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Willis Sparks
Willis Sparks is a senior editor for GZERO Daily. He is also a Director in the Global Macro practice at Eurasia Group, where he has worked since 2005. He has made speeches on international politics on every continent except Antarctica and appears regularly as an analyst on CBS. Willis holds degrees from Brown University, the Juilliard School, Columbia University's School of International and Public Affairs, and the Institut d'Etudes Politiques in Paris. He also holds an honorary degree from the Moscow Art Theatre School. A native of Macon, Georgia, Willis has worked as a stuntman at New York's Metropolitan Opera. As a child, he declined an opportunity to spend an afternoon riding the Great American Scream Machine, a rollercoaster, with Ronald McDonald, for money. He has never regretted that decision.
Venezuela's President Nicolas Maduro leads the celebration of the 22nd anniversary of late President Hugo Chavez's return to power after a failed coup attempt in 2002, in Caracas, Venezuela April 13, 2024
The Biden administrationannounced this week it will reimpose oil sector sanctions on Venezuela because President Nicolas Maduro’s government has backed away from a commitment to hold a free and fair presidential election this year.
The US lifted sanctions six months ago, but Maduro’s government has since banned opposition leader Maria Corina Machado from running for president and blocked her chosen replacement from running too.
Now for the asterisk: US oil giant Chevron will be permitted to keep a joint venture with Venezuela’s national oil company. Why? Look at the calendar. Biden’s got an election to win in seven months. Venezuela is a major oil producer, and the US wants to avoid giving oil markets any more reason to worry.
After all, the threat of a wider war in the Middle East is creating oil supply jitters while a rapidly recovering Chinese economy is expected to start guzzling more crude again this year.
So while Joe Biden can no longer pretend Venezuela’s people will have a real choice in their election, with US inflation still stubbornly high, he’s got to make some hard choices about his own — and this is one of them.
US President Joe Biden delivers remarks at United Steel Workers headquarters in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, US, April 17, 2024.
President Joe Biden used a meeting in Pennsylvania with United Steel Workers on Wednesday to call for a tripling of steel tariffs on China. Trade representative Katherine Tai, in response to a petition from the union, also announced an investigation of unfair trade practices in China’s shipbuilding industry.
Administration officials insist these moves are about economics, not election-year politics, but there are clearly messages to be drawn here. Aware that his reelection depends on victory in Pennsylvania and other union-heavy Midwest swing states, we can expect Biden to continue to lean into his “friend of the working man” image. As political commentator Paul Begala has noted, Democrats havelost votes in recent years by shifting “from being the party of the factory floor to the party of the faculty lounge.” Biden appears determined to avoid that trap. It also demonstrates that China will remain a go-to election-year political target.
Democrats are also on offense in a crucial Sun Belt swing state. In Arizona, they worked to force a vote this week onrepealing a hyper-controversial law that bans nearly all abortions, a question that highlights deep divisions on this issue within the state’s Republican Party. The aim was to push state GOP lawmakers to take public positions on an issue many of them would rather ignore. On Wednesday, Republicans opted to prevent the vote from happening, leaving the party with political responsibility for defending the 160-year old law.
Colonel-General Oleksandr Syrskyi (R), the Commander of the Defense of Kyiv.
Slow but steady gains come at great cost to Russian lives and equipment – both sides have seen tens of thousands of soldiers killed and hundreds of thousands wounded – but Russia has deeper reserves of both men and munitions.
For now, Ukraine is waiting for help, particularly from Washington. Without many more and much better weapons, warns Syrskyi, Ukraine can’t “seize the strategic initiative” back from the Russian invaders.
In Washington, House Speaker Mike Johnson continues to look for ways to provide Ukraine with tens of billions of dollars in assistance while avoiding an open revolt from Republican lawmakers who want to cut Ukraine loose. Both Democrats and Republicans in Congress want to see what Johnson will bring to the House floor for a vote, and Ukrainians are waiting to see how long they can resist Russia’s current momentum.
Former U.S. President Donald Trump returns from a break at Manhattan criminal court in New York, U.S., on Monday, April 15, 2024.
36: A recent poll found that 36% of voters registered as independent would be “less likely to support [Donald] Trump” if he’s convicted on any of the 34 felony charges in the so-called hush money case now underway in New York City.
3: On Monday, the Supreme Court announced that it will not hear a case from the Fifth Circuit Court that effectively eliminated the right to protest in Louisiana, Mississippi, and Texas. This leaves the lower court's decision – which ruled that a protest organizer faces potentially ruinous financial consequences if a single attendee at a mass protest commits an illegal act – in place, jeopardizing the First Amendment right to protest in these three southern US states.
20: After nearly 20 years in power, Lee Hsien Loong, son of Singapore’s founding father Lee Kuan Yew, will step down on May 15 as prime minister. Deputy PM and Finance Minister Lawrence Wong, Lee’s heir apparent for the past two years, will take the job. After almost six decades of political dominance by the People’s Action Party, Singapore may have its first genuinely competitive elections as early as later this year as the party becomes less popular.
