United States 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, […]

The Trump administration’s strategy of applying “maximum pressure” on Iran has succeeded in inflicting unprecedented economic pain on the country, particularly since the U.S. withdrew from the Iran nuclear deal in May 2018 and subsequently reimposed punishing sanctions. Yet, despite the resulting political pressures that have mounted in Iran, the strategy has failed to meet its ostensible goal of bringing Tehran back to the negotiating table to agree to a far more comprehensive deal. Nor has it persuaded Iran to significantly alter its regional behavior, particularly its support for proxies that are hostile to the U.S. and Washington’s partners in […]

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 splashdown of two American astronauts, Robert L. Benken and Douglas G. Hurley, in the Gulf of Mexico last Sunday was historic in many ways. It was the first water landing by NASA since 1975, and marked the completion of the first manned trip into outer space by a private company. Perhaps most importantly, it showed that the United States has officially regained the ability to send astronauts into space. For the better part of a decade, since the retirement of the space shuttle program in 2011, the United States depended on Russia’s Soyuz spacecraft to get its astronauts to […]

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 […]

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 […]

With polls making it appear increasingly likely that Donald Trump has entered the twilight of his presidency and could be defeated in the November election, it is not too soon to focus on the blind spots and liabilities that come with his Democratic challenger. Since he secured his party’s nomination in a sudden burst of primary victories in March that abruptly turned around a flagging campaign, former Vice President Joe Biden has benefited from two main types of appeal. First, and probably most powerfully in a country where many have tired of Trump, is the simple fact that he is […]

Editor’s note: The following article is one of 30 that we’ve selected from our archives to celebrate World Politics Review’s 15th anniversary. You can find the full collection here. At approximately 8:19 p.m. on the evening of May 25, Derek Chauvin, a 19-year veteran of the Minneapolis Police Department, brought his weight down upon George Floyd’s neck. Floyd, a 46-year-old Black man, arrested for the alleged crime of using a counterfeit $20 bill, struggled for breath—for life—for more than five minutes. Lying prostrate on the hot concrete, his arms handcuffed behind his back, his airways choked by Chauvin’s knee, Floyd summoned […]

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 […]