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President Joe Biden’s in Boston today, where he’ll be meeting Prince William at the John F. Kennedy Library and Museum, per his schedule.

BIDEN AND MACRON TWEAK THEIR WAY THROUGH STATE DINNER

There was a lot of literal and metaphorical kissing at the White House over the past 24 hours, as one would expect with a State Dinner for French allies. Whether they made up is still an open question.

The open wound of the Inflation Reduction Act, which prioritizes U.S. auto suppliers over a level playing field that including Europeans, was addressed but not closed.

Biden: “The U.S. makes no apology for that legislation but obviously there can be glitches. … There’s tweaks that we can make. When I wrote the legislation, it was never intended to exclude those who are cooperating with us.”

Macron: “It’s very clear that it was not the goal of the U.S., but the consequences are real.”

An EU-U.S. ministerial meeting scheduled for Monday, the trans-Atlantic Trade and Technology Council, is expected to address the subject.

Australian and U.S. ministers will also meet Dec. 6.

WHERE TO JOIN GLOBAL INSIDER 

Get your Davos party invite: POLITICO is headed back to the Schatzalp during the World Economic Forum. If you’d like to join us, Thursday, Jan. 19, for sizzling debate inside, followed by our freezing annual sled run down the mountain, RSVP here.  

What are you expecting from travel this holiday season? Hit and miss; highs with and some expensive lows? POLITICO invites you to debate the Travel Experience Redefined, with Sen. Jacky Rosen (D-Nev.), and a host of consumer and industry voices, Dec. 7, 8:30 a.m. ET. You can join online or at the Madison Hotel in D.C. Register here.

POLITICO will unveil its European POLITICO 28 power list at an annual gala dinner in Brussels, also Dec. 7. European Parliament President Roberta Metsola will be the keynote interview. You can watch online by registering here.

SOUTH AFRICA — RAMAPHOSA PRESIDENCY TEETERS: President Cyril Ramaphosa reportedly considered resigning yesterday, following a damning official report into the theft of millions of dollars of foreign currency from his family farm. The report concluded Ramaphosa committed “serious violations” of South Africa’s constitution, his oath of office and anti-corruption laws.

Ramaphosa could face impeachment in parliament, or be told to go by the ruling ANC party’s executive committee, which is meeting today.

CANADA— BEIJING URGED TO CLOSE POLICE OPERATIONS ON CANADIAN SOIL: That’ll do it! Canada has issued a “cease and desist” warning to China over police stations it has illegally established in the country, and ministers have summoned Beijing’s ambassador for meetings following reports of the police network.

The tension in Canada followed October revelations of dozens of Chinese police stations operating in Europe.

THE EU HAS A SPY PROBLEM — HERE’S WHY IT’S SO DIFFICULT TO CATCH THEM: The walls have ears in Brussels. The spies: They’re sipping warm wine next to you at think tank events and posing questions at the press conferences. And they’re often doing it with the protection of a diplomatic passport.

Led by Barbara Moens, a team of POLITICO reporters including Global Insider investigated why it’s so hard to get a grip on the problem, starting with the lack of an EU intelligence agency, or even an umbrella organization to coordinate the bloc’s 27 national spy services — unlike, say, for national police forces. Full story.

Belgium has upped its counterintelligence game — but it’s still a minnow swimming in a sea of spies. As many as one in five of the Chinese journalists working in Brussels are suspected to be intelligence officers, according to the Belgian security services.

“It’s a very dangerous world out there,” a former senior U.S. intelligence official said, looking over his shoulder in a popular Brussels coffee bar. “Y’all just didn’t realize how careful you ought to be.”

IRAN — LICENSE TO KILL: POLITICO’s Matthew Karnitschnig explains how Europe lets Iran and Russia get away with murder. Authoritarian assassination plots don’t often succeed, but the countries behind them can be sure of one thing: Europe won’t make them pay for trying.

The Washington Post reported Thursday on Iran’s increased efforts to kidnap and kill government officials, journalists and activists around the world. Iran relies heavily on proxies to carry out its plans, offering large sums of money to criminals for murder-for-hire schemes.

A plot to kill former Secretary of State Mike Pompeo failed, but one plot is bound to succeed sometime, officials told the Post.

XI AND MICHEL 

Over in Beijing, Charles Michel, who represents the 27 EU heads of state or government, met Xi Jinping Thursday. The pair seemed to mostly talk across each other according to respective readouts of the meeting, before Michel was left to address reporters on his own.

The EU side: “President Michel underlined that the EU counts on China, as a permanent member of the U.N. Security Council, to call on Russia to respect the core principles of the U.N. Charter and contribute to ending Russia’s brutal destruction and occupation” of Ukraine, per a canned statement from the EU.

China’s view: Ukraine isn’t one of China’s top issues to address between the two power centers, POLITICO’s Stuart Lau wrote Global Insider. Beijing insisted it has “no fundamental strategic differences and conflicts” with Brussels, is not a rival to be decoupled from, invites Europeans to come and invest, and wants to work with Europe to shore up the U.N. system (somehow without addressing Europe’s point on Russia).

GLOBAL RANKINGS CORNER 

DEMOCRACY STILL DECLINING GLOBALLY: The International Institute for Democracy and Electoral Assistance, pinpoints efforts to undermine credible election results as the latest front line in democracy decline, in a new report.

