Category: Uncategorized

Who is Hiring Medicaid Recipients?

Posted on by Alex Terr

Being poor in America is hard. Temporary Assistance for Needy Families (TANF) has virtually disappeared in many states. Safety net programs such as Medicaid and SNAP have strict income limits, with participants coming under increased pressure to work. Indeed, a KFF study found that as of 2023, roughly two-thirds of nondisabled non-elderly (NDNE) Medicaid recipients had paid employment.  

That puts many low-income people in the tricky position of threading a very thin needle. A single mother, for example, may be trying to balance time spent attending community college and raising kids, while working just enough hours to earn some money without violating the Medicaid income limits. A full-time job which provides health care coverage would be best, of course — but finding one that pays enough to cover childcare may not be possible without more schooling. 

In this context, the most attractive employers for Medicaid recipients may be those which offer a lot of flexibility in working hours to help stay under the income limits,  with the possibility of jumping to full time work when appropriate. A new study from the GAO analyzed data from a small number of selected states and identified the top employers of NDNE Medicaid and SNAP recipients in those states. These included large private employers such as Walmart, Amazon, and Fedex; universities and healthcare systems such as Indiana University, Brown University, Mass General Brigham, MaineHealth, and Emory Healthcare; and public entities such as the Commonwealth of Massachusetts,  the U.S. Post Service, and the Georgia Department of Human Resources. 

In many ways, being named on the GAO’s list of top employers who hire Medicaid recipients is a badge of honor. Especially with work requirements tightening up in 2027, we need to encourage more employers to hire Medicaid recipients, not discourage them.   

It’s not unreasonable to expect that large employers should offer full-time employees access to healthcare. But note that the GAO’s employer analysis contains absolutely no direct information about whether the Medicaid recipients at  these large organizations were in full-time jobs. As part of the same paper, the GAO did a separate statistical analysis of the national workforce which suggests that most wage-earning nonelderly Medicaid recipients work for smaller companies, and less than half work full-time, full-year jobs. 

Indeed, people — Medicaid recipients or not — often seek out flexible work because they are caregivers, military spouses, students, retirees supplementing Social Security, parents of school-age kids, or have some other life circumstances which require that flexibility. These types of opportunities allow people to be productively employed when they might otherwise be excluded from work altogether. 

Kahlenberg and Lin for the Radically Pragmatic Substack: What’s Wrong with American Studies?

Posted on by Alex Terr

The field of American Studies appears to be in a defensive crouch.

This January, we published a study analyzing the flagship journal of the American Studies Association, American Quarterly. In the report, we objected to Donald Trump’s attempt to whitewash negative aspects of our country’s story but found that the articles in American Quarterly did the reverse by erasing anything good about the United States. Examining nearly 100 articles over a three-year period, we found that 80% were critical of America, 20% neutral, and not a single article was positive.

We published the full report, “The Distortion of American Studies: How the Field’s Leading Journal Has Embraced a Worldview as Slanted as Donald Trump’s,” with the Progressive Policy Institute and a summary in the Wall Street Journal, under the headline “American Studies Can’t Stand Its Subject.” We said there were plenty of valid reasons to critique America, but also asked, how could the articles in American Quarterly show no curiosity about any of America’s worthwhile attributes? How could there be no articles exploring, for instance, why the United States is cited as the most desirable destination for immigrants, or why we have so many Nobel Prize winners?

The response to our findings from leading academics has been as revealing as the original study. We thought professors might argue that particular articles should have been categorized as positive. Alternatively, academics might have seen the study as an opportunity for self-reflection, to ask whether they needed to do a better job of telling the full American story. Instead, with one admirable exception, their responses have been mostly misleading and dismissive, mischaracterizing the way we conducted our review and going so far as to deny the very existence of objective historical truths.

Read more on the Radically Pragmatic Substack

Manno for Daita K12:The Nuance in the Social Media Debate That K-12 Leaders Can’t Afford to Miss

Posted on by Max Sherrill

A new survey from the American Survey Center at the American Enterprise Institute complicates the tidy story most people tell about teenagers and social media. That complication is exactly what K-12 school leaders need to hear.

The survey, authored by Daniel Cox, finds real harm associated with social media use among teenagers. But it’s not the harm, and not the population, that dominates the public conversation.

The effects show up almost entirely among heavy users, teens spending four or more hours a day on these platforms. Moderate and light users look statistically similar to each other. And the effects concentrate among girls. Heavy-using teen girls report satisfaction with their lives at less than half the rate of girls who use social media lightly, a 30-point gap.

