Bolivia Braces for Renewed Unrest as IMF Loan Arrangement Advances

Risk Outlook: September 24, 2026

Sep 24, 2026

Welcome to the Stepwise Risk Outlook, which highlights and contextualizes over-the-horizon developments in key regions of the world and industries of the global market. Today’s featured deep dive by Elton Smole examines Bolivia’s loan agreement with the IMF and the potential for renewed unrest.

Bolivia Braces for Renewed Unrest as IMF Loan Arrangement Advances

By Elton Smole

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Bolivia’s Congress approved a $1.9 billion loan agreement with the International Monetary Fund (IMF) on Friday, giving conservative President Rodrigo Paz a major victory but raising the risk of renewed unrest. The loan’s conditions include the elimination of fuel subsidies, and pump prices rose 83% after the government issued Supreme Decree 5716 on Saturday, eliminating a diesel subsidy that Paz said cost $55 million per week. Unions responded with a national assembly to organize opposition to the loan agreement, setting the stage for a continuation of nationwide roadblocks that have paralyzed the country twice over the past year.

Paz, who took office last November after nearly two decades of socialist rule by Evo Morales’s Movement for Socialism (MAS) party, has aligned Bolivia with the Trump administration. He has moved to open the country to foreign investment, and has so far managed to push through sweeping economic reforms while forcefully quelling domestic unrest. After months of road blockades by unions, farmers, and supporters of Morales, Paz deployed security forces to clear the blockades under a state of emergency, which Bolivia’s Congress recently extended from September 17 to December 17. With international support, Paz has demonstrated his ability to withstand domestic pressures and will continue his stronghanded approach as the country braces for another wave of unrest.

In today’s full analysis:

Economic Reforms Open the Door to Foreign Investment
Road Blockades, an Early Test for Paz, Set to Continue
Reforms March Ahead, Despite Risks of Unrest

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Europe

ICYMI: The EU and the Philippines reached a “substantial agreement” in trade negotiations on Tuesday. The framework of a free trade agreement (FTA) appears to be the removal of 94% of tariff lines, including European machinery and Filipino agrifood exports; the opening of the Philippines’ procurement market; partial harmonization of sanitary and phytosanitary rules on food products; rules facilitating digital trade, including data transfers; and an ambition to facilitate European investment in sustainable energy and critical mineral projects. An FTA with the Philippines will likely expand the volume of bilateral trade, which was already €17.6 billion in 2025.

An EU-Philippines FTA bolsters the bloc’s diversification from the US and China. The EU continues to hold fast to the WTO-backed liberalized trading order, as reflected by the EU’s progress in advancing FTAs with the Mercosur bloc, Australia, and India in the past couple of years. The EU will be especially interested in the Philippines’ critical mineral reserves, including copper, nickel, and cobalt.

Read More: European Commission, AP, Politico

Middle East

President Trump’s Board of Peace unveiled a $2.45 billion recovery plan for Gaza. The 66-project plan, the text of which has not been publicly released, was announced at a meeting of the multinational board on the sidelines of UNGA in New York this week. The plan sets a six-month roadmap for the implementation of early postwar reconstruction of Gaza, where an estimated 80% of all structures have been destroyed.

Optimism for the plan is muted given that it does not address the lack of progress on the peace plan or, yet, the makeup of a promised international stabilization force. Progress on last year’s Israel-Hamas peace deal has stalled for months, with Israel and Hamas at odds over the timeline for Hamas to disarm and Israel to withdraw, and clashes and strikes are common. Early reporting on the plan indicated that details about standing up a government and the makeup of a long-awaited multinational stabilization force would be included, but early details have not emerged. The deal will be good for Gaza if it can be implemented, but there is no clear way to do that as yet.

Read More: Axios, BBC, International Crisis Group

Asia-Pacific

Today US President Donald Trump is hosting Chinese President Xi Jinping at the White House as part of a three-day summit. After a lavish welcome ceremony including military bands and a flyover of US military jets, the pair are set to cover a range of issues in bilateral talks. One central topic of discussion will be AI. US Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent indicated that China was eager to engage with the US on AI issues, including coordination on identifying risks from rogue AI agents or non-state actors, and would likely agree to a national security notification system for AI risks. However, Trump said he does not expect that the talks will result in the imposition of concrete guardrails on AI development.

