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“More global trade is a good thing if we get a piece of the cake,” Mr. Duijzers said. “But that’s the problem. We’re not getting our piece of the cake.”

For generations, libraries full of economics textbooks have rightly promised that global trade expands national wealth by lowering the price of goods, lifting wages and amplifying growth. The powers that emerged victorious from World War II championed globalization as the antidote to future conflicts. From Asia to Europe to North America, governments of every ideological persuasion have focused on trade as their guiding economic force. Advertisement Continue reading the main story But trade comes with no assurances that the spoils will be shared equitably. Across much of the industrialized world, an outsize share of the winnings have been harvested by people with advanced degrees, stock options and the need for accountants. Ordinary laborers have borne the costs, suffering joblessness and deepening economic anxiety

When millions of workers lost paychecks to foreign competition, they lacked government supports to cushion the blow. As a result, seething anger is upending politics from Europe to North America.

The Doing Business indicators measure the costs and the number of steps for starting a formal business — for example, a car dealership. If one were to open a car dealership in Madagascar, it would take eight days and cost 35.8 percent of the average annual income (this cost includes official fees and fees for legal or professional services). If one wanted to open a car dealership in Malaysia, it would take 18 to 19 days and cost 5.4 percent of the average annual income. Contrast this with opening a car dealership in United States, where it would only take around four days and cost 1.3 percent of the average annual income. The steps and costs reflect rules, and sometimes the corruption, in a system.

The existence of Doing Business has brought about thousands of reforms across the world over the last 15 years. They have led to job creation and improved access to credit and business registration, enhancing competition and investment opportunities worldwide.

Doing Business uses country pride and even national chauvinism as a form of jiu jitsu to get countries to reform policies that impact business regulations

Russia's worst-kept secret is its increasingly heavy reliance on private security contractors—really, mercenaries—to maintain a Russia-favorable global status quo and to undermine its competitors' interests. This reliance on mercenaries stems from a known capability gap

Russia's military has strictly limited ability to project ground power worldwide. It has almost no organic ability to project and sustain ground power more than a few hundred kilometers beyond its own borders. Russian strategic lift is anemic compared to Soviet-era lift. Available forces are often tied down in one of the many frozen conflicts that ring Russia's western and southern borders.

Even a strong de facto dictator like Vladimir Putin cannot deploy one-year conscripts beyond Russia's borders without incurring significant political risk

The Heavenly Palace, the first module in China’s permanent space station, will be launched next year, a senior aerospace official confirmed Wednesday.

a crew of three taikonauts

Aerospace experts and military officials say the Chinese military space program has made major advancements in recent years, notably when it tested an antisatellite system in 2007, using a ballistic missile to shoot down one of its own weather satellites 540 miles up

Antarctica, the world’s “last great wilderness,” has for six decades been largely shielded from exploitation. A 1959 agreement born out of Cold War necessity and eventually joined by 54 countries reserved the continent “exclusively for peaceful purposes.” What began as a single agreement expanded into a web of interlocking rules and regulations known as the Antarctic Treaty System (ATS). The ATS applies to land and sea, existing alongside other international laws—like the 1982 U.N. Convention on the Law of the Sea—to prevent conflict, foster international cooperation and enable scientific development.

Experts believe Antarctica has a trove of resources, including oil, minerals, commercial fishing, and coal and hydrocarbons. In addition, the region houses the largest freshwater reserve on Earth in large ice sheets, which could soon become attractive to drought-stricken areas.

Among ATS signatories, China has the fastest growing presence, with four Antarctic bases and a fifth underway. Beijing has also in recent years ramped up research expenditures, signed a fueling partnership with Australia, constructed a new icebreaker, announced a permanent airfield and grown its polar tourism industry exponentially. In addition, some evidence suggests China may have already breached parts of the treaty through unreported military and development activities—mirroring a similar disregard for international law in the South China Sea.

conflicts appear to be caused by struggles around power or resources between either the same or different socio-economic groups. Favouring particular sides in local conflicts enables violent extremist groups to easily recruit and strengthen their capacity, and exacerbate conflict.

there are contextual variations in how terror groups position themselves regarding local conflicts. They can be either directly involved in fighting or play the role of mediators. Their presence can also lead to a temporary break in conflict.

Criminal activities such as illicit trafficking and armed robbery, often resulting in violence, continue unabated. The state is either absent or minimally present in many areas, and therefore unable to provide protection to communities. Even in places where it is present, government authority is sometimes challenged.