6.4 billion: To boost US domestic production of semiconductors, the Biden administration will give up to $6.4 billion in grants to Samsung, one of the world’s largest chipmakers, to finance a new manufacturing hub and expand an existing site in Texas.
10: On Monday, electric vehicle maker Tesla announced plans to lay off more than 10% of its workforce (about 14,000 people) to cut costs, and a longtime senior executive announced his resignation. Meanwhile, EV makers in Asia and Europe have been producing a growing number of new models.
3: Organizers of the Beijing half marathon are investigating video footage shared online that appears to show three East African runners allowing a Chinese competitor to win the race. It’s not clear why the two Kenyans and one Ethiopian might have done this.
Calton Hill and Edinburgh city scenic view at sunset Beautiful view of Edinburgh at sunset Edinbourgh United Kingdom.
Good news for Britain’s Labour Party: Anew poll from YouGov shows that, for the first time in nearly a decade, the party leads in Scotland, a result that can bolster its already-high odds of winning the UK’s next general election, probably this fall.
Years ago, Labour could count on votes in Scotland, where the Conservative Party is traditionally less popular than in England and Wales, to boost its seat total in the UK parliament. In 2010, a year when Scotland’s own Gordon Brown led Labour, the party won 41 of Scotland’s 59 seats. But as demand for an independence referendum lifted the Scottish National Party to prominence, Labour won just one seat in Scotland in 2015 and the same in 2019.
But the SNP, burdened with the disappointment of the failed referendum, a poor economy, and scandals that engulfed once-popular leader Nicola Sturgeon, has faded, and Labour is again in favor with Scottish voters.
Nationally, Labour already leads Conservatives by 20 points. A restoration in Scotland could help the party and its current leader, Sir Keir Starmer, secure the landslide win they seek and a return to 10 Downing Street for the first time in 14 years.British Foreign Secretary David Cameron holds a joint press conference with US Secretary of State Antony Blinken at the State Department in Washington, US, April 9, 2024.
UK Foreign Secretary David Cameron visited Washington on Tuesday to lobby for greater material US support for Ukraine, and Congress is likely to provide a package that includes help for Ukraine by the end of the month, according to analysis from Eurasia Group, our parent company.
The war, meanwhile, has settled into a grim exchange of attacks that are unlikely to speed an end to the fighting, but which target energy supplies. Russia continues to launch missiles against Ukraine’s energy infrastructure, and it has reportedly begun to prioritize targets like hydroelectric and thermal power stations outside Kyiv and other major cities that are less well-defended.
In response to the Russian barrage, the EU has announced that help is on the way. Austria, Germany, Sweden, and the Netherlands have offered 157 power generators as part of the EU Civil Protection Mechanism, and the EU itself has deployed 10 large-capacity power generators from its own stockpiles.
For its part, Ukrainian drones have repeatedly struck oil refineries deep inside Russian territory since the beginning of the year, and Russian air defenses haven’t yet found a way to defend against them.
A smartphone with a displayed TSMC (Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Company) logo is placed on a computer motherboard in this illustration taken March 6, 2023.
For all countries with advanced manufacturing capabilities, future chip production will be crucial for both economic dynamism and national security, because semiconductors will be an indispensable component in everything from electric vehicles to consumer electronics to satellites and advanced weapons systems.
Monday’s announcement marks a political victory for President Joe Biden, who can now claim he’s adding a “Made in America” label to the world’s most advanced technologies.
There is an important security implication from this announcement, one that Taiwan’s government may not like. TSMC remains at the heart of the island nation’s “silicon shield,” the protection that semiconductor dominance provides Taiwan by giving the United States good reason to protect it from Chinese attack. Shifting more of TSMC’s production to Arizona reduces that incentive.
Commander Shingo Nashinoki, 50, and soldiers of the Japanese Ground Self-Defense Force's Amphibious Rapid Deployment Brigade (ARDB), Japan's first marine unit since World War Two, take part in a military drill as U.S. Marines observe, on the uninhabited Irisuna island close to Okinawa, Japan, November 15, 2023.
Before an historic trilateral meeting on April 12 between US President Joe Biden, Japan’s Prime Minister Fumio Kishida, and Philippines President Ferdinand Marcos Jr, the Philippine ambassador to the US has said Tokyo and Manila are negotiating a “reciprocal access agreement” that would allow the Japanese and Philippine militaries to train and conduct joint exercises on each other’s territory. Given the ugly World War II history between the two countries, that would be a startling development.
Japan’s foreign ministry has cast doubt on the specifics of this plan. It’s true, said a spokesperson, that the “implementation of this agreement will enhance the interoperability of the Japanese and Philippine] troops, but it is not true that we are discussing deploying the Self-Defense Forces in the Philippines,” he added.
It’s not clear, however, whether a temporary placement of Japanese troops in the Philippines to take part in joint exercises with US forces stationed there would create the same controversy inside Japan, where pacifism remains a potent political force, as a more permanent rotation of Japanese forces there.
But it is clear that the US, Japan, and the Philippines want Beijing to recognize their concerns over assertive Chinese actions in the South China Sea.