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Trump says he will institute a system of tariffs of on most foreign goods. Penalties would increase if trade partners manipulate their currencies or engage in other unfair trading practices. He will urge that Congress pass a “Trump Reciprocal Trade Act,” giving the president authority to impose a reciprocal tariff on any country that imposes one on the U.S. Much of the agenda focuses on China. Trump has proposed a four-year plan to phase out Chinese imports of essential goods, including electronics, steel and pharmaceuticals. He wants to ban Chinese companies from owning vital U.S. infrastructure in sectors such as energy, technology and agriculture, and says he will force Chinese owners to sell any holdings “that jeopardize America’s national security.”

And the domestic consequences could be severe. Many of Mr. Trump’s economic advisers, including the former trade chief Robert Lighthizer (a leading candidate to be the Treasury secretary under Mr. Trump), are apparently intent on pursuing the Great Depression redux — waging trade wars with Europe and Asia. They’re floating a host of other risky measures, including  the independence of the Federal Reserve, weakening the dollar to try to increase exports and imposing high tariffs on goods from China and Europe.

This dovetails with Trump’s blanket economic protectionism. In addition to the 60 per cent tax on Chinese imports, Trump has proposed a 10 per cent minimum rate on goods from all countries, including US allies. Trump may even use US security commitments as leverage, making them conditional on other countries joining the United States in isolating China. Trump sees even cooperative international relationships in and wants the US to ‘win’ by getting allies to contribute more to collective security. These two foreign policy strategies — pressuring allies to contribute more while also threatening to withdraw US support — are mutually contradictory and would create perverse incentives for other countries.

Trump, however, may pursue populist, anti-globalization, and protectionist policies that hinder trade and restrict the movement of labor and capital. And he has cast doubt on existing US security guarantees by suggesting that he will force America’s allies to pay for more of their own defense. If Trump is serious about putting “America first,” his administration will shift US geopolitical strategy toward isolationism and unilateralism, pursuing only the national interests of the homeland. When the US pursued similar policies in the 1920s and 1930s, it helped sow the seeds of World War II. Protectionism – starting with the Smoot-Hawley Tariff, which affected thousands of imported goods – triggered retaliatory trade and currency wars that worsened the Great Depression. More important, American isolationism – based on a false belief that the US was safely protected by two oceans – allowed Nazi Germany and Imperial Japan to wage aggressive war and threaten the entire world. With the attack on Pearl Harbor in December 1941, the US was finally forced to take its head out of the sand. Today, too, a US turn to isolationism and the pursuit of strictly US national interests may eventually lead to a global conflict. Even without the prospect of American disengagement from Europe, the European Union and the eurozone already appear to be disintegrating, particularly in the wake of the United Kingdom’s June Brexit vote and Italy’s failed referendum on constitutional reforms in December. Moreover, in 2017, extreme anti-Europe left- or right-wing populist parties could come to power in France and Italy, and possibly in other parts of Europe. Without active US engagement in Europe, an aggressively revanchist Russia will step in. Russia is already challenging the US and the EU in Ukraine, Syria, the Baltics, and the Balkans, and it may capitalize on the EU’s looming collapse by reasserting its influence in the former Soviet bloc countries, and supporting pro-Russia movements within Europe. If Europe gradually loses its US security umbrella, no one stands to benefit more than Russian President Vladimir Putin. Trump’s proposals also threaten to exacerbate the situation in the Middle East. He has said that he will make America energy independent, which entails abandoning US interests in the region and becoming more reliant on domestically produced greenhouse-gas-emitting fossil fuels. And he has maintained his position that Islam itself, rather than just radical militant Islam, is dangerous. This view, shared by Trump’s incoming National Security Adviser, General Michael Flynn, plays directly into Islamist militants’ own narrative of a clash of civilizations. Meanwhile, an “America first” approach under Trump will likely worsen the longstanding Sunni-Shia proxy wars between Saudi Arabia and Iran. And if the US no longer guarantees its Sunni allies’ security, all regional powers – including Iran, Saudi Arabia, Turkey, and Egypt – might decide that they can defend themselves only by acquiring nuclear weapons, and even more deadly conflict will ensue. In Asia, US economic and military primacy has provided decades of stability; but a rising China is now challenging the status quo. US President Barack Obama’s strategic “pivot” to Asia depended primarily on enacting the 12-country Trans-Pacific Partnership, which Trump has promised to scrap on his first day in office. Meanwhile, China is quickly strengthening its own economic ties in Asia, the Pacific, and Latin America through its “one belt, one road” policy, the Asian Infrastructure Investment Bank, the New Development Bank (formerly known as the BRICS bank), and its own regional free-trade proposal to rival the TPP. If the US gives up on its Asian allies such as the Philippines, South Korea, and Taiwan, those countries may have no choice but to prostrate themselves before China; and other US allies, such as Japan and India, may be forced to militarize and challenge China openly. Thus, an American withdrawal from the region could very well eventually precipitate a military conflict there. As in the 1930s, when protectionist and isolationist US policies hampered global economic growth and trade, and created the conditions for rising revisionist powers to start a world war, similar policy impulses could set the stage for new powers to challenge and undermine the American-led international order. An isolationist Trump administration may see the wide oceans to its east and west, and think that increasingly ambitious powers such as Russia, China, and Iran pose no direct threat to the homeland. But the US is still a global economic and financial power in a deeply interconnected world. If left unchecked, these countries will eventually be able to threaten core US economic and security interests – at home and abroad – especially if they expand their nuclear and cyberwarfare capacities. The historical record is clear: protectionism, isolationism, and “America first” policies are a recipe for economic and military disaster.

Former President Donald Trump has promised more tariffs if reelected, 60 percent against Chinese goods, 10 percent against products from the rest of the world. These are in addition to the tariffs he imposed during his time in office and presumably on top of some noteworthy tariffs added to by President Joseph R. Biden, Jr., including the 100 percent tariff on Chinese-made electric vehicles (EVs). China was considered a strategic competitor under the former Trump administration's ; other countries were not. Into this “rest of the world” category fit allies, neighbors, and just innocent bystanders. Why 10 percent? Why all countries? There is no other reasonable explanation than that Trump considers all trade to be “unfair” in some respect, or at least disadvantageous. This isn’t normally the way presidents act when it comes to tariffs. Additional tariffs are generally imposed very selectively, under trade remedy statutes crafted by Congress. They are actions taken pursuant to a finding that a particular product is involved in a specified unfair trade act, or it may be that the new tariff is a surgical retaliatory measure to open a market for a specified American product. Many uncertainties surround Trump’s proposals. We don’t know why 10 percent was chosen or why it would remain at 10 percent once imposed, but we do take Trump at his word on tariff matters—think about his fulfilling his pledge on day one of his time in office to withdraw the United States from the Transpacific Partnership (TPP) negotiated by President Barack Obama with Asia Pacific countries. He also already applied tariffs at a level of his choosing, first to steel and aluminum imports, and then to most imports from China, which netted out to , a third of what he is promising now.

