China is openly warning that it is prepared to retaliate if the European Union does not significantly soften two pieces of proposed legislation that Beijing sees as directly targeting Chinese firms and Chinese industrial influence.

Beijing will take countermeasures against the EU and companies unless substantial changes are made to the proposed “Buy European” Industrial Accelerator Act and to revised EU cybersecurity rules. China’s commerce ministry has argued that the measures are discriminatory, breach WTO principles, and would damage EU-China trade and cooperation.

For Taiwan, the anxiety surrounding next month’s Trump-Xi meeting is not simply that the island will be absent from the room. It is that Taiwan could become the most important issue discussed there precisely because it is absent and because both Washington and Beijing understand how much can be signaled through even subtle changes in language. 

Taiwan is expected to sit at the top of Xi Jinping’s agenda when Donald Trump visits Beijing on May 14-15, a marked change from their earlier meeting in Busan, when Xi deliberately did not foreground the issue. Beijing has been making clear in public and private that Taiwan is what it calls the “core of core interests” and the political foundation of U.S.-China relations.

India is heading into May in a more exposed position than the headlines about a possible Trump-Xi reset might suggest. The risk is not that Washington and Beijing suddenly reconcile in a way that directly targets India.

The bigger danger is that any partial stabilization between the U.S. and China could leave New Delhi caught between two competing systems at a moment when its own vulnerabilities are unusually visible: high dependence on Chinese industrial inputs, growing sensitivity to oil shocks from the Iran war, and a sharp deterioration in foreign portfolio flows and currency stability. India is not the principal target of U.S.-China rivalry, but it is highly exposed to the second-order effects.

The latest surge in U.S. crude exports shows how central America has become to holding together the global oil market after the Iran war shattered normal Gulf flows. U.S. crude exports climbed above 6 million barrels a day last week for the first time, beating the previous record of nearly 5.3 million barrels a day set in late 2023.

Combined exports of U.S. crude and refined products also reached a new all-time high above 14 million barrels a day, as overseas buyers scrambled for replacement barrels after Middle Eastern supplies were choked off.

The war with Iran is increasingly acting as a strategic accelerant for Asia’s shift from imported hydrocarbons toward electrification. The conflict’s disruption of roughly 10 million barrels per day of oil and refined-product supply from the Middle East, together with the blockage of around 20% of global LNG trade through the Strait of Hormuz, is pushing governments, manufacturers, and consumers across Asia to treat electric vehicles and battery storage not only as climate tools but as energy-security tools.

That is a meaningful shift, because Asia is the region most exposed to Gulf energy disruption and therefore the region with the strongest incentive to reduce oil and gas dependence. The underlying argument is straightforward. Asia was already moving toward electrification, but unevenly. China had long been the main engine, with EVs approaching half of new-vehicle sales and with rapid expansion in buses, trucks, and batteries.

Germany is trying to contain what could have become a serious fuel-supply shock around Berlin by stitching together replacement crude flows for the PCK Schwedt refinery after Russia said it would halt deliveries through the Druzhba pipeline from May 1. The immediate picture is less severe than feared: Brandenburg officials said up to 80% of Schwedt’s crude needs are secured for May, allowing the refinery to keep operating at a relatively stable level while Berlin searches for additional barrels.

The background matters here because Schwedt has been one of Germany’s most politically sensitive refineries since the rupture with Russian energy after 2022. The plant is crucial to fuel supply in northeastern Germany and parts of Poland, and it has already been operating in a more fragile way since Germany took control of the refinery from Rosneft in 2022 without fully resolving the ownership issue.

The United Arab Emirates is signaling that its withdrawal from OPEC was not an isolated oil decision, but part of a wider strategic review of how useful multilateral bodies still are to Abu Dhabi. The country is reassessing its role and contributions across multilateral organizations broadly, while ruling out any additional withdrawals for now.

The statement came after speculation that the UAE might also reconsider its place in bodies such as the GCC or the Arab League following its decision to leave OPEC and OPEC+ effective May 1. The immediate message from Abu Dhabi is therefore calibrated rather than revolutionary.

Tungsten’s price surge is becoming one of the clearest examples of how Chinese export controls and rearmament demand are colliding in the critical-minerals market. Ammonium paratungstate, the main intermediate used to make tungsten metal, has risen above $3,000 per metric ton unit in Rotterdam, more than tripling from the start of the year. In January, Rotterdam APT had already hit record highs near $1,100 per metric ton unit after China tightened export rules and cut mine quotas.

The immediate driver is China’s overwhelming weight in the market. China remains the dominant global supplier and has progressively tightened control over exports, first with new restrictions in 2025, then with lower mining quotas, and later by limiting 2026-2027 export permissions to just 15 firms. The U.S. Geological Survey’s 2026 mineral summary also notes that China introduced export controls on selected tungsten items in February 2025 and that prices rose sharply throughout 2025 as a result.