Leveraging a crash in oil revenue, the Saudi government has quickly imposed unprecedented changes to the way it raises cash by increasing taxes and slashing subsidies in ways Saudi citizens once considered unthinkable.
Despite the Trump administration sentiment that the U.S. partner with Saudi Arabia in a joint oil alliance, such an approach is unlikely to be successful, write energy fellows Jim Krane and Mark Finley. Forbes blog: https://bit.ly/2WUa6rb
"With the U.S. and Iran staggering toward war, it bears asking: How would U.S. interests be served by war with Iran?" writes fellow Jim Krane. Read his argument for why U.S. interests would be deeply undermined by any such war on the Baker Institute Blog.
This post originally appeared in the Forbes Blog on June 17, 2019.
U.S. National Security Advisor John Bolton recently remarked that Brazil's newly elected president, Jair Bolonsoro, is a “like-minded” leader for the Trump administration. In a blog for Axios, nonresident fellow Christopher Sabatini reviews these comments and the right-wing authoritarian style of Bolsonaro: https://bit.ly/2EYT9od
Saudi Arabia recently ended its legal ban on women driving. The long-term consequences of this change on transportation, energy, labor, and health remain unclear, write fellows Farhan Majid and Jim Krane in an op-ed for the Houston Chronicle: https://bit.ly/2Lrqnja
After more than five decades, China's central government is modernizing, standardizing and regulating the Hukou system of registration that largely tied farmers to the lands on which they were born, and kept them out of the cities and away from competing with urban residents for jobs and benefits. China is now officially gradually phasing out its highly unequal two-tier system of citizenship.
