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Graphic Truth: Are Canada and the US narrowing the gender pay gap?
Despite lofty rhetoric about equality from politicians in Washington and Ottawa, the US and Canada are trailing behind several of their G7 counterparts (though both far ahead of Japan) when it comes to progress made in narrowing the gender pay gap over the past two decades or so, OECD data shows.
Women working full-time in the US make 84 cents for every dollar men make, according to the Census Bureau. Canadian women make 88 cents for every dollar men make, per the Canadian Chamber of Commerce.
Since 2002, the gender wage gap — defined as the difference between median earnings of men and women relative to median earnings of men — has declined in the US from 22.1% to 17%. During the same period in Canada, it declined from 24% to 17.1%.
Are the US and Canada doing enough to narrow the gender pay gap?
President Joe Biden signs an executive order about artificial intelligence as Vice President Kamala Harris looks on at the White House on Oct. 30, 2023.
Everybody wants to regulate AI
US President Joe Biden on Monday signed an expansive executive order about artificial intelligence, ordering a bevy of government agencies to set new rules and standards for developers with regard to safety, privacy, and fraud. Under the Defense Production Act, the administration will require AI developers to share safety and testing data for the models they’re training — under the guise of protecting national and economic security. The government will also develop guidelines for watermarking AI-generated content and fresh standards to protect against “chemical, biological, radiological, nuclear, and cybersecurity risks.”
The US order comes the same day that G7 countries agreed to a “code of conduct” for AI companies, an 11-point plan called the “Hiroshima AI Process.” It also came mere days before government officials and tech-industry leaders meet in the UK at a forum hosted by British Prime Minister Rishi Sunak. The event will run tomorrow and Thursday, Nov. 1-2, at Bletchley Park. While several world leaders have passed on attending Sunak’s summit, including Biden and Emmanuel Macron, US Vice President Kamala Harris and European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen plan to participate.
When it comes to AI regulation, the UK is trying to differentiate itself from other global powers. Just last week, Sunak said that “the UK’s answer is not to rush to regulate” artificial intelligence while also announcing the formation of a UK AI Safety Institute to study “all the risks, from social harms like bias and misinformation through to the most extreme risks of all.”
The two-day summit will focus on the risks of AI and its use of large language models trained by huge amounts of text and data.
Unlike von der Leyen’s EU, with its strict AI regulation, the UK seems more interested in attracting AI firms than immediately reining them in. In March, Sunak’s government unveiled its plan for a “pro-innovation” approach to AI regulation. In announcing the summit, the government’s Department for Science, Innovation, and Technology boasted the country’s “strong credentials” in AI: employing 50,000 people, bringing £3.7 billion to the domestic economy, and housing key firms like DeepMind (now owned by Google), while also investing £100 million in AI safety research.
Despite the UK’s light-touch approach so far, the Council on Foreign Relations described the summit as an opportunity for the US and UK, in particular, to align on policy priorities and “move beyond the techno-libertarianism that characterized the early days of AI policymaking in both countries.”- UK AI Safety Summit brings government leaders and AI experts together - GZERO Media ›
- AI agents are here, but is society ready for them? - GZERO Media ›
- Yuval Noah Harari: AI is a “social weapon of mass destruction” to humanity - GZERO Media ›
- Should we regulate generative AI with open or closed models? - GZERO Media ›
- Podcast: Talking AI: Sociologist Zeynep Tufekci explains what's missing in the conversation - GZERO Media ›
- OpenAI is risk-testing Voice Engine, but the risks are clear - GZERO Media ›
Gov. Tiff Macklem walks outside Bank of Canada building in Ottawa
IMF expects real GDP growth in the G7
The title of the IMF’s new World Economic Outlook says it all: “Navigating Global Divergences.” The organization expects Canada’s real GDP to grow by 1.6% next year, followed by the US at 1.5%. Both countries are ahead of the expected Euro area average of 1.2% and the advanced economy average of 1.4%. Meanwhile, the United Kingdom is expected to manage a paltry 0.6% percent, up from 0.5 in 2023, as it faces pandemic fallout and the lingering effects of Brexit.
