HOT AIR BALLOON FLIGHT

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Insights, analysis and must reads from CNN's Fareed Zakaria and the Global Public Square team, compiled by Global Briefing editor Chris Good

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October 8, 2021

Fareed: America's Protectionism Is Misguided

As a presidential candidate, Joe Biden railed against Donald Trump's isolationism, tariffs, and China trade war. But as President, Fareed writes in his latest Washington Post column, Biden has wrongheadedly stayed Trump's protectionist course.
 
Citing analysis by Peterson Institute for International Economics President Adam S. Posen, Fareed writes that the US has walled itself off as the rest of the world has integrated through trade. US–China trade is often blamed for American job losses, but net numbers don't bear that out. The cost of Trump's tariffs, meanwhile, was born almost exclusively by American consumers and businesses. 
 
And yet, in Washington, protectionism remains in vogue. It "has become one of those zombie ideas that continue to move forward despite all the evidence showing them to be wrong," Fareed writes. "Most worryingly, it is part of a sea change in the United States' basic outlook. From an optimistic and confident view that we can thrive in a world in which others also do well … we are now retreating to a cold, curdled view of international life, one that is dark and zero-sum ... It's a world in which we try to gain some narrow benefit for ourselves by cheating everyone else. In other words, it is the Donald Trump way."

Signs of Taliban Land Grabs

As the world watches to see how the Taliban will rule, with particular focus on women's rights and whether girls' education will return, a Der Spiegel article by Christoph Reuter and Thore Schröder identifies signs of rural land grabs. Ideology seems less of a motivation than avarice, but Reuter and Schröder report claims by ethnic minorities that Taliban members are staking claims and driving residents from their homes and farms.

The 'Living With Covid-19' Strategy Is Being Tested

As lockdowns dragged on and as vaccines arrived, some of the pandemic's "zero-Covid" success stories shifted their plans. In Australia and parts of Southeast Asia, strict lockdowns and border closures had kept Covid-19 cases to near-miraculous lows—but after more than a year of vigilance, some countries decided to ease precautionary measures, choosing deliberately to live with an endemic virus rather than keep economies shuttered.
 
That strategy is now being tested. At The New York Times, Sui-Lee Wee writes that Singapore serves as a warning, having reapplied some restrictions as infections started doubling every eight to 10 days in September. Vaccination rates may be high in some similarly situated countries, but one downside of past success is a lack of natural immunity; at The Lancet, an op-ed by authors largely hailing from the Asia–Pacific region warns that for places like Australia, Hong Kong, New Zealand, and Singapore, it will be important to remain flexible and reinstate precautions as cases rise.

Our Texan Future

Some may misperceive Texas as an all-White, conservative bastion, but Steven Pedigo writes in a New York Times opinion essay that it's anything but. It has already become a majority-minority state, racially, and urban populations have grown. Texans care about climate change, per polling; businesses flock to its limited government; a diverse community of stakeholders and public-private cooperation balance things out. The state's politics may remain intransigent as Republican lawmakers fight the trends, Pedigo writes, but the state foreshadows where the rest of the country is heading.