Read More: New York Times [paywall], CBS, CNN, Bloomberg [paywall]

Americas

The United States and 14 regional partners announced new cooperation measures under the Shield of the Americas initiative. In the Joint Statement on Defending Hemispheric Sovereignty, released Tuesday, the countries commit to deeper cooperation on economic security and countering transnational criminal organizations. Participating governments, including Argentina, Bolivia, Chile, Colombia, Ecuador and Peru, pledged greater intelligence sharing and security cooperation, while also exploring investment screening, protecting critical-mineral supply chains and promoting trusted suppliers for digital infrastructure. The initiative is organized around three pillars: economic cooperation, anti-crime sanctions coordination and multilateral engagement.

The initiative’s first joint action will target 24 narco-terrorist organizations. The list includes MS-13, Tren de Aragua, the Sinaloa and Jalisco New Generation cartels, Colombia’s ELN and FARC dissident groups, and several Brazilian and Ecuadorian criminal organizations. Participating governments intend to pursue measures including asset freezes, visa and immigration restrictions, and penalties for individuals who knowingly provide material support to the groups. They also plan to seek consultations through the Organization of American States under the Rio Treaty, potentially providing a framework for broader collective action.

Geoeconomics

The US and China have agreed to extend their trade truce through January 10, 2027, giving negotiators two additional months to pursue a broader agreement. Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent announced the extension on September 23 after meeting with Chinese Vice Premier He Lifeng. The agreement postpones the November 10 expiration of the Busan framework, which paired US tariff relief with Chinese commitments to ease critical-mineral export restrictions and purchase American agricultural goods. Negotiators are also discussing tariff reductions on roughly $30 billion in non-sensitive goods, alongside financial services and agricultural purchases. Bessent said it remained unclear whether a broader deal could be completed by the new deadline.

The extension gives businesses more time to plan shipments, but implementation problems continue to undermine the truce. Bessent said China was meeting its commitment to purchase 25 million tons of US soybeans but lagging on other agricultural purchases, while US officials have also reported shortfalls in rare-earth deliveries. Deeper disagreements also remain: Washington wants Beijing to reduce industrial subsidies and reliance on export-led growth, while China seeks relief from US restrictions on sensitive technologies.

Read More: Reuters [paywall], White House, South China Morning Post [paywall], CSIS

Energy

Tankers are becoming a bottleneck in global energy supplies. The war in the Middle East has created shortages in Very Large Crude Carriers (VLCCs), as those ships must take slower, less efficient routes, thereby limiting their availability. The going rate to hire a supertanker from the Middle East to China has risen more than 40-fold this year, and the cost of shipping oil from Brazil to China has likewise spiked. The issue has been exacerbated by large numbers of ships waiting in the Middle East to load their cargoes. The spiking shipping costs and the lack of availability are driving down the amount of oil refineries can access and afford.

The tanker shortage is compounding with other issues affecting energy supplies. Strikes against Russian and Middle Eastern energy infrastructure have been continuing, such as the recent damage to a Saudi pipeline, and are acting as another damper on global supplies. Global refining capacity has also suffered from the drops in diesel exports from both Russia and the Middle East.

Read More: Financial Times [paywall], Wall Street Journal [paywall], Wall Street Journal [paywall]

Transnational Crime & Corruption

A hacking group claimed to have stolen the personal information of thousands of FBI employees as well as sensitive investigative files. The group, ShinyHunters, said it had exploited a previously unknown bug in Oracle’s PeopleSoft human resources and financial software to access FBI systems. Representatives from the group provided multiple media outlets with samples of the stolen data, which included the names, titles, home addresses, phone numbers, and medical information of thousands of FBI employees, job applicants, and their spouses.

ShinyHunters threatened to release or sell the data and has been accused of extortion in the past. An FBI advisory earlier this year alleged that ShinyHunters frequently demanded ransom payments from victims of its hacks. The group disputed the FBI’s allegations and claimed to not be financially motivated, demanding that the FBI advisory be taken down in exchange for deleting the stolen data.

The hack could expose FBI investigators working on sensitive anti-terrorism and national security-related initiatives. The data sample released to news media included references to the FBI working on counterespionage initiatives and telecommunications intercept operations not previously publicly disclosed by the bureau.

Read More: 404 Media, Reuters [paywall], New York Times [paywall]