[Tyler Cowen] Renaming NAFTA just might work

The Trump administration’s renegotiation of NAFTA is decidedly underwhelming, the product of a toxic process that made only a modest modification of the original deal. The administration’s renaming of NAFTA, however -- it will henceforth be known as the USMCA, for the US-Mexico-Canada Agreement -- could prove to be a stroke of political and marketing genius.　Names really matter, and politicians should give as much thought to them as corporations do. Amazon, Google and Apple, for instance, have b

Oct. 9, 2018

[David Cay Johnston] Allegations of years of tax dodges add to an awful truth -- the president as ‘financial vampire’

Americans were confronted Tuesday with a profound problem, one that challenges our commitment to accountable democratic government and justice. It is an awful truth that we must face now that the New York Times has published a richly documented, 14,000-word expose alleging decades of deeply corrupt Trump family finances.After 18 months of interviewing people who worked for or with the Trump family and scrutinizing more than 100,000 documents, the newspaper painted a portrait “unprecedented in sc

Oct. 9, 2018

[Noah Smith] Let immigrants save America’s struggling cities

Immigrants who want to work in the US can be sponsored either by individuals -- usually family members -- or companies. Regional immigration is a proposed variation on this system, in which a region -- probably a city, but perhaps a county or state -- sponsors an immigrant for a green card or work visa. It’s an idea that’s been tossed around in policy circles as a way to revive “old industrial cities that have been hollowed out.”I used to be against regional immigration. The reason is that if re

Oct. 9, 2018

[David Ignatius] Trump’s bullying tactics with Iran could backfire

President Donald Trump seems convinced that he has found the formula for success in foreign policy: Bully your adversaries, sanction them, squeeze them -- and then flatter them and make a deal. Trump followed this approach with North Korea and he got a showy summit meeting in Singapore in June with Kim Jong-un and a pledge -- encouraging but so far undelivered -- for denuclearization. He adopted the hard-talk/sweet-talk tactics with Mexico and, eventually, after a long pout, with Canada, and he

Oct. 8, 2018

[Dakota L. Wood] Shrinking and overworked US military can barely pass inspection

We place a lot of demands on our fine US military, and the good news is -- at home and in many places around the world -- it’s meeting those demands.Now the bad news: We’re wearing it out. After 17 years of continuous combat operations, it’s in desperate need of a rebuild.To be sure, the US Congress recently provided some welcome additional funding. That money has enabled the services to make progress in reducing maintenance backlogs, replenishing depleted inventories of repair parts and munitio

Oct. 7, 2018

[Helmut K. Anheier] 100 years of ineptitude

The global financial and economic crisis that began in 2008 was the greatest economic stress test since the Great Depression, and the greatest challenge to social and political systems since World War II. It not only put financial markets and currencies at risk, it also exposed serious regulatory and governance shortcomings that have yet to be fully addressed.In fact, the 2008 crisis will most likely be remembered as a watershed moment, but not because it led to reforms that strengthened economi

Oct. 7, 2018

[Leonid Bershidsky] No, Mr. Putin, bungled spying won‘t blow over　

The latest failures of Russia’s military intelligence service, commonly known as the GRU, expose a major flaw in President Vladimir Putin’s habitual way of dealing with public fiascos: He mistakenly believes the uproar will blow over.Dutch Prime Minister Mark Rutte and his British counterpart Theresa May said Thursday that the GRU had tried to hack the Organization for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons in The Hague, which was testing the substance used to poison ex-spy Sergei Skripal and his d

Oct. 7, 2018

[Peter R. Orszag] Why Americans are retiring later

Something significant is happening in Social Security in the US: People are retiring and taking their benefits later. These trends are at least in part the consequence of policy changes made in the early 1980s that were purposefully delayed in their implementation. Consider this: In 1997, 57 percent of US men claiming their retirement benefits under Social Security were 62, the earliest age at which one can do so. By 2017, that share had dropped to 34 percent because more people elected to put o

Oct. 4, 2018

[Pankaj Mishra] China would be smart to heed Asia’s wise man

Visiting Beijing in August, Mahathir Mohamad, Malaysia’s recently elected prime minister, startled his hosts by boldly warning against a “new version of colonialism.” He was referring to China’s Belt and Road Initiative, the trillion-dollar infrastructure plan that aims to put the People’s Republic at the heart of a global commercial web.Mahathir’s invocation of colonialism could only have wounded leaders in Beijing, for the Chinese nation-state has built its self-image on anti-colonialist rheto

Oct. 3, 2018

[Noah Smith] Why millennials are sour on economy

As Americans become more negative about the state of their society, a number of people have tried to cheer them up by reminding them of the improvements made, both inside their society and out. The Cato Institute’s Human Progress project puts out a steady stream of data about improved living standards and social indicators in the US and around the world. Psychologist Steven Pinker writes popular books about the topic. Technologists trumpet the impressive range of new goods that people can buy, w

Oct. 3, 2018

[Tyler Cowen] Six broader insights from Kavanaugh saga so far

Most news analyses are written by experts. But sometimes an event is of such importance that it is worth sampling some outsiders, and so I would like to consider last week’s Senate testimony from Christine Blasey Ford and Brett Kavanaugh. I don’t know who “Squi” is, my day job stopped me from watching and I don’t recall the possible names of the cited drinking games. Still, the broader saga has made a big impression on me. Stepping back from the most partisan elements of the day-to-day, I see th

Oct. 3, 2018