Insights, analysis and must reads from CNN's Fareed Zakaria and the Global Public Square team, compiled by Global Briefing editor Chris Good Seeing this newsletter as a forward? Sign up here. August 4, 2024 |
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On GPS, at 10 a.m. and 1 p.m. ET:
Business leaders may not believe former President Donald Trump would slap heavy new tariffs on imported goods if reelected, as he has promised, Fareed says—but Trump's long affinity for protectionism suggests he is serious.
Tariffs ultimately tax US consumers by raising prices on imported goods, Fareed says. In other words, they're inflationary. If Trump were right that tariffs hurt foreign exporters rather than Americans, Fareed points out, the Revolutionary War would have been a big mistake. Why dump tea into the Boston Harbor in protest, if the British crown had only harmed itself and not the colonies with those newly mandated import duties?
After that: The Middle East edges closer to a catastrophic, region-engulfing war. With the assassinations of a Hezbollah leader in Beirut and a Hamas leader in Tehran, Iran and its network of allied proxies will be tempted to seek revenge. Fareed talks with two noted Middle East experts, Vali Nasr of the Johns Hopkins School of Advanced International Studies and Robin Wright of The New Yorker, about what happens next.
A massive US–Russia prisoner exchange has freed Wall Street Journal reporter Evan Gershkovich, former US Marine Paul Whelan, and others. Fareed talks with William Browder, founder and CEO of Hermitage Capital Management and formerly the largest foreign investor in Russia until a fallout with the Kremlin, about the deal's impact on Russia's relations with the West. Fareed also asks Browder why the unprecedented Western campaign of economic sanctions has failed to change the Kremlin's course.
After an election last Sunday, Venezuela's strongman President Nicolás Maduro was declared the winner—but few seem to believe the results were legitimate. Fareed talks with Leopoldo Eduardo López Mendoza, of the Venezuelan opposition party Voluntad Popular, about the vote and what's next for his country.
Finally: Are electric vehicles still the future? Prices are high, and US drivers seem to prefer hybrids. Fareed examines EV speed bumps and where the electric transition stands.
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Can Vice President Kamala Harris win in November? Examining her chances in Der Spiegel, Simon Book, Muriel Kalisch, René Pfister and Marc Pitzke write of Harris' sudden coronation as Democrats' presumptive nominee: "It's all a bit surreal. Until recently, Harris was regarded as a disappointment in American politics. The 59-year-old's popularity ratings were if anything only slightly better than those of the geriatric president. Her public appearances were regarded as shaky and uninspired, her political track record as mixed at best. Harris attempts to reform election laws never quite materialized, and the issue of migration, which [President Joe] Biden had placed in her hands, hangs around the party's neck like a millstone."
Add to that Harris' "miserably run" flop of a Democratic presidential primary campaign in 2019, and the pre-summer view of Harris' political future was moribund, the Der Spiegel authors note. And yet, her newfound presidential campaign is now awash in positive buzz. Excited supporters are giddily posting memes. Her campaign appearances have appeared strong. She will need to move to the center to appeal to Midwestern voters, the Der Spiegel authors argue, but early signs are encouraging for Democrats.
Polling reflects the positive trajectory. Reliable surveys have yet to be published on critical swing states, but nationwide CNN polling finds Harris has improved on Biden's standing against Trump. Her 46% support, compared with Trump's 49%, is within the poll's margin of error.
The Atlantic's Elaine Godfrey writes that Harris can run on extending Biden-administration policy priorities: "[I]n this race," Godfrey writes, "there's no need for her to reinvent the Biden wheel." It's possible that this short election "is not going to be defined by substance so much as by personality and vibes," and Harris appears well positioned.
