Jeffrey D. Sachs's Blog, page 25

Thomas More, Machiavelli, Luther, and Our Times

KU Leuven June 2017. Watched the full talk here.

Earth 2.0: Is Income Inequality Inevitable?

Will Economic Illiteracy Trigger a Trade War?

Nearly 100 days after US President Donald Trump took office, he and his commerce secretary, Wilbur Ross, continue to commit an economic fallacy that first-year economics students learn to avoid. They claim that America’s current-account deficit (or trade deficit), which is in fact the result of America’s low and falling saving rate, is an indicator [...]

How Trump could make US a climate pariah over Paris pact

Reports have it that President Donald Trump will assemble his advisers on Tuesday to decide on whether to pull out of the Paris Climate Agreement. Naturally, EPA Administrator Scott Pruitt, a career-long, oil-industry shill from Oklahoma, is arguing to pull out. Yet even Secretary of State Rex Tillerson, former CEO of ExxonMobil, is arguing to [...]

Earth 2.0: What Would Our Economy Look Like?

Our misguided ‘wars of choice’

There is one foreign policy goal that matters above all the others, and that is to keep the United States out of a new war, whether in Syria, North Korea, or elsewhere. In recent days, President Trump has struck Syria with Tomahawk missiles, bombed Afghanistan with the most powerful nonnuclear bomb in the US arsenal, [...]

Eurasia is on the rise. Will the US be left on the sidelines?

The world’s biggest geopolitical trend today is not America First, or the global war on terror, or Brexit, or the renewed Cold War with Russia. It is the economic integration of Europe with Asia, especially the European Union with China. Europe and Asia co-inhabit the world’s largest landmass, Eurasia. They are increasingly connected economically as [...]

CNN panelists erupt over climate change

Donald Trump’s Climate Fantasies

Legend holds that King Canute brought his flatterers to the sea to show them that even a king could not command the ocean waves, that the laws of nature are more powerful than the decrees of men. So pity Donald Trump, who really believes that his executive orders can hold back the tides. Trump is [...]

US military should get out of the Middle East

It’s time to end US military engagements in the Middle East. Drones, special operations, CIA arms supplies, military advisers, aerial bombings — the whole nine yards. Over and done with. That might seem impossible in the face of ISIS, terrorism, Iranian ballistic missiles, and other US security interests, but a military withdrawal from the Middle [...]