New Rules: UAE leaving OPEC, China-Africa's Zero Tariff & EU REACH revision paused #213
Plus All-Electric 10,000-Tonne Container Ship and Trump's new tariff on EU's EV cars
Four stories that matter this week:
On April 28, the UAE announced to leave OPEC and OPEC+ (the latter includes Russia) on May 1. OPEC was founded in 1960 to give leading oil producers collective control over global prices through the management of supply limits. Since 2020, the UAE and Saudi Arabia have clashed over oil policy, with tensions surfacing during OPEC+ summits in 2020 and 2021. While the UAE wanted to increase production post-pandemic, the Saudis pushed for lower output to sustain high prices. This divide stems from different economic needs: Saudi Arabia requires high oil revenue to fund its massive Vision 2030 projects, whereas the UAE’s more diversified economy is less reliant on crude prices.
The UAE's departure from the oil cartel means that Abu Dhabi no longer finds value in the Saudi-led group. As Energy Minister Suhail Al Mazrouei told the New York Times: “The world needs more energy. The world needs more resources, and [the] UAE wanted to be unconstrained by any groups.”
This shift may trigger a broader withdrawal from organizations like the Arab League, the Organization of Islamic Cooperation, or the Gulf Cooperation Council, as regional players prepare for, as experts call, “an unpredictable post-war landscape.”Some disbanded, and others flock together. On May 1, China extended a zero-tariff policy to all 53 African nations it has diplomatic relations with, becoming the first major economy to do so. The policy rolled out in two phases: 1/ the first phase, in December 2024, covered 33 least-developed African countries across 100% of tariff lines; 2/ the second, effective this week, extends to the remaining 20, including South Africa, Nigeria, and Egypt.
The motives are straightforward. Western markets are closing to China-made goods (US tariffs, EU countervailing duties on EVs, to name a few), and China needs alternative export channels. Meanwhile, Africa has been the fastest-growing destination for Chinese exports since 2018. At the same time, Africa needs industrial goods for its infrastructure buildout, and China is currently overproducing exactly those goods.
We wrote a deep analysis of this zero-tariff deal between China and Africa in our article “China-Africa Zero-Tariff Policy: What It Means For Supply Chain and Sourcing” and what it entails for the rest of the world.Some pushed forward, others deferred. On April 27, the European Commission decided NOT to propose a major revision of REACH (Registration, Evaluation, Authorisation, and Restriction of Chemicals), which aimed at tightening legal requirements on chemicals used in products in Europe. After six years of postponement, Environment Commissioner Jessika Roswall confirmed that “now is not the time” and that Europe is “at a point where we need certainty and predictability.” (indeed, as high production and energy costs due to the Iran War are hurting European manufacturers since February this year)
The REACH revision was first announced in 2020 as one of the most ambitious chemicals reforms of the European Green Deal, and it has been postponed on multiple occasions since. The Commission is now working on “a minimal reform of the current framework”. Roswall also said the upcoming EU PFAS restriction proposal could arrive by year-end. Until year-end, it’s still a long way to go, and anything could happen to this EU PFAS proposal, given the trend of deregulation in Europe since the beginning of 2026 (the first shot was the EU Omnibus Package). For teams who need to stay close to this development of the PFAS ban in the EU and other regions, check out our report “The 2030 PFAS-free Roadmap: Viable Alternatives” and prepare your industrial strategy.Speaking of strategy, our team published an essay called “Overcapacity is the Strategy”, covering China’s industrial overcapacity, and why the standard media’s reading of it misses the point. They keep quoting these numbers: nearly 24% of Chinese industrial firms operating at a net loss by the end of 2025, and manufacturers pricing products at a loss for 37+ consecutive months.
Yes, numbers don’t lie, but the interpretations often do. In this essay, we explained how China’s industrial system uses excess capacity to reduce component costs, accelerate product iteration, and stress-test industries through brutal competition, creating survivors across major industries (EV, steel, solar, batteries, waste-to-energy, etc.). For industrialists and investors, if you have to read one thing next week, read this essay. For others, it’s simply an important read for your view on manufacturing and supply chain.
Enjoy the rest of your weekend. Stay sharp, and keep building.
Anh & Tri
On behalf of the Tocco team
Help Us Find The People Worth Listening To
The industrial world is becoming harder to read. Geopolitics, energy, regulation, AI, materials, manufacturing, and supply chains are now one connected story.
That is why we are expanding our conversations through Long Game with Leon Ge (available on YouTube, Spotify, and Apple Podcasts) and Remake by Tocco.
If you are building, researching, designing, investing in, manufacturing, regulating, or explaining something that helps the rest of us understand this moment, we would like to hear from you.
You can nominate yourself, recommend someone else, or send us a topic we should cover.
A recent example: Leon’s conversation with Tu Minh Tri, Cambridge and LSE alumnus and young Vietnamese political scientist, on what is happening in the world and how to think more clearly in unstable times.
Have An Industrial Problem We Should Look At?
Before we open MatterBrief more widely, we want to hear what is already breaking, blocking, or becoming urgent in your world.
Supplier risk, material substitution, regulatory deadlines, cost shocks, sourcing uncertainty, manufacturing bottlenecks, geopolitical exposure, hard-to-find technologies - send us the problem.
We are building Tocco to help industrial teams make sense of exactly these questions, using our network, research workflows, data, and AI-assisted tools.
Further Readings · Material & Manufacturing News · 05.2026
(China 🇨🇳) China’s First All-Electric 10,000-Tonne Container Ship Enters Service. The Ning Yuan Dian Kun is now operating commercially on the Ningbo-Zhoushan to Jiaxing corridor. 742 TEU capacity, roughly 20 MWh battery power delivered through containerized battery packs, shore charging, plus battery swapping.
(Global 🌏) Less Than 1.7% of People Use 33% of Global Energy. A new article in Science breaks down the asymmetry. One third of final energy is consumed by only 1.7% of the population in the “excessive high energy consumption” category. While half of the world uses only 9%. Decent living standards require 13 to 18 GJ per capita per year. The average in Western Europe is about 100.
(USA - Europe 🇺🇸 🇪🇺) On May 1, President Trump announced plans to hike tariffs on EU-imported cars and trucks from 15% to 25%. He said at the White House, “We have a trade deal with the European Union. They were not adhering to it. So I raised the tariffs on cars and trucks to 25%, that’s billions of dollars coming into the United States, and it forces them to move their factory production much faster.” We previously discussed how tariffs didn’t work (at least, not the way President Trump wanted). Let’s see if this time will be different.
(Global 🎙️) In the latest episode of Long Game, Leon discusses his journey from a Chinese village with a $250 GDP per capita to travelling across 50+ countries, and his take on the extreme danger of algorithm-driven echo chambers, why democracies in declining economic cycles are vulnerable to populism, and societal-technological disruptions we are unprepared for. Available on YouTube, Spotify, and Apple Podcasts.