The Folly of Decoupling From China – with Abraham Newman

On May 14, U.S. President Donald Trump threatened to break the United States’ economic relationship with China. “There are many things we could do,” he told Fox Business host Maria Bartiromo. “We could cut off the whole relationship. Now if you did, what would happen? You’d save $500 billion.” It was Trump’s most extreme anti-China rhetoric to date, but it wasn’t out of step with the mood in Washington. Both Republicans and Democrats agree that China has transformed from a competitor into an adversary, and perhaps even an enemy.

As tensions have mounted as a result of the

Henry Farrell and Abraham Newman, “The Folly of Decoupling From China,” Foreign Affairs (online), June 3, 2020.

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Tornado Cash Is Not Free Speech. It’s a Golem – with Bruce Schneier

In August, the U.S. Treasury’s Office of Foreign Assets Control (OFAC) sanctioned the cryptocurrency platform Tornado Cash, a virtual currency “mixer” designed to make it harder to trace cryptocurrency transactions—and a worldwide favorite money-laundering platform. Americans are now forbidden from using it. According to the U.S. government, Tornado Cash was sanctioned because it allegedly laundered ...
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When Politics Drives Scholarship – with Steve Teles

The publication of Nancy MacLean’s Democracy in Chains, a history of the “public choice” economist James Buchanan and his impact on American politics, has led to an enormous, highly charged debate. But as Marshall Steinbaum correctly noted in this journal, not many people have weighed in who aren’t either Team Public Choice or Team Anti-Buchanan. ...
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