Developing states, meanwhile, are expected to post higher growth than their advanced economy counterparts, with China looking at 4.2% and India at 6.3%. The developing and emerging economies group is looking at 4% growth in 2024, consistent with its numbers from the last two years.
The takeaway? The IMF is projecting low and slow growth throughout much of the world and “little margin for policy error.” That’s going to have politicians and civil servants on edge, particularly as geopolitical crises intensify. That’s the bad news. The good news is that these numbers suggest the odds of a soft landing are up, and slow growth is better than a recession.
The new BRICS expansion and the Global South agenda
Ian Bremmer's Quick Take: Hi, everybody. And a happy end of summer back to school. Labor Day is coming up in a week and I am going to be back and at it in New York and around the world. But for now, a Quick Take and want to talk a little bit about the BRICS.
You saw the summit last week in South Africa, the headlines going into the summit, at least from the United States and its allies, was all about how Putin wasn't going to be allowed to attend. He had to attend virtually. One of the members of the BRICS, they can only send their foreign minister. Doesn't that show that, you know, the International Criminal Court means something, even though the Americans aren't actually a signatory to it? But that wasn't the real story.
The real story is that after a significant amount of Chinese diplomatic effort to expand the BRICS and make it more meaningful, which other members were skeptical about, there was significant success and an announcement that there will be six new members invited to join at the beginning of 2024. That's a very meaningful expansion. Egypt, Ethiopia, Argentina, UAE, Iran and Saudi Arabia. Presuming this all goes ahead, the BRICS will be the most important grouping of the so-called Global South. And I use that term advisedly because it's not quite clear that China is really a member of the Global South. It's much more important economically as a creditor of the Global South and increasingly wanting to have great influence over it, which a lot of members of the Global South want to resist. I'll get into that in a minute. But still, if you compare to what's been going on among the developing members of the G-20 to try to set a common agenda that more aligns with their interests as opposed to those of the United States and its allies in the G-7 who have become increasingly tight-knit post-Trump and post the Russian invasion of Ukraine.
I would say the BRICS are now supplanting that process as the most important piece of international architecture to watch, engage with, and to drive an agenda that matters to the countries of the Global South. And I think that the agenda-setting will be important on climate, it will be important on finance and the global economy. Maybe a bit on Russia, Ukraine, and also in efforts to resist weaponization of the US dollar. In other words, these are a whole bunch of countries that don't really like the fact that the Americans have leveraged a dominant position in the international financial system and as global reserve currency to have more influence over their own economic outcomes. I don't think this really means dollarization or the replacement with a BRICS currency any time soon. The role of the US dollar in global reserve currencies held by central banks around the world has been roughly the same for the last 20 years, and that, I suspect, will be true in another 10, another 15, 20 years as well. But nonetheless, in terms of a willingness of a whole bunch of countries to say we are not happy with the present global agenda as being set in their interests by the United States and allies, the BRICS will be an alternative, that is important, that will matter more economically over time and on some issues will be cohesive. So in that regard, I think it is important and I think we should spend more time following it and covering it.
As you know, we do other major sub-global confabs out there. A few points as rejoinders to that though, first of all, Argentina is not actually going to join. The present Argentine government very happy to. That is a leftist government that is much more aligned with China in particular. Their economy is falling apart. It is almost certain that after elections we will have a center-right or perhaps a far right libertarian government, either Bullrich or Milei in charge of Argentina. Both have said that they would not join the BRICS. So let's take Argentina out of the equation.
The countries that are left, it's interesting. It's all kind of one very broad region. We're talking about the Middle East and kind of northeast Africa. So again, UAE, Saudi Arabia and Iran, Egypt, and Ethiopia. Let's look at what that means. In the case of the Middle East, this is the region of the world that is becoming much less aligned with the United States, much more focused on the fact that they have to be self-sufficient, in part because the Americans aren't as interested, in part because the Americans are core competitors for energy, fossil fuel, energy development and export, then the Saudis, the Emiratis, and the Iranians.
