Column Archive

The day after the U.S. House of Representatives voted largely along party lines to impeach President Donald Trump last month, it voted overwhelmingly to approve his top trade priority: the U.S.-Mexico-Canada Agreement, or USMCA. The new trade deal will replace the North American Free Trade Agreement, in effect since 1994 and reviled in equal measure by Trump and many Democrats. Both Trump and Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi hailed the amended agreement—approved by 385 members of the House, with just 41 opposed—as a victory, and claimed credit for getting it done. Yet while there is much in the USMCA […]

Given the magnitude of the shared global challenges humanity confronts today, from climate change to nuclear proliferation, the world desperately needs a quiet phase of international comity, enlightened leadership and steady cooperation. Alas, the Boring ‘20s are not on the cards. The new decade seems poised to be as volatile and divisive as the Roaring ‘20s a century ago. Indeed, the historical parallels are dramatic and disturbing. Now, as then, the forces of chaos and division include populist nationalism, authoritarian politics, nativist intolerance, political extremism, technological disruption, economic inequality, geopolitical competition and American solipsism. In the 1920s, the leading world […]

Editor’s Note: Frida Ghitis will return next week with her weekly Thursday column. Since the end of the Cold War, American relations with Africa have been characterized by a single, powerful trend: disengagement. Its direction has been so constant that it is tempting to think of it as a fixed given, but that would be a mistake. In reality, over the past three decades, this troubling trend has only accelerated. As the civilian bureaucracies that are supposed to lead American foreign policy have steadily disengaged from Africa, they have been eclipsed by the Pentagon. Of course, every few years Washington […]