Europe’s next phase of renewable growth is increasingly being built around a simple commercial reality: solar and wind projects need batteries beside them if they are to remain profitable in a power system that is producing more zero-marginal-cost electricity than the grid can always absorb.

Europe’s co-located renewable and battery capacity is expected to rise from 6.3 gigawatts in 2025 to around 35 gigawatts by 2030, an increase of more than 450%. Solar-plus-storage already accounts for more than 60% of existing deployments, which makes sense given that solar is the technology most exposed to midday price collapses.

China’s clean-tech exporters are turning the Iran war into an opening for global expansion, because the conflict has made fuel-import dependence more expensive and more politically uncomfortable for many countries. The war has disrupted oil and gas flows from the Middle East, pushed up diesel and gasoline costs, and strengthened the commercial case for solar power, batteries, electric vehicles, and storage systems.

Chinese clean-tech exports reached a record $26 billion in March, up 30% from February and 52% from a year earlier, with battery systems, solar equipment, and EVs all benefiting from the shift. This is not simply a windfall created by high fuel prices. It is also a release valve for Chinese manufacturers facing weak profitability and slowing demand at home.

China’s April inflation data look like a turning point at first glance, but the underlying story is less about a healthy reflation cycle than about an imported cost shock hitting an economy that still suffers from weak domestic demand. Producer prices rose 2.8% from a year earlier, the strongest increase in 45 months and far above the 1.6% expected.

That followed March’s 0.5% rise, which had already ended a 41-month stretch of producer-price deflation. Consumer inflation also accelerated, with CPI rising 1.2% year on year, above expectations and up from 1% in March. The immediate driver is the Iran war and the surge in global energy and commodity prices it has caused.

The Trump-Xi summit is being framed as a stabilizing encounter between the world’s two largest economies, but the agenda already shows how limited any genuine breakthrough is likely to be. U.S. officials say Donald Trump and Xi Jinping are expected to discuss Iran, Taiwan, artificial intelligence, nuclear weapons, rare earths, trade, agriculture, energy, and possible aircraft purchases during the May 14-15 talks in Beijing.

That breadth is itself revealing. The meeting is not centered on a single solvable dispute; it is an attempt to keep multiple strategic flashpoints from worsening at once. The most urgent topic is likely to be Iran. Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent has already said the war will be on the agenda, and U.S. officials are pressing Beijing over the revenue and dual-use goods China provides to Iran and Russia.

Bolivia’s proposed electricity and renewable-energy law would mark one of the most consequential economic-policy reversals the country has made in years, because it would push the power sector away from the heavy state control that defined the Evo Morales era and toward a more investment-driven model.

The legislation would allow private firms to participate in generation, as well as in the export and import of energy, ending the monopoly of state-run utility ENDE if Congress approves it. Energy Minister Marcelo Blanco described the proposal as a move from a market largely controlled by the state to a more competitive one in which the private sector has a proper role.

Germany’s March industrial data suggest the country entered the second quarter in a weaker position than headline first-quarter GDP growth implied, and that matters because the full force of the Iran war had not yet hit industry. Official figures showed industrial production fell 0.7% from February, against expectations for a rise, driven mainly by weaker energy output and lower machinery and equipment manufacturing.

At the same time, exports rose 0.5%, but imports jumped 5.1%, with China remaining Germany’s largest source of imports. Exports to the U.S., Germany’s most important export market, fell sharply by 7.9%, and the trade surplus shrank to €14.3 billion from €19.6 billion.

The coming Trump-Xi summit is shaping up less as a venue for a broad reset in U.S.-China relations than as a tightly constrained encounter dominated by crisis management over Iran and the wider stability of the global economy. Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent has already made clear Iran will be a central topic when Donald Trump and Xi Jinping meet in Beijing on May 14-15, while Secretary of State Marco Rubio has separately said Taiwan is also likely to be discussed.

That alone narrows the room for progress on more commercial issues such as tariffs, rare earths, and technology restrictions, because the agenda is being pulled toward the most combustible strategic questions rather than the more technical work of economic de-escalation.

The Trump administration’s emergency approval of up to $25.8 billion in weapons sales to Middle Eastern partners is less important for what it delivers immediately than for what it reveals about Washington’s strategic posture after the Iran war.

Secretary of State Marco Rubio used emergency authority on May 1 to waive the normal congressional review period for sales to Bahrain, Israel, Kuwait, Qatar, and the UAE, and that the larger $25.8 billion figure reflects modifications to earlier approvals rather than only the $8.6 billion in new sales publicly highlighted last week.