Sleep, reading for pleasure, excitement about the future, and self-rated health all show the same pattern. Notably, the survey finds no relationship between social media use and friendship formation or satisfaction. This runs counter to the common claim that these platforms simply make teenagers lonelier.

Read More in Datia K12. 

 

Guenther and Mandel for Florida Today: Florida’s space play offers a roadmap for beating China

Posted on by Alex Terr

China has a secret weapon in the modern day space race that the United States isn’t taking enough advantage of: state and local investment.

Chinese provinces and municipalities such as Shanghai are spending billions and leading the effort to build space infrastructure and satellite systems. For example, Shanghai Spacecom Satellite Technology (SSST) was initially founded with capital from Shanghai’s municipal state asset management commission and Shanghai Alliance Investment, a state-owned venture capital firm.

It’s working, at least so far. SSST aims to have a global LEO internet network fully operational by 2030, which sets it up to compete with American companies like Starlink and Amazon Leo. Though there are mounting questions about state and local debt, some of which is the result of duplicative spending.

The U.S. system cannot and should not seek to copy China’s system, but it would be foolish not to learn from what’s working for our biggest competitor.

Read more in Florida Today

Ainsley and Mattinson in Politico Magazine: A New Report Offers a Stark Warning to Centrists in France

Posted on by Alex Terr

Far-right politicians in Europe and the Americas have amassed support vowing to check the disruptions of globalization, promising strict borders and inward-looking economic and security policies.

In France, voters have another reason to consider the hard right: Many see no alternative.

That’s the conclusion of a new study of French voters conducted by Deborah Mattinson and Claire Ainsley, two prominent British political strategists. Mattinson and Ainsley, both affiliated with the center-left Progressive Policy Institute, have conducted focus groups with persuadable voters across Europe, the United States and Australia. For long-established political parties, the picture is bleak.

The collapse of the center and the rise of extremes is a global trend, confirmed in scores of elections and PPI’s international focus groups. Even in that bilious context, France stands out as a land of political desolation — a country where voters are so despairing and the center and left so depleted that Marine Le Pen, criminal conviction and all, may well be the next president.

“One of the things that came really clearly from these focus groups is that National Rally are on track to win because they are sort of the only show in town,” Mattinson told me, referring to Le Pen’s party.

The Mattinson-Ainsley research, which they shared with POLITICO Magazine, is arresting reading for anyone contending with the far right’s appeal to working-class communities, or hoping to resurrect a coalition nearer the center.

Read more in Politico

Canter and Manno for Thomas Fordham Institute: Good programs aren’t enough: States need a work-based learning strategy

Posted on by Alex Terr

In Philadelphia, a young person leaving Launchpad Philly’s post-high school graduate training track is on pace to earn nearly $30,000 within nine months and $50,000 within one year. That far outpaces the roughly $12,500 a young Philadelphian with only a high school diploma typically earns.

That’s not a best-case anecdote. It’s a design choice. And it’s one of six such designs documented in our new report, A Practical Guide to Work-Based Learning, which also examines a network of career and technical charter schools in South Bend, Indiana; an industry-themed school network in San Antonio; a rural coordination model spanning a thinly populated Indiana county; a Purdue-affiliated early college network; and a multi-district rural collaborative in Colorado.

Each program provides, by any fair measure, excellent preparation for college and career. And each one raises the same uncomfortable predicament. Education has no shortage of good ideas. What it lacks is a strategy for making them commonplace.

States should stop treating work-based learning primarily as something individual schools or districts choose to pursue and start treating it as something the state itself is responsible for enabling at scale. Based on what separated our six success stories from the much larger number of well-intentioned efforts that stall out, here are four actions state policymakers can pursue.

Read more in Thomas Fordham Institute

Trump’s New Tariffs, Likely Illegal, Will Cost Americans $100 Billion a Year

Posted on by Alex Terr

WASHINGTON (July 23, 2026) — Today, Ed Gresser, Vice President and Director for Trade and Global Markets of the Progressive Policy Institute (PPI), released the following statement in response to the Trump administration’s announcement of “Section 301” tariffs on goods from 60 U.S. trading partners, 10% for 22 partners and 12.5% for the other 38 compared to a legal “simple average” rate of 3.5%, ostensibly related to imports of products made with forced labor:

“The experience with the Trump administration’s illegal ‘international emergency’ tariffs last year suggests that its new Section 301 tariff decree, if it survives court scrutiny, will likely cost Americans $100 billion a year. Mr. Trump and his trade officials have clearly told American families to expect higher prices for groceries, back-to-school supplies, Christmas presents and other goods this fall. And it has warned American businesses grappling with the high cost of essential goods and business inputs — farmers, manufacturers, restaurants, building contractors, retail shops, clinics and others — to expect no relief.