Much can happen between now and Election Day, observers uniformly recognize. "If the excitement of this moment lasts," The Atlantic's Godfrey writes, "the Harris campaign could end up looking a lot like Barack Obama's in 2008, which expanded the map of where in the country Democrats could compete and engaged a whole new set of voters. But it could also look like Hillary Clinton 2.0; that 2016 campaign was rife with missteps and mishaps, forced memes, and a general sense of overconfidence." The magazine's Ronald Brownstein writes that Harris' campaign could shepherd "a reconciliation among liberal white women and women of color, many of whom had felt marginalized by [Hillary] Clinton's campaign operation." Brownstein writes that Aimee Allison, founder of the group She the People, "believes that Harris's candidacy could mobilize enough people of color and younger people to prove to the Democratic Party that it can win without concentrating so hard on courting culturally conservative older and working-class white voters."
Their Atlantic colleague David A. Graham observes: "Trump making offensive remarks, his campaign in disarray after the RNC, Democrats riding high behind a historic female candidate—it all feels a lot like summer 2016. Everyone knows how that election turned out. Trump is in a much worse place than he was on July 15, but he could still easily win. Harris's vibe shift could run out of steam, a Trump punch could land, or some new crisis could reshape the race." |
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'Ready for War in Sweden' |
In Sweden, some things haven't changed in 70 years, Gordon F. Sander writes in The New York Review of Books: In sommar, Stockholm residents still flock upcountry or to outlying archipelagos to enjoy long days and sunny nights of vacation.
Other things have changed. An influx of immigrants and a wave of crime blamed on non-ethnic Swedish gangs has prompted concerns about moving too fast to welcome newcomers without better integration policies. Geopolitical neutrality had persisted as part of the national ethos, but Russia's invasion of Ukraine and Sweden's decision to join NATO have upended that while giving Sweden's military new purpose.
Sander writes: "The Swedish civil contingencies agency, which specializes in crisis management, reported a more than 3,000 percent increase in visits to its online list of bomb shelters following the two officials' statements, as well as a 900 percent increase in downloads of its war preparedness pamphlet. Meanwhile, Donald Trump threw another wrench into the works with his implicit threat to withdraw the US from NATO if he is elected in November, when he bragged in February about telling a NATO ally that he would let Russia 'do whatever the hell they want' to members who do not pay their dues. I asked [Swedish Armed Forces chief of staff Lt. Gen. Michael] Claesson [who will assume the role of Swedish defense chief at the end of September] if he was concerned about that. 'I am,' the incoming supreme commander said. 'I am concerned about all the potential breaches of Western unity and cohesion. This is not just about Ukraine anymore. This is a systemic conflict—the collective West against Russia. And behind Russia there is China. So the transatlantic link is more important than ever.' As one Western diplomat puts it, 'Sweden is undergoing perhaps the most profound reformation of its identity since the early 1800s. It is a bewildering process, for some even painful.'" |
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The planet is getting hotter, a process that has unleashed extreme storms and deadly heat waves. Over the last 12 months, Earth surpassed the 1.5-degree-Celsius warming limit laid out in the Paris climate accords, per the EU's climate-change service.
Is there any other solution besides halting combustion engines and abandoning fossil fuels in pursuit of "net zero"? Some say yes: As Fareed has detailed previously on GPS, the alluring-yet-terrifying concept of "geoengineering" entails altering the planet in order to cool it, for instance by releasing chemicals into the atmosphere to deflect heat. Giant space parasols and efforts to suck carbon out of the air and store it underground fit loosely under the same category of seemingly longshot fixes.
As Alejandro de la Garza wrote for Time in 2023, scientists are divided over the idea of changing the Earth, perhaps irreversibly, in a way that would affect everyone on it. At The New York Times, David Gelles profiles geoengineering advocate David Keith, who proposes releasing sulfur dioxide into the stratosphere. "Such radical interventions are increasingly being taken seriously as the effects of climate change grow more intense," Gelles writes. "Some scientists are performing experiments designed to brighten clouds, another way to bounce some solar radiation back to space. Others are working on efforts to make oceans and plants absorb more carbon dioxide. But of all these ideas, it is stratospheric solar geoengineering that elicits the greatest hope and the greatest fear. Proponents see it as a relatively cheap and fast way to reduce temperatures well before the world has stopped burning fossil fuels. … But many scientists and environmentalists fear that it could result in unpredictable calamities." |
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