The spread of nuclear weapons poses at least six severe threats to international peace and security including: nuclear war, nuclear terrorism, global and regional instability, constrained US freedom of action, weakened alliances, and further nuclear proliferation. Each of these threats has received extensive treatment elsewhere and this review is not intended to replicate or even necessarily to improve upon these previous efforts. Rather the goals of this section are more modest: to usefully bring together and recap the many reasons why we should be pessimistic about the likely consequences of nuclear proliferation. Many of these threats will be illuminated with a discussion of a case of much contemporary concern: Iran’s advanced nuclear program. Nuclear War The greatest threat posed by the spread of nuclear weapons is nuclear war. The more states in possession of nuclear weapons, the greater the probability that somewhere, someday, there will be a catastrophic nuclear war. To date, nuclear weapons have only been used in warfare once. In 1945, the United States used nuclear weapons on Hiroshima and Nagasaki, bringing World War II to a close. Many analysts point to the 65-plus-year tradition of nuclear non-use as evidence that nuclear weapons are unusable, but it would be naïve to think that nuclear weapons will never be used again simply because they have not been used for some time. After all, analysts in the 1990s argued that worldwide economic downturns like the Great Depression were a thing of the past, only to be surprised by the dot-com bubble bursting later in the decade and the Great Recession of the late 2000s.48 This author, for one, would be surprised if nuclear weapons are not used again sometime in his lifetime. Before reaching a state of MAD, new nuclear states go through a transition period in which they lack a secure-second strike capability. In this context, one or both states might believe that it has an incentive to use nuclear weapons first. For example, if Iran acquires nuclear weapons, neither Iran, nor its nuclear-armed rival, Israel, will have a secure, second-strike capability. Even though it is believed to have a large arsenal, given its small size and lack of strategic depth, Israel might not be confident that it could absorb a nuclear strike and respond with a devastating counterstrike. Similarly, Iran might eventually be able to build a large and survivable nuclear arsenal, but, when it first crosses the nuclear threshold, Tehran will have a small and vulnerable nuclear force. In these pre-MAD situations, there are at least three ways that nuclear war could occur. First, the state with the nuclear advantage might believe it has a splendid first strike capability. In a crisis, Israel might, therefore, decide to launch a preventive nuclear strike to disarm Iran’s nuclear capabilities. Indeed, this incentive might be further increased by Israel’s aggressive strategic culture that emphasizes preemptive action. Second, the state with a small and vulnerable nuclear arsenal, in this case Iran, might feel use them or lose them pressures. That is, in a crisis, Iran might decide to strike first rather than risk having its entire nuclear arsenal destroyed. Third, as Thomas Schelling has argued, nuclear war could result due to the reciprocal fear of surprise attack.49 If there are advantages to striking first, one state might start a nuclear war in the belief that war is inevitable and that it would be better to go first than to go second. Fortunately, there is no historic evidence of this dynamic occurring in a nuclear context, but it is still possible. In an Israeli–Iranian crisis, for example, Israel and Iran might both prefer to avoid a nuclear war, but decide to strike first rather than suffer a devastating first attack from an opponent. Even in a world of MAD, however, when both sides have secure, second-strike capabilities, there is still a risk of nuclear war. Rational deterrence theory assumes nuclear-armed states are governed by rational leaders who would not intentionally launch a suicidal nuclear war. This assumption appears to have applied to past and current nuclear powers, but there is no guarantee that it will continue to hold in the future. Iran’s theocratic government, despite its inflammatory rhetoric, has followed a fairly pragmatic foreign policy since 1979, but it contains leaders who hold millenarian religious worldviews and could one day ascend to power. We cannot rule out the possibility that, as nuclear weapons continue to spread, some leader somewhere will choose to launch a nuclear war, knowing full well that it could result in self-destruction. One does not need to resort to irrationality, however, to imagine nuclear war under MAD. Nuclear weapons may deter leaders from intentionally launching full-scale wars, but they do not mean the end of international politics. As was discussed above, nuclear-armed states still have conflicts of interest and leaders still seek to coerce nuclear-armed adversaries. Leaders might, therefore, choose to launch a limited nuclear war.50 This strategy might be especially attractive to states in a position of conventional inferiority that might have an incentive to escalate a crisis quickly to the nuclear level. During the Cold War, the United States planned to use nuclear weapons first to stop a Soviet invasion of Western Europe given NATO’s conventional inferiority.51 As Russia’s conventional power has deteriorated since the end of the Cold War, Moscow has come to rely more heavily on nuclear weapons in its military doctrine. Indeed, Russian strategy calls for the use of nuclear weapons early in a conflict (something that most Western strategists would consider to be escalatory) as a way to de-escalate a crisis. Similarly, Pakistan’s military plans for nuclear use in the event of an invasion from conventionally stronger India. And finally, Chinese generals openly talk about the possibility of nuclear use against a US superpower in a possible East Asia contingency. Second, as was also discussed above, leaders can make a ‘threat that leaves something to chance’.52 They can initiate a nuclear crisis. By playing these risky games of nuclear brinkmanship, states can increase the risk of nuclear war in an attempt to force a less resolved adversary to back down. Historical crises have not resulted in nuclear war, but many of them, including the 1962 Cuban Missile Crisis, have come close. And scholars have documented historical incidents when accidents nearly led to war.53 When we think about future nuclear crisis dyads, such as Iran and Israel, with fewer sources of stability than existed during the Cold War, we can see that there is a real risk that a future crisis could result in a devastating nuclear exchange. Nuclear Terrorism The spread of nuclear weapons also increases the risk of nuclear terrorism.54 While September 11th was one of the greatest tragedies in American history, it would have been much worse had Osama Bin Laden possessed nuclear weapons. Bin Laden declared it a ‘religious duty’ for Al- Qa’eda to acquire nuclear weapons and radical clerics have issued fatwas declaring it permissible to use nuclear weapons in Jihad against the West.55 Unlike states, which can be more easily deterred, there is little doubt that if terrorists acquired nuclear weapons, they would use them.56 Indeed, in recent years, many US politicians and security analysts have argued that nuclear terrorism poses the greatest threat to US national security.57 Analysts have pointed out the tremendous hurdles that terrorists would have to overcome in order to acquire nuclear weapons.58 Nevertheless, as nuclear weapons spread, the possibility that they will eventually fall into terrorist hands increases. States could intentionally transfer nuclear weapons, or the fissile material required to build them, to terrorist groups. There are good reasons why a state might be reluctant to transfer nuclear weapons to terrorists, but, as nuclear weapons spread, the probability that a leader might someday purposely arm a terrorist group increases. Some fear, for example, that Iran, with its close ties to Hamas and Hizballah, might be at a heightened risk of transferring nuclear weapons to terrorists. Moreover, even if no state would ever intentionally transfer nuclear capabilities to terrorists, a new nuclear state, with underdeveloped security procedures, might be vulnerable to theft, allowing terrorist groups or corrupt or ideologically-motivated insiders to transfer dangerous material to terrorists. There is evidence, for example, that representatives from Pakistan’s atomic energy establishment met with Al-Qa’eda members to discuss a possible nuclear deal.59 Finally, a nuclear-armed state could collapse, resulting in a breakdown of law and order and a loose nukes problem. US officials are currently very concerned about what would happen to Pakistan’s nuclear weapons if the government were to fall. As nuclear weapons spread, this problem is only further amplified. Iran is a country with a history of revolutions and a government with a tenuous hold on power. The regime change that Washington has long dreamed about in Tehran could actually become a nightmare if a nuclear-armed Iran suffered a breakdown in authority, forcing us to worry about the fate of Iran’s nuclear arsenal. Regional Instability The spread of nuclear weapons also emboldens nuclear powers, contributing to regional instability. States that lack nuclear weapons need to fear direct military attack from other states, but states with nuclear weapons can be confident that they can deter an intentional military attack, giving them an incentive to be more aggressive in the conduct of their foreign policy. In this way, nuclear weapons provide a shield under which states can feel free to engage in lower-level aggression. Indeed, international relations theories about the ‘stability-instability paradox’ maintain that stability at the nuclear level contributes to conventional instability.60 Historically, we have seen that the spread of nuclear weapons has emboldened their possessors and contributed to regional instability. Recent scholarly analyses have demonstrated that, after controlling for other relevant factors, nuclear-weapon states are more likely to engage in conflict than nonnuclear-weapon states and that this aggressiveness is more pronounced in new nuclear states that have less experience with nuclear diplomacy.61 Similarly, research on internal decision-making in Pakistan reveals that Pakistani foreign policymakers may have been emboldened by the acquisition of nuclear weapons, which encouraged them to initiate militarized disputes against India.62 Currently, Iran restrains its foreign policy because it fears major military retaliation from the United States or Israel, but with nuclear weapons it could feel free to push harder. A nuclear-armed Iran would likely step up support to terrorist and proxy groups and engage in more aggressive coercive diplomacy. With a nuclear-armed Iran increasingly throwing its weight around in the region, we could witness an even more crisis prone Middle East. And in a poly-nuclear Middle East with Israel, Iran, and, in the future, possibly other states, armed with nuclear weapons, any one of those crises could result in a catastrophic nuclear exchange.

As the new year begins, the existential risks posed by nuclear weapons continue to grow. A crucial factor in whether one or more of today’s nuclear challenges erupt into full-scale crisis, unravel the nonproliferation system, or worse will be the outcome of the U.S. presidential election. How the winner of the 2024 race will handle the evolving array of nuclear weapons-related challenges is difficult to forecast, but the records and policies of the leading contenders, President Joe Biden and former President Donald Trump, offer clues. A major responsibility for any commander in chief is to avoid events that can lead to a nuclear war with Russia over its war on Ukraine and with China over its claims to Taiwan. One indicator of Trump’s more confrontational approach came in 2019 when, at a meeting of senior officials from the five nuclear-armed states recognized under the nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty (NPT), China proposed a joint statement reiterating that “a nuclear war cannot be won and must never be fought.” Two years later, Biden administration officials successfully pressed the group to reaffirm this Reagan-Gorbachev maxim, first enunciated in 1985. Since then, Russian President Vladimir Putin’s full-scale attack on Ukraine and threats of nuclear use have raised the specter of nuclear conflict. To his credit, Biden has not issued nuclear counterthreats and has backed Ukraine in its struggle to repel Russia’s invasion. In 2022, Biden also joined leaders of the Group of 20 states in declaring that the use of nuclear weapons and threats of their use are “inadmissible.” Well before Putin’s nuclear rhetoric turned ominous, Trump engaged in an alarming exchange of taunts with North Korean leader Kim Jong Un in 2017. His threats of unleashing “fire and fury” against Pyongyang fueled tensions on the Korean peninsula and provide another clue how he might behave in a crisis with China, North Korea, or Russia in a second term. Effective U.S. leadership on arms control will be critical to avoid a destabilizing, three-way arms race after the New Strategic Arms Reduction Treaty expires in 2026. As the treaty’s first expiration deadline of February 5, 2021, was approaching, Trump refused to agree to simple extension of the pact, focusing instead on a failed effort to cajole China into joining Russian-U.S. arms talks. This left the incoming Biden administration only days to reach a deal with the Kremlin to extend the pact by five years, and it did. In June 2023, the Biden administration proposed talks with Russia “without preconditions” on a new, post-2026 “nuclear arms control framework.” As long as there is war in Ukraine, the best outcome likely is a simple deal committing both sides to stay below the current limit of 1,550 deployed strategic warheads until a longer-term framework is concluded. Biden also has pursued nuclear risk reduction talks with China, which continues its nuclear buildup begun during the Trump era. In November, senior Chinese and U.S. officials held the first such talks in years. Meanwhile, Iranian leaders continue increasing their capabilities to produce weapons-grade uranium in response to Trump's 2018 decision to withdraw unilaterally from the 2015 Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action and impose tougher U.S. sanctions to pressure Tehran into negotiating a new deal. They now are threatening to pull out of the NPT if the United States or other UN Security Council members snap back international sanctions against Iran. Biden’s efforts to restore mutual compliance with the 2015 deal have been stymied by Iranian demands on matters outside the nuclear file and tensions over the war in Gaza. Avoiding a more severe crisis over Iran’s nuclear program will require more sophisticated U.S. diplomacy. Kim has ramped up North Korean nuclear and missile development and stiff-armed overtures for talks with Washington ever since the disastrous 2019 Hanoi summit, when Trump flatly rejected Kim’s offer to dismantle the Yongbyon nuclear complex in return for limited sanctions relief, then walked out of the meeting. Renewed talks on curbing North Korea’s weapons program will require a recalibration of the U.S. approach. Concerns about a possible nuclear testing revival also are rising. The Trump administration did not help when it declared in 2018 that the United States did not intend to ratify the Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty and in 2020 when senior Trump officials discussed resuming explosive testing to intimidate China and Russia. Biden, on the other hand, has reaffirmed U.S. support for the treaty; and his team proposed technical talks on confidence-building arrangements at the former Chinese, Russian, and U.S. test sites. Most Americans do not vote based on candidates’ positions on nuclear weapons, but they are aware and deeply concerned about nuclear dangers. A 2023 national opinion survey found that large majorities believe that nuclear weapons are the most likely existential threat to the human race. In 2024, the candidates’ approaches to these dangers deserve more scrutiny than usual. Presidential leadership may be the most important factor that determines whether the risk of nuclear arms racing, proliferation, and war will rise or fall in the years ahead

