🌍 The US shutdown and the world
Plus: This embassy got a good idea
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Today’s briefing: |
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Good morning Intriguer. Many global cities have a diplomatic spouses club. They host social events and raise a bit of cash for local charity — it’s a good way to help embassy families connect with each other, and with the local community.
But as with any club, big egos will occasionally make it more about, well, their big egos!
True story: there was once some kind of personal rivalry brewing in a local diplomatic spouse club, until one of the members tragically lost their diplomat partner in a car crash.
Egos in the spouse club initially hit pause on the pettiness for maybe a week to let this particular spouse grieve. But soon enough, and I kid you not, one of them eventually reached out and explained that, as this berieved person was no longer technically a diplomatic spouse, they were no longer allowed in the diplomatic spouse club!
Anyway, that’s the level of disfunction on my mind as we explore the global impacts of America’s latest shutdown.
Treaty of the day
Pukpuk
That’s the name (meaning ‘crocodile’) of the mutual defence pact Papua New Guinea’s cabinet just agreed to sign with neighbouring Australia. PNG unexpectedly postponed the treaty last month, amid escalating Western competition with China for regional influence.
The stall on Capitol Hill
Intrigue’s dispatch is coming to you this morning from inside a US base in Germany (opportune time to see friends abroad). Surrounded by the Alps, Washington feels a world away, yet all the local chatter has still been about the first US government shutdown in more than six years.
Between jokes that the US now has a ‘volunteer’ military (troops still show up but risk missing a paycheck), and assurances the commissary is still in fact open, our big question remains — should folks outside the US care about another shutdown?
Let’s answer that by timeframe, shall we? Most shutdowns have only lasted…
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🤏 Just a few days
If we see a repeat of that, the international impact might be pretty limited…
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Embassies and consulates remain open. Diplomats keep working, but stuff deemed non-essential gets paused (think cultural events and official LinkedIn updates — we definitely endorse declaring LinkedIn non-essential btw).
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Most immigration services run on a fee-based structure with support from the above diplomats, with as little as 1% of US Citizenship and Immigration Services workers hit by shutdown furloughs. So any impacts here should be limited.
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The markets don’t seem to be too bothered either, instead hitting fresh records, while Treasury’s Office of Foreign Assets Control is still beavering away delivering new hits on Iran’s weapons procurement channels.
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Oh, and if you have a banger trip booked to Vegas, TSA will still be there kindly instructing you to take that MacBook (with Intrigue stickers) out at security.
So, if this whole drama gets cleared up in a few days? Folks from Tokyo to Tunis can safely tune it right the heck out. But if it drags on for…
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📅 A full week?
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Paychecks start to go missing for those government workers above, and you’d be amazed how much productivity can drop when landlords come a-knocking.
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Customs workers, now processing ~$100M in tariffs a day, will mostly continue unaffected, meaning key trade lanes and terminals keep operating. But back-office furloughs might start to slow down some documentation and compliance.
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Tourists can still visit most national parks, but international numbers typically drop as pics of unattended trash-piles and restrooms go viral.
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And immigration services can start to feel the heat, though more via back-end functions like court hearings rather than front-facing services or enforcement.
So, as this thing drags through the first week, the impacts gradually start to accumulate, until you get yourself…
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🗓️ A prolonged shutdown
Three of the last four shutdowns (1995-96, 2013, 2018-19) have lasted weeks. The last one (2018-19) lasted five. If we see something like that again, you can expect…
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Markets will get the jitters, eying US treasury bonds for any offloading — that could reflect foreign governments questioning America’s safe-haven appeal, with (historically short-term) ripples onto reserves and rates. That’ll be exacerbated by…
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Economic data delays, as key data agencies are typically not classified as essential (even the SEC halts registrations). That means markets will start to fly blind amid a backlog of inflation, growth, retail, housing, and jobs reports. And…
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Of course, allies will start to feel it, whether it’s delays in defence export approvals or the powerful Committee on Foreign Investment in the US, or just a sense key US players in tariff talks are too busy yelling about the shutdown.
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And let’s not forget those foreign foes, who are already milking this for public confirmation that the US is a declining power beset by chaos and conflict.