So some of it is the US paying less attention, some of it is US driving a climate agenda to a greater degree than they were before. Some of it is the Americans are not a part of OPEC and competing with OPEC. And so for all of these reasons, what you see is the countries from the Middle East wanting to go more their own way, wanting to balance and hedge and be a part of everything. So keep their security relations with the US if they're Saudi Arabia and the UAE, but also work more closely with the Chinese and with everyone else that has significant demand for that energy. Hence the Saudis and the Iranians having a diplomatic engagement that the Chinese, that breakthrough sponsored by China, hence the Saudis inviting everyone, the Americans and the Chinese and the Ukrainians, everyone but Russia to be a part of what has been so far the most significant diplomatic effort around the Russian-Ukraine war and the fact that the Saudis, the Emirates and the Iranians are all now joining the BRICS is a significant additional movement. I would argue the Middle East is becoming more geopolitically stable, but also less aligned with the United States, more playing a balancing role with everyone. In the case of Ethiopia, that is a very significant, very populous country in Africa that is overwhelmingly aligned economically with China. That's where the money is. The United States doesn't play much of a role.
I think the next round of BRICS expansion looking forward is probably more likely to have the most interest from other sub-Saharan African countries. How many actually join is an open question, but that's certainly the easiest grouping that you can see wanting to be a part of the BRICS for all the reasons we just talked about. And then finally, I would say, let's also recognize what the BRICS is not. The BRICS is not a China-led competitor to the G-7, and that is because most of the countries that are in the BRICS, not all, but most do not want it to be. They don't want it to be led by China. Think about India in that regard in particular. And they don't want it to be a competitor to the G-7 where they have to join one and not the other. They want to have good economic relations with both. The economic order is a multipolar order. It is not a Cold War environment, and the security order is driven primarily by the United States. And you have to put BRICS expansion into that broader global framework. So the BRICS will matter more economically. They will facilitate far more Middle Eastern hedging. They will also facilitate greater agenda-setting in the global economy, broadly defined by the Global South. But that is not suddenly a decoupling of the world into G-7 versus BRICS. That's certainly not what we're going to see. So very important, a meaningful diplomatic win for the Chinese, not aligned with what the United States is trying to accomplish with the G-7 and with NATO broadly speaking, but not directly confrontational either. It's messy, it's nuanced. It doesn't easily lend itself to a five-second headline, but a ten-minute Quick Take. What the hell?
So anyway, that's it for me. Hope everyone's doing well. Enjoy this last days of summer and I'll talk to you all real soon.
Armenia, Azerbaijan & the Nagorno-Karabakh crisis that needs attention
Ian Bremmer's Quick Take:Hi everybody. Ian Bremmer here and a Quick Take to kick off your week.
I want to talk about an issue that is not getting the attention that it should, and that is the conflict in Nagorno-Karabakh. It is one of many impacts from the Russian war in Ukraine. Not new. There's been a war for decades over this little territory, an autonomous Armenian populated territory inside Azerbaijan, former two Soviet republics.
Armenia and Azerbaijan became independent in 1991 when the Soviet Union collapsed. It is small, it is mountainous, it is all of 120,000 people. It is fiercely contested. When the Soviet Union collapsed, in part would support from Russia, Armenia had military superiority. They were able to not only have control over it, but also buffer regions bordering it. They didn't negotiate very seriously with the Azeris, in part because they had the upper hand. That is now changing. Azerbaijan has been building up their own military capabilities, in part from a lot of energy wealth from the Caspian, in part with support from Turkey, which is very aligned with Azerbaijan.
Meanwhile, Russia, which is Armenia's major supporter, really their only kind of strong geopolitical supporter with troops in Armenia and peacekeepers on the ground, very distracted given the invasion of Ukraine and under a lot of pressure. That has meant reduced troop presence and them acting largely on the sidelines. Azerbaijan, sensing opportunity, struck, took back occupied territory around Nagorno-Karabakh, and now have a functional lock on any ability to get in or out of the territory.
Now, Armenia, the Armenian government itself in Yerevan, has said that they are willing to renounce claims on this territory. They no longer see it as part of Armenia if these Armenians are given guarantees of rights and autonomy. That is not the view, at least not therefore, not thus far of the local government in Karabakh.
Meanwhile, in Azerbaijan, they have cut off the humanitarian corridor. In part, this is to force the local Armenians to the table, but it's also a massive humanitarian crisis. And there is now a real possibility that 120,000 people are going to face starvation.