The capacity to manufacture drugs and active pharmaceutical ingredients has moved from the United States and Europe to developing countries in Asia where costs are lower and environmental regulations more relaxed. According to some widely cited estimates, the United States now imports virtually all of certain common antibiotics and over-the-counter pain medications from China, along with a high percentage of generic drugs used to treat HIV, depression, Alzheimer’s, and other ailments, and many of the active pharmaceutical ingredients used to make other medicines. Constriction of supply chains due to coronavirus-related shutdowns in China, further disruptions in global transportation networks, and a spike in worldwide demand for essential drugs could endanger the health of American citizens.

If trade were suspended due to a tense confrontation or an actual armed conflict, the United States might find it difficult, and perhaps impossible, to ramp up and sustain production of arms, munitions, weapons platforms, communications equipment, and other military systems.

Even before the current crisis, many companies had begun to diversify production away from China, shifting a portion of their manufacturing capacity to other countries. This movement was driven by the need to avoid U.S. tariffs, but also by longer-term trends, including rising Chinese wages and technological developments that are making it both desirable and cost-effective to shorten some supply chains, bringing producers closer to final consumers.

The idea that immigrants will steal jobs from American workers assumes they compete for the same scarce pool of jobs. Studies show this is often not the case. In many instances, positions that native born workers are not willing to fill create opportunities for migrants. Furthermore, immigrants are not only workers, but they are also consumers. Ultimately, the amount of jobs available depends in large part on the level of demand for goods and services, which is in turn affected by the total number of people contributing to the economy. Immigrants also become employers themselves, at rates higher than the native-born population. As such, they help put upward pressure on American wages and overall employment. Immigrants also tend to fill jobs that are complements to those held by native-born workers, making the latter more productive. And despite immigrants only making up 16% of inventors, they are responsible for 30% of aggregate US innovation since 1976, with their indirect spillover effects accounting for more than twice their direct productivity contribution. In short, immigration creates more economic opportunities for everyone: a win-win scenario.

A similar argument was also put forth by those voices who sought to discourage women from joining the labor market in larger numbers during the 1960s and 70s. Yet the huge bulge in female employment during this time and after is strongly associated with the creation of millions upon millions of new jobs due to much of the same logic we outlined above in the case of immigrants.

perhaps Americans underestimate the positive economic impacts made by immigrants, making it easier for any administration to fumble the ball on this issue. Alternatively, some folks may simply not care, the economy be damned

In a typical year, the glass factories here power down only once, for maintenance in August. But with Europe in the midst of an energy crisis, facing a 400 percent increase in natural gas bills, the gas-fueled blazes needed to produce Murano’s richly colored, ornate creations have become a luxury the glassmakers can scarcely afford.

The gas crisis stems from a combination of factors — insufficient stockpiles within Europe, constrained supply from Russia and increased competition from Asia for access to liquid natural gas. And with the Kremlin threatening to cut off flows if it is hit with sanctions over Ukraine, the crisis could get worse.

For Murano’s glassmakers, who were already reeling from a pandemic lockdown in 2020 and massive flooding in 2019, support has come in the form of regional and national subsidies intended to help them get through the winter. But with gas prices continuing to rise, the subsidies aren’t expected to last them beyond next month, tops. That’s led companies like Effetre to keep their furnaces off — and some to consider closing up shop for good.

Washington is now embarked on a campaign to persuade itself, the American people and the rest of the world that the ‘global war on terrorism’ (GWoT) will be a ‘long war’. This ‘long war’ is explicitly compared to the Cold War as a similar sort of zero-sum, global-scale, generational struggle against anti-liberal ideolo-gical extremists who want to rule the world.

When the Cold War ended, Washington seemed to experience a threat defi cit, and there was a string of attempts to fi nd a replacement for the Soviet Union as the enemy focus for US foreign and military policy: fi rst Japan, then China, ‘clash of civilizations’ and rogue states

the GWoT had the feel of a big idea that might provide a long-term cure for Washington’s threat defi ci

in 1999, the Commodities Futures Trading Commission deregulated futures markets. All of a sudden, bankers could take as large a position in grains as they liked, an opportunity that had, since the Great Depression, only been available to those who actually had something to do with the production of our food

After World War II, the United States was routinely producing a grain surplus, which became an essential element of its Cold War political, economic, and humanitarian strategies -- not to mention the fact that American grain fed millions of hungry people across the world

