 38-year-old Cecilia Pasa Sarat, who has planted a small amount of corn, told AFP in Xetzac, a village in Cunen. Indigenous woman Lucia Rojop, 43, shows corn cobs at her house in the Xetzac community of Cunen, Quiche department, Guatemala, on May 27, 2026. —AFP Cunen is a hard-to-reach mountainous region where the majority of the approximately 47,000 residents are poor and rely on water from wells that are now going dry. This village in the Indigenous Maya department of Quiche lays in the heart of the Dry Corridor, an arid mountainous stretch running through Honduras, El Salvador and Nicaragua that’s become vulnerable to extreme climatic events. Quiche was one of Guatemala’s most hard-hit regions during the El Niño related food crisis in 2023. Some worry the crisis could return due to a lack of government support. Indigenous woman Cecilia Pasa, 38, works on her drought-affected corn plantation in the Xetzac community of Cunen, Quiche department, Guatemala, on May 27, 2026. —AFP The phenomenon now fueling local residents’ hunger fears occurs every two to six years as part of a natural climatic cycle that affects the surface temperatures on the Pacific Ocean. It’s expected to start between June and August, creating planetary ripple effects lasting months. Aerial view of a corn plantation in the Xetzac community of Cunen, Quiche department, Guatemala, on May 27, 2026. —AFP Prolonged damage Weeks of drought have dessicated the dusty streets of Xetzac, where the creeks that usually irrigate the town’s patchwork of corn, potato, broccoli and bean fields are evaporating under the brutal sun. Taking refuge in the tree shade where the resin scent of pines drifts down the hillside, Elvira Pasa said the eventual loss of the village harvests would only end in “hunger”. “We farm. We don’t sell it. We just eat it,” the 27-year-old community leader and mother of two boys aged two and seven, told AFP. “Whatever we plant is what we eat. What will happen if it doesn’t rain?” 43-year-old Lucia Rojop queried. Indigenous woman Lucia Rojop, 43, shows drought-affected broad beans at her house in the Xetzac community of Cunen, Quiche department, Guatemala, on May 27, 2026. —AFP Her fears are well-founded. Around 2.5 million Guatemalans face potential food insecurity due to the drought and the high probability of a powerful El Niño weather cycle. The Guatemalan government says it has 1.1 million rations ready to distribute in the face of an emergency. According to experts, the chance that El Niño could spiral into a more dangerous event depends on numerous atmospheric factors. Governments across the dry countries of Central America have raised alert levels over the El Niño phenomenon. But El Niño isn’t the only reason the situation is worsening. In Guatemala alone, the Dry Corridor has expanded from 40 to 160 municipalities since 2004, meaning almost half of the country has been subjected to drought fueled by climate change, according to the government. Cecilia Pasa walked through a puny corn farm, a clear testimony of the drought. “The plants can’t take it anymore. The ground is drier. It’s not humid anymore like it used to be,” she said. Indigenous woman Cecilia Pasa, 38, loads firewood at her house in the Xetzac community of Cunen, Quiche department, Guatemala, on May 27, 2026. —AFP It means that only half of her neighbors planted corn this year. Everyone else, including Catarina Sica, didn’t even bother. “There isn’t rain, and the time has passed for us to plant,” Sica said, showing the black, white and yellow seeds still on the cob of corn. Indigenous woman Catarina Sica, 39, shows potato seeds she has been unable to plant due to a lack of rain at her house in the Xetzac community of Cunen, Quiche department, Guatemala, on May 27, 2026. —AFP Migratory impact For years, the brutal challenges of working the fields in Cunen were eased with remittances migrants sent home from the United States. Yet US President Donald Trump’s mass deportations have taken away that support. Around 24,000 Guatemalans have been deported this year, many from Quiche. The deportations have paralysed the construction of homes — the great dream of many migrants — as well as the jobs that go with it. Families now deal with the crisis by raising pigs, sheep, chickens and turkeys for sale. A donkey stands outside a house in the Xetzac community of Cunen, Quiche department, Guatemala, on May 27, 2026. —AFP Sica’s husband returned two years ago after saving enough money to build a concrete house. Now he works occasionally in agriculture, though the $10 daily wage he earns means the family diet is limited to beans, herbs and potatoes, like most locals. “We’re seeing what to do, but it all depends on God,” Sica said with resignation.
Government sanctions 91,918 quintals of seeds for distribution to farmers to improve soil health and boost sustainable agriculture, says Agriculture Minister
“My name is Ozymandias, king of kings: Look on my works, ye mighty, and despair! Nothing beside remains. Round the decay Of that colossal wreck, boundless and bare The lone and level sands stretch far away.” — Percy Bysshe Shelley, Ozymandias “I am in blood, Stepped in so far that, should I wade no more, Returning were as tedious as go o’er.” — William Shakespeare, Macbeth PROLOGUE This is and isn’t about America’s illegal war against Iran. It is primarily about hiding an empire in plain sight and now watching it unravel in plain sight. The war against Iran becomes a consequential event in tandem with other structural weaknesses, a fillip of sorts. It reminds one of the Soviet war on Afghanistan. That war, in and of itself, did not bring down the Soviet Leviathan. The process inhered in the very make-up of the Soviet Union. The war just shoved it over the precipice. But let’s get on with our purpose here. In August 2022, then-US President Joe Biden signed the CHIPS and Science Act into law. A $280 billion legislative package, it sought to revitalise domestic semiconductor manufacturing. The act was a