“The administration’s decree, however, may fail in court just as last year’s IEEPA Executive Orders did. As PPI’s testimony earlier this month explained, measured either against the Constitutional separation of powers or the statutory rules of Section 301, its vague claims about forced labor abroad do not hold up. Constitutionally, it is likely impermissible as an attempt to use a law designed for problem-solving abroad to impose a general tariff increase. And legally, Section 301 requires administrations to demonstrate ‘unreasonable acts, policies, or practices’ which impose a burden on U.S. commerce, which this Executive Order fails to do. While making emotive claims about forced labor, it neither presents evidence that the listed countries are buying goods made with the use of forced labor, nor demonstrates that if they were, this would impose the statutorily required ‘burden on U.S. commerce.’

“Thus, the Executive Order looks vulnerable to challenge, and courts would have good reason to strike it down. The courts, however, should not have to make this call. Rather, Congress should act to restore Constitutional policymaking after a year of erratic, constantly changing, and basically inappropriate administration attempts to rule by decree. Senator Ron Wyden (D-Ore.) this week introduced important legislation to terminate Mr. Trump’s tariff decrees en bloc and restore a Constitutionally appropriate, Congressionally-driven system for setting tariff rates. The appropriate next step is for House Speaker Mike Johnson, Ways and Means Committee Chairman Jason Smith, and their Senate counterparts Majority Leader John Thune and Finance Committee Chairman Mike Crapo to pass this bill and restore the Constitutional order.”

Read more about Section 301 and how the Trump Administration is trying once again to circumvent Congress to implement tariffs and skyrocket costs for Americans here.

Founded in 1989, PPI is a catalyst for policy innovation and political reform based in Washington, D.C. Its mission is to create radically pragmatic ideas for moving America beyond ideological and partisan deadlock. Find an expert and learn more about PPI by visiting progressivepolicy.org. Follow us at @ppi.

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Media Contact: Ian O’Keefe – iokeefe@ppionline.org

PPI Background on the Trump Administration’s Attempt to Implement Section 301 and Forced Labor Tariffs

Posted on by Alex Terr

“Section 301,” a trade statute drafted in 1974, authorizes presidents to use tariffs as negotiating leverage to solve specific trade policy problems, after demonstrating that the government of a relevant country is implementing unreasonable “acts, policies, or practices” that impose a “burden on U.S. commerce.”Secretary of the Treasury Scott Bessent announced that the Trump administration would use this law, along with “Section 232,” to restore the International Emergency Economic Powers Act tariff rates the Supreme Court struck down that month.

Five months later, the Trump administration’s Executive Order uses Section 301 to impose tariffs of 10% on goods from 6 U.S. trading partners (Canada, Ecuador, the European Union, Indonesia, Pakistan, and the U.K.) and of 12.5% on goods from another 54, from Australia, New Zealand and Japan to Chile, Colombia, Mexico, China, South Africa, and Bangladesh. Together, these countries are the source of about $3.3 trillion in goods, roughly 97% of the consumer goods, groceries, industrial inputs, and raw materials American families and businesses buy from abroad. Based on the $82 billion raised by last year’s 10% “IEEPA” global tariff, imposed on April 9, 2025, and in place until the Supreme Court’s decision in February, the action is likely to cost Americans roughly $100 billion a year.

The administration’s argument for this action is a claim that (a) the countries on its list are importing goods made with the use of forced labor, and using them to produce other goods competing with American products, and (b) this imposes a “burden” on U.S. commerce by unnaturally reducing the prices of their goods. Gresser’s July 2026 testimony, given before the U.S. Trade Representative Office’s “301 Committee,” rebuts both claims, arguing that the action fails on Constitutional grounds, and also fails to meet Section 301’s evidentiary standards:

