In The News

League of Nationalists

November 25, 2016
Despite living in a world that shares numerous global challenges, voters increasingly place their trust in a new nationalism. Some are unnerved by lost jobs and blame an increasing number of foreign-born living in their midst. Others long for self-reliance. “All societies draw on nationalism of one sort or another to define relations between the state, the citizen and the outside world,” notes...

The Losers of Deglobalization

Pierpaolo Barbieri November 22, 2016
Brexit and Donald Trump’s presidency both rode to success on a wave of nationalistic fervor, based on the view that globalization on balance harms the UK and the US. Yet the histories of those countries demonstrate that economic protectionism can lead to political instability and worse, total war. In the 1930s, devaluation of British and American currencies, in the aim of making their own goods...

Donald Trump and the Coming Test of International Order

Uri Friedman November 21, 2016
Foreign policy experts suggest that Trump may pose a test to the post-WWII international order, led by the United States and shaped by alliances, an open economy and support for liberal institutions. For seven decades, Republican and Democratic administrations argued in favor such an order and assumed that the consequences of collapse would be enormous. Uri Friedman interviews several experts for...

Goodbye Globalization

Matt Phillips November 16, 2016
The US president-elect plans to increase jobs by ending trade that does not benefit the United States. That assumes the US is self-sufficient and that other countries might go along. Instead, the other countries, especially China as the world’s largest market and soon to be largest economy, will retaliate while possibly continuing trade with one another. Meanwhile, US prices will soar and quality...

Trump Spells End of Normality for Europe

Melanie Amann, Horand Knaup, Martin Knobbe, Peter Müller, Ralf Neukirch, René Pfister, Michael Sauga and Christoph Schult November 14, 2016
Donald Trump vowed to upend the establishment. German leaders also expect the next US president to upend European politics, fueling populist parties and encouraging fragmentation of the European Union as right-wing politicians lure working-class voters with big promises of restoring jobs by ending immigration. German-US relations enter unknown territory. “Will the next US president become the...

What the Tea Party Tells Us About the Trump Presidency

Vanessa Williamson November 9, 2016
The Tea Party movement foreshadowed Donald Trump’s winning the US presidential race. Vanessa Williamson, writing for Brookings, describes the grassroots activists as a coalition of older, white conservatives and a conservative media infrastructure funded by ideologue billionaires who oppose taxes and regulations. “Donald Trump was willing to address immigration in terms substantially more extreme...

Europe Worries Portugal Is Prone to a Debt-Crisis Relapse

Patricia Kowsmann October 26, 2016
Portugal’s economic weakness is part of a long string of bad news for the European Union, which has been hit by a rising tide of euroscepticism. Earlier in October, Portugal’s central bank predicted a decline in investment in the country. The International Monetary Fund has asserted that this decline is due to the government’s turn away from austerity, including high levels of public and private...