response to a startling vulnerability: the world’s most advanced chips, essential for everything from F-35 fighter jets to surgical equipment to artificial intelligence, are overwhelmingly manufactured by a single company, the Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Company (TSMC), located on an island claimed as sovereign territory by America’s primary strategic rival, China. This dependence is not an accident of geography or a supply chain anomaly. The semiconductor industry wasn’t even hobbled by Covid 19. Despite its complex and far-flung operations, the industry works smoothly. The US dependence is the logical endpoint of a decades-long corporate strategy that maximised profit by outsourcing physical production while retaining only the high-value design and marketing ends of the value chain, the so-called “Smile Curve” strategy. The undoing of the United States in the Iran war may be far more significant than its defeats in Vietnam, Iraq and Afghanistan. It may well mark a historic milestone in the fraying of the position of the US as a global hegemon. But the seeds of this erosion of American dominance, argues Ejaz Haider, were laid long before its misadventure in Iran… The Italian economist and sociologist Giovanni Arrighi, to whom I shall return, would have been amused to see the revered smile curve — taught at prestigious business schools and which encourages firms to outsource capital-intensive manufacturing to focus solely on high-margin research and development (R&D), branding and marketing — as a classic trap of late-stage capitalism. In fact, the CHIPS Act stands as a state-level admission that this strategy, so profitable for individual corporations like Apple and NVIDIA, to name just two, has become a major geopolitical vulnerability for the US. This is the central paradox of America’s declining empire. The very mechanisms that generated unprecedented wealth have systemically dismantled the material and industrial foundations upon which that wealth ultimately rests. The decline of the American empire is not a partisan talking point. The US is a behemoth. It won’t just collapse one day like the Berlin Wall. Nor is a snapshot view the way to go. It is an ongoing structural process and a number of scholars have used longitudinal designs to analyse the trend lines. I argue that it is a slow, systemic unravelling across interconnected domains. First, the financialisation of capital, theorised most rigorously by Arrighi. Capital shifts from productive investment to speculative finance, generating short-term profits at the cost of long-term industrial vitality. It hollows out domestic industrial and political power, a process identified by American sociologist and political scientist Ho-fung Hung, who argues that off-shoring of production destroys the industrial ecosystem, skilled labour base and, ultimately, the social cohesion required for great power competition. Second, the erosion of the alliance system. And no, it’s not just Trump. Three deeper currents are involved: the gradual unravelling of the post-WWII security architecture; the economic failure of neoliberalism; and the imperial outreach baked into the very idea of neoliberalism. Third, the lateral diffusion of technologies, now commodified and everywhere. They help innovative and determined weaker powers offset the asymmetric advantage of bigger powers: Ukraine versus Russia; Hamas/Hezbollah/Houthis versus the US-Zionist duo; and now Iran versus the US-Zionist duo. As I note later in this space, the war against Iran is a much bigger setback for the US than its wars in Vietnam, Afghanistan and Iraq. Corollary: the post-WWII ‘Pax Americana’ is transitioning from a period of hegemonic stability, to use American historian Charles Kindleberger’s concept, into a protracted and likely irreversible, terminal crisis, to borrow Arrighi’s term. But let’s first begin with the peg: the war against Iran. THE PRESENT Since its inception, America has been at war: wars of choice, wars of conquest, wars for resources, wars to defend its hegemony, wars to spread “American values.” How or why does the Iran war stand out? Foremost, the conflict has confirmed the structural limits of US coercive diplomacy in a shifting multipolar world. It has exposed acute structural vulnerabilities in defence economics and inventory endurance, as well as a critical absence of pragmatic post-war planning and a misreading of societal resilience. The conflict has also underscored the changing nature of global alignments in a multipolar world. This comes with the collapse of coercive economic power. For four decades, the US has relied on sophisticated sanctions and lawfare to pressure Iran into subjugation. It has failed, showing the limits of sanctions, especially on fungible commodities. Even sanctions on non-fungible elements like technology can be circumvented. As in Iran’s case, the sanctioned state can develop indigenous expertise through varied strategies. There’s clear evidence that Tehran has developed complex and sophisticated non-dollar lifelines with China and Russia, rendering unilateral sanctions increasingly ineffective. It has used an array of strategies to blunt the effect: interchangeability (can’t sell to X; sell to Y); value retention (barter, use of cryptocurrencies); substitution and evasion (relying on third parties, covert ship-to-ship transfers, use of shell companies). Unlike the insurgencies in Vietnam, Iraq and Afghanistan, the US is not involved in ground combat in Iran (so far). It has relied on high-tech aerial and missile attacks through its formidable ISTAR (Intelligence, Surveillance, Target Acquisition and Reconnaissance) capabilities. Iran has not responded through elusive, hit-and-run ground attacks. It has countered US technology through technology in a non-contact war. But its employment of technology is grounded in asymmetric capabilities: a large arsenal of ballistic missiles, cruise missiles, and one-way attack drones. The cost-exchange ratio, by