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Politics Will Trade Policy Be America First’s Iraq War? There are better and worse ways to do things, and there is no reason to dig in on the worse ways. (Chip Somodevilla/Getty Images) There’s a fine line between conviction and partisanship. A helpful rubric is whether you have stopped asking the question, What if we’re…

Foreign Affairs On Iran, Trump Should Ignore Netanyahu A nuclear deal with Tehran would serve U.S. interests. Credit: KPG-Ivary President Trump has made a habit of dropping major news when Israel’s Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu visits the White House. In early February, during a joint news conference with the Israeli leader, Trump debuted his plan…

Economics Cold Breakfast in America From corn flakes to Legos, the consumer is on the business end of “economics.” ((Photo by Sebastian Gollnow/picture alliance via Getty Images) Not long ago I found myself flipping through a biography of John Harvey Kellogg, the impresario of dry breakfast cereal. It was a very dull book. But it…

Foreign Affairs Erdoğan’s New Turkey—and Old? The “neo-Ottoman” dreams of American Turkey-watchers exceed reality. For Americans steeped in a post-Cold War “unipolar” understanding of world affairs, the foreign policy of Recep Tayyip Erdoğan can be hard to fathom. Whether in buying Russian-produced S-400 air defense systems over Washington’s loud objections in 2020, triangulating between Ukraine…

Politics Trump’s Desperado Mission Has something gone quite wrong or not? In the second century before Christ, Tiberius Sempronius Gracchus, the Roman tribune of the plebs, proposed a reactionary program of legal and economic reform to address the republic’s pressing problems, particularly the dispossession of small landowners by the planter class, which had sapped the…

Foreign Affairs The Chinese Honeypot Problem The entrapment and exploitation of American officials by sexual liaisons is a real danger in the new cold war. The U.S. government recently banned American personnel in China, as well as family members and contractors with security clearances, from any romantic or sexual relationships with Chinese citizens. The policy…

Foreign Affairs Trump’s Surprising Friendship with Mexico The president has been amigos with Mexican leaders since 2018. Credit: Anna Moneymaker-Pool/Getty Images When Trump took office in 2016, bad relations with Mexico seemed preordained. During the campaign, the president had lambasted the country for its role in facilitating illegal immigration to the U.S., famously saying that…

Culture The Highlights Habit Politics or sports—we’re all here for the exciting moments. As a watcher of live sporting events, I plead guilty to preferring the miracle finish to the long slog that precedes the miracle finish. I was reminded of my inexcusable inattentiveness on Monday evening, when the Florida Gators played the Houston Cougars…

U.S. Customs and Border Protection released a major update late Friday exempting many electronics and electronic components from Trump’s tariff regime. These products, including smartphones, computers, computer parts, TV screens, and integrated circuits will not be subject to reciprocal tariffs, the baseline 10 percent universal tariff, or the 125 percent tariff on Chinese imports. The…

The United States and Iran concluded preliminary talks Saturday on Iran’s nuclear program, with both sides describing the talks as constructive. The talks were held in Oman and were mediated by Badr Al-Busaidi, Oman’s foreign minister. The talks were held indirectly over the course of 2.5 hours with Iran’s foreign minister, Seyed Abbas Araghachi, and…