The End of Globalization as We Know It (Dalia Marin)

Since 2008, rising economic, geopolitical, and climate risks, together with progress on automation, have fundamentally changed firms’ calculations regarding global value chains. While firms have reason to keep some production on foreign soil – if it cannot be automated at home – the reshoring trend is set to accelerate. MUNICH – As US President Donald …

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Trump promised to make America great. Instead, he may bring about its destruction (Randall Kennedy)

Donald Trump and his cronies are smashing up democratic norms, government institutions and the postwar international order. There are no signs yet that anyone will stop them. Fearful of divine retribution for slavery, Thomas Jefferson remarked that he trembled for his country when he imagined that God is just. Some observers today are also trembling. …

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The Future of Democracy in America: A Conversation with The Atlantic (American Academy in Berlin)

A conversation representing or showing the state of democracy in the United States – as confused as it can be. How are America’s democratic institutions adapting to a time of intense polarization and change? The Atlantic staff writers Anne Applebaum and George Packer join the magazine’s editor in chief, Jeffrey Goldberg—all leading voices in journalism …

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How Far Will Rwanda Go in Congo? Amid Western Inaction, Kigali Is Carving Up Its Neighbor and Reigniting a Regional War (Michela Wrong)

In 1963, nearly three dozen newly independent African nations met in Addis Ababa to establish the Organization of African Unity. Among the core principles they embraced was the inviolability of existing, colonial-era national borders. Failure to uphold them, they agreed, would open the way for one irredentist claim after another and threaten to tear the …

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Artificial intelligence will limit some human roles but could make others more accessible (Marina M. Tavares)

Artificial intelligence promises to expand and broaden opportunities for humanity—even as it takes over many tasks limited until recently to human ingenuity. But whether AI enlarges or shrinks the space for human talent depends on how widely AI tools are available and how ethically and fairly they are used. The challenge for policymakers is to …

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Democratizing innovation can harness untapped talent and spur economic growth (XAVIER JARAVEL)

Notwithstanding Plato’s 2,400-year-old proverb, necessity alone is not the mother of invention. It also requires opportunity. An individual’s likelihood of becoming an innovator reflects parental background in terms of income and sociological factors, recent research shows. Highly talented children from disadvantaged backgrounds tend to innovate far below their potential, while children from wealthier or more …

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Access to top performers sets an upper bound on a country’s aspirations (IMF)

Countries that attract the world’s most talented people will be the most successful at overcoming mounting economic pressures from aging populations and declining productivity. Yet immigration isn’t always popular. Will global talent flows—which I characterize as a “gift” in my book—come to an end? Absolutely not, but policymakers will need new frameworks.  Why the optimistic take? Despite …

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Can Political Parties Be Rebooted? (Chris Herhalt)

Morris P. Fiorina is a senior fellow at the Hoover Institution and the Wendt Family Professor of Political Science at Stanford University. He published a new collection of Unstable Majorities essays ahead of the 2024 presidential election that sought to explain how American voters saw their choices. Here, he describes how the lessons from those essays could …

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