As one of the countless millions of people who were freed or protected from totalitarianism by the United States of America, it is easy for me to talk about the past. To talk about the belief of the American people and their leaders that this country was exceptional, and had special responsibilities to match its tremendous power. That a nation founded on freedom was bound to defend freedom everywhere. I could talk about the bipartisan legacy of this most American principle, from the Founding Fathers, to Democrats like Harry Truman, to Republicans like Ronald Reagan. I could talk about how the American people used to care deeply about human rights and dissidents in far-off places, and how this is what made America a beacon of hope, a shining city on a hill. America led by example and set a high standard, a standard that exposed the hypocrisy and cruelty of dictatorships around the world. But there is no time for nostalgia. Since the fall of the Berlin Wall, the collapse of the Soviet Union, and the end of the Cold War, Americans, and America, have retreated from those principles, and the world has become much worse off as a result. American skepticism about America’s role in the world deepened in the long, painful wars in Afghanistan and Iraq, and their aftermaths. Instead of applying the lessons learned about how to do better, lessons about faulty intelligence and working with native populations, the main outcome was to stop trying. This result has been a tragedy for the billions of people still living under authoritarian regimes around the world, and it is based on faulty analysis. You can never guarantee a positive outcome— not in chess, not in war, and certainly not in politics. The best you can do is to do what you know is right and to try your best. I speak from experience when I say that the citizens of unfree states do not expect guarantees. They want a reason to hope and a fighting chance. People living under dictatorships want the opportunity for freedom, the opportunity to live in peace and to follow their dreams. From the Iraq War to the Arab Spring to the current battles for liberty from Venezuela to Eastern Ukraine, people are fighting for that opportunity, giving up their lives for freedom. The United States must not abandon them. The United States and the rest of the free world has an unprecedented advantage in economic and military strength today. What is lacking is the will. The will to make the case to the American people, the will to take risks and invest in the long-term security of the country, and the world. This will require investments in aid, in education, in security that allow countries to attain the stability their people so badly need. Such investment is far more moral and far cheaper than the cycle of terror, war, refugees, and military intervention that results when America leaves a vacuum of power. The best way to help refugees is to prevent them from becoming refugees in the first place. The Soviet Union was an existential threat, and this focused the attention of the world, and the American people. There existential threat today is not found on a map, but it is very real. The forces of the past are making steady progress against the modern world order. Terrorist movements in the Middle East, extremist parties across Europe, a paranoid tyrant in North Korea threatening nuclear blackmail, and, at the center of the web, an aggressive KGB dictator in Russia. They all want to turn the world back to a dark past because their survival is threatened by the values of the free world, epitomized by the United States. And they are thriving as the U.S. has retreated. The global freedom index has declined for ten consecutive years. No one like to talk about the United States as a global policeman, but this is what happens when there is no cop on the beat. American leadership begins at home, right here. America cannot lead the world on democracy and human rights if there is no unity on the meaning and importance of these things. Leadership is required to make that case clearly and powerfully. Right now, Americans are engaged in politics at a level not seen in decades. It is an opportunity for them to rediscover that making America great begins with believing America can be great. The Cold War was won on American values that were shared by both parties and nearly every American. Institutions that were created by a Democrat, Truman, were triumphant forty years later thanks to the courage of a Republican, Reagan. This bipartisan consistency created the decades of strategic stability that is the great strength of democracies. Strong institutions that outlast politicians allow for long-range planning. In contrast, dictators can operate only tactically, not strategically, because they are not constrained by the balance of powers, but cannot afford to think beyond their own survival. This is why a dictator like Putin has an advantage in chaos, the ability to move quickly. This can only be met by strategy, by long-term goals that are based on shared values, not on polls and cable news. The fear of making things worse has paralyzed the United States from trying to make things better. There will always be setbacks, but the United States cannot quit. The spread of democracy is the only proven remedy for nearly every crisis that plagues the world today. War, famine, poverty, terrorism–all are generated and exacerbated by authoritarian regimes. A policy of America First inevitably puts American security last. American leadership is required because there is no one else, and because it is good for America. There is no weapon or wall that is more powerful for security than America being envied, imitated, and admired around the world. Admired not for being perfect, but for having the exceptional courage to always try to be better. Thank you.

We did get through it last time. But that wasn’t for lack of Trump’s trying. It was because of the guardrails: those features of the political system, both formal and informal, that so often prevented Trump from actually doing the undemocratic things he tried to do. So to assess the peril a second Trump term poses for American democracy, we need to assess the condition of the guardrails. Worryingly, most of them have weakened since Trump first came to power; some have weakened very significantly. None appear to have gotten stronger. We’re still a very long way from a system where the president can truly rule without any checks on his power. We can’t know right now exactly how often the guardrails would still hold Trump back, or how future crises would play out. But it’s easy to see how a more determined and radicalized Trump, in a system with significantly weaker guardrails, could lead American democracy to even more dangerous places.

Global change will strike the oldest and most complex ecosystems of the world hardest, regardless of their past stability. This alarming finding is reported in a JRC-led article published in Nature Communications. The authors hypothesized that invasive species, the warming climate and environmental degradation have altered natural habitats so deeply that species adaptation to historical conditions may not be helpful under these new circumstances. Interestingly, the authors found independent support for this hypothesis from both computer simulations and real-world data. Starting from a single ancestor digital organism, the authors let artificial life communities evolve for hundreds of thousands of generations under different, stable environmental settings. These simulated communities included both free-living and 'parasite' digital organisms that helped researchers investigate how biodiversity and ecological networks develop over time, under different environmental conditions. Over several generations, both hosts and parasites diversified, and their interactions became more complex. The authors then investigated how these communities would respond to different scenarios of biodiversity loss. They found that when species become extinct in a sequence consistent with their degree of adaptation to the 'natural' environmental conditions within which they had evolved, their extinction has only a limited effect on the overall diversity of the community. Any deviation from this pattern however, may trigger extinction cascades, eventually leading to the collapse of the entire network. The tendency of consuming species to rely and specialise (develop in a way most suited to the environment) on dependable resources has enabled the evolution of complex systems. This basic mechanism may have doomed many species to extinction -- the authors demonstrate it by comparing the results of their artificial life simulations with several empirical host-parasite networks of different animal groups. Resources that had been largely available in the past are now becoming increasingly scarce, putting at risk the species that rely on them.

Carbon dioxide emission cuts will immediately affect the rate of future global warming Concordia and MIT researchers show Montreal, April 2, 2013 – There is a persistent misconception among both scientists and the public that there is a delay between emissions of carbon dioxide (CO2) and the climate’s response to those emissions. This misconception has led policy makers to argue that CO2 emission cuts implemented now will not affect the climate system for many decades. This erroneous line of argument makes the climate problem seem more intractable than it actually is, say Concordia University’s Damon Matthews and MIT’s Susan Solomon in a recent Science article. The researchers show that immediate decreases in CO2 emissions would in fact result in an immediate decrease in the rate of climate warming. Explains Matthews, professor in the Department of Geography, Planning and Environment, “If we can successfully decrease CO2 emissions in the near future, this change will be felt by the climate system when the emissions reductions are implemented – not in several decades." “The potential for a quick climate response to prompt cuts in CO2 emissions opens up the possibility that the climate benefits of emissions reductions would occur on the same timescale as the political decisions themselves.” In their paper, Matthews and Solomon, Ellen Swallow Richards professor of Atmospheric Chemistry and Climate Science, show that the onus for slowing the rate of global warming falls squarely on current efforts at reducing CO2 emissions, and the resulting future emissions that we produce. This means that there are critical implications for the equity of carbon emission choices currently being discussed internationally. Total emissions from developing countries may soon exceed those from developed nations. But developed countries are expected to maintain a far higher per-capita contribution to present and possible future warming. “This disparity clarifies the urgency for low-carbon technology investment and diffusion to enable developing countries to continue to develop,” says Matthews. “Emission cuts made now will have an immediate effect on the rate of global warming,” he asserts. “I see more hope for averting difficult-to-avoid negative impacts by accelerating advances in technology development and diffusion, than for averting climate system changes that are already inevitable. Given the enormous scope and complexity of the climate mitigation challenge, clarifying these points of hope is critical to motivate change.”

