As Japan prepares to host its first G20 leaders’ summit later this month, little remains of the open and cooperative spirit that marked the first such gathering in 2008. But although the United States will most likely continue its protectionist drift, other G20 countries should use the occasion to make a clear case for free trade.
Policy gurus spend too much time with others like them – top civil servants, high-flying journalists, successful businesspeople – and too little time with ordinary voters. If they could become “humble, competent people on a level with dentists,” as John Maynard Keynes once suggested, voters might identify with them and find them trustworthy.
For Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe, appeasing US President Donald Trump is not so much a choice as a necessity: he must prove to Japan’s people and their neighbors, particularly the Chinese, that he knows how to keep Trump on his side. But Abe's strategy won't work with a US administration as fickle and self-serving as Trump’s.
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LONDON –The toughest challenge in politics right now is resolving the tension between the best long-term policy and the best short-term politics. Nowhere is this tension clearer than in Britain’s debate over Europe.
Europe has disturbed and divided British politics for years. But this time is different. Now mainstream politicians from the governing party are openly making the case for Britain leaving the European Union, or at least radically changing its relationship with it – which may amount to the same thing – with the sympathy of some of our nation’s leaders and far wider support among the public.
The reason for this resurgent skepticism and hostility toward the EU is not hard to fathom. Europe is in crisis. The euro’s design flaw – an economic union motivated by politics but expressed in economics – has become manifest. Structural changes to economies that experienced a sharp fall in interest rates when they joined a Germany-dominated currency bloc now must be made quickly, in crisis, and without the luxury of devaluation.
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