  • Secretary Bessent’s comment demonstrates that this action, along with the accompanying Section 301 investigation of “structural excess capacity” in manufacturing in 16 economies, is simply meant to replace the illegal IEEPA Executive Orders of 2025 and impose a general tariff increase, rather than to address a forced-labor policy question through policy reform. Section 301 does not authorize general tariff increases, as the Constitution reserves this to Congress by assigning power over “Taxes, Duties, Imposts, and Excises” to Congress in Article I. The Executive Order is therefore an impermissible breach of the separation of powers.
  • The U.S. Trade Representative Office’s Report of June 2 recommending these tariffs fails to demonstrate that any of the countries it names are importing forced labor goods. Rather, it simply notes that there is some forced labor trade in the world, and that the listed countries must therefore be buying some. In some cases — for example, Spanish breweries’ imports of Burmese rice for malt liquor — it accuses the countries of buying goods Americans also buy. This cannot justify tariff imposition.
  • USTR’s Report also fails to demonstrate that, if any of the listed countries are in fact buying forced labor goods, this would impose a “burden” on U.S. commerce. It argues that “in general”, forced labor enterprises would produce goods at lower costs than honorable and law-abiding businesses. This may well be true in some cases, but as Gresser’s testimony points out, the largest recent U.S. forced-labor enterprise – “Rojas Avila Harvesting,” a labor contractor active in Georgia onion and blueberry picking, 24 of whose executives and associates have pleaded guilty to human trafficking, forced labor, and other crimes — operated for years without affecting the prices of goods. Only empirical data and analysis could demonstrate the price effects USTR assumes to be a general pattern, and its report offers none.
  • Outside the bounds of this particular action, the Trump administration has shown little interest in forced labor. To the contrary, it has sharply scaled back U.S. government efforts to eliminate forced labor, canceling all U.S. support for forced labor elimination overseas through DOGE last year and reducing the number of Labor Department inspectors to fight it at home.

Pearson for CCDaily: Don’t get too excited about Workforce Pell, yet

Posted on by Max Sherrill

Education officials have had high hopes for this month’s launch of the long-awaited Workforce Pell program. For the first time ever, students attending short-term vocational programs in fields like healthcare support and the skilled trades will be eligible for federal grant aid, just like their peers studying English or biology at a university — a potential “game changer” for career training, in the recent words of Undersecretary of Education Nicholas Kent.

Workforce Pell does indeed promise a step toward rectifying the imbalance in federal funding for college-going Americans and those who seek to join the workforce sooner. But higher education leaders might need to temper their expectations, at least early on. No matter what, it will take at least a few years for states to fully implement Workforce Pell, which requires them to decide which programs will be eligible and track their results. Design choices by the federal government, as well as the basic realities faced by short-term job training programs, may limit the program’s initial potential, too.

That’s the conclusion I’ve reached after conversations with multiple community college system leaders in recent weeks, who I offered confidentiality in order for them to speak freely.

Read More in CCDaily.

Canter on Radically Pragmatic Substack: How Mississippi Almost Abandoned Its Education Reforms

Posted on by Alyssa Brown

The little-known story of how backlash to Common Core nearly sank the policies that have turned the state into a national model.


Adapted from Rachel Canter’s PPI report.

One of the most remarkable aspects of Mississippi’s education reforms has been its durability. Unlike the policy churn familiar to education advocates in most of the country, the state has steadily built on its reform agenda for around 15 years to create a coherent and comprehensive policy framework — one that includes not only strong learning standards and rules that hold schools accountable for their results, but also evidence-based instructional practices like the science of reading and real support for implementation down to the classroom level. As I’ve written, it was this marathon approach that helped propel us to the top of the national leader board in reading and math, when adjusting for demographics, in 2024.

What some may not realize is that our ability to keep going wasn’t simply dumb luck. It was grit. By the time Mississippi began making efforts to dramatically improve learning, the national mood had already begun to sour on ideas like accountability and rigorous standards. The bipartisan consensus for reform was pulling apart at the seams, and states across the country were already starting to turn back, or water down, measures they had enthusiastically adopted only a few years before.

From the left, longstanding complaints about standardized testing found new purchase with the public after several years of No Child Left Behind, which used grade-level scores on exams as the exclusive measure of whether schools could be designated as “in need of improvement” and face consequences. When reformers began to advocate that tests be used to evaluate teachers, their unions saw an opportunity not only to cast the effort as an attack on educators but to delegitimize all standardized testing and the broader concept of school accountability. A 2008 Time Magazine cover of the first mayorally-appointed Chancellor of DC Public Schools, Michelle Rhee, holding a broom became emblematic not of reformers’ desire to clean up overly bureaucratic and ineffective school districts but of the teachers union’s accusation that reformers sought to fire their way to success.

On the right, the Common Core State Standards, adopted by most states in 2010, became the subject of evolving and increasingly bizarre conspiracy theories online and in conservative media. Reasonable critiques — ranging from concerns the standards didn’t emphasize phonics enough in the early grades to philosophical disagreements about whether the federal government should incentivize the adoption of particular state learning standards — were completely blown away by allegations that the standards were a sinister plot to indoctrinate children in left-wing ideologies. Conservatives dubbed the standards “Obamacore,” despite the entire effort preceding Obama’s presidency and having its genesis in a wholly state-driven process, because many states had rushed their adoption to be competitive in the first round of Race to the Top, the president’s signature education grant initiative.