most accounts, is unfavourable for the US. For instance, the Iranian Shahed-136 one-way attack drone has an estimated unit cost of $20,000 (some estimates put it at around $10,000). It is a simple, slow-moving, and relatively easy to detect drone. But it is also cheap and plentiful. To intercept it with costly SM-2 or ESSM missiles creates a cost-exchange ratio of between 30 to one and 100 to one. It is also a shoot-and-scoot system. Iran can afford to lose hundreds of such drones and produce some 1,000 per month. The US cannot afford to fire thousands of interceptors at them. And those interceptors take three to four years to manufacture. It is a cost-asymmetric war. Similarly, the US has been pulling out assets from the Pacific to the Gulf. The USS Boxer amphibious group is an example. Diverting naval assets from the Pacific physically manifests deployment overstretch. As Robert Farley, visiting professor at US Army War College notes, resources needed to prevail in one theatre guarantee weakness in another. It’s the same with all force deployments and employments: “Every missile allocated to one target is unavailable for another.” The contrast with Vietnam, Iraq and Afghanistan is instructive. In those theatres, the US was defeated by determined insurgencies, even as it bombed and bombed. The adversaries were willing to absorb enormous casualties, drag it out and inflict mission fatigue on the US. In both Iraq and Afghanistan, broadly speaking, the US won the conventional war expeditiously but then got bogged down. In the Iran conflict, while Tehran has demonstrated the ability to absorb much pain, the US is not facing elusive insurgents but a state with a sophisticated missile programme, a sharp understanding of force employment, a network of allies across the region (Hezbollah in Lebanon, Ansar Allah in Yemen, and Hashd al-Shaabi in Iraq and Syria), and the ability to close the Strait of Hormuz, through which 20 percent of the world’s oil passes. Iran has also demonstrated adaptation under fire, used the operational strategy of dispersal and delegation, exercised deception, demonstrated growing targeting capabilities through ISR, rapid repair of underground sites after US-Zionist bombing and consistently shifted locations for counterattack operations. Can the US still bomb Iran? Of course. Will that be painful? Yes. Will Iran respond? Hell, yes. Would that raise the overall cost? You can bet your dime on it. It will be proof, yet again, that it is a slow grind and the US cannot achieve its objectives at a sustainable cost. Yet, it is stuck, because to walk away means it loses credibility. Trump needs a win; Iran is not prepared to give him that. The war has changed the ground realities. There is no status quo ante. The objectives remain strategically incompatible — ie we might get a pause, even a long one, but the essential causes remain unaddressed. Spoiler alert: Zionist entity. US President Donald Trump attending the return of the bodies of the first six American soldiers killed during the war with Iran on March 7, 2026: the lateral diffusion of technologies help innovative and determined weaker powers, such as Iran, offset the asymmetric advantage of bigger powers, such as the US | AFP THE POINTILLIST EMPIRE: HOW IT BEGAN American imperialism did not begin with grand pronouncements like the Monroe Doctrine or the Big Stick diplomacy of Theodore Roosevelt, though they give us a potent sense of a rising, expansionist power. It literally began with bird poop, which sounds about right if one were to understand imperialism as a crap enterprise. The Guano Islands Act of 1856 allowed US citizens to claim uninhabited, guano-rich islands. The act set a precedent for later overseas acquisitions. Historian Daniel Immerwahr calls this a “pointillist” empire. This practical, resource-driven, and often hidden expansion set a pattern that would define America’s power and military bases for the next century. The Mexican-American War (1846-1848) established the continental empire, seizing vast territories from Mexico. This wasn’t a war of liberation but a war of conquest, not manifest destiny but a fig leaf to cover the musty crotch of violent expansion, economic greed and racial supremacy. The 1848 Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo formalised the seizure of over half of Mexico’s territory. The Spanish-American War of 1898 definitively projected American power overseas. Theodore Roosevelt’s Secretary of State John Hay, in a personal letter to Roosevelt, called it a “splendid little war.” By its end, the US had seized Cuba, Puerto Rico, Guam and the Philippines. But the “splendid” label concealed a brutal reality, just like the payload of Trump’s “gorgeous B-2 bombers.” The subsequent Philippine-American War (1899-1902) resulted in Filipino genocide. That savagery has been systematically erased from American popular memory, even as Mark Twain was scathing in his condemnation and also did a fantastic job of calling out Rudyard Kipling for The White Man’s Burden. But this wasn’t all. Immerwahr documents that American forces employed waterboarding (yes, much before the darned ‘War on Terror’), concentration camps (“black sites”), and scorched-earth tactics that would be recognisable to any student of colonial atrocities. After World War I, US President Woodrow Wilson attempted a new form of imperialism: liberal internationalism, rather than direct territorial control. Much has been written about the “Wilsonian moment.” British historian and diplomat E. H. Carr called it a utopian project, divorced from the reality of power politics. In fact, it wasn’t. The project was essentially colonial and Wilson’s liberal internationalism fit it perfectly. The mandates were thriving. The US Senate’s refusal to join the League of Nations left a vacuum that no amount of idealistic pronouncements could fill. War did come. Carr gives us insights into why it became inevitable. The US emerged from the war as the leading power. The post-WWII