Ever heard that a Ukrainian president's Lansky may be joining as well?
Yeah, there's been a lot of speculation about whether Zelinsky would come here
in person. Bloomberg News is confirming through
anonymous sources at this point that he perhaps is on his way, he would be then
participating in person here where Osama in some last minute added sessions on
Ukraine on Sunday. Again, we have not gotten official
confirmation from the host country being Japan.
But the speculation and the sources are telling us is that Vladimir Zelinsky is
going to be here at the G7. Then again, that will help punctuate the
G7 ISE unity, if you will, on some of the sanctions and tightening of
sanctions and adding of new sanctions against Russia and its ability to
continue to wage war in Ukraine.
Obviously, now Bloomberg News is also learning from sources that the G7 has
essentially ruled out imposing it. All right.
All out ban on Russian exports, instead deciding to essentially, you know, make
certain exemptions available. So they were they were talking about
flipping it around and banning all exports and then allowing certain
exemptions. But they're going to keep this existing
round of sanctions and other sanctions. And then on a case by case basis, allow
certain exports to continue. So that is the latest one right now.
Again, they're trying to close some loopholes to allow Russia to evade the
current round of sanctions. So we're we're just looking at some of
the formalities right now. So I'm just looking at the live feed
where we're seeing some ceremonies obviously around at the Peace Memorial
Park across the street from where we are right now.
And there's the end of the feed. And again, it's a poignant reminder with
the atomic bomb dome here in Hiroshima of 78 years ago, where the first nuclear
weapon was obviously detonated at a time when Rahm Emanuel, the Japanese, the
U.S. ambassador to Japan, has been talking
about Vladimir Putin's cavalier threat of potentially using nuclear weapons in
Ukraine. Japan is what I refer to as the supply
chain of the supply chain. There are about 18, 19 companies here in
Japan that operate 40, 75 to 80 percent of market share worldwide in their
space. You cannot produce semiconductor without
a Japanese company involved in it, if not multiple companies.
Well, that that obviously is the wrong sound bite.
That was a sound bite from Rahm Emanuel when he was talking about microns
investment into Japan and diversifying and securing supply chains for chips
into Japan. The other reference I was talking about
was, again, where he talked about the Vladimir Putin's cavalier attitude
towards nuclear weapons. Why that is so pointed being that with
the G7 hosted in what's called Japan's peace city.
Steve, when we look at, you know, what they're doing, that essentially they're
in a bit of a row about how they can stop gemstones being taken into Europe
and particularly in other places had a total ban on gemstones being put on the
table that's been rejected by the EU. But they're looking at what they can do
to restrict trade here. In fact, Charles Michel said Russian
diamonds are not forever anyway. Steve, so what they're doing is looking
for further ways of, I suppose, cornering Russia, if you will, and
trying really to the moment to squeeze Russia further without perhaps resorting
to sanctions as the only policy. Yeah, that's right.
I mean, Janet Yellen last week in NIKKEI talked about closing those loopholes
that Russia's been able to evade the sanctions and get much needed
technologies and other products to continue to wage its war in Ukraine.
And the G7 is discussing a number of other issues, obviously, to cut that
off. They're talking about cutting off about
7, 70 entities from Russia and other countries receiving U.S.
exports by adding them to the Commerce Department's export blacklist, as well
as close a bunch of of those other loopholes.
So that's going to be something high on the agenda over the next couple of days
here as the G-7 leaders summit kicks off today and runs through the weekend.