The Big Picture brings together a range of PS commentaries to give readers a comprehensive understanding of topics in the news – and the deeper issues driving the news. The Big Question features concise contributor analysis and predictions on timely topics.
With less than two months to go until the US presidential election, the candidates’ opposing worldviews, objectives, and priorities – and their implications for international relations, the economy, and democracy – have come into sharper focus. While it is impossible to know exactly what a leader will do once in office, the contours of both a Donald Trump and a Kamala Harris presidency are remarkably well defined.
Several developments in recent years, from sustained renminbi appreciation to increasingly aggressive Western tariffs, should have eroded China’s global manufacturing dominance, but have not. Why has China’s share of global manufacturing exports continued to rise, and what might turn the tide?
After decades of facilitating and even encouraging China’s rise, the United States’ dramatic shift to a policy of containment continues apace, with both Republican and Democratic administrations imposing sweeping tariffs and other trade restrictions. How will the upcoming US presidential election affect the bilateral relationship, and what will this imply for the American, Chinese, and global economies?
With the world’s major economies pouring investment into artificial intelligence, ensuring the technology’s safety before its applications are known has become an increasingly urgent policy imperative. While a sci-fi-style AI apocalypse is not impossible, more immediate risks to both security and democracy must be addressed.
While stock markets have recovered somewhat from last Monday’s rout, investors remain rattled, fearing further volatility. What was behind the sudden selloff, and does it portend a period of escalating global economic distress – and even a US recession?
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US Vice President Kamala Harris’s rise as the presumptive Democratic nominee has breathed new life into November’s presidential election. But Donald Trump remains a formidable opponent, and defeating him will require Harris to strike the right balance between supporting President Joe Biden and distinguishing herself from him with a compelling vision for America’s future.
How to design effective industrial policies has suddenly become a hot – and divisive – topic among economists and policymakers. Even those who agree that governments should intervene in the economy to bolster productivity, increase competitiveness, and tackle social and environmental challenges differ sharply on the details.
Many observers breathed a sigh of relief at the results of the European Parliament elections, because the widely predicted far-right surge did not dislodge traditional conservatives. But even if far-right forces do not dominate the next European Parliament, they have gained ground, particularly in France and Germany. Can mainstream politicians and parties reverse this trend?
Whether generative artificial intelligence will do more harm or good to our families, economies, and societies remains an open question. In devising strategies for harnessing the technology, optimism is undoubtedly warranted, but it should not come at the expense of realism.
Governments that had spent nearly a half-century preaching the virtues of free trade, deregulation, and hyperglobalization are now imposing import tariffs and export restrictions, adopting industrial policies, and lavishing subsidies on domestic firms in favored sectors, like green tech. With many observers heralding the death of neoliberalism, we asked PS commentators what comes next.
A spate of new US tariffs on Chinese goods has raised the specter of full economic decoupling between the world’s two largest economies. For many observers, the measures are not only misguided, but also counter-productive, with the potential to undermine economic dynamism, hamper climate action, and trigger geopolitical conflict.
Since taking power in 2014, Prime Minister Narendra Modi and his ruling Bharatiya Janata Party have stoked Hindu nationalism, hollowed out India’s democracy, and overseen an economy that is probably performing far worse than official figures suggest. And yet Modi and the BJP are genuinely popular, making them likely – though not certain – to emerge victorious when the ongoing parliamentary election concludes in June.
From a long list of criminal indictments to unfavorable voter demographics, there is plenty standing between presumptive GOP nominee Donald Trump and a second term in the White House. But a Trump victory in the November election remains a distinct possibility – and a cause for serious economic concern.