Futures markets traditionally included two kinds of players. On one side were the farmers, the millers, and the warehousemen, market players who have a real, physical stake in wheat. This group not only includes corn growers in Iowa or wheat farmers in Nebraska, but major multinational corporations like Pizza Hut, Kraft, Nestlé, Sara Lee, Tyson Foods, and McDonald's -- whose New York Stock Exchange shares rise and fall on their ability to bring food to peoples' car windows, doorsteps, and supermarket shelves at competitive prices. These market participants are called "bona fide" hedgers, because they actually need to buy and sell cereals. On the other side is the speculator. The speculator neither produces nor consumes corn or soy or wheat, and wouldn't have a place to put the 20 tons of cereal he might buy at any given moment if ever it were delivered. Speculators make money through traditional market behavior, the arbitrage of buying low and selling high. And the physical stakeholders in grain futures have as a general rule welcomed traditional speculators to their market, for their endless stream of buy and sell orders gives the market its liquidity and provides bona fide hedgers a way to manage risk by allowing them to sell and buy just as they pleased.

A world which is failing to respond to climate change is one in which the values embodied in the UN will not be met. It is a world in which competition and conflict will win over collaboration.

I will first argue that an effective response to climate change underpins our security and prosperity. Second, our response should be to strive for a binding global deal, whatever the setbacks. And third, I will set out why effective deployment of foreign policy assets is crucial to mobilising the political will needed if we are to shape an effective response.

a growing number of countries are retreating from some free-market rules that have guided international trade in recent decades and have started playing by Chinese rules

President Nicolas Sarkozy of France, who will take over leadership of the Group of 20 biggest economies, said over the weekend that he was pushing for a new system of coordinating global currencies as wealthy nations did in the 1970s, before a free market orthodoxy took hold.

Some economists argue that the standoff over China’s currency could herald a new era of protectionism reminiscent of the 1920s and ’30s, which they say they fear could undermine trade and make a weak recovery even weaker. But others argue that it was the free-market consensus of the 1980s and ’90s that weakened American competitiveness and was exploited by rising powers like China, calling for a more assertive policy to protect jobs, increase exports and keep industry at home.

If we are to stop this dangerous escalation we must understand where Russia is coming from. I saw a fair amount of Mr Putin when I was British Ambassador in Moscow. Like most politicians he is ready to manipulate the truth when necessary. But in most of his public utterances he is strikingly faithful to what he genuinely believes.

In his view we lied to Russia about the expansion of Nato. We have backed every recent Russian enemy from Chechnya's Dudayev to Georgia's Saakashvili.

The most likely immediate outcome is stasis; the present level of sanctions, Russia firmly in control of Crimea, and Ukraine limping on as a troubled cockpit for East/West competition. But even if the West "wins", with rising levels of sanctions eventually forcing Russia into ignominious retreat, would it have been worth it? The fissures and misgovernment which have dogged Ukraine since independence would only grow deeper. And an embittered Russia would become even more of a thorn in the West's side.

Inequality within countries -- both rich and poor -- has been growing even as inequality between countries has been declining.

Poor countries -- especially big ones like China, India, Nigeria, Vietnam, Brazil, Turkey, and Indonesia -- have been opening their doors to the global economy and taking advantage of the opportunities it has to offer. Hundreds of millions of people have moved off of farms and into cities to take jobs in big factories and service operations. These businesses have adopted technology from around the world in an enormous feat of economic leapfrogging. They've packed a century of industrial development into just a few years.

absolute living standards have undoubtedly risen for a huge number of people

The United States needs higher level political engagement in Africa to counter China’s growing influence even as the military cuts back troop levels on the continent, U.S. Africa Command’s commander told lawmakers

Despite the Pentagon-ordered troop cutbacks, Waldhauser said he has “adequate” forces to carry out his mission and special operations troops in Libya and Somalia were unaffected by the drawdown. Instead, the reductions centered on regions where there was no clear threat to the U.S. homeland, he said. And in Niger, where four U.S. soldiers were killed in a 2017 ambush, special operations troops have shifted away from ground patrols to advising forces at a battalion headquarters level and even remotely, Waldhauser said.

In recent years, much of the United States focus in Africa has centered on countering violent extremism in places such as Niger, a country that military leaders have long acknowledged there is no immediate threat to the United States. Meanwhile, Beijing has invested billions to finance mineral extraction ventures, telecommunication projects, port and infrastructure deals in Africa. China also has increased its military activities, establishing its first overseas base in Djibouti nearly two years ago. “They certainly want to protect those investments,” the general said. As the United States vies for influence, Waldhauser said it can’t focus just on military power. “We need to do a better job of publicizing things we are doing on the soft side of power,” he said. “Africans don’t want to be in the middle of great-power competition.”