And that's why I'm bringing this up right now. Look, there are lots of places around the world that need more international attention, and GZERO Media is trying our best to shine more of a light on them in Haiti, in Niger, in Yemen. Well, you can now add Karabakh to that list. And international pressure from the US, from the Europeans, from the Japanese, from everyone is needed to get that humanitarian assistance in immediately. And then hopefully, and quite plausibly a deal that allows both Armenian and Azeri populations to live in peace.It's a small territory. These are not very powerful countries. A little bit of pressure and focus from these governments, from the G-7 governments in particular would go a long way. Turkey is a NATO ally of the United States. They have a lot of influence over the Azeris, but it's not hitting the headlines right now. And in that regard, it's worth all of us doing a little bit more.
So hopefully this makes a tiny bit of difference. You can spread the word too. I thank you for your attention for a few moments this summer. And I hope everyone's doing well. Thanks a lot.
- The Graphic Truth: How do Azerbaijan and Armenia stack up? ›
- What's happening in Nagorno-Karabakh? ›
- Special podcast: View from "fully blockaded" Nagorno-Karabakh during Armenia's conflict with Azerbaijan ›
- What We're Watching: Turkish political verdict, Nagorno-Karabakh flareup, Sunak's immigration plan, Lula's military ›
- Canada-India relations strained by murder allegation - GZERO Media ›
- Russian Black Sea Fleet commander still alive despite Ukraine's claims - GZERO Media ›
- Ian Explains: 2023: A good year for warmongers - GZERO Media ›
- Armenia’s capital reels from the aftermath of Nagorno-Karabakh & Russia-Ukraine wars - GZERO Media ›
- Overlooked stories in 2023 - GZERO Media ›
- Ian Explains: Gaming out the 2024 US election - GZERO Media ›
Russia's war: no end in sight
Ian Bremmer's Quick Take: Hey everybody. Ian Bremmer here and a happy Monday to you. A Quick Take to kick off your week. Wanted to talk latest on the Russia War.
Seen both sides, significant new attacks. From the Ukrainians, a drone successfully hitting an office tower in Moscow. From Russia, a drone attacking a grain storage and infrastructure facility right on Ukraine's Romanian border. The Ukrainians wanting to show Russia that they can continue to hit deep inside the country, even right at the capital. The Russians wanting to show that they can and will cripple Ukrainian agricultural capabilities now that they have stepped out, the Russians have stepped out of the Black Sea grain deal. Both of these things showing that 500 plus days in the war is not over. It's continuing to cause grave damage to both populations and both also showing that there's very little substantial progress either towards victory of one side, defeat of the other or towards a ceasefire and a breakthrough in negotiations.
Given that state of play, and given that we just had a Vilnius summit, NATO summit that showed that the countries are together and they're providing strong levels of ongoing support for the Ukrainians, that's not going to fall apart anytime soon. But meanwhile, the Russians are defending themselves capably in the front lines against Ukrainian counter offensive, which is not going as well as certainly the Ukrainians or NATO had hoped a couple of months ago before it started. I wanted to look at policy because what US and NATO policy towards the Russia, Ukraine fight is and isn't is sometimes misstated.
NATO and the United States, first and foremost are trying to help defend Ukraine and help them get their land back, certainly the territory that has been taken since February 24th. They have done a pretty good job of that. Certainly the Ukrainians are far more capable in terms of their defenses going forward, and much of the territory that was initially taken by the Russians has now been regained by Ukraine. Certainly not all of it, and again, not very much over the last couple of months, but the Russians do not control most of the territory that they have illegally annexed over a few months ago. And of course, all of the territory they initially took in the north and towards Kyiv and the Northeast, that the Ukrainians have removed them from completely back to the original borders. Secondly, the US and NATO are trying to make sure that Russia doesn't want to do it again, that they understand that this was a mistake, whether or not they admit it as such and that such an attack going forward would be even more so.
