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Welcome back to the globalEDGE Blog! Our student authors have returned from their Michigan State University winter breaks and are excited to begin the Spring 2023 season of the globalEDGE blog.
We will be posting blogs every Monday through Thursday. Keep checking in to find new stories regarding international topics, including specific market overviews, analysis of growing industries, current events in business, and more!
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This week marks the end of the Michigan State University Fall 2022 semester. Our student blog writers will be leaving the university campus for our winter break, and will be returning at the beginning of January. Over break, our team members will be traveling and spending time celebrating the holidays.
We would like to acknowledge a graduating student and our globalEDGE blog editor, Chloe Jaessing. Chloe is graduating this December with a Major in Finance from the Broad College of Business. She has been tirelessly working to keep the globalEDGE blogs up-to-date for all of our readers. To read some of Chloe’s blogs throughout the years, click here.
The globalEDGE blog will return January 16th, 2023. In the meantime, we hope our readers continue to enjoy all the other areas of the globalEDGE website!
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As agricultural growth ramps up, drought continues to worsen. This is especially prominent in the Southwest regions of the United States as they face the worst drought in 1,200 years. Rural communities in La Paz County, Arizona have been noticing water disappearing left and right. The water workers in Wenden, Arizona are reporting that they have "never seen anything like this" as they noticed moving water in a well where the water is typically still. This massive underground reservoir stores water built up over thousands of years and was discovered to be moving due to someone pumping it rapidly out of the ground. With further research, it was found that there was a neighboring well belonging to Al Dahra, a United Arab Emirates-based company that was pulling this water for its own benefit.
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Since 2007, the Gaza Strip has been burdened by a land, air, and sea blockade imposed by Israel. Gaza is a self-governing territory but was seized by Israel in 1967, leading to intense restrictions that have cut Gaza off from hospitals, banks, religious practices, and other essentials in the community. The primary goal of this blockade has been to prevent imports of materials that Gazans could use for military use. For fishermen needing to travel through the Gaza Strip and buy necessary fishing equipment, these restrictions are severely limiting their ability to work in this industry.
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COP 27, which stands for “Conference of the Parties”, is a yearly conference in which leaders from across the world meet to discuss different topics within climate change. This year, the conference took place from November 6th to November 18th in Egypt and saw more than 33,000 attendees, making it the second-largest COP in history. Specifically, there were record numbers of attendees from African countries and small, less-developed countries and islands, which helped give them a bigger voice at this year’s conference.
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The Eurozone is seeing a drop in inflation – this comes as a first in 17 months since the war in Ukraine set off record-high energy and food prices. Inflation has been increasing in months prior, even when the U.S. rate was stable for four months after July. With this increase in inflation throughout the bloc, the European Central Bank (ECB) increased its key interest rate "more sharply than at any time in its history."
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Global markets around the world are expected to plummet as protests in China continue. The protests are due in part to China’s strict zero-Covid policy and citizens' disapproval of such rules. This has been one of the first major government challenges since the Tiananmen crisis more than 30 years ago. China has seen a high number of positive Covid-19 cases, and on Saturday, the nation saw a new high of 40,000 cases. China is the second leading consumer of oil in the world, yet with the intense Covid-19 restrictions, the country is seeing a dip in the amount of production. The nation’s high-risk districts make up close to 65% of China’s gross national domestic product. The country has seen protests for three days and there is no sign of them slowing down.
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Esports has been a growing industry over the past few decades and has grown at a healthy rate. The popularity of esports started internationally in South Korea and China in the late 90s. By the early 2000s, its popularity reached the United States. With the addition of Twitch, a streaming service built around video games, the popularity of esports went international by the early 2010s. Investors were enticed by the esports industry and expected a fruitful market in the upcoming years. In 2022, many investors not seeing a return on their investments, not due to a lack of popularity, but rather a difference in markets.
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After some delay, Russia has decided to extend its grain deal with Ukraine for another 4 months, easing fears that Russia might abandon the deal. This deal will continue allowing Ukraine to ship grain through the Black Sea. Ukraine is already shipping millions of tons of grain through this deal. Ukraine is also a top supplier of wheat, barley, and supplies 46% of the world’s sunflower oil.
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During an economic crisis, Egypt is cutting back on its domestic energy consumption to provide more natural gas to Europe. This past summer, the Egyptian government began to reduce household electricity consumption by cutting the lighting in some streets, squares, shops, and government buildings. In order to do this, the amount of natural gas needed to generate electricity must be reduced by 15%, and the surplus will be shipped to European buyers who pay top dollar for liquified natural gas.
