Project Syndicate

If Donald Trump and Xi Jinping's Beijing summit produces a sustained Sino-American trade truce and a path to reopening the Strait of Hormuz, that will give the world economy something it has lacked for the past year and half: a reduction in tail risks. In a year when so much has gone wrong, that is a welcome prospect.

The United States needs AI governance that protects workers without stifling innovation; tax strategies that actually address inequality; and innovation policies that do not kill the goose that lays the golden egg. If there is one place where these demands will be met, it is the Golden State.

Judging by most of the media coverage of the global AI "race," the United States and China are the two dominant players, and every other country and organization is at risk of being left behind. The reality is far more complex—and not nearly as bleak.

Governments and financial institutions urgently need to align on restoring and maintaining the planet's life-support system. By harnessing recent advances in science, monitoring technologies, and data availability, we can finally start treating water like the shared, transnational asset that it is.

Under Xi Jinping, China is moving steadily away from the pragmatic authoritarianism of the reform era toward the restoration of Mao-style totalitarianism. Two recent books argue that Xi's political ascent was no historical accident, but a structural feature of China’s political system.

Central Asia has long been dismissed as too risky, too isolated, and too politically unstable to attract international investors. But a landmark IPO by Uzbekistan’s national investment fund may finally change that, signaling that one of the world’s fastest-growing regions is eager and ready to attract global capital.

Childhood immunization is the world’s most cost-effective public-health intervention, with a single vaccine dose costing less than $2 to administer—even in active conflict zones. But local delivery in the hardest-to-reach places, where zero-dose children are concentrated, requires investment in models that depend on local partners.

Not all wars lead to better international orders. The Iran war launched by the United States and Israel is likely to prove particularly damaging in this respect, which will become all too obvious at this week’s US-China summit in Beijing, where Chinese President Xi Jinping has been given the upper hand.

Donald Trump’s disastrous war in Iran underscores that the guiding principle of his foreign policy is superpower suicide. But this is a symptom of a deeper condition: the democratic distortions and drastic inequalities that have enabled world-historic levels of strategic buffoonery.

Although the European Union has transformed the continent politically and economically, many citizens perceive integration as a source of regulations and constraints rather than as something that improves their daily lives. The digital euro could change that, but only if policymakers are willing to make the political case for it.

Trump’s planned White House ballroom and other architectural projects are not distractions but part of a broader effort to inscribe his preferred values and view of America into institutions that future presidents will be forced to operate within. Resisting it will require organized refusal now and institutional redesign later.

The American public’s fascination with neurodivergence has increased significantly in recent years. One possibility for this newfound obsession is that autism has become an interpretive screen onto which anxieties about technology, identity, and the future are projected.

The left- and right-wing populists calling for targeted taxes on the ultra-wealthy argue that the economic game is rigged against typical workers, allowing the rich to take from the middle class and the poor. But this claim is untrue—and the opposite of what aspiring young people need to hear.

Far from restoring Russia’s great-power status, the Ukraine war has left Russia stretched so thin that it has repeatedly failed to fulfill its commitments to partners and allies. With even Russia's closest friends hedging their bets, the Kremlin's ability to project power and shape world affairs has been severely weakened.

An advisory opinion from the International Court of Justice last year left no doubt that states have a legal obligation to prevent significant harm to the climate system, and that a failure to do so carries legal consequences. Now, a new United Nations resolution seeks to put this ruling into practice.

Manufacturing used to be a powerful economic escalator because it could employ large numbers of low-skilled workers while making limited demands on low-income countries’ governance and infrastructure. The good news is that services may be able to deliver the productivity growth necessary to support a robust middle class.

It may be tempting to regard US President Donald Trump’s attacks on the Federal Reserve as a personal vendetta against outgoing Chair Jerome Powell. But Trump’s hostility reflects a broader trend: the erosion of conservative support for independent central banks worldwide.

When Donald Trump sits down with Xi Jinping this week, he will be facing a leader who is patient, perceptive, and ambitious. While the best way to safeguard Taiwan’s autonomy is to ensure Xi never receives the signal that patience is no longer required, Trump's carelessness could have the opposite effect.

Despite being the least-indebted continent, Africa remains stuck in a debt trap. The trap does not reflect the volume of debt African countries have accumulated—which is just 3% of the global total—but rather how that debt is structured and perceived, which in turn reflects a flawed global financial architecture.