In other words, they don't want the Russians to think that they can wait out and have a second bite of this apple. Now so far they seem pretty successful there as well. That's why you continue to have efforts to talk about long-term Ukrainian security guarantees, including eventually a pathway into NATO. But short of that, and before that, commitments that the G-7 will all continue to provide cyber defenses and equipment and training and intelligence for the Ukrainians, all of which is intended to bolster that policy. And then finally want lessons for other countries, notably China, to them, that if you were thinking of invading Taiwan, if you were thinking of attacking territory that really matters to the West, think again, there will be serious consequences. You'll be punished for that. It'll hurt you militarily, it'll hurt you economically. And I think that on that policy as well, there has been so far a fair amount of success.
Now, what the policy is not. It is not a policy to remove Putin from office. It is not a policy of regime change. It is also not a policy to destroy Russia. Russia is a federation. There are different autonomous republics and regions with different nationalities. This is not an intention to do to the Russians what happened to the Soviet Union in the late eighties, culminating in the collapse in 1991. Also very importantly and not discussed very often, it's not an effort to cut off global markets from Russia. I hear a lot, look at, and I put out those numbers myself. Look at how much oil the Indians are buying from Russia. Look at how much the Chinese are now buying from Russia. The American policy, the NATO policy is that India and China should buy that oil at a discount from the Russians. The alternative would be that the markets would be crippled.
The alternatives would be a massive spike in disruptions in supply chain, a major recession that Biden doesn't want and that frankly nobody in NATO wants. So even though you won't see NATO leaders saying, we're so happy the Indians are buying all of this oil, the reality is they are. It's cheaper. The Russians are getting less for it than they would in a properly functioning global market had they not invaded Ukraine. And then the Indians are actually doing more refined product, value add for them that is being exported to Europe so the Europeans can continue to have their economy run. Are the Europeans still essentially consuming a lot of Russian oil? Sure they are. Are the Europeans ending up getting a whole bunch of food from Russia? Yeah, and so is Africa, and so are other countries around the world.
And it's very annoying that the food and fertilizer deal has been unilaterally broken by the Russians, and now the Ukrainians will not be able to profit from their food and fertilizer industry, and it's going to hurt a lot of African nations in particular, but Russia will still be able to export a lot of that food. And again, given the importance of those commodities to global markets, that's not going to change anytime soon. The reason I mention this is because at some point the war will be over, at some point there will be a ceasefire, hopefully, as the Ukrainians can take as much of their land back as was stolen from them as possible, and hopefully with very strong and defined and ongoing support from the EU, from the United States, from the G-7, from NATO, that will allow Ukraine to reconstruct, allow them to join the EU, allow them eventually even to join NATO, and hopefully there will also be strong lessons that are maintained by the Russians, by the Chinese, by others around the world that the G7 is cohesive, will respond to breaking of the rule of law, at least in those cases where countries are strategically important to NATO and the G-7.
I'd like to say to all countries around the world, that would certainly be the proper international law response. It would also be the proper human response. I don't think that we are there, but nonetheless, the basic intentions of these policies are so far looking to be pretty strong. The question of course is what do you do beyond that? Because the consequences of Putin invading is that he has screwed up his own country. The consequences of Putin invading is that Prigozhin, who was this very loyal guy that was providing all sorts of paramilitary services for dictatorships across the Middle East and Africa, suddenly had to redeploy to Ukraine because the defense ministry and the regular forces did so badly, his forces got eaten up, and now he's become enemy number one for the Russians, and yet is still walking around in Belarus. That destabilizes Russia. It's not American policy, but it is a knock on consequence of the failure of the invasion and the consequences of the invasion.
What that means is that dealing with the Russians long term is something the Americans are going to have to think a lot more about. You can get the war in Ukraine eventually over and still have a massive problem with a nuclear-armed Putin whose country is much more destabilized, and yet the US has no interest in having a Russia massively destabilized. In that regard, America shares interest with almost everyone in the world, certainly the Chinese, the Indians, the entire Global South. Nobody wants nuclear war. Nobody wants a rogue state like Russia to become destabilized and more risk acceptant. That would undo so many of the proper lessons that hopefully are finally being learned by a lot of countries on the basis of the late, but nonetheless, strong response to the Russian invasion.