The 2024 U.S. presidential election will be pivotal for climate policy. GOP candidates are divided, with some backing limited measures to address climate issues and others rejecting climate change outright, likening it to a hoax. Climate policy has flipped back and forth depending on which party controls the presidency and Congress, said Dana Fisher, a Brookings Institution nonresident senior fellow and director of the Center for Environment, Community and Equity at American University. She said the outcome of the 2024 presidential election will determine whether clean energy initiatives and climate policies in the U.S. go forward. "What we frequently see is that whatever political party is in power and holds the presidency plays a substantial role," she said. Extreme weather events such as wildfires, excessive heat, flooding and drought have not gone unnoticed by Democrats and Republicans in Congress, which passed the bipartisan Inflation Reduction Act (IRA) in 2022 to boost clean energy incentives for businesses. The U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission is also working on a proposed climate risk disclosure rule that would require publicly listed businesses to detail their direct greenhouse gas emissions and weather-related business risks. Apple, Microsoft, Salesforce and other tech companies recently signed letters of support for a similar reporting framework, the Climate Corporate Data Accountability Act, in California. Reducing environmental impact and implementing more sustainable business practices is also becoming increasingly important to enterprise business leaders. Senior business leaders named sustainability a top 10 priority in 2022, according to a Gartner survey, making U.S. leadership on climate policy critical for businesses looking to align business environmental goals with federal policy. Despite some marginally growing acceptance of climate-related issues by Republicans in Congress, some potential GOP presidential candidates stand strongly against further climate policy in the U.S. GOP candidates' stance During the first Republican presidential debate of the 2024 election, GOP candidate and businessman Vivek Ramaswamy said Biden's clean energy policies are hurting innovation. He called climate change a "hoax." Ramaswamy's climate stance reflects that of GOP candidate and former U.S. President Donald Trump, whose administration focused on championing oil, natural gas and coal industries as well as reversing environmental protections. GOP candidate and Florida governor Ron DeSantis sent a message on his climate stance earlier this year when he signed a bill that prohibits state officials from investing public funds to promote environmental, social and governance (ESG) goals. On DeSantis' campaign website, he says he has delivered wins on conservative priorities, including "waging war on woke power-grabs like ESG." GOP candidates like Nikki Haley acknowledge that climate change is occurring but only support certain governmental-led efforts to address it, such as carbon-capture technology for businesses. GOP candidate Mike Pence wants to eliminate the Environmental Protection Agency and end IRA tax credits for electric vehicles and green retrofitting of existing buildings. If the election results in Republicans winning the U.S. presidency and control of Congress, the future of the IRA is uncertain, said Dave Effross, director of the Information Technology and Innovation Foundation's Center for Clean Energy Innovation. "If the Republicans controlled all three branches, they would roll back the IRA," he said. How a change in leadership will affect climate policy The uncertainty surrounding climate policy has been demonstrated by past presidential administrations, Fisher said. Through an executive order in 2015, former President Barack Obama's administration enacted the Clean Power Plan, which set limits for carbon pollution from power plants. That executive order was immediately reversed when the Trump administration took office in 2016. But the IRA is the first climate legislation passed into law in the U.S., which will be much harder for a Republican president to reverse should Biden lose reelection. Fisher doesn't believe the Republicans will reverse the IRA. "There's really a disconnect right now between the messages that we saw on the stage with that first GOP debate and the way that Republicans in Congress have been talking about climate," she said. "They've been acknowledging that there is climate change. But the solutions they're proposing are the absolute lowest hanging fruit, which will not in any way solve the climate crisis or stave it off. But they will have an effect on emissions." Within Congress, there are several policy mechanisms that Republicans could support, Fisher said. The Trump administration was extreme in denying climate change, which resulted in Republicans in Congress getting in line behind Trump's messaging, Fisher said. However, before the Trump administration came in, Congressional Republicans were in a similar place to where they are now -- acknowledging climate change but calling for a softer response. "I'm not saying a Republican is going to run on a platform to stop burning fossil fuels. But a platform that opens up to more energy variation in terms of energy sources or one that supports carbon capture and storage and carbon removal technologies that complement fossil fuel extraction," she said. "The messages we got from this presidential debate make it unclear if a Republican president would follow through on this. But I think in Congress, we will see Republicans absolutely continue to support this." ITIF's Effross said certain effects of climate-related risks aren't lost on Congress, including massive federal aid spending in the wake of climate-related disasters. However, the Republicans oppose forced clean energy adoption through regulation, Effross said. This entails relying on competitive markets to foster price parity between clean energy technologies and fossil fuel-based systems. Fisher said if a Republican wins the presidency, there could be a turning away from international commitments to addressing the effects of climate change, like The Paris Agreement. Additionally, if a Republican candidate with a strong anti-climate stance like Trump or Ramaswamy was elected, they likely would not sign additional climate legislation. "Policymaking will stall. But the interesting thing is that I don't think we're going to see complete removal of the investments written into the Inflation Reduction Act," she said. Biden falls short on climate commitments Though the Biden administration was the first to lead U.S. climate policy through both the House and Senate, Fisher said he's fallen short on the aggressive climate commitments he made at the beginning of his presidency. To pass the IRA, Biden and Democrats in the Senate agreed to open public lands to extraction of fossil fuels and the continued construction of the natural gas Mountain Valley Pipeline that runs 303 miles from West Virginia to Virginia. The IRA does provide strong incentives for investing in clean energy, and while Fisher said there are plenty of carrots through the IRA, "there are less sticks than there have ever been before." "Environmental justice activists are all very disappointed in the way he got the IRA passed," she said. If Biden is re-elected, he will see growing pressure for more climate action that's not just carrots but sticks, Fisher said. "I think that President Biden himself was open to those kinds of measures and then had to make compromises to get the job done with Congress," she said. "If Congress becomes more open to supporting more aggressive polices, I think we'll see them coming from the president." Makenzie Holland is a news writer covering big tech and federal regulation. Prior to joining TechTarget, she was a general reporter for the Wilmington StarNews and a crime and education reporter at the Wabash Plain Dealer.

Far-right conservative groups are promoting a sprawling “battle plan” to obstruct and undo the federal government’s efforts to tackle the climate crisis, with hopes of quickly enacting a series of sweeping changes if Donald Trump, or any other Republican, gets elected as president next year. The 920-page proposal, if implemented, would not only undo any progress the Biden administration has made to reduce emissions and fund clean energy development and other climate-related efforts, but it would make it far more difficult for a future administration to pursue any policy that seeks to address global warming at all, according to a report last week by POLITICO. The plan would even make it challenging for federal agencies to carry out common environmental protections that have been practiced in the country for more than 50 years. Called Project 2025 and written by more than 350 right-wing hardliners—including former Trump staffers—the plan would block wind and solar power from being added to the electrical grid; gut funding for the Environmental Protection Agency; eliminate the Department of Energy’s renewable energy offices; prohibit states from adopting California’s tailpipe pollution standards, transfer many federal environmental regulatory duties to Republican state officials; and generally prop up the fossil fuel industry. “Project 2025 is not a white paper. We are not tinkering at the edges. We are writing a battle plan and we are marshaling our forces,” Paul Dans, director of Project 2025 at the Heritage Foundation, which is leading the initiative, told POLITICO. “Never before has the whole conservative movement banded together to systematically prepare to take power day one and deconstruct the administrative state.” While Republican and Democratic presidents have commonly rolled back policies from rival administrations upon taking office, including reversing executive orders and introducing new federal agency rules, Project 2025 stands out for its aim to implement a systematic conservative takeover of the federal government. For example, the plan compiles a list of as many as 20,000 like-minded conservatives who could serve in the next administration to carry out the kind of deregulatory overhaul that became a hallmark of the Trump administration. “In 2016, the conservative movement was not prepared to flood the zone with conservative personnel,” Heritage Foundation President Kevin Roberts told the New York Times. “On Jan. 20, 2025, things will be very different. This database will prepare an army of vetted, trained staff to begin dismantling the administrative state from Day 1.” Andrew Rosenberg, who served as a senior official at the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration during the Clinton administration and now works for the University of New Hampshire’s Carsey School of Public Policy, told POLITICO that Project 2025 marks a fundamental shift, where instead of federal agencies obliging their duty to public health and environmental protection, they instead work to help the industries they’ve been tasked with overseeing. The proposal would be especially damaging for the EPA, the nation’s top environmental and health regulatory agency and one of the most important tools a president has to address climate change. It would eliminate the EPA’s environmental justice and public engagement functions, drastically slash the agency’s budget and terminate new hires in what the plan’s authors refer to as “low-value programs.” The plan would also revive the so-called “secret science” rule, a controversial proposal by the Trump administration that would have severely limited how the EPA can use scientific studies in its policy making. “What this does is it basically undermines not only society but the economic capacity of the country at the same time as it’s doing gross violence to the environment,” Rosenberg said. In fact, Project 2025 is part of a larger plan by Trump and his far-right allies to greatly expand the president’s authority over every part of the federal government. Their goals include ending the post-Watergate practice of shielding the Department of Justice from White House political influence; putting independent agencies like the Federal Trade Commission, which enforces antitrust laws and consumer protection rules, under direct presidential control; and reviving the practice of refusing to spend money Congress has appropriated for programs a president doesn’t like—a tactic lawmakers banned under President Richard Nixon. The plans add to the mounting evidence that signals the Republican party is continuing to shift dramatically to the right—a change that only accelerated during Trump’s time in office. Even as a growing number of GOP lawmakers embrace well established climate science and admit that humans are, in fact, rapidly warming Earth’s atmosphere, Trump’s grip on the party is forcing conservative leaders in Congress to take radical positions on many culture-war topics, including climate change. It’s a problem that some prominent Republicans say must be addressed going into next year’s presidential election. But many worry that the party has been taken hostage by Trump and similar lawmakers in Congress who have adopted the former president’s bravado and propensity for fear mongering and populist, inflammatory rhetoric. “As Donald Trump is the near presumptive nominee of our party in 2024, it’s going to be very hard for a party to adopt a climate-sensitive policy,” Sen. Mitt Romney, a Republican from Utah, told CNN. “There are a number of states, like mine, that are concerned about wildfires and water.” “I think the evidence so far is that the West is getting drier and hotter,” the former Republican-endorsed presidential candidate added. “That means that we’re going to have more difficulty with our crops, we’re going to have a harder time keeping the rivers full of water. The Great Salt Lake is probably going to continue to shrink. And unfortunately, we’re going to see more catastrophic fires. If the trends continue, we need to act.”

