| | | | After US Announcement, Are More Settlements on the Way? | | Breaking with more than 40 years of US policy, Secretary of State Mike Pompeo has declared that America sees Israel's West Bank settlements as consistent with international law. In a Bloomberg column, Zev Chafets writes that the US has sided with on-the-ground and political realities—few in Israel, including in the center-left, oppose the settlements—but if the move was intended to boost Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, Chafets writes that it is also a "repudiation of 50 years of Palestinian diplomacy."
The US move means Palestinian interests "won't be protected by international tribunals," Chafets writes; "UN declarations and EU condemnations will bounce off Israel as they always have." Ultimately, it could mean more settlement construction under future prime ministers, Chafets concludes. | | Why the US-China Relationship Is So Contentious | | The US-China relationship has entered a new phase, Evan S. Medeiros writes in the latest issue of The Washington Quarterly, in an essay that examines its fundamentals. Arenas of competition like technology have taken on a security dimension, he writes, giving competition a sharper edge: As artificial intelligence and communications technologies can be used both for military and civilian purposes, the US-China tech race isn't just an economic competition. Security concerns extend to supply chains, Medeiros writes, where the US fears dependence on Chinese manufacturing could endanger its security, and they give urgency to US demands that China stop protecting and subsidizing its tech industries.
At the same time, President Xi Jinping's expansion of China's presence on the world stage, and his commitment to offering a "China model" for developing countries, has lent shades of a global war of governance ideas. This comes at a time when traditional sources of ballast have fallen away, and not just amid President Trump's voluble demands: Thanks in part to growing US business frustration with Chinese market access and intellectual property theft, the US business community is now more in favor of open competition and plays less of a stabilizing role. All of which adds up to a greater risk of confrontation, Medeiros warns. | | The $90 Trillion Cost of Borders | | It's a common argument that immigration is good for productivity: allowing workers to move where they're most valued makes for a good allocation of labor resources. In making that case anew, The Economist cites an estimated price tag on global immigration restrictions: "If everyone who wanted to migrate were able to do so, global GDP would double, estimates Michael Clemens of the Centre for Global Development, author of a forthcoming book, 'The Walls of Nations,'" the magazine writes. "No other policy change comes close to generating such colossal rewards. If there is $90 trillion a year up for grabs, you might think that policymakers would be feverishly devising ways to get a piece of it." Elsewhere, the magazine notes that when "migrants move from a poor country to a rich one, they typically make three to six times as much money as before"—value that clearly accumulates.
It's all the more reason, The Economist argues, to find ways to make immigration orderly, address domestic concerns, and mitigate the "cultural" cost that worries some immigration opponents. | | Global Trade Is on a Collision Course With Global Warming | | As the world gets hotter, trade could be affected in more ways than one, Joseph Curtin writes for Foreign Policy. Not only will storms and rising sea levels disrupt shipping and damage port infrastructure, the fight to cut emissions could play out in tariff policies.
As countries work to reduce emissions, Curtin writes, some are concerned about "carbon leakage"—the offshoring of production to countries without carbon taxes or trading schemes, where profits (and emissions) can be maintained. One way to address it, which has gotten "considerable attention on both sides of the Atlantic," Curtin writes, is a "carbon tariff" imposed on countries that don't do their emissions-cutting share. Given economic incentives not to cooperate, Curtin suggests such a tariff might be necessary to keep free-riders in line. | | | | | | |
