Blog

  • More than Cheap Labor

    It’s been no secret that Chinese companies have been building factories in Mexico to protect their access to the United States market in the face of high U.S. tariffs on…

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  • Misguided Missiles

    I’ve received several inquiries from journalists asking my thoughts about how the attacks on commercial ships off the coast of Yemen are likely to affect trade and shipping. There’s no…

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  • China’s Intangible Future

    China, as everyone knows, is a manufacturing powerhouse: it accounted for nearly one third of manufacturing globally in 2022, according to United Nations data. Factories were responsible for 28 percent…

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  • The Supply-Chain Bureaucracy

    Back before the covid-19 pandemic — it seems decades ago, not a mere four years — nobody in Washington gave much thought to supply chains. Queues of container ships outside…

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  • Fifty Years After Car-Free Sundays

    Some events from your youth stick with you. For me, one such memorable event occurred 50 years ago, on November 4, 1973, when the Dutch government responded to the OPEC…

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  • Reality Sets In

    Despite ample signs to the contrary, global economic institutions have remained remarkably optimistic about the state of the world economy. This week, that suddenly changed. The World Bank and the…

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