The recent grilling of TikTok’s CEO in front of an almost entirely hostile congressional committee was a reminder that a hardening stance against China is one of the few areas of genuine bipartisanship. That and an antagonistic stance toward Big Tech, so TikTok actually manages to check two boxes.
Read moreThe Other Scandal Revealed at Mar-a-Lago
Regardless of whether the former president is ultimately indicted, the case points to a problem that’s bigger than Trump: The U.S. government has become addicted to shrouding its actions behind a veil of secrecy, especially when it comes to national security.
Read moreHere’s What Happens to a Conspiracy-Driven Party
As tempting as it to take the rise of conspiracy theories as a singular mark of a partisan internet-fueled age, however, there’s nothing particularly modern or unique about what is happening now.
Read moreHow Biden Could Wind Down the Imperial Presidency
Once Biden undoes some of what Trump has done, he could leave his most indelible and important mark by rolling back that trend in American governance, ceding presidential powers back to Congress and the states, making it harder for any subsequent president to abuse the power of the office.
Read moreTrump’s TikTok Policy Is Just a New Kind of ‘Security Theater’
After weeks of uncertainty following President Donald Trump’s executive order on TikTok—ordering its Chinese parent company to divest its American operations within 90 days—the video app that has stolen the hearts, if not the data, of millions of teens has found an American partner: Oracle.
Read moreIt’s Official: Conventions Are History. So What Replaces Them?
The parties killed the convention before the pandemic. Now they have a chance to reinvent it.
Read moreHow to Avoid the Shutdown 'Kill Switch'
Ninety days into the Covid-19 pandemic and shutdown, American leaders now have to confront an unsettling truth: Bringing an entire economy to a halt so fast, and so widely, isn’t a decision they can just reverse.
Read moreNo, This Isn’t as Bad as 1968 (So Far)
The blue CitiBike I was riding, unlocked with an iPhone, was very much a 21st-century phenomenon, but the landscape around it felt like 1968. In the past days, 1968 has emerged as a meme, a way to understand what we’re living through right now.
Read moreFor Once, Wall Street is Optimistic. That Might Not Be Crazy.
Any look at the news suggests that we’re in the early stages of a society-changing response to an unpredictable virus that will have vastly negative consequences for the economy, not just in the U.S., but around the world.
Read moreTrump Is Actually the President We Need Right Now
This past week, however, one thing became clear: Donald Trump may be exactly the president we need now.
Read moreThe U.S.-China Trade Deal Was Not Even a Modest Win
If you detect a note of skepticism already creeping in, it’s because this pseudo-deal deserves not just skepticism but calling out as a dramatic failure of U.S. policy that will have lasting and deleterious effects.
Read moreDon’t Blame Just Trump for U.S.-China Hostility
The Trump administration, with its fixation on trade balances and its view that the Chinese have ripped off U.S. consumers for decades, clearly initiated the current trade war. But the truth is that American animosity to the rise of China can’t all be attributed to President Donald Trump.
Read moreWhat Trump Doesn’t Get About the Chinese Economy
As President Donald Trump escalates his trade war with China, the administration is adamant that China is bearing the brunt of the tariffs. “They’re not hurting anybody [in the United States],” White House trade adviser Peter Navarro said on CNN’s “State of the Union” on Sunday. “They’re hurting China.”
Read moreTrump’s Trade War Is Making Mexico Great
When President Donald Trump made good on his promise to be “Tariff Man” this week, he sent economists into a lather, pushed the stock markets onto a wild and largely downward ride, and thrilled parts of his political base, who saw a president finally willing to use his bluntest policy weapon against America’s biggest economic rival.
Read moreTrump’s Phony Trade War with China
The yearlong China-U.S. trade war now appears to be in its final stages. Tariffs will be lifted, Beijing will promise to buy more American goods and take a harder stance on technology transfers and industrial espionage, and Trump will declare victory — but it will be Pyrrhic, at best.
Read moreStop Freaking Out About Trump’s State of Emergency Threats
The president’s proposed reallocation of federal spending to build his wall is hardly an existential crisis for American democracy.
Read moreHow to Win a Trade War With China
Donald Trump is right—the United States is not in a trade war with China.At least, not yet. As the rhetoric has flown back and forth between Washington and Beijing, breathless news coverage has made it seem as though the war of tariffs has already begun. It has not—hardly any new duties have been levied.
Read moreGary Cohn Doesn’t Matter
So it happened. After months of speculation about whether and when Gary Cohn might resign, he finally did. The former prince of Goldman Sachs—and the unofficial leader of the free-traders, internationalists and Wall Streeters at the White House
Read moreTrump’s ‘America First’ Strategy is Old Hat
Judging from their flurry of op-eds and tweets denouncing, dismissing or analyzing President Trump’s new National Security Strategy, America’s foreign policy mandarins would have you believe that the document is either dangerous, irrelevant or both. It is neither.
Read moreHow Trump Throws Away His Own Power
It’s fashionable these days to compare our present to the Gilded Age: rising inequality, labor struggling while capital thrives, an astonishingly wealthy and concentrated elite appearing to amass an inordinate amount of power. But a stark difference between our era and the last decades of the 19th century is the nature of the American presidency.
Read more