order was a direct lesson learned from the intervening two decades. No more “isolationism”. The US must play the role of the hegemonic stabiliser. The core argument was simple and powerful: a stable world economy requires a single power to act as lender of last resort, maintain an open market for distressed goods, and coordinate macroeconomic policies. The US did that via the Bretton Woods system, the Marshall Plan and a vast security architecture that spanned the globe. The quid for the quo? American dominance. The US was now fully involved. It bore the cost but the return on investment was handsome. It kept the US in the lead, even during the bipolarity of the Cold War and beyond. With the Berlin wall crumbling, American political scientist Francis Fukuyama became the mascot for neoliberalism. History had ended; all the wagon trains were destined for one town. Some might arrive late, but arrive they would. Europe was pacified and rebuilt. Japan was demilitarised and transformed into a manufacturing powerhouse. The dollar became the world’s reserve currency, giving the US what French President Valery Giscard d’Estaing called “exorbitant privilege.” For three decades, from 1945 to the early 1970s, this system appeared to confirm the virtues of hegemonic stability. Real GDP growth in Western Europe averaged nearly five percent annually, and the US share of world manufacturing output remained above 40 percent. But beneath the surface, the seeds of decline were already being sown. ARRIGHIAN COUNTER World-systems theorists like Immanuel Wallerstein and Giovanni Arrighi were not focused on immediate “imperial overstretch” in the manner of British historian Paul Kennedy. Kennedy argued that empires declined when their military commitments outpaced their economic base. The US, he warned, was suffering from imperial overreach. For Arrighi, the decline was gradual and subtle. He argued that capitalist hegemonies move through repeating “systemic cycles of accumulation.” A phase of material expansion where capital is invested in production, infrastructure and trade, inevitably gives way to a phase of financial expansion, where capital seeks profit through speculation, lending and financial engineering. The material foundation is hollowed out even as the financial superstructure appears to boom. This was the logic of capitalism. The “autumn” of each hegemon is marked by a dazzling financial belle époque that masks terminal decline. The smile curve strategy is the purest expression of this financialisation and Apple is a textbook case. It designs its products, develops its chips, creates the operating systems, controls the branding, marketing and the retail experience. But it manufactures almost nothing. The iPhones and MacBooks are assembled by Foxconn in Zhengzhou and by Pegatron in Shanghai. The advanced chips are fabricated by TSMC in Taiwan. The displays come from Samsung in South Korea and LG Display. Apple captures an estimated 80-90 percent of the profit from each device, while the suppliers who do the actual physical work fight over the remaining scraps. Business schools love this strategy because it maximises corporate profits and shareholder value. But as Hung argues in his work on global value chains and the Arrighian counter, what maximises corporate profits does not necessarily maximise national power. In fact, it may systematically undermine it. By outsourcing the middle of the smile curve, the US has drastically hollowed out its industrial ecosystem. Combine it with the faith in short, sharp wars of shock and awe through high-tech precision weapons and we get the full picture of what has happened in the war against Iran. This is very different from the WWII industrial base of America. This brings us to TSMC and the chokepoint crisis. It manufactures chips designed by other companies (Nvidia, AMD, Qualcomm) rather than designing and selling its own chips. Over three decades, TSMC has built an unassailable lead in advanced process nodes. By 2025, it was manufacturing 92 percent of the world’s most advanced chips. The entire global technology industry (including the US military and intelligence apparatus) became dependent on a single cluster of fabs (fabrication plants) in Hsinchu, Taichung and Tainan. China, which views Taiwan as a breakaway province to be reunited with the mainland by force if necessary, has the physical means to blockade or invade the island. Whether it would do so or should is a different debate. On ground, the People’s Liberation Army has been systematically building anti-access/area denial (A2/AD) capabilities, to prevent US intervention in a Taiwan scenario. It’s a fairly absurd position from the US point of view! Its technological supremacy is guaranteed by a factory complex on an island which, in theory, its primary strategic rival could potentially seize or blockade. To circle back to the CHIPS Act, this is the background. TSMC is now building a fab complex in Arizona. Intel is expanding in Ohio and Arizona. Samsung is building in Texas. But, as a 2023 Marketplace report noted, replicating TSMC’s “deep, deep process knowledge” will take years. The fab in Arizona has already faced delays, cost overruns, and labour disputes. Taiwanese engineers are reluctant to relocate to the United States. The set goes to Arrighi. America’s weaponisation of the dollar has accelerated efforts by China, Russia and other BRICS members to create alternatives | Shutterstock THE DOLLAR DILEMMA The dollar’s role as the world’s primary reserve currency has been a central pillar of American power since the Bretton Woods agreement of 1944. This exorbitant privilege allows the US to borrow in its own currency, run persistent trade deficits without penalty and, crucially, impose unilateral financial sanctions on states, corporations, and individuals. This weaponisation of the dollar has accelerated efforts by China, Russia and other BRICS members to create alternatives. China has been aggressively promoting its own Cross-Border