| | | | Fareed: Like All Tariffs, Trump's Won't Work | | "President Trump has set off what could end up becoming a full-blown trade war," Fareed writes in his latest Washington Post column. "As we go down this path, it is worth keeping something firmly in view: Tariffs don't work."
Example after example has shown that tariffs fail to protect struggling American industries, Fareed writes; they're also difficult to remove because lobbyists want to keep them, and the US remains stuck with other countries' retaliatory measures. What's more, Trump seems to want to aid production in states he's hoping to win in 2020.
"Trump's trade strategy might have started out well-intentioned, but it has turned into a highly politicized and out-of-control wrecking ball that could end up destroying a system that has brought peace and prosperity to the world for 75 years," Fareed writes.
 | | A Less-Autocratic Future for China? | | Prevailing wisdom among China watchers is that while China's economy has grown, the country has only become more autocratic, disproving a key political-economic theory—that liberalism, openness, and economic growth are linked. Ted Galen Carpenter recently echoed that point in The National Interest, writing that "[O]nly incurable optimists or the willfully blind would argue that today's China is more tolerant and open than it was a decade ago. The trend is toward greater repression and regimentation, not greater liberalization."
But China historian Rana Mitter, writing in the latest issue of Chatham House's The World Today, presents a slightly different outlook: that while China won't become a democracy, it may have to become slightly less autocratic. For one, China "will begin to see the effects of its one-child policy come home to roost" in 2029 and will need to welcome in younger immigrants to augment an aging workforce, which will open the country and diversify its politics. And as China seeks greater influence in the world, alliances are still hard to come by; as a consequence, it will need to show a softer touch (both in domestic repression and its approaches to Taiwan and Hong Kong) to attain the global influence it seeks.
All of which raises a question about China's future, as Mitter poses it: "Could the development of a more liberal state, with one-party rule, but a genuinely free public sphere, be the next stage?" | | In Russia, Protesters Suffer Under a State Crackdown | | | Writing of Russia's recent wave of protests, Henry Foy and Max Seddon detail a particularly aggressive police crackdown in the Financial Times. It's a bad sign for President Vladimir Putin, they suggest, as Russia's economy has slowed and the shine has worn off foreign victories. "Now, analysts say, the regime is left with nothing but the truncheon," they write.
Notably, Russia's economy has lagged those of other post-communist states, the authors point out: Compared to Russia, GDP per capita has risen faster in Poland, Estonia, Lithuania, Latvia, and Hungary since the Soviet Union fell. That economic slide, they write, has eroded an "unspoken agreement" in which Russians have "traded political and social freedoms for rising prosperity and national pride." | | Does the Persian Gulf Prove Europe Needs America? | | In recent weeks, as Europe sought to organize its own coalition to guard Persian-Gulf shipping—without the US, which sparked tensions with Iran in the first place—it appeared America's closest allies were going their own way.
Now that the UK has broken off to join a US-led maritime-security initiative instead, The Wall Street Journal declares in an editorial that Europe can't secure its ships without America's help. Writing for the Lowy Institute's Interpreter blog, Daniel Woker suggests Britain's move portends a weaker Europe, militarily and geopolitically, after Brexit. It remains an open question whether Britain, after leaving Europe's trading bloc, will continue to work with Europe on political and security matters. Woker writes that the answer seems to be "no," if Prime Minister Boris Johnson has his way. | | IPCC to World: Eat Less Meat | | The UN's Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change has released a new report on land use and climate change, and one of its messages, notes Quirin Schiermeier in Nature, is that people should eat less meat.
That's because land, meat, and climate are linked. As the World Resources Institute has noted, beef and lamb are much more resource intensive than other food sources, due almost entirely to the land-use change necessary to produce them. Agriculture, forestry, and other land use accounted for 23% of total human-caused greenhouse-gas emissions from 2007-2016, the IPCC report finds. It's not the only recommendation, but the report finds that "[b]alanced diets, featuring plant-based foods … and animal-sourced food produced in resilient, sustainable and low-GHG emission systems, present major opportunities" to mitigate warming.
Of course, debate over meat-eating can also spark a culture clash. Bjorn Lomborg was quick to point out at The Wall Street Journal that meat-eating isn't the only connection between land use and warming, calling vegetarianism climate "virtue signaling." On the other hand, The Guardian's Arwa Mahdawi recently wondered if meat-eating will go the way of smoking in restaurants, not only obsolete but no longer socially acceptable. | | | | | | |