The Stockholm-based electoral think tank said widespread disillusionment among youth over political parties will be a growing structural problem in both established and emerging democracies. Secretary General Kevin Casas-Zamora said that a necessary part of the response from democratic leaders is to “show their citizens that they can forge new, innovative social contracts that bind people together rather than divide them."

GLOBAL ECONOMIC OUTLOOK: The Institute of International Finance forecasts global growth of 1.2 percent in 2023 in a new report, “which is as weak as the 2009 Great Recession.” The group said the GDP numbers will depend principally on the trajectory of the war in Ukraine: “Our base case is that fighting drags on into 2024, given that the conflict is ‘existential’ for (Russian President Vladimir) Putin.”

“Everyone seems to agree that global GDP growth will keep slowing, and that inflation will crest but remain sticky. Central banks will keep tightening, albeit not quite so quickly,” writes FT’s Bryce Elder, who highlighted the risk of “a Fed-induced recession.”

The most recent inflation data in the U.S. and euro area, suggested inflation may have peaked.

GLOBAL SUSTAINABILITY COMPETITIVENESS RANKING: Scandinavian countries are the closest to achieving sustainable economies, according to a new ranking by SolAbility, a Seoul- and Zurich-based consulting firm, of performance on sustainability metrics. The group bases its analysis on areas including use of physical resources, intellectual capital, social cohesion and governance.

The U.S. is a distant 30th place — right above China. The worldwide average score is down compared to 2021. SolAbility defines sustainable competitiveness as "the ability to generate and sustain inclusive wealth without diminishing the future capability of sustaining or increasing current wealth levels."

WHO’S AT RISK OF A NEW MASS KILLING? That’s not a subheading you want to read, is it? Thanks to the Early Warning Project, we have an answer, via an assessment of risks in 162 countries calculated by the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum and Dartmouth College.

The top five countries by estimated risk of a new mass killing are Pakistan, Yemen, Myanmar, Chad and Ethiopia.

The report authors set the threshold for a new mass killing as when a “new perpetrator group emerges and kills more than 1,000 civilians of a specific group, or an existing perpetrator group begins targeting a new group of civilians.” The perpetrators could be state or non-state actors.

Under that definition, Syria does not end up near the top of the list though the Assad regime’s crimes are similarly horrific compared to other entries on the list.

Zimbabwe is, relatively speaking, on the worst trajectory: It’s ranked as the 14th riskiest country in this context, up 43 spots from the ranking released a year ago.

KLEPTOWATCH

U.S. MOVES TO SEIZE $150 MILLION RUSSIAN-OWNED YACHT: But United Arab Emirates authorities are not cooperating. At least 38 business people or officials with ties to the Russian president own homes in Dubai that are collectively valued at more than $314 million, according to the Center for Advanced Defense Studies. Five of those owners are under U.S. sanctions.

CRYPTO MOVES: All the crypto attention has been on disgraced FTX founder Sam Bankman-Fried in recent days — including because he managed to get applause for his appearance at a New York event earlier this week.

Much less attention went to New York’s Gov. Kathy Hochul signing into law a two-year moratorium on reviving fossil-fuel power plants for crypto mining — a bill the industry spent millions trying to kill.

That makes New York a global trendsetter in putting limits on the most energy-intensive form of crypto-mining, known as proof-of-work mining, which the White House has described as a climate problem. China banned the practice in 2021.

Meanwhile, Robin Vince, CEO of America’s oldest bank, BNY Mellon, is out today arguing for a "reset of the crypto opportunity." Vince thinks “disruptive behavior by some” should not spoil the crypto party for all. BNY Mellon was the first of the big traditional banks to launch a crypto custody service, in October.

WHEN DINNER BECOMES A MEMORIAL: The Chinese Embassy in D.C. was forced to cancel a long-awaited culinary event Wednesday, following the death of former President Jiang Zemin, according to an email seen by Global Insider.

China’s embassy chefs Xianlong Yang, Yuechao Zhao and Song Lin won the judges’ choice award at the 2022 Embassy Chef Challenge at inaugural Washington International City Food Festival, beating out 38 other embassies.

The venue for the ticketed dinner, which included some paying guests, was hastily turned into a memorial space for Jiang.

NEW YORK — IF YOU CAN PAY IT THERE, YOU CAN PAY IT ANYWHERE: Singapore is the most expensive city to live in — for the eighth time in 10 years — sharing the top spot with New York City this year, according to the latest Worldwide Cost of Living survey of 172 cities from the Economist Intelligence Unit. Cities in Japan and South Korea became relatively cheaper, while the Russian cities of Moscow and St. Petersburg rose by 88 and 70 places respectively.

MOVES

Foley & Lardner has rehired Manuel Rocha, former U.S. ambassador to Bolivia, to the firm’s Miami office as a senior international business advisor. Rocha previously worked with Foley from 2009 to 2012 and served in the White House during the Clinton administration as the National Security Council director for Inter-American affairs.

“China’s Underestimated Leader: The Legacy of Jiang Zemin,” by George Washington University Professor David Shambaugh. Jiang was slated to be a transitional leader after the 1989 Tiananmen Square debacle, but remained in top posts until 2004, when he gave up his post chairing China’s Central Military Commission, and in clearing the rise of Xi in 2007.

Thanks to editor Heidi Vogt and producer Hannah Farrow.

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