Notas de interés

President Biden has enlisted a dozen Asia-Pacific nations to join a new loosely defined economic bloc meant to counter China’s dominance and reassert American influence in the region five years after his predecessor withdrew the United States from a sweeping trade accord that it had negotiated itself.

The alliance will bring the United States together with such regional powerhouses as Japan, South Korea and India to establish new rules of commerce in the fastest-growing part of the world and offer an alternative to Beijing’s leadership. But wary of liberal opposition at home, Mr. Biden’s new partnership will avoid the market access provisions of traditional trade deals, raising questions about how meaningful it will be. 

“We’re writing the new rules for the 21st-century economy,” Mr. Biden said on Monday in Tokyo during the launch for what he has termed the Indo-Pacific Economic Framework. “We’re going to help all of our country’s economies grow faster and fairer.”

For decades, the mainstream of both the Democratic and Republican parties favored expanding trade between the U.S. and other countries. Greater globalization, these politicians promised, would increase economic growth — and with the bounty from that growth, the country could compensate any workers who suffered from increased trade. But it didn’t work out that way.

Instead, trade has contributed to the stagnation of living standards for millions of working-class Americans, by shrinking the number of good-paying, blue-collar jobs here. The incomes of workers without a bachelor’s degree have grown only slowly over the past few decades. Many measures of well-being — even life expectancy — have declined in recent years.

All along, many politicians and experts continued to insist that trade was expanding the economic pie. And they were often right. But struggling workers understandably viewed those claims as either false or irrelevant, and they refused to support further expansions of trade.

Headlines are abuzz with the return of inflation, which, according to some measures, is now reaching 40 year highs. Considering that vanquishing inflation is supposed to be the one undisputed achievement of neoliberalism, why is it rising? Many explanations – from excessive money creation to disrupted supply chains to tightening labour markets and a post-lockdown surge in demand are offered.

The view that it would be a short term affair is giving way to a more sobering assessment of its persistence, particularly since geopolitical conflict gave inflation a booster shot. As for its solution, one thing is clear, dealing with it as Paul Volcker famously did in the late 1970s is not a politically affordable option for governments beholden to elites whose outrageous fortunes depend on low interest rates.

This panel will seek to examine this phenomenon by asking question such as why is inflation rising? Can we expect it persist? What are the major policy-options being discussed and what are their political implications of each? How should socialists think about this new problem?

El gobierno de Venezuela confirmó que Estados Unidos autorizo que empresas petroleras estadounidenses y europeas reanuden operaciones en el país caribeño. Esto puede ser un indicio para el levantamiento de las medidas impuestas al país por parte del gobierno estadounidense.

Durante el mandato de Barack Obama se emitió una declaración de emergencia que representaba Venezuela para el país del norte, amenazando la seguridad nacional y la política exterior. Las restricciones se intensificaron durante el mandato de Donal Trump, impidiendo comerciar con la empresa estatal Petróleos de Venezuela.

Este alivio de las sanciones esta encaminado a reanudar las negociaciones con la oposición y se ve impulsado por el súbito incremento de los hidrocarburos derivado de la crisis entre Rusia y Ucrania.

Trust in the U.S.-led economic and geopolitical order has been eroding. The Russian invasion of Ukraine and the U.S. response to it, whatever its merits, may be the last straw for the global monopoly of the dollar-reserve system.

In 2013, eight years before horned intruders stormed the United States Capitol in the name of a perverse freedom, Council on Foreign Relations President Richard Haass argued in his book Foreign Policy Begins at Home that the greatest threat to American security comes not from abroad but within.