Afghanistan, U.S.-China relations, and Wyoming: 3 big politics stories this week

This week in politics, Yahoo Finance will be watching for reactions to the one-year anniversary of the United States' withdrawal from Afghanistan and its potential to expose President Joe Biden to criticism.

We'll also be monitoring U.S.-China relations as a bipartisan group of lawmakers visits Taiwan amid continued economic tensions with Beijing. And finally, all eyes are on the state of Wyoming this week as U.S. Rep. Liz Cheney fends off a primary challenge from Trump-backed Harriet Hageman.

Here's more on the three biggest political stories this week:

Afghanistan anniversary

This week marks the one-year anniversary of America's withdrawal from Afghanistan. President Biden has garnered sharp bipartisan criticism for his handling of the withdrawal from lawmakers, including Rep. Mike McCaul (R-Texas) and Adam Schiff (D-Calif.).

"There are many sins, if you will," McCaul told Margaret Brennan on CBS News' "Face the Nation. ""There was a complete lack and failure to plan. There was no plan, and it was — there was no plan executed."

McCaul, the top Republican on the House Foreign Affairs Committee, is expected to release a report this week assessing the withdrawal and deeming it a "strategic failure."

House Intelligence Committee chairman Adam Schiff (D-Calif.) also criticized how the withdrawal was handled, noting in an interview with CBS News that many Americans died during the months-long withdrawal and that the U.S. is still trying to help people escape Afghanistan.

"But I do think that we have demonstrated, the administration has demonstrated with the killing of Zawahiri, the number two in Al-Qaeda under Bin Laden," he added, "that it retains the capability, much as it said it would a year later to go after those that threaten the country wherever they may be, in this case, the heart of Kabul."

U.S.-China relations

Just one week after House Speaker Nancy Pelosi's historic visit to Taiwan, a new bipartisan group of lawmakers has arrived on the island as China continues its military exercises in the Taiwan Strait. The group is being led by Sen. Ed Markey (D-Mass.), who is chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations subcommittee that oversees international cybersecurity in the Indo-Pacific region. Also on the trip: Reps. John Garamendi (D-Calif.), Don Beyer (D-Virginia), Alan Lowenthal (D-Calif.), and Rep. Aumua Amata Coleman Radewagen, a Republican delegate from American Samoa.

On the economic front, five Chinese companies will delist from the New York Stock Exchange: China Life Insurance, PetroChina, China Petroleum & Chemical, Aluminum Corp. of China and Sinopec Shanghai Petrochemical, as Bloomberg reported over the weekend. The question now becomes whether additional China companies will delist or the remaining companies will become more transparent with U.S. regulators.

And so much for Pelosi's visit hurting Biden's geopolitics. If anything, it might have provided an opening for Biden to meet with President Xi Jinping face-to-face in November during Xi's first international travel in nearly three years, as the Wall Street Journal reported. Biden's "Asia tsar" Kurt Campbell told reporters last week that Biden and Xi discussed the possibility of a face-to-face meeting during their recent telephone call, according to The Guardian. It would no doubt be one of the highest profile international trips for Biden just as the G-20 meetings take shape the week following the midterm elections.

Wyoming

Perhaps there will be no more closely watched primary than Rep. Liz Cheney's fight on Tuesday evening. The race between Trump-backed Harriet Hageman and the incumbent Rep. Liz Cheney has provided more political drama than an episode of "Yellowstone." While polls suggest that Hageman should be able to carry out a victory, the biggest unknown is whether Cheney will be able to convince Democratic voters to switch parties and show up to vote for her — all while mobilizing independent voters.

It's a long shot, but Cheney clearly has larger ambitions. A loss in the primary would only fuel speculation about her plans on the national stage heading into 2024. She would also become the de facto leader of the never Trump movement. And as one Republican donor recently told me, she would become the leader of conservatives who fled the party during Trump's ascent. While much of the media's obsession in Trump coverage has been on "the Trump base," Cheney will look to position her coalition as a base of its own — deeply worried about America's positioning on the world stage; disgusted by the suffocating grip fringe politicians have on America's two-party system; and fiscally conservative.

Beyond Wyoming, Alaska's GOP primary will be fascinating to watch on Tuesday, too. Sen. Lisa Murkowski has emerged as one of the most influential moderate conservatives on the national stage — and a key vote in virtually every upper chamber decision of consequence. She faces a MAGA-backed challenger Kelly Tshibaka. But Alaska's ranked-choice voting primary system means that Murkowski or Tshibaka only has to finish in the top four slots to advance to the general election, where voters will rank-vote their choices. Alaska's primary process is proving to be a case study in serving as a check and a balance against the hyper-polarization trend in the two party system.

Kevin Cirilli is a Yahoo Finance contributor. He is a senior media fellow at both the Krach Institute for Tech Diplomacy at Purdue and the Atlantic Council in the Global China Hub. Follow him on LinkedIn.

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