Interbank Payment System (CIPS) as an alternative to Swift. The People’s Bank of China has signed bilateral currency swap agreements with dozens of countries, allowing trade to be settled in renminbi rather than dollars. Russia has demanded payment in rubles for its natural gas exports. India has established a rupee settlement mechanism for trade. Brazil and China have agreed to trade in their own currencies. The Central Bank of Brazil has announced that it is diversifying its reserves away from the dollar. And yet, the actual pace of de-dollarisation has been glacial. Several structural factors explain this “stickiness”, to use American political economist Benjamin Cohen’s term. First, there is network stickiness. The dollar’s dominance is not simply a matter of policy; it is an issue of deep, self-reinforcing infrastructure. Global supply chains, commodity exchanges, derivatives markets, and correspondent banking networks are all built around the dollar. Second, as various experts have argued, there is a lack of viable alternatives. The Chinese renminbi, despite China’s enormous economic weight, is not a free-floating, fully convertible currency. China maintains capital controls, a heavily regulated financial system, and a non-independent central bank. No foreign investor can be certain that their renminbi holdings would not be frozen or devalued by arbitrary state action. The euro, the second-largest reserve currency, is hobbled by the Eurozone’s fragmented fiscal system and the lingering scars of the 2011 debt crisis. Gold is impractical for everyday transactions. And cryptocurrencies are far too volatile and illiquid to serve as a reserve asset. Third is the absence of a deep, liquid and open bond market. A reserve currency requires a “safe asset” in which foreign central banks can park their surplus reserves. The US Treasury market, with $25 trillion in outstanding debt and extraordinary liquidity, is the only game in town. Result: while China and Russia publicly call for de-dollarisation, their central banks have themselves continued to accumulate US Treasury securities, because there is nowhere else to go. Corollary: the near-term prognosis for de-dollarisation is not collapse but slow erosion. IMF data shows the dollar’s share of global reserves has declined from over 70 percent in 2000 to approximately 58 percent in 2025. This is not a precipitous decline, but it is a steady one. The debate is not if the dollar will lose its dominance but when. I have no expertise in this area and I have relied on studying existing expertise. Most analyses measure the timeframe in decades, not years. From that, my understanding is that increasing uncertainty, further weaponisation of the dollar, continuing application of sanctions and asset freezes will (a) erode the confidence that underpins the entire system and (b) force experts (and governments) to find alternatives. EPILOGUE: TERMINAL CRISIS Two other issues are important but I am only flagging them here for paucity of space: the implosion of neoliberalism and its internal effects and the fraying of the transatlantic alliance. Both are exacerbated by Trump but neither is a direct result of his election. Both are extremely consequential. The United States has not collapsed; not yet. Nor can it be defeated from outside. But it can crumble from within. The future is not about a return to US hegemony, certainly not in a unipolar sense. The industrial base may be gone but it can be rebuilt, albeit not overnight. Alliances are frayed; trust cannot be easily restored. The fiscal position is precarious, with a $35 trillion US national debt. Internal politics is deeply polarised, with a significant portion of the American electorate believing that the system is rigged against them. A lot of these factors, singly and in combination with other factors, are self-reinforcing. The future also lies in terra incognita, a contested transition to a multipolar world, whose contours remain unknown. A recent book by German political analyst Marc Saxer, Geopolitical Conflict in the Wolf World, is a sobering structural assessment of where the world and the US are headed. “Homo homini lupus est” (Man is a wolf to man) is how Saxer begins. With that statement, we are back to Plautus and Hobbes. This is not mere rhetorical flourish. Saxer’s wolf world is an analytic category, a systemic condition characterised by the absence of a hegemon capable of enforcing rules, the demise of neoliberalism, the collapse of shared legal-normative frameworks, the return of great-power competition, the rise of Middle Powers, many with regional hegemonic aspirations, and the normalisation of coercion as a primary instrument of statecraft. As I said to Saxer during the launch of his book in Lahore, for the Global South, it has always been a wolf world. Pax Americana did not keep the peace for the periphery. It financed selective peace on credit. The bill has now come due. The writer is a journalist interested in security and foreign policies. X: @ejazhaider Published in Dawn, EOS, May 31st, 2026
ISLAMABAD: Prime Minister Shehbaz Sharif on Monday assured businessmen and industrialists that measures were being taken to make the forthcoming federal budget conducive to industrial growth and production. The government is expected to approve a consolidated national development programme of over Rs3.5 trillion and a macroeconomic framework envisaging economic growth of 4.1pc and inflation of 8.5pc for FY2026–27. The premier made these remarks while meeting presidents of chambers of commerce and industries to seek their suggestions for the 2026-27 federal budget, scheduled to be announced on June 5. During the meeting, PM Shehbaz directed the Federal Board of Revenue (FBR) to dispose of all pending cases of tax refunds by June 15. He further ordered moving the headquarters of Pakistan Revenue Automation Limited (PRAL) to Karachi, in order to enhance exports and facilitate the business community and exporters. The establishment of an office