In his historic speech in Davos in January, Canadian Prime Minister Mark Carney urged middle powers to confront an increasingly harsh geopolitical reality by joining forces to forge a “third path” between kowtowing to great-power pressure and going it alone.
In 2010, a Greek sovereign-debt crisis roiled world financial markets. Now, France threatens to do the same, but on a larger scale. Not only is its public debt-to-GDP ratio edging up toward that of Greece on the eve of its crisis, but the French political system seems unwilling or unable to address the country’s gaping fiscal deficit.
CAMBRIDGE—The US budget situation is increasingly reminiscent of a train hurtling along a winding mountain track. No one wants to slow down, for fear of falling behind schedule and losing their jobs. But even if the train does not plunge into the abyss, it is worth asking: why keep driving it at full speed? Despite robust economic growth, the federal budget deficit has reached almost 6 per cent of GDP. However, slowing the train down is clearly not part of President Donald Trump’s plans.
On September 6, the far-right Alternative für Deutschland (AfD) won 43.8% of the vote in the German federal state of Saxony-Anhalt, falling just short of an absolute majority. For the first time since the founding of the Federal Republic, an openly ethnonationalist (indeed, racist) party, campaigning on a political platform that is ideologically adjacent to National Socialism, is close to gaining government power.
The world must now face up to the fact that the increase in average global temperatures will surpass 1.5° Celsius, the more ambitious of the 2015 Paris climate agreement’s targets. That means devising a plan for managing the consequences—by increasing our focus on adaptation, loss and damage, and geoengineering—while redoubling our efforts to cut greenhouse-gas (GHG) emissions.
Germany’s far right has won again, capturing the largest share of the vote in the northeastern state of Mecklenburg-Vorpommern, as it did in Saxony-Anhalt earlier this month.
The decision by the United States and Israel to go to war against Iran is proving to be a turning point in the global balance of power, leaving both the US and China weaker than before. No one in Europe should cheer that, because Europe’s current model is ill-suited to protect itself in the dangerous world of weak powers.
When the European Union determines which assets are strategic, it tends to focus on those where a rival already dominates production (or could one day). That is why we hear so much about semiconductors, batteries, rare earths, and hydrogen. But we almost never hear about an EU asset that cannot be replicated elsewhere: Europe’s soil.
NEW YORK—The International Monetary Fund (IMF) is conducting a ‘Review of Programme Design and Conditions’ (ROC). This is the first major assessment of the Fund’s programmes since 2019, that is, from before the Covid-19 pandemic.
As President Donald Trump plunges the United States into another reckless trade war—this time with neighboring Canada, one of its largest trading partners, and a NATO ally—the irony is hard to miss. Despite being the main architect and beneficiary of the multilateral trading system since 1945, the US under Trump has recast itself—at least rhetorically—as the victim of an allegedly unfair economic order.
US President Donald Trump has once again published a map on which the American flag covers not only the United States but also many other countries, including Canada, Cuba, Greenland and Mexico.
NEW YORK—US Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent has announced the launch of a high-stakes economic operation (‘Economic D-Day’): the US has threatened to tighten the noose around Iran by imposing sanctions on countries that continue to trade with it.
NEW YORK — In a county in northern Virginia, one family’s electricity bill has doubled. A few miles away, a windowless building the size of a shopping mall hums all night long—yet another AI data center that consumes more electricity than the city next to which it is built.
Four and a half years after Russia’s unprovoked, full-scale invasion of Ukraine, there is no end in sight to the conflict. What initially appeared to be a “special operation” that was supposed to end in a matter of days (or, at most, weeks) has turned into a seemingly endless and grueling war.
Are we really seeing the first signs of panic in U.S. President Donald Trump’s Treasury Department? The United States is the world’s largest debtor (by a wide margin), and the steady rise in global long-term interest rates—which I’ve long written about as inevitable—is beginning to cause it real pain.
In July, China announced the establishment of the World Artificial Intelligence Cooperation Organization (WAICO). This platform brought together 38 countries to collaborate on artificial intelligence (AI) and reduce AI inequality by supporting innovation and the adoption of this technology in developing countries. The emergence of WAICO was a turning point, but not the one the world needs.
WASHINGTON, D.C. — Few could have predicted what consequences China’s accession to the World Trade Organization in 2001 would have for the United States. By contributing to the devastation of the U.S. manufacturing sector and the loss of jobs in that industry, China’s integration into the global economy helped pave the way for the right-wing economic populism that became the driving force behind Donald Trump’s political rise.
PARIS—Soon after it became clear that more than 70,000 Moroccans were attempting to cross into the Spanish enclave of Ceuta—many by swimming across the narrow stretch of water separating it from Morocco—22 European Union member states called on European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen to convene an emergency meeting of the bloc’s interior ministers. But before the meeting could even take place, Italy announced that it was temporarily suspending visa-free travel from Spain and reintroducing border controls.
The first “China shock” followed China’s entry into the global trading system, when the mobilization of its vast pool of cheap labor, combined with large-scale foreign investment, led to a dramatic shift of global manufacturing capacity to that country.
TEL AVIV — In the past, international criminal tribunals were responsible for bringing defeated leaders to justice, such as Serbian President Slobodan Milošević and Liberian President Charles Taylor.
