Economics & Business Archive

However one judges the results, there is no question that President Donald Trump has taken American trade policy in a very different direction than his predecessors going back decades. He has rejected multilateralism and severely weakened the World Trade Organization, while embracing the use of tariffs against allies and adversaries alike. Biden has been clear that, if elected, he would restore a more multilateral approach, especially with respect to challenging Chinese trade practices. He has also assured union supporters that he would put the interests of American workers at the core of his trade policy. Beyond those broad principles, however, […]

In mid-July, 130 high-profile Twitter accounts were hijacked by a small group of hackers, apparently led by a teenager in central Florida. They were able to take over some of the social media service’s most prominent handles—including those of Kanye West, Jeff Bezos and Elon Musk—and use them to scam hundreds of people out of a combined $118,000 in bitcoin. It was the biggest security breach in Twitter’s history, and a stunning embarrassment for the company. The hack also entailed a high level of risk to users’ personal security. According to Twitter, the hackers were able to not only send […]

The wildly popular video-sharing platform TikTok and its Chinese parent company, ByteDance, have had a rough couple of months. The government of India banned TikTok in June—along with dozens of other Chinese apps—and authorities in a number of other major markets are investigating TikTok over national security and data privacy concerns. President Donald Trump said last week that he would ban the app in the United States, but then changed his mind and gave his blessing to a proposed deal in which Microsoft would buy TikTok’s operations in the U.S., Canada, New Zealand and Australia. On the Trend Lines podcast […]

Authoritarian leaders have taken advantage of the coronavirus pandemic, intensifying their efforts to undercut the democratic norms that restrain their power. Some of those leveraging COVID-19 for their autocratic agenda are in the European Union, where they have created dilemmas for the bloc for years. And yet, this crisis has also created opportunities. If managed skillfully, the EU can convert the upheaval of the pandemic into a turning point, at long last exerting meaningful pressure to start reversing Eastern Europe’s undemocratic, illiberal tide. Last month, EU leaders managed to craft a muscular economic rescue package to deal with the pandemic’s […]

Editor’s Note: Every Wednesday, WPR Newsletter and Engagement Editor Benjamin Wilhelm curates the week’s top news and expert analysis on China. A vast fleet of Chinese fishing boats was spotted off Ecuador’s Galapagos Islands last month, triggering alarm in Quito and prompting concerns about the threat to numerous vulnerable species in the protected waters around what is a UNESCO World Heritage Site. The presence of so many Chinese fishing vessels off South America’s Pacific coast also raised more questions about China’s distant-water fishing industry. Ecuador’s president, Lenin Moreno, formally complained to China after the Ecuadorian navy announced it had spotted […]

Over the past few months, the wildly popular video-sharing app TikTok and its Chinese parent company, ByteDance, have found themselves mired in a serious public relations crisis. In June, India banned dozens of Chinese apps, including TikTok, over national security concerns, and officials in Australia are reportedly investigating the app due to concerns over its ties to the Chinese Communist Party. In the United States, President Donald Trump seemed ready to ban the app last week, but has now given his blessing to a potential deal in which Microsoft would buy TikTok’s operations in the U.S., as well as in […]

President Donald Trump touts them as campaign promises he has delivered on, but by reversing Washington’s long-standing commitment to open markets and clamping down on immigration, he may have done permanent damage to the U.S. economy and America’s global reputation. Tariffs, especially against China, are now higher than they have been in decades. American acceptance of refugees is sharply lower, and the Trump administration has recently turned its sights on temporary foreign workers and foreign students. Although the tariff increases and some of Trump’s executive actions against immigration could be undone if his Democratic challenger, Joe Biden, wins in November, […]

California’s State Senate is slated to vote this month on a monumental piece of environmental legislation that, if approved and signed into law, would reaffirm the state’s status as a pacesetter in global conservation. AB 3030, which has already cleared the State Assembly, would commit the state to permanently protect 30 percent of its land and coastal waters by 2030. At a time when the Trump administration is rolling back environmental regulations, opening wild public lands to drilling and mining, and abandoning the Paris Agreement on climate change, the Golden State is betting that environmental conservation and economic dynamism are […]