President Biden has taken to branding his program “Bidenomics” and to contrasting it with what he calls the failure of “trickle-down” policy to spread wealth. In a speech in Chicago in June, he said public investment was essential to drive long-term growth, and he compared his infrastructure law to the Interstate Highway System built in the 1950s and 1960s. “Biden economics means the industries of the future are going to grow right here at home,” he said. While his branding may be premature, Mr. Biden’s agenda could prove transformative, both in nurturing new industries and, arguably as importantly, in breaking with decades of putting restraints on government and letting the market set the nation’s economic priorities. Under President Ronald Reagan, this orthodoxy – often called neoliberalism – prioritized free trade, limited government, and unfettered capital. It commanded fealty from Republicans and Democrats alike. To dissent was to be branded a big-government heretic who would imperil the money machine of capitalism. That makes the shift under Mr. Biden, a Democrat from the party’s center, all the more profound. While Presidents Bill Clinton and Barack Obama largely adhered to the post-Reagan economic playbook, Mr. Biden has embraced a far more interventionist approach, says Gary Gerstle, an American historian at the University of Cambridge. “I think he has a sense that America is at an inflection point” – a point, he adds, where the “neoliberal economics of Clinton and Obama are no longer suitable ... for an America that needs a different and more ambitious agenda.” Jennifer Harris, who served for two years as senior director for international economics and labor on Mr. Biden’s National Security Council, calls his agenda “a revolution in economic ideas” that upends the neoliberal approach. “We’re living now in an experiment around industrial policy [and] the power of fiscal policy to solve what needs solving,” she says. The White House can point to early indicators that its experiment is working. From May 2022 to May 2023, private investment in industrial plants rose to $200 billion, triple the yearly average seen in the 2010s. Manufacturing employment has risen to nearly 13 million jobs, its highest level since 2008. Barely a week goes by without the announcement of a new clean energy project. Harder to gauge is whether voters will credit Mr. Biden for this activity and repay him and his party at election time. Infrastructure projects typically take years to complete. Many of the new factories are being built in conservative states like Georgia where Republican leaders lambaste the president and obscure the role his policy plays in attracting investments. And voters are still reeling from high inflation and the higher interest rates applied to reduce it. Even if Biden-backed projects provide concrete benefits, that may not be persuasive in a distrustful, polarized democracy, says Ted Strickland, a former Democratic governor of Ohio. “For some people, a road or a factory ... may move them in how they’re going to vote. But I think, unfortunately, for most people it’s going to be based on, are you on our team or the other team?” Mr. Biden is already campaigning on his economic policies and his belief in their power to improve people’s lives. His chance of winning a second term, and of making his transformations stick, may depend on how many voters share his belief that Bidenomics can deliver. It took the form of a 184-acre industrial park along I-75 on the outskirts of Dalton, Georgia, a town that for decades had grown wealthy making carpets for homeowners who expected wall-to-wall carpeting. After the housing bubble popped in 2007-08, putting hundreds of carpet-mill employees out of work, the county government drew up a diversification plan. It was time to roll out a welcome mat in the “Carpet Capital of the World” for other types of factories. As executive director of the Dalton-Whitfield County Joint Development Authority, Mr. Campbell had to find tenants for the industrial park, a former campground the county had purchased in 2010. Now, eight years on, there was nothing to show for its investment. Auto-industry suppliers and other manufacturers checked it out, and the site often made their shortlist. But they all chose to build factories elsewhere. Dalton was always the bridesmaid, never the bride, and Mr. Campbell and the county commissioners were feeling political pressure. But then, in January 2018, President Donald Trump – who in his inaugural address said “protection will lead to great prosperity and strength” – slapped tariffs of 30% on imports of solar cells, hitting producers in China and South Korea. Shortly after, Mr. Campbell heard that QCells was looking for sites in Georgia. By February, he was sitting down with representatives from the company, who told him they wanted a plant to be operational in a year. “They were on a really fast timeline,” Mr. Campbell says. The first QCells factory opened on time in early 2019 and created 600 jobs, with entry-level wages starting at $15 per hour. This was above what Dalton’s carpet and flooring mills were paying, says Mr. Campbell. Landing QCells didn’t quell the criticism, though. For one, the Korean firm received a 10-year tax abatement on its 480,000-square-foot plant, so the county was still in the red. And why should a solar company receive subsidies when carpet manufacturers employed far more workers, many residents wondered. “I’m not sure how you create wealth by giving money away to a foreign company,” says David Pennington, the Republican mayor of Dalton who ran for governor in 2014. This argument mirrors the wider debate about government intervention, from trade barriers to protect domestic producers to tax incentives for favored industries. To neoliberals, such policies distort the economy and put too much power in the hands of bureaucrats and politicians. “If you subsidize something, you get more of it. But I think you get too much of it, generally. And what you get is often not cost-effective,” says Donald Boudreaux, an economist at George Mason University in Fairfax, Virginia. Under President Biden, this debate has intensified. In 2021, he signed into law the $1.2 trillion Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act, which includes financing for clean energy projects. This was followed in 2022 by the Inflation Reduction Act (IRA), which offers at least $370 billion in subsidies for solar, wind, nuclear, and other low-emissions technology. Next came the CHIPS and Science Act that subsidizes new semiconductor plants, primarily in Texas, Arizona, and Ohio. This Bidenomics legislation was largely opposed by Republicans. The IRA passed the House on a Democratic party-line vote. The infrastructure law, which was co-written by then-Sen. Rob Portman, a Republican from Ohio, had support from 19 Senate Republicans, but only 13 House GOP members. Among those opposed was Marjorie Taylor Greene, a far-right Republican who represents the district in which Dalton sits. She tweeted the names and telephone numbers of the 13 “traitors” who voted for the infrastructure bill. Some later reported receiving death threats over their vote. After the IRA became law, QCells began negotiations to expand in Dalton. This time, the county struck a harder bargain: Tax relief would be capped at 50% over 10 years, with revenues earmarked for public schools. Hourly wages would start at $19 an hour, rising to $20 after a trial period. QCells says the IRA’s clean-tech incentives are the reason it is expanding. Marta Stoepker, a QCells spokesperson, says that state and local support in Georgia has been “really important,” but the IRA “gave us the market certainty we needed to make critical investments.” Like many Republicans, however, Jevin Jensen, chair of the county commission, is skeptical of Mr. Biden’s economic agenda. He gives the IRA little, if any, credit for QCells’ expansion. “I think we would’ve closed the deal regardless,” he says. What attracts manufacturers to Georgia isn’t just subsidies. Land and electricity prices are lower than in the Northeast and California, and Georgia offers easy access to ports and highways, like I-75. Another factor is labor costs and union contracts. Georgia and other Southern states are “right-to-work” states with low unionization rates. Since the IRA was passed, Georgia has announced clean energy manufacturing projects worth almost $12 billion, more than any other state, in addition to preexisting commitments to build EV and battery factories. Some of these projects may be built using union labor. But Georgia has a unionization rate of 4.4%, compared with a national average of 10%. QCells has no labor union in Dalton. Mr. Biden frequently talks about creating “good union jobs” in a decarbonized economy. “I promised to be the most pro-union president in history. And I tell business leaders all the time: Our union workers are the best in the world,” he said in Chicago. So far, though, the vast majority of clean-tech factories eligible for federal subsidies are located in Republican-run, right-to-work states that voted for Donald Trump in 2020. For Mr. Biden’s labor allies including the United Auto Workers, whose members launched a strike on Sept. 15, a subsidized stampede by manufacturers into states seen as hostile to unions is a source of tension. Under the IRA, enforcement of rules on labor standards lies with the Treasury Department, and the rules are still “a work in progress,” says Damon Silvers, a senior adviser to the president of the AFL-CIO, the federation of U.S. labor unions. “The statute is not as strong as it should be and this creates a very serious problem, which is the problem of some manufacturing companies wanting to take public money and then pay poverty-level wages and not respect workers’ legal rights,” he says. This could have political implications for the president and his climate policies. “The only way that people are going to support this critical agenda is if it creates good jobs. If it creates bad jobs, the public will not, in the end, support it,” says Mr. Silvers. From another vantage point, though, a red-state boom in strategic industries is a political strategy, one that could keep Mr. Biden in power and extend his economic legacy. Take the computer chips that the U.S. imports from Asia. In Arizona, facilities planned or under construction by Intel, a U.S. chipmaker, and Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co., which dominates global production, represent a total investment of $60 billion. Meanwhile, Georgia is adding tens of thousands of jobs in EV plants and other clean-tech industries. Both states are presidential battlegrounds that Mr. Biden flipped in 2020. Professor Gerstle, the Cambridge historian, sees an “electoral strategy” salted into an industrial policy. “The macro strategy is to re-shore in America. The micro strategy is, which states do we target? And the Biden administration is clearly targeting red states with the hope of electoral payoffs.” But Mr. Biden insists that his economic programs are designed to benefit everyone, regardless of where they live or how they voted. “I promised to be a president for all Americans,” he said in June at the announcement of a $42 billion plan for broadband coverage under the infrastructure law. “We’re not going to leave anyone behind.” “Look over there; that’s the lost Seventh Street.” Brian Boland, an urban planning activist, is driving around Cincinnati’s west side, a drab wedge of warehouses and parking lots near downtown. This was once a thriving Black neighborhood. But catastrophic flooding in 1937 was followed by postwar highway building that displaced thousands of residents, clearing the way for I-75 and the superannuated Brent Spence Bridge. The reconfiguring of cities for transportation projects comes at a cost that has historically been borne by disadvantaged communities. In the 1950s, planners routed highways around and through majority-Black districts, creating physical barriers that reinforced racial segregation and divided communities. Homes, schools, and churches were bulldozed for highway construction. The infrastructure law signed by President Biden provides $1 billion for cities to reconnect cutoff neighborhoods, as a way to rectify this racist history. Mr. Boland has a proposal for using some of that money. His advocacy group, Bridge Forward, wants planners to shrink the Brent Spence Bridge project’s total footprint and reconnect Cincinnati’s west side via a new district built on reclaimed land over underground highways. “A quality urban neighborhood, safe and connected – that’s what people want,” he says. His vision isn’t shared by local business leaders who, after decades of waiting, are wary of costly redesigns that could hold up construction. Mr. Boland admits that his design would cost more, but he argues it would benefit Cincinnati residents. “We can make sure that everything we do going forward is inclusive and everyone gets a chance to get a share of prosperity,” he says. Across the river, the mayor of Covington, Joseph Meyer, can sympathize. He’s also trying to improve connectivity, while making sure highway planners don’t carve up more districts. So far, he’s happy with the design of the replacement bridge – the current bridge will be reconfigured for local traffic – and with the promise of noise barriers and storm sewers. Mr. Meyer, a Democrat, remembers vividly that neither President Obama nor President Trump succeeded in securing funding for a new bridge. “Biden came through when nobody else did,” says Mr. Meyer, a former state lawmaker. He “provided the national leadership to get it done.” As for political benefits, however, Elizabeth Mason-Hill, a paralegal who sometimes spends 45 minutes commuting 7 miles due to bridge traffic, doubts voters will express much gratitude. “Biden will definitely get credit from Democrats, but the Republicans here won’t give him any credit,” she says. Interstate 71 also crosses the river using the Brent Spence Bridge, linking Louisville, Kentucky, to Columbus and Cleveland, Ohio, where John Rockefeller began refining oil, the commodity that built the modern industrial economy. The digital economy runs on another commodity: semiconductors, or computer chips. Every electronic device and system runs on chips. They’re embedded in cars, phones, fridges, and credit cards, which is the reason shortages during the pandemic wreaked havoc on manufacturers. Just off I-71 outside Columbus, Intel broke ground last year on a sprawling $20 billion semiconductor facility with funding from the CHIPS act, a plank of Bidenomics that is as much about geopolitics and national security as it is about manufacturing jobs. Federal support for domestic production goes hand in hand with the Biden administration’s efforts to curb China’s ability to produce the advanced chips used by supercomputers for technologies like generative artificial intelligence. “The United States has to lead the world in producing these advanced chips – this law is going to make sure that it will,” Mr. Biden said in September 2022. That goal has broad support in Washington, where concern over China’s competitive edge in civilian and military technologies is top of mind. The bipartisan consensus on China is likely to safeguard the law, which passed the Senate in 2022 with 17 Republican votes, from any reversal by Congress under a future administration. But Mr. Biden’s broader agenda to build a low-emissions economy and to support made-in-America manufacturing may be more vulnerable, with its addition to the national debt making it an easy target. House Republicans have threatened to repeal his climate-related legislation. During debt limit negotiations in April, Speaker Kevin McCarthy proposed ending subsidies for producers of wind, solar, and other green technologies. Ms. Harris, the former Biden administration official, worries that his programs could be uprooted prematurely if he loses in 2024, allowing the Republicans to wrest back control. “These are early days for an experiment this massive through the entirety of the U.S. economy. You need at least a few years to see how it’s playing out,” she says. Mr. Biden’s policies poll well individually, with 65% in favor of expanded tax credits for installing solar panels, for example, according to a July poll. But the White House has struggled to gain credit. In April, Vice President Kamala Harris traveled to the QCells factory in Dalton to announce the sale of 2.5 million solar panels that will be installed across the country. She also praised the company’s planned expansion and creation of 2,500 jobs in Georgia. Jan Pourquoi, a local Democrat who owns a carpet company, attended the event. Not a single GOP official showed up, he says. Mr. Pourquoi, a former Republican who left the party under Mr. Trump, doubts the Democrats’ ability to sell the president’s climate agenda in Georgia. “In the rural South, it’s a nonstarter. Green policies will not get Democrats one extra vote,” he says. What resonates with voters are cultural and social issues pushed by Representative Greene, the firebrand congresswoman. “That’s the news” in Dalton, he says. Ms. Greene, who took office in 2021, has never visited QCells in Dalton, but she has voiced support for the company. “Those jobs were jobs in my district under the Trump administration,” she told Politico, while denying the IRA’s subsidies spurred QCells’ expansion. That a solar panel factory has been built on the back of policies of Republican and Democratic administrations – tariffs imposed by Mr. Trump and legislation signed by Mr. Biden – suggests that the shift in economic thinking represented by Bidenomics may endure longer than his presidency. Analysts say President Trump’s dismissal of the GOP’s free trade platform and his readiness to protect domestic industries – policies championed on the left by Sen. Bernie Sanders – have seeded an economic populism on the right. Unfettered markets and limited government are out. Industrial policy and economic nationalism are in. “There’s a different kind of thinking going on in parts of the Republican Party, which convinces me that this is not just the Democratic moment,” says Professor Gerstle. “It’s something bigger and deeper that both parties will be reckoning with over the next 10 or 15 years.” To Professor Boudreaux, the economist, this rebuttal of neoliberalism is alarming. He worries that, far from unraveling Mr. Biden’s agenda, the new guard of Republicans may extend its lifespan because they no longer view industrial policy as a nonstarter. Classical economic liberals, as he calls himself, “are feeling pretty lonely at the moment,” he says. This debate on the right is reinforced by facts on the ground. Replacing the Brent Spence Bridge has a social and economic impact that goes beyond Cincinnati, says Rep. Greg Landsman, a Democrat who represents the city in Congress. A new bridge “will make a big difference for our region to continue to grow,” he says. It also carries a political message at a time of frayed trust in government. “It’s a reason to believe that your government is functioning and will ultimately arrive and be supportive as we try to rebuild this democracy,” he adds.