of the Immigration and Passport Department in Gujrat was also ordered. Moreover, the premier urged Pakistani investors to promote e-vehicle production in the country through joint ventures. PM Shehbaz noted that consistent efforts and hard work had helped stabilise the economy. He said additional measures would be taken in the upcoming budget to promote industrial development, boost production and support the business community. The premier assured the delegation of the government’s commitment to creating a more favourable environment for investment and economic growth. The delegation, in turn, assured the PM that the entire business community and industrialists were standing by the government and supporting its economic policies. It presented recommendations regarding the upcoming federal budget and measures aimed at supporting the country’s overall economic growth. ‘New era’ in Pak-China economic partnership Earlier, PM Shehbaz said the extraordinary increase in business engagements between the private sectors of Pakistan and China heralded a new era in economic partnership between the two countries. He emphasised that enhanced industrial, agricultural and technological cooperation with China would boost Pakistan’s exports and create new employment opportunities. The premier was presiding over a review meeting to assess progress on the agreements and memoranda of understanding (MoU) signed at the Pakistan-China Business-to-Business (B2B) conference held during his recent visit to China, the Prime Minister’s Office (PMO) said in a press release. In the meeting, he directed the relevant authorities to ensure that the MoUs signed in Hangzhou are swiftly transformed into formal agreements and joint ventures. PM Shehbaz also decided to personally chair monthly review meetings to monitor progress on the outcomes of the B2B conference. He further ordered that cooperation between the China Academy of Agricultural Sciences and the Pakistan Agricultural Research Council (PARC) be implemented effectively. The premier observed that agricultural research, modern technology and joint ventures between Pakistan and China could bring about a revolutionary transformation in the country’s agricultural sector. During the briefing, participants were informed that a total of 123 Pakistani companies and 436 Chinese companies attended the B2B conference on May 24, where 207 MoUs worth approximately $7.54 billion were signed. Those MoUs were signed in several key sectors, including battery energy storage systems, artificial intelligence (AI), mobile phones and handheld devices. Significant agreements were also reached in the areas of fertilisers, seeds, modern irrigation equipment, fisheries, and food processing. Additionally, MoUs were signed to promote joint investment in advanced industrial sectors, including biotechnology and vaccine manufacturing. The meeting was attended by Federal Ministers Rana Tanvir Hussain, Ahsan Iqbal, Ahad Khan Cheema and Shaza Fatima Khawaja, along with other senior government officials. Last week, the Federation of Pakistan Chambers of Commerce and Industry (FPCCI) released a set of four independent “shadow” policy studies proposing an alternative economic framework to accelerate growth, broaden the tax base, and reduce fiscal imbalances. The documents were prepared by the Economic Policy and Business Development Think Tank (EPBD) and released at the FPCCI office and focused on structural reforms to lift Pakistan’s economy onto a higher, more sustainable growth path. The documents — ‘Tax Policy and Administration Reforms’, ‘Shadow Federal Budget 2026-27’, ‘Shadow Economic Survey of Pakistan 2026’, and ‘Shadow Five-Year Development Plan 2026-31’ — collectively set out a reform agenda centred on private-sector-led growth, fiscal consolidation, and institutional restructuring.
The Comprehensive Economic Partnership Agreement (CEPA) between India and Oman is set to come into force on June 1, marking a significant milestone in bilateral economic relations. Both nations will formally announce the decision on Monday.This marks the fifth free trade agreement (FTA) implemented under the Modi government since 2014. It follows trade pacts rolled out with Mauritius (April 2021), the UAE (May 2022), Australia (December 2022), and the European Free Trade Association (EFTA—comprising Switzerland, Iceland, Liechtenstein, and Norway in October 2025). India has also signed deals with the UK (July 2025) and New Zealand (April 2026), alongside concluding trade talks with the 27-nation European Union (EU) on January 27 this year.CEPA vs FTAModern trade pacts typically span around 20 chapters. These encompass comprehensive regulations across trade in goods, trade in services, investment, intellectual property rights, customs procedures, and dispute settlement mechanisms.Similar bilateral frameworks are also designated as Comprehensive Economic Cooperation Agreements (CECA), Comprehensive Economic Trade Agreements (CETA), or Economic Cooperation and Trade Agreements (ECTA).Also read: India-Oman CEPA to strengthen energy security, trade resilience and export growthIndia-Oman tradeBilateral trade between the two nations reached USD 11.18 billion during 2025-26, up from USD 10.61 billion in 2024-25. India’s exports stood at USD 4.02 billion, while imports from Oman were valued at USD 7.16 billion.In the services domain, India's exports to Oman expanded from USD 397 million in 2020 to USD 665 million in 2024, driven primarily by telecommunications, computer and information, transport, and travel sectors. Conversely, services imports from Oman grew from USD 101 million to USD 197.7 million over the same period, led by transport, travel, telecom, and other business services.What does India gain? The deal unlocks 100% duty-free market access for Indian exports to Oman, covering 98.08% of Oman’s tariff lines, which represents 99.38% of the trade value (based on the 2022-23 average).Immediate Concessions: All zero-duty access comes into effect from "Day