• Does the U.S. Economy Benefit from U.S. Alliances and Forward Military Presence?

    To what extent does conflict in other regions affect the U.S. economy, even when the United States remains a nonbelligerent state? To what extent does U.S. military engagement abroad suppress conflict? To what extent does U.S. military engagement abroad impact U.S. peacetime trade and investment with other countries? To what extent does U.S. military engagement abroad increase U.S. economic welfare?

  • Cutting off Europe's Gas Supply Is Putin's Last Throw of the Dice

    Away from the fighting the most important moves are in the economic sphere, especially in the energy markets. These moves are geared to influencing the military situation although their more important consequences may end up over the long-term being away from the war, reflected in the stresses and strains imposed on the global economy. As for influencing the course of the battles in the short-term, which is what is intended, their effects may be limited.

  • Germany — No Exit from the Nuclear Energy Exit

    German Economy Minister Robert Habeck wants to keep two of the three German nuclear power plants on standby for an extra three months as an emergency reserve. That is the right decision.

  • Poland: WWII Losses Caused by Germany Worth $1.3 Trillion

    A parliamentary committee in Poland has filed its estimate on the economic damage caused by Germany’s invasion and occupation in World War II. Germany responded that it considers the issue “closed.”

  • Russia's Stranglehold on the World's Nuclear Power Cycle

    Since Russia invaded Ukraine on February 24, countries supporting Ukraine have imposed several packages of sanctions targeting Russia’s lucrative energy industry (mostly oil, gas, and coal. Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskiy recently called on the international community to come up with a stronger response and ban Russian imports from yet another sector: nuclear power. But blocking and replacing Russia’s deliveries of uranium, reactors, and nuclear technology to the rest of the world is easier said than done.

  • Tipping the Balance Between Global Rivals

    Seeking to understand how trade policies fueled China’s rise and continue to determine geopolitical winners and losers.

  • The Economic Weapon: The Growing Use of Sanctions as a Tool of War

    The war in Ukraine has put economic sanctions in the global spotlight. In his book, Nicholas Mulder traces the first use of sanctions back to the Peloponnesian War, but says that it was only in the globalizing world of the 20th century that sanctions moved to center stage. Ironically, as the use of sanctions has surged, their chances of success have plummeted.

  • China Has a New Global Development Initiative, but Who Will Actually Benefit from It?

    China is a major player in world affairs, representing the second-largest economy in the world after the United States. A year after assuming power in 2012, President Xi Jinping announced the creation of the so-called Belt and Road Initiative, a massive infrastructure project designed to increase investment and promote economic development in many of the world’s poor nations. In the past year, Xi has advanced another idea – the Global Development Initiative.

  • Chinese Subsidiary of British Investment Bank Now Includes Communist Party Committee

    British bank and financial services giant HSBC, a longtime presence in East Asia, has become the first foreign lender to install a Chinese Communist Party committee in its investment banking subsidiary in China.

  • Sanctions Are Crippling Russia's Economy: Study

    Researchers at Yale University say the Russian economy is suffering massive damage due to Western sanctions, despite Moscow downplaying the effect.

  • Europe’s Energy Choice

    Russia’s war in Ukraine and the disruption of Russian gas exports to Europe has triggered an energy crunch, with price spikes unlike anything seen since 1973. And the situation will get worse before it gets better. Responding to the immediate energy crisis in the right way will help to address the broader climate challenge. Authorities must both buffer the shock of the gas crunch in the short term, and accelerate the transition to clean energy in the long -term.

  • Anti-Israel Activists Co-opt American Tragedies to Target Israel

    Prominent anti-Israel groups and individuals have sought to tether American issues such as gun violence and limits on abortion rights to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, doubling down on anti-Zionist tropes and false accusations against the state of Israel.

  • Global Supply Chains Remain Resilient in the Wake of Natural Disasters

    International trade links bind countries together in ways that are difficult to untangle following a crisis. While many U.S. policy makers are calling for reshoring and nearshoring to combat trade disruptions caused by COVID-19, new research suggests retrenchment of global supply chains is unlikely to happen in the post-pandemic context.

  • Calls Rise in Congress to Designate Russia a State Sponsor of Terrorism

    As Russian attacks on civilian sites are reported on a near-daily basis, pressure is mounting on the Biden administration to officially designate Russia as a state sponsor of terrorism.

  • Rare Earths in Australia Must Be About More Than Mining

    REEs are a group of 17 metals—15 elements from the lanthanide series and two chemically similar elements, scandium and yttrium. Each has unique properties vital for a range of commercial and defense technologies, including batteries, high-powered magnets and electronic equipment. China’s rare-earth production exceeds that of the world’s second-largest producer, the U.S., by more than 100,000 tons per year. The U.S. still relies on China for most rare-earth imports. In some cases, like heavy REE processing, China has 100 percent control of the market.