(Nathaniel Rakich, senior elections analyst): For a long time, the economy has been seen as a big liability for President Biden in his reelection bid. Inflation soared in 2021 and 2022, culminating at a rate of 9.1 percent last June. The same month, average gas prices exceeded $5 per gallon. And in the second quarter of 2022, the gross domestic product actually decreased by 0.6 percent. It was little surprise, then, that only 28 percent of Americans approved of the way Biden was handling the economy in a July 2022 Quinnipiac University poll. But in recent months, economic indicators have been looking up, and Biden has begun making the case that his economic policies are working. Yet Americans don’t seem to be changing their perceptions of his stewardship of the economy. (The last Quinnipiac poll put his approval rating on the economy at 36 percent.) So for today’s FiveThirtyEight Slack chat, I want to explore why that is, and whether Biden has any hope of actually making the economy a winning issue for him in next year’s election. First, though, let’s set the scene: What are indicators saying right now about the health of the economy? ameliatd (Amelia Thomson-DeVeaux, senior reporter): For an economy that’s allegedly been on the brink of a recession for over a year now, it’s looking pretty good! Real wages are finally rising faster than inflation, the labor market is weakening a bit but is still fairly strong for workers and consumers are still spending at a healthy rate. Monica Potts (Monica Potts, senior politics reporter): What Amelia said. For starters, the job market remains really strong. Unemployment is at 3.8 percent, and wages are rising. Inflation, at just over 3 percent, is finally cooling, too. The Federal Reserve seems to be succeeding in its high-wire act of lowering inflation without causing too much unemployment. There are other signs, too. For example, the Inflation Reduction Act has spurred investment in manufacturing, which the White House has been more than happy to point to. ameliatd: In a lot of ways, it looks like the economy is finally returning to its pre-pandemic normal — but with conditions that are a bit more worker-friendly. That mythical “soft landing” is actually looking like it could come to pass. Of course, economists’ recession predictions are never very reliable. (This is a time-honored FiveThirtyEight refrain.) And things can always shift — for example, as Monica wrote recently, student loan repayment is about to restart, which will mean millions of Americans have less money to spend as they resume their monthly payments. But it’s still a rosier situation than a lot of people were predicting even just a few months ago. gelliottmorris (G. Elliott Morris, editorial director of data analytics): That’s right. Some of the doomer predictions of a recession were never really reliable, but aggregate economic expectations are still up relative to what people were saying a year or even six months ago. That said, there are some not-so-hot indicators. Mortgage and interest rates are continuing to climb, for example, and the personal savings rate is nearly at an all-time low. That’s a different dimension of “the economy” than, say, annual growth in wages, but it’s an important one. ameliatd: Right, Elliott, and it’s not clear that the Fed is done with rate hikes. A lot will depend on what the August 2023 inflation data looks like when it comes out later this week. Monica Potts: Yes, I think that hints at a really big and persistent problem with asking voters how they feel about “the economy.” What that term means to people can vary a great deal. Does it mean how much money they’re making, or how much they spend on things like housing and food? Does it mean whether they can afford daycare? There is a huge variation in how people feel about the economy — and many different ways the federal government can have an effect on those things. ameliatd: Another question is whether consumer spending will start to tick down — which has been a possibility as people spend down their pandemic savings. But generally, there are other signs that Americans are feeling OK about their finances. For example, a recent Ipsos poll found that the share of Americans who say they have enough money to cover an unplanned expense (54 percent) is higher than at this time last year (40 percent). Fewer people are also saying that after they pay their bills, they don’t have enough money to spend on things they want. nrakich: And yet, despite this, Biden is having trouble convincing voters that “Bidenomics” is working. Why? Monica Potts: To start at the beginning, Biden inherited a really weird economy. The COVID-19 shutdowns caused a severe and dramatic recession, but then the economy started to bounce back. But people’s behavior had also changed. More people were working from home and moving, they had cash to spend and supply chains were slow to restart. So Americans were generally sour on the economy from the time he took office. The recovery was afflicted by super-high inflation, as you noted at the beginning, Nathaniel, and a lot of what the Biden administration has done on economic policy is the kind of slow-moving, behind-the-scenes policymaking that voters don’t really notice. Even though inflation is cooling, prices are still much higher than they were before the pandemic; borrowers are still seeing much higher interest rates; etc. So I think a lot of it is that Americans are generally unhappy with the new normal we find ourselves in. gelliottmorris: I think that last point is a really good one, Monica. The share of people telling pollsters that the broader economic situation is poor is still around the highest it’s been since 2018. At first, that seems hard to square with the rosy economic indicators we talked about. But I think it’s possible that people just have longer-term memories about economic growth and remember a time when prices were meaningfully lower. Lots of the discussion on this topic is pegged to tracking annual change in the consumer price index or job market or what have you. But if you take a longer view, for a lot of families, things are just permanently more expensive now. Even if their wages are up, I doubt they enjoy spending 15 percent more at the grocery store than they were before the pandemic. And it will take a while for those memories to fade. Of course, that’s just my theory. ameliatd: I mean, some people think the economy is improving. Civiqs’s tracking poll shows that Democrats, in particular, are more likely to say that the current condition of the economy is fairly or very good (63 percent) than they were a year ago (53 percent). But that’s not quite the question you’re asking, Nathaniel — it’s not just whether people think the economy is getting better, it’s whether people are seeing an improvement and saying, “Yeah, Biden is making that happen!” And there, it doesn’t seem like Biden is getting much of a boost. According to a recent Wall Street Journal poll, for example, the share of registered voters who say they approve of the way Biden is handling the economy hasn’t meaningfully changed since April. Which gets to my theory about what’s happening. I’m not sure voters were ever going to give Biden credit for an improving economy, especially because the inflation increase happened under his watch. It’s not like he can come in and say, “Look at this mess my predecessor left for me.” But! That doesn’t mean this turn of events isn’t good for him, because the alternative — a souring economy — could really hurt him. nrakich: Interesting, Amelia. So you think that the stink of the bad economy of a year or two ago is permanent for Biden? He can never wash it off, even if he fixes it? ameliatd: I don’t know about permanent, but as Elliott said, prices are still higher. Americans are increasingly convinced that those high prices are here to stay. So the fact that people are starting to get used to those higher prices and are saying the economy is improving could be an indication that Biden’s dodging a bullet. So it depends on how you frame it. On the one hand, people aren’t giving Biden credit, so that’s unfortunate for him. But on the other, it’s looking increasingly like we might have a normal-ish economy heading into 2024, which you could see as a huge win considering how much economic volatility we’ve seen since the pandemic started. Monica Potts: I don’t think prices will go down, but it’s also possible people will just get used to them. So they could hurt Biden less, as Amelia said. And that leaves room for other issues voters care about to rise in importance. nrakich: Question, though: How much does getting that win really matter politically? Historically, what has been the correlation between the health of the economy and presidential reelection chances? ameliatd: Would Biden love for “Bidenomics” to show up in high school history textbooks? Sure. But what he really wants is to win reelection, and that is much less likely to happen if people think the economy is getting worse. gelliottmorris: Historically, we know that actual economic conditions are pretty well correlated with presidential election outcomes. If the state of the economy is broadly positive compared with a year or two ago, then the incumbent party tends to get a boost. Of course, economic indicators do not fully predict outcomes of elections, but they do have a residual impact. The good news for Biden on this front is twofold: First, voters tend to start making these retrospective evaluations closer to the election. And second, that they look only a couple years in the past. That means there is time for things to get even better for him, and for him to be rewarded. The bad news for Biden, though, is that there's still time for things to turn against him!