One" of the agreement. Currently, only 15.33% of India’s export value (11.34% of tariff lines) enters Oman duty-free under the Most Favoured Nation (MFN) regime.Price Competitiveness: The pact eliminates the current 5% import duty on Indian goods worth USD 3.64 billion.Growth Drivers: Key sectors poised for immediate advantages include textiles, agricultural products, transport equipment, precision instruments, processed food, and gems & jewellery.New Horizons: The agreement unlocks fresh export windows for Indian minerals, chemicals, base metals, machinery, plastic, rubber, automobiles, clocks, instruments, glass, ceramics, marble, and paper.India-Oman CEPA: Key sectoral gainsOman will grant immediate zero-duty access to crucial Indian industrial segments, including:Iron and steelElectrical and industrial machineryMarine products and copper goodsFurthermore, the removal of the 5% tariff is set to directly bolster the competitiveness of Indian vehicles in the Omani market, while securing binding zero-duty access for key finished medicines and vaccines.India protects sensitive sectorsTo insulate local industries and farming communities, India has placed 2,789 tariff lines on its exclusion list.Excluded Categories: Key domestic sectors shielded from tariff concessions include transport equipment, major chemicals, cereals, fruits, vegetables, spices, coffee, tea, and products of animal origin.Manufacturing Safeguards: High-value manufacturing chains including rubber, leather, textiles, footwear, petroleum oils, and mineral-based products remain protected.Agricultural Shielding: Strategic segments such as dairy products, meat, oilseeds, vegetable oils, sugar, and food-processing residues are entirely kept out of the liberalisation purview.Service sector stands to gainWith Oman’s total global services imports standing at USD 12.52 billion in 2024, India’s current share of 5.31% presents significant room for expansion.Oman has made robust commitments regarding the temporary entry and stay of Indian service professionals. Notably, the Intra-Corporate Transferees (ICT) ceiling has been raised from 20% to 50%, allowing Indian firms to deploy a higher volume of managerial and specialist personnel.Additionally, for the first time in any FTA, Oman has locked in specific commitments for professional service providers, benefitting Indian talent in IT, accounting, engineering, medical, education, construction, and consulting fields.Gains for India's agri sectorIndian agricultural exports such as natural honey, potatoes, cashews, boneless meat, and bakery items will secure immediate duty-free entry into Oman.Oman has agreed to dismantle tariffs—which currently range from 5% to 100%—on an array of items. These include cheese, curd, milk, cream, frozen fish, butter, meat, yoghurt, pastries, cakes, chocolate, sugar confectionery, mineral water, alongside animal and vegetable fats and oils.In return, Indian consumers will benefit from cheaper imports of Omani dates, with India granting zero-duty access for up to 2,000 tonnes of the commodity annually. New Delhi is also extending tariff concessions to Oman’s traditional products: Gum Arabica (utilised in food, pharmaceuticals, and cosmetics) and Frankincense (utilised in the incense and perfume sectors).Oman to benefit from tariff concessionsIndia is extending tariff concessions across 77.79% of its total tariff lines (equivalent to 12,556 lines), which encapsulates 94.81% of India’s total imports from Oman by value.For items that hold significant export value for Oman but remain sensitive for domestic industries in India—such as dates, marbles, and specific petrochemical products—liberalisation will be managed via a controlled Tariff-Rate Quota (TRQ) mechanism.India strengthening presence in Middle EastThe Oman CEPA serves as another pillar in India's deepening trade ties with the Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC), following its May 2022 pact with the UAE. New Delhi is set to commence trade talks with Qatar soon, and has already inked terms of reference (TOR) to initiate broader trade pact negotiations with the entire GCC bloc (comprising Saudi Arabia, UAE, Qatar, Kuwait, Oman, and Bahrain).Despite its size, Oman commands vast geopolitical importance as it borders the Strait of Hormuz, a critical maritime chokepoint heavily relied upon by Asian enterprises for oil trade. The nation serves as a strategic gateway for Indian goods and services into the broader Middle Eastern and African markets.Currently, nearly 7 lakh Indian nationals reside in Oman, sending home approximately USD 2 billion in annual remittances. Over 6,000 Indian establishments operate within Oman, and India has clocked USD 615.54 million in foreign direct investment (FDI) from Oman between April 2000 and September 2025. Notably, this CEPA is the first bilateral trade pact Oman has signed with any nation since its agreement with the United States in 2006, cementing its position as India’s third-largest export market within the GCC.
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Prime Minister Shehbaz Sharif reached Beijing on Sunday, where he would have “high-level engagements” with the Chinese leadership, including President Xi Jinping and his counterpart, Li Qiang. PM Shehbaz landed in Hangzhou on Saturday, kicking off his four-day official visit to China. He addressed the Pakistan-China Business-to-Business Investment Conference in Hangzhou earlier today, following which he reached Beijing, where he was received by Chinese Minister of Environment and Ecology Huang Runqiu. “During his stay in Beijing, the prime minister will hold high-level engagements, including meetings with Chinese President Xi Jinping and Prime Minister Li Qian,g to further strengthen Pakistan-China all-weather strategic cooperative partnership and advance cooperation under CPEC Phase-II, particularly in trade, investment, industry, agriculture, science and technology, and people-to-people exchanges,” a statement by the PM’s Office (PMO) said. It added that in Hangzhou, the PM chaired the opening ceremony of the third Pakistan-China B2B Investment Conference, which was focused on “charging infrastructure, battery energy storage and solar technologies, and pharmaceuticals”. “He also engaged with the provincial leadership, leading Chinese enterprises, including StarCharge, CATL and Xiuzheng Pharmaceutical, to explore practical investment and industrial cooperation,” the statement said, adding that PM Shehbaz also visited Alibaba Headquarters, where he was received by Executive Chairman Joe Tsai. PM highlights 4 areas for Pak-China cooperation While addressing the Pakistan-China Business-to-Business Investment Conference in Hangzhou, PM listed four areas of importance for Pakistan-China cooperation: agriculture, IT, special economic zones (SEZs), and mines and minerals. Noting that Pakistan was “basically an agrarian economy”, the premier noted the 1,000 Pakistanis who received advanced training in China last year were now back in the country “doing a great job”. He called for both countries to move forward, taking opportunities to improve per-acre yields and have high-quality seeds, best agricultural practices, and mechanisation through which the agricultural sector could be advanced “manifold”. “We have signed MoUs worth billions of dollars, which now need to be converted into agreements. I am very happy to hear that 30 per cent of these M0Us have already been converted into agreements,” the PM said. “China imports every year about $100 billion worth of agricultural products from abroad,” he said. “Pakistan’s share is just a fraction … We will be able to produce agricultural products as per your requirements.” He stressed that if both countries worked together, they would be able to not only provide “massive” job opportunities to the rural areas of Pakistan but also create value addition by raising “hundreds of thousands” of small and medium-scale entrepreneurs there who would export items to China. “In the next five to seven years, we expect that we can increase our agricultural product trade to China by about $10bn,” he said. “And this is not a big task. It can be done, it is possible, not difficult at all — but we need your support,” PM Shehbaz said. The premier also drew attention to the potential of SEZs, highlighting that Karachi’s SEZ spanned over 6,000 acres. He stated that the government would be providing “all basic amenities” at the zone to encourage joint investments by Chinese and Pakistani entrepreneurs. “You will be offered a red carpet treatment,” he stated, adding that the investors would be offered land on long-term leases at “very attractive terms and conditions”. “We will have a world-class SEZ, and then that model will be replicated elsewhere in Pakistan through your great contribution,” he said. Pointing out that “labour in China has become pretty expensive” and that the country was moving towards a high level of industrialisation, PM Shehbaz invited Chinese investors to pursue joint ventures with Pakistani entrepreneurs in sectors where expensive labour had made China less competitive. The goods produced could be exported to third countries, creating a “win-win” situation for Chinese and Pakistani entrepreneurs alike, he said: “This will be … a roaring success in times to come, whether it’s textile or leather or other areas.” He invited Chinese investors to come to Karachi to see its export zone, saying, “Be our guest; we’ll play host to you, and you’ll have great opportunities to understand business propositions.” PM Shehbaz also noted the “huge potential” of the IT and artificial intelligence (AI) sector, and highlighted Pakistan’s large deposits of minerals and gemstones to encourage Chinese entrepreneurs to invest in the mining sector. He concluded by stressing that Pakistan was looking for “expertise, experience, investments — not loans, not aid, not handouts”. “Handouts [and] aid never made a nation vibrant, never made a nation stand on its own feet,” the premier remarked. He expressed his appreciation for President Xi Jinping’s “dynamic leadership” and the deep friendship between Pakistan and China. The conference discussed the sectors of IT and Telecommunications, battery energy storage systems, and agriculture. DPM Dar arrives in Beijing Meanwhile, Deputy PM and Foreign Minister Ishaq Dar arrived in Beijing on Sunday, accompanied by Planning Minister Ahsan Iqbal. He was received at the Beijing airport by Vice Minister of the International Department of the CPC Central Committee (IDCPC), Sun Haiyan. “I will be later chief guest on behalf of PML-N, at the 2nd Pakistan–China Political Parties Forum and the 4th CPEC Political Parties Joint Consultation Mechanism, alongside H.E. Mr Liu Haixing, Minister of the IDCPC,” the deputy foreign minister said in a post on X. Dar noted that the forum will bring together representatives from 12 political parties of Pakistan, including his PML-N. “Looking forward to productive discussions on strengthening political mutual trust, advancing high-quality CPEC cooperation, and deepening the enduring Pakistan–China friendship,” Dar said in another post. Earlier in the day, Dar also addressed the Pakistan-China B2B Investment Conference. “Over 500 companies from both sides are present in this hall. You are the driving force behind this partnership. This conference belongs to you: it is for you, and because of you,” he told the moot, according to a transcript shared by the Foreign Office. “Our government is pursuing an ambitious agenda of economic revival, industrial expansion, and sustainable growth. Over the past four years, we have achieved economic stabilisation, and the economic trajectory today is firmly upward, despite external headwinds,” Dar affirmed. He further said, “Today, you will also hear about another successful joint venture between Servis Group of Pakistan and Long March Tyres of China. Within five years, this joint venture is now about to create a billion-dollar joint venture company.”