So those jokes on American bases abroad will probably start sounding a whole lot less funny the longer this saga drags on.
Intrigue’s Take
You could look at all the past shutdowns, or the chaos around Covid, and conclude that things all tend to stabilise sooner or later. The US is resilient.
But that depends on whether this time is different. And there are reasons it might be:
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Polling all points to more polarisation, raising the prospects of a longer shutdown
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President Trump is warning of more hard-ball tactics like permanent layoffs
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Markets are now more data-dependant given all the international uncertainty
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And this is all playing out against weaker US credit (Moody’s downgrade), plus…
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There are now more wars around the world than last time.
Either way, the longer this drags on, the longer the rest of the world wonders what a divided and gridlocked America can still do for (or against) it.
Sound even smarter:
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The main disagreement on the Hill is around healthcare spending.
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Secretary of State Marco Rubio argues it’s “jeopardizing our national security.”
Meanwhile, elsewhere…
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🇺🇦 UKRAINE – Strike. Comment: The Kremlin will inevitably warn of consequences if the US supplies these arms, though Putin’s consequences will probably just look the same as when Ukraine got Western systems like ATACMS, Himars, Storm Shadow, and Scalp: ie, he’s bluffing. |
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🇨🇴 COLOMBIA – Be gone. Comment: Petro is facing several scandals back home, including not just a deteriorating security situation, but also an eldest son now facing even more corruption charges at an indictment hearing due within days. |
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🇪🇺 EUROPEAN UNION – Drone on. Comment: This is partly the point of Putin’s hybrid warfare: send a few drones, then watch the West squabble over any response, while border nations fret over allied reliability. It also distracts Europe from Putin’s own mounting woes (Russian analysts now assess 38% of its refining capacity is now offline, mostly due to Ukrainian hits). |
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🇵🇭 PHILIPPINES – Deadly quake. |
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🇰🇷 SOUTH KOREA – Makin’ it rain. Comment: Lee’s diagnosis is spot on. |
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🇦🇫 AFGHANISTAN – Reconnected. |
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🇧🇧 BARBADOS – No borders. Comment: It’s an interesting counterpoint to immigration debates playing out elsewhere, which have tended to lean away from integration lately. The relevant Barbados ambassador is crediting the neighbours’ cultural similarities for their willingness to open up further. |
Extra Intrigue
Meanwhile, in other worlds…
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Art: Italian authorities have confiscated 21 artworks from a Salvador Dali exhibition on suspicion that the paintings are fakes.
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History: Over 200 historical artefacts dating back hundreds of years have been found in a vulture nesting site in Spain.
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Science: The legendary Jane Goodall, the world’s foremost expert on chimpanzees, has passed away in Los Angeles, aged 91.
Diplomacy of the day
Shout out to Japan’s embassy in Delhi, which just launched its second-ever ‘CLICK!’ photo contest. The rules are simple: you must be an Indian national, and you must’ve snapped your pic in Japan between 1 March 2025 and 15 February 2026. Three lucky winners will then score some sweet sweet prizes from Japan’s Canon and JAL carrier.
The strategy is geeky, but it kills a few embassy birds with one stone, by…
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Incentivising travel to Japan
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Fostering more embassy links with folks in India, and
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Avoiding another boring institutional event.
Speaking of non-boring events, shoot us an email if you’d like to partner with Intrigue on a tailor-made event for your company or organisation!
Today’s poll
How long do you think this US government shutdown will last? |
Yesterday’s poll: Do you think social media has helped make politics more democratic?
🗣️ Yes, everyone gets a voice (24%)
📢 No, it's amplifying anti-democratic forces (70%)
✍️ Other (write in!) (6%)
Your two cents:
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📢 K.L.C: “Social media algorithms, controlled by companies, are also (very obviously) being manipulated.”
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✍️ T: “The good news is everyone gets a voice… The bad news is everyone gets a voice.”
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🗣️ F.G: “It's really hard to get away with stuff when all the world is watching all the time.”
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✍️ L.M: “Both, it's allowing more people to be heard than ever before at the same time that it is providing the tools for the media companies and governments to decide which messages get amplified.”