The largest U.S. technology companies continued to spend millions on lobbying last quarter, seeking to sway legislation intended to bolster antitrust enforcement and force other changes on the industry. Apple Inc. increased its spending to $1.64 million in the second quarter, up 12.3% from the previous quarter. Amazon Inc.’s total increased by 1.3% to $4.86 million. Lobbying expenditures by Microsoft Corp. dipped slightly, down 4.6% to $2.47 million and Facebook Inc. mostly held steady at $4.77 million. Alphabet Inc.’s Google spent $2.09 million, down 22.3% from last quarter, but up 23.7% from last year. While the numbers show a mixed trend, the sustained level of spending on government influence demonstrates what the technology industry has at stake as policy makers debate stronger antitrust enforcement and tougher regulations on a sector that for the most part has been allowed to develop organically. Now, these entrenched companies have surpassed $1 trillion, and in some cases $2 trillion, in market valuation and are using their abundant resources to protect their positions. Most of the companies disclosed dozens of bills and issues that their lobbyists are tracking, grouped into broad categories like taxes, consumers, homeland security and banking. The lobbying reports, required by law, were due Tuesday. A common concern was antitrust. Forcing more competition in the online economy is one of few issues that has bridged partisan divides in Congress, and received the full support of the Biden administration. Antitrust advocates on Tuesday cheered the nomination of Google foe Jonathan Kanter to lead the Justice Department’s antitrust division. He joins Lina Khan, a fierce critic of the technology giants who heads the Federal Trade Commission, and Tim Wu, a leader of the new anti-monopolist movement, as a top White House adviser. A bill to give the Justice Department and the FTC more resources to pursue competition cases passed the Senate and a similar measure received bipartisan support in the House. Five other antitrust measures got votes from Republicans and Democrats on the House Judiciary Committee, including proposals focused on a handful of U.S. tech companies to make mergers more difficult, force platforms to allow consumers to move their data, change how companies present their own services to consumers or force them to divest entirely of certain lines of business. Apple, Facebook, Google, Amazon and Microsoft all listed these House proposals as targets of their lobbying campaign last quarter, trying to convince lawmakers that this legislation would destroy popular products, endanger user safety and benefit foreign competitors. There is some evidence that these arguments resonated, as it’s unclear whether the bills would have enough support to pass the full House, and no floor vote has been scheduled.

WASHINGTON — Faced with the growing possibility of antitrust actions and legislation to curb their power, four of the biggest technology companies are amassing an army of lobbyists as they prepare for what could be an epic fight over their futures. Initially slow to develop a presence in Washington, the tech giants — Amazon, Apple, Facebook and Google — have rapidly built themselves into some of the largest players in the influence and access industry as they confront threats from the Trump administration and both parties on Capitol Hill. The four companies spent a combined $55 million on lobbying last year, doubling their combined spending of $27.4 million in 2016, and some are spending at a higher rate so far this year, according to the Center for Responsive Politics, which tracks lobbying and political contributions. That puts them on a par with long-established lobbying powerhouses like the defense, automobile and banking industries. As they have tracked increasing public and political discontent with their size, power, handling of user data and role in elections, the four companies have intensified their efforts to lure lobbyists with strong connections to the White House, the regulatory agencies, and Republicans and Democrats in Congress. Of the 238 people registered to lobby for the four companies in the first three months of this year — both in-house employees and those on contract from lobbying and law firms — about 75 percent formerly served in the government or on political campaigns, according to an analysis of lobbying and employment records. Many worked in offices or for officials who could have a hand in deciding the course of the new governmental scrutiny. The influence campaigns encompass a broad range of activities, including calls on members of Congress, advertising, funding of think-tank research and efforts to get the attention of President Trump, whose on-again, off-again streak of economic populism is of particular concern to the big companies. Last month, the industry lobbying group, the Internet Association, which represents Amazon, Facebook and Google, awarded its Internet Freedom Award to Ivanka Trump, the president’s daughter and White House senior adviser. “They are no longer upstarts dipping a toe in lobbying,” said Sheila Krumholz, the executive director of the Center for Responsive Politics. “They have both feet in.” Facebook and Google are dogged by concerns over their handling of consumer data, harmful content and misinformation. Amazon’s rapid expansion has been met with unease over labor conditions and the company’s effect on small businesses. Apple’s control over its app store makes it hard for new apps to get discovered, some rivals say. Earlier this week, the threat of government action became more real, driving down their stock prices. The House Judiciary Committee announced a broad antitrust investigation into big tech. And the two top federal antitrust agencies agreed to divide oversight over Apple, Amazon, Facebook and Google as they explore whether the companies have abused their market power to harm competition and consumers. “Unwarranted, concentrated economic power in the hands of a few is dangerous to democracy — especially when digital platforms control content,” Speaker Nancy Pelosi tweeted after the Judiciary Committee announced its investigation. “The era of self-regulation is over.” The industry’s troubles mean big paydays for the lawyers, political operatives and public relations experts hired to ward off regulations, investigations and lawsuits that could curtail the companies’ huge profits. The companies all had earlier ties to Democrats but have also worked to develop closer relationships with Republicans. Facebook is paying two lobbyists who worked for Ms. Pelosi, including her former chief of staff Catlin O’Neill, who now serves as a director of United States public policy for the social media company. Ms. Pelosi received nearly $43,000 in total donations for her 2018 re-election campaign from employees and political action committees of Facebook, Amazon and Alphabet, Google’s corporate parent — each of which ranked among her top half-dozen sources of campaign cash. She had been a champion of tech companies, which have a robust presence in her district in California.

There have been several attempts to address trademark bullying. For example, shaming is a way to reduce overreaching trademark enforcement,20 legislation has been proposed to address the problem, and commentators have suggested a number of reforms. Notably, a major change in trademark law to address the issue is unlikely because trademark bullying is intimately tied to enforcement practices that are part and parcel of trademark law and theory itself. A wholesale change to the way we use and understand trademark law is unlikely. For example, it is doubtful that the government will become responsible for all trademark enforcement. That likely would result in a cost-prohibitive system. A more tailored response to bullying itself is a more probable solution, such as making it easier to obtain attorney fees.

