Rest of the World Report - May 14, Morning Edition

Xi opened with Taiwan. Not trade. Not Iran. Taiwan. The bilateral is done. The communiqué comes tomorrow. Three other rooms are open right now and none of them are getting the cameras.① What Xi actually said in the room: Taiwan first, Iran vague, commerce warm. The international press consensus in one word: stability. The test is not what gets announced. It’s what Taiwan says after the cameras are off. ② Lebanon-Israel talks are underway in Washington. BRICS is underway in New Delhi. Both rooms are open. No results yet. The architecture of any lasting agreement is being built in the room American coverage isn’t watching. ③ While Trump was in the Great Hall of the People, Iran seized a ship 38 nautical miles off the UAE coast. The strait has been closed for 75 days. The Aramco CEO says markets won’t normalize until 2027 if it stays closed past mid-June. That’s four weeks away.“Whenever the people are well informed, they can be trusted with their own government.” — Thomas Jefferson, 1789I will never put the news behind a paywall. If you want to support keeping it free for everyone else, there’s a paid option. That’s all it is. Get full access to The Rest of the World Report at www.restoftheworldreport.com/subscribe