So something to spend more time thinking about, especially as we talk about, for example, Putin as a war criminal, which certainly is true, and on the other hand, he'll never be tried for it. And the ability to deal with a war criminal makes it a lot harder long term for Europe, for the United States to have a stable relationship with a post-Ukraine war Russia. How do you square that circle? And if you don't, what kind of a world are you living in? What kind of greater risks are you imputedly willing to tolerate? Something we're going to talk about a lot more.
Anyway, that's it for me on a Monday. Hope everyone's doing well and I'll talk to you all real soon.
There is still a Haiti crisis
Hey everybody. Ian Bremmer here, Quick Take to kick off your week and I want to talk about something that we've really spent almost no time talking about. Neither has the media, but it deserves our attention.
And that is the crisis in Haiti. It is the poorest country in the western hemisphere, despite being the wealthiest colony a few centuries ago. Over 50% of the population under the poverty line, and today it is a failed state with no government, no legitimized governance. Instead, the capital city is controlled by criminal gangs, and some of the surrounding countryside as well, has only deteriorated since 2021 when the president, Jovenel Moïse, was assassinated. Still with all sorts of questions as to exactly who was behind that and how violence has escalated since then. Overwhelming the underfunded police force while the security forces that remain are corrupt and ineffective and largely tied to the gangs themselves.
The United Nations reports that this situation has descended into what they call a catastrophic spiral of violence. Gangs shooting indiscriminately at people on the street, firings into their homes, burning people alive on public transport. Because the Haiti government can't respond, civilians are forming vigilante groups to fight the gangs and lynching of suspected members and the rest, I don't know if you all saw "Escape from New York", it's sort of like that, but not as cinematic. It's only 700 miles away from Florida, which is just far enough away to not pay attention. And of course, the Haitians are not Europeans like Ukraine. And so getting nowhere near the attention from the media, nowhere near the influencers on social media, the care nowhere near the international aid or support. The situation is desperate and there is no path to fixing it. There have been talks to try to resolve Haiti's political crisis, but last week they hit a deadlock.
And absent that, there's no willingness to deploy international forces that would help to combat criminal gangs who continue to terrorize the country. My friend, the UN Secretary-General António Guterres, has called for the Security Council to issue a deployment of peacekeeping forces, but so far that has gone nowhere. The Americans are asking the Canadians to do more. The Canadians are saying, "Well, unless there's support on the ground from a government, we're not going to provide forces." They'll provide some funding for the police. But of course, if there's no government on the ground that there's no legitimacy. This clearly is a case where the G-7 as a whole plus concerned members of the Global South need to come together and actually have a peacekeeping force, need to be providing a level of rule of law and accountability and also need to shine a light on this issue.
And frankly, the only way that's going happen is much more pressure. I know a friend of mine, Richard Engel from NBC, is planning on going over there and starting some coverage soon. I think that will be helpful. The major, mainstream media on the left, on the right in the US and internationally needs to be sending more correspondence. I know it's hardship duty, and I know it's dangerous, but thank God for them. They need to be doing more coverage of Haiti so people understand this. I'm going to do our best to try to make sure that we do more than we have been. GZERO has been on it, but nowhere near frankly, what we should be. And I do hope that we can help to turn the page on what has been an utter catastrophe for the 11 million Haitians that are living in this situation.
Thanks a lot for this, and I hope to talk to you soon. Bye.
Ukraine's NATO & EU ambitions
Carl Bildt, former prime minister of Sweden, shares his perspective on European politics.
First question, is Ukraine going to be a member of NATO?
Well, eventually it will. There's no question about it. There was no even formal limitation issued in the news for fairly obvious reasons. The country is in war at the moment. But at the same time, no question, there were substantial commitments by NATO, even more substantial commitment by the different G-7 nations to build up the armed forces of Ukraine long term, integrate them into NATO. And no question that Washington Summit next year is going to be a lot of discussions on when NATO formally has go to admit Ukraine as a member.
Second question, will Ukraine be a member of the European Union?
Well, same answer. It will be at some point in time, but that's going to be somewhat more drawn out process necessarily. I would hope that by the autumn of this year, that we will have first opinion by the European Commission to say yes and a decision by the heads of government, heads of state and government of the European Union in December to start accession negotiations.