It took a marathon, 29-hour session in June 2021 for the full House Judiciary Committee to approve a package of six bills aimed at regulating Big Tech. One would have barred Google, Amazon and Apple from steering or requiring customers to use their products and services rather than those of competitors. Another would have limited how Google and Facebook monetize the data they collect from users to earn revenue from advertisers. And another would have prevented tech giants from buying up nascent competitors, as Facebook did with Instagram and Google with Waze and YouTube. And if those efforts proved insufficient to prevent the tech giants from using their dominance in one market to win dominance in related markets, courts would be authorized to break them up. Yet while each of those bills were approved by bipartisan majorities that spanned the ideological spectrum from Democrat Pramila Jayapal (Wash.) on the left to Republican Matt Gaetz (Fla.) on the right, Buck and Cicilline were already running into resistance. In the weeks leading up to the committee markup, Democrats from northern California mounted a campaign to convince their San Francisco colleague, then-Speaker Nancy Pelosi, to delay the vote. Over the years, Pelosi had raised tens of millions of dollars from tech company executives. As significant, one of her closest friends in the House was Rep. Zoe Lofgren (Calif.), a senior Democrat on the Judiciary Committee whose district includes much of Silicon Valley. At Pelosi’s request, Cicilline said he agreed to delay the vote for a week and accepted several changes to the bills proposed by Lofgren and industry executives. But in the end, the speaker stuck by her promise to let the committee do its work — and the bills were approved over bitter objections from Lofgren and several of her California colleagues. Republicans were also backing away. Whatever bipartisan good will there was when the investigation was launched in 2019 had evaporated as Democrats moved toward impeaching President Donald Trump later that year. To lead the defense of the president, Republicans had named Jim Jordan as ranking member on the House Judiciary Committee, a partisan pit bull who rarely passes up an opportunity to stoke the blood feud with Democrats. Jordan wasted no time in declaring that the only Republican interest in regulating Big Tech was to stop the censorship of conservative views and voices — an issue that Buck and Cicilline had deliberately sidestepped in crafting their bipartisan package. Over the ensuing months, Republicans who voted for the bills began to back off, telling Buck they had been warned they could lose their seats on the committee if they didn’t. By the summer of 2021, Pelosi had also come to see the effort as a threat to the Democratic unity she considered vital to the more important task of pushing through the rest of President Biden’s ambitious agenda. Despite her earlier promise to bring the package before the full House, Pelosi and her lieutenants told Cicilline they doubted he and Buck could deliver the necessary Republican votes to make up for the Democrats from tech-heavy districts inclined to vote against it. They were also reluctant to make Democrats take politically risky votes — ones that could invite industry attack ads and hamper fundraising — until the package had been passed in some form by the Senate. Suddenly, Cicilline and Buck were face to face with the paradox at the root of congressional dysfunction: On most issues, both parties prefer gridlock because both believe it reduces the risk of losing the next election. One of the original motivations behind the Progressive era antitrust law was to prevent monopolists from using their outsize profits to buy political influence and turn a democracy into a plutocracy. More than a century later, that dynamic was very much in play as the Senate’s Judiciary Committee met early in 2022 to consider how far it would go in regulating Big Tech. Leading the charge was Amy Klobuchar of Minnesota, the Democratic chair of the antitrust subcommittee who had just published a 600-page book (including 200 pages of footnotes) on this history of antitrust. Klobuchar had recruited to the cause the committee’s ranking Republican, Charles E. Grassley of Iowa, neither a lawyer nor, at age 88, much of a techie, but who channels the prairie populist fear of corporate power. Other co-sponsors ranged from progressive Democrats such as Richard Blumenthal (Conn.) and Cory Booker (N.J.) to hard-right Republicans such as Mike Lee (Utah), Josh Hawley (Mo.) and Ted Cruz (Tex.). As in the House, their reasons for taking on Big Tech rarely overlapped. In the months leading up to the committee vote, the industry had deployed a small army of lobbyists and industry-funded trade associations and think tanks to derail the antitrust bills in the Senate. Early on, Klobuchar and Grassley agreed to set aside the most controversial of the House bills authorizing judges to break up companies if their self-dealing proved unavoidable. Also set aside was the bill preventing firms from buying start-ups that might one day challenge their dominance. Instead of outright prohibition of certain business practices, regulators and courts would have to show that competitive harms outweighed consumer benefits. The right of customers and competitors to file private antitrust suits was eliminated. Given the amount of money at stake, however, it soon became clear that no amount of compromise was ever going to satisfy the tech firms, whose lobbyists redoubled their efforts to sow seeds of doubt in the minds of senators who had come out in favor of the bills. Senators with an interest in privacy and security, for example, received warnings from the likes of James R. Clapper, the former director of national intelligence, and Leon E. Panetta, a former defense secretary, that allowing users to download apps from unapproved sites would make phones and computers vulnerable to hackers and cyberattacks. Senators who worried about economic competitiveness were pitched on the idea that restraining the growth and profits of the world’s most successful companies would disrupt the innovative ecosystem, undermine patent protections and jeopardize America’s tech dominance. Conservative Republicans were warned about the broad new powers that would be handed over to liberal-leaning government bureaucrats to micromanage a rapidly changing industry, while progressive Democrats were warned that social media networks and search engines would lose the ability to remove dangerous or offensive content or block disinformation campaigns by right-wing conspiracists and foreign adversaries. And all senators were made to understand there would be an avalanche of voter backlash once millions of consumers were scared into believing they might lose access to Prime, Google Maps and the Apple app store. The industry talking points ranged from badly exaggerated to utterly specious, flagrantly mischaracterizing the proposals while ignoring the changes already made to accommodate industry complaints. What all these arguments had in common was that they rested on the premise that regulators and judges were incapable of figuring out whether a business practice would cause significant harm to competition — a premise undermined by more a century of antitrust enforcement. But in offering such arguments, the lobbyists were aware of the old K Street wisdom that those opposing legislation don’t have to prove they are right — all they need to do is create enough doubt to convince risk-averse legislators to put off a decision. When the 22 members of the full Senate Judiciary Committee met to vote on the trimmed-down package in the first weeks of 2022, the result was tellingly ambiguous. While the two most significant bills were approved by lopsided bipartisan majorities, many of those voting in favor took pains to declare they still had serious concerns with the bills. To win their votes, Klobuchar had to promise to continue working with them on additional changes before the bills were brought to the Senate floor. That’s not the way it’s supposed to work. Thirty years ago, a committee “markup” was the moment when committee members and staff would sit around a table, roll up their sleeves and work through the politics and the substance so that a sound and politically viable bill could be put before the other members of the Senate, who generally relied on their expertise and recommendations. But in today’s Senate that rarely happens. One reason is that committees have become unwieldy. Previously, each senator served on only one major and one minor committee — a limitation that allowed them to develop a familiarity with issues, and with each other, and made it more likely that some consensus might be reached. But beginning in the 1990s, Senate leaders began doling out extra assignments to win support from members who saw the added assignments as a way to enhance their stature and raise campaign funds from a wider array of special interest groups. As a result, senators now typically serve on three and sometimes four committees, and any number of subcommittees, making it nearly impossible for them to sit through an entire hearing or a multiday markup, let alone develop much expertise or relationships with other members. The average committee now has a quarter of the entire 100-member Senate as members, with Finance and Commerce at 27 and Appropriations with 29. All of this has had the perverse effect of reducing the power and relevance of committees and the influence of individual members. And so it was that the Senate Judiciary Committee came to advance major bills regulating one of the country’s most important industries without first coming to agreement on what exactly should be in them. Democrats on the committee were eager to be seen championing an issue of keen interest to young, progressive voters. Republicans were eager to be seen channeling right-wing anger over censorship. And few wanted to disappoint Klobuchar, who had invested much time and political capital in the issue and didn’t take well to being challenged. Absent a policy consensus, the easiest thing for all of them was to kick the can down the road and leave it for later — or, more likely, for party leaders — to make the tough decisions and compromises. The TV ads began appearing in the spring of 2022 in states with contested Senate races. They were sponsored by front groups such as NetChoice, the America Edge Project, the App Security Project and the Chamber of Progress, along with more traditional business groups. They warned that Congress was about to “break the internet,” end “guaranteed two-day delivery,” prevent you from easily accessing your favorite apps and “make us less safe.” By one estimate, the companies spent $130 million for TV ads to turn the public against regulating Big Tech. It would be hard to overstate the corrupting effect that such “dark money” has had on the legislative process. Now that the arms race for regulated and reported contributions has played out to a draw, the real competition is for the unlimited sums that billionaires and corporations can funnel into individual House or Senate races through “independent” nonprofits and super PACs that have no obligation to disclose the source of their funds. Significantly, much of that dark money is raised or funneled to campaigns by party leaders who have used it to enhance their own power — including the power to decide which legislation is put to a vote in the House and Senate.

After years of hearings, reports and stalled proposals, Congress ended 2022 to regulate Big Tech. But a few blocks away in Washington, Jonathan Kanter is just getting warmed up. While the Justice Department’s top antitrust official has yet to file fresh lawsuits against any of the country’s biggest tech companies, Kanter has spent months laying the groundwork for a broader tech reckoning, arguing that changes in technology have created new opportunities for businesses to exploit monopoly power in ways courts may not yet recognize as potentially illegal. Traditionally, antitrust enforcers have focused on how dominant companies might hurt consumers through increased prices or by reducing choices in the marketplace. But Kanter, along with his ally at the Federal Trade Commission, Chair Lina Khan, have pushed to expand the US government’s thinking, looking increasingly at the sophisticated ways businesses can use new technologies to gain an anticompetitive advantage. That includes the use of “dark patterns,” software interface designs meant to nudge consumers toward making a company’s preferred choice, Kanter told CNN in an interview last month. “Economic realities have shifted,” Kanter said. “Some of the interaction between companies and consumers now is personalized and targeted. [Antitrust] has to take into account how consumers react to dark patterns; how companies can affect the behavior of consumers; how they can extract value, consumers’ attention, money and data.” With Congress entering a new phase of , policy experts have said the outlook for tech legislation may now be even dimmer than before — making enforcers like the DOJ and the FTC the likeliest sources of action going forward.