This brief quantifies the potential exposure of key European countries to Russian gas price and supply manipulation, shows how Moscow has used energy as an instrument of coercive diplomacy since the early 1990s, and briefly assesses the impacts and future policy implications of Russian entities’ past use of the “energy weapon” in and near Europe.
Although it has not been widely successful to date in the former Soviet zone, Russia's use of the energy weapon against Western European countries in various forms still constitutes a strategic threat that warrants close attention from policymakers in Washington and throughout Europe, writes fellow Gabriel Collins.
Public finance fellow Joyce Beebe discusses state and federal legislation aimed at granting states greater authority to collect sales taxes on remote online sales, as well as obstacles to those efforts.
Venezuelan President Nicolás Maduro appears to be a month away from destroying all remnants of what was once one of Latin America's most stable democracies.
On March 28, 2017, Energy Dialogues organized an event co-hosted with Shell at the Shell Woodcreek Campus in west Houston in which participants from across the oil and gas sector engaged in discussions that centered on three themes: economy, environment, and coalition-building. This report summarizes the day's discussions.
The landscape is changing for foreign direct investment in Latin America. Investments flow not only from north to south, but also from south to south and south to north. What's more, relatively small firms in developing countries are becoming as likely as multinationals to invest abroad.
NAFTA has neither been the enormous success that its supporters believe, nor the disaster that its detractors claim. Renegotiating NAFTA — or even threatening to repeal it — is not a high-stakes proposition. The treaty simply does not possess the leverage to deliver a major boost or setback to the U.S. manufacturing sector.
The extent of fuel theft from pipelines in Mexico is now so great that it is becoming a serious financial burden for state-owned petroleum company Pemex and, more broadly, may pose a challenge to the implementation of policies designed to liberalize Mexico's gasoline market, writes postdoctoral fellow Adrian Duhalt.
Most analysis of NAFTA begins by citing the huge increase in bilateral trade between the U.S., Canada and Mexico since 1993. U.S.-Mexico trade—exports plus imports—has grown three and a half times faster than U.S. GDP since NAFTA began in 1994. If NAFTA were solely responsible for that trade, renegotiating it on more favorable terms might have big payoffs. However, there are seven problems with thinking NAFTA has mattered or can matter very much.
Bonner Means Baker Fellow Joe Barnes analyzes how President Trump’s criticism of NATO members and the Paris accord on climate change during summits in Brussels and Taormina might affect U.S.-European relations. Baker Institute Blog: http://bit.ly/2qxrxyU.
This paper analyzes the links between transnational organized crime and the illicit wildlife trade in Mexico. It aims to provide policymakers with a better understanding of the seriousness of this crime and potential policy options that might help the international community in apprehending the culprits.