Continue reading on Substack.

Gresser in The Economist: The tariffs that just won’t die

Posted on by Alex Terr

[…]

But they could soon rise further. Later this year, the USTR is expected to impose further country-specific duties under Section 301 investigations into “structural excess capacity” among 16 of America’s largest trading partners. The administration accuses these countries of “producing more goods than they can consume or productively invest domestically”, a definition that Ed Gresser of the Progressive Policy Institute, a think-tank, calls “eccentric”.

[…]

Read more in The Economist

Merchant fleet shipping capacity has doubled since 2010

Posted on by Alex Terr

FACT: Merchant fleet shipping capacity has doubled since 2010.

THE NUMBERS: Deadweight tonnage of worldwide merchant shipping fleet* –

       2026     2.53 billion tons
2020     2.07 billion tons
2010     1.28 billion tons
2000     0.79 billion tons
1990     0.63 billion tons

* UNCTADStat

WHAT THEY MEAN: 

Special note: Beginning in August, Trade Facts will be delivered through PPI’s newly launched Substack, “Radically Pragmatic.” Trade Fact emails will continue as usual, free and with no solicitations.

A strange proposal from Mr. Trump last week suggests permanent U.S. Navy policing Strait of Hormuz traffic in exchange for a rakeoff:

“All other countries will have fair and open use of the Strait,” [and the U.S.] “will be reimbursed, at therate of 20% on all cargo shipped, for any and all costs necessary to do the job of providing safety and security to this very volatile section of the World.”

As with the July 8 “embargo on Spain” idea, this looks more like an agitated search for a Gulf achievement than anything serious. Also like that one, it seems to have swiftly disappeared. The more traditional U.S. maritime principles are (a) “freedom of navigation” on oceans and in international waterways like the Strait, as a support for U.S. commerce and common-good contribution to world prosperity, and (b) the U.S. Navy is not for foreign rent or hire. (Very traditional maritime principles, continuous from the Jefferson administration’s 1807 response to the Orders in Council, through Admiral Mahan’s Gilded Age theorizing, the Fourteen Points and the Atlantic Charter, to the 21st-century FONOPS; see below.) In that spirit, the present-day big picture on commercial fleets and navies:

Ships: As of January 2026, according to UNCTAD’s “Review of Maritime Transport”, 116,000 merchant ships of 100 tons or more were on the water at the beginning of 2026, together capable of carrying 2.5 billion tons of cargo at any one time. (About 150 per day were transiting the Strait of Hormuz in that pre-war month; this week it’s about ten a day.) Steaming alongside this commercial fleet are about 45,000 large fishing vessels (by the UN FAO’s count), plus 14,000 cruise ships and large yachts; a few hundred icebreakers, cable ships, and other specialized vessels; and 4,000 naval ships. A basic tally:

Cargo vessels, over 100 deadweight tons (DWT) 116,000  2,529 million DWT
… bulk carriers    14,000   1,067 million DWT
… oil tankers 9,000      683 million DWT
… container ships      7,600      389 million DWT
… general cargo   16,000        84 million DWT
… roll-on/roll-off           850        16 million DWT
… other cargo*   69,000     190 million DWT
Fishing vessels, over 100 tons 45,000      40 million DWT
Cruise vessels, ferries, yachts 14,000        3 million DWT
Navies 4,000      18 million DWT

* “Other cargo” includes small coastal cargo ships, seagoing barges, refrigerated “reefers” carrying perishable cargoes, etc.

Fleet growth: Though government trade policies have mostly deadlocked over the last decade, the actual real-world commercial fleet has grown with startling speed. The 98,000 merchant ships of 2010 could ferry 1.28 billion tons of cargo around the oceans — half of this year’s 2.53 billion-ton capacity, with the container fleet growing from 169 million to 389 million deadweight tons and the bulk-carrier fleet from 457  million to 1.06 billion deadweight tons. Nor does this burst of growth look like it’s slowing down. Last year, 1,643 new vessels steamed out of the yards, and BRS Shipbrokers says 5,600 more are under construction this year: 4,055 in China, 731 in Korea, 633 in Japan, 320 in Europe, 306 everywhere else. (The U.S. is making 15 — not a lot, but a noticeable jump from the three a couple of years ago, after the Philly Shipyard’s 2024 purchase by Hanwha Oceans.) By 2029 or so, these new vessels will likely add another 470 million tons of cargo capacity.

Cargo: In a normal peacetime year, about $0.85 trillion worth of goods transit the Strait of Hormuz. (About $600 billion comes out in the form of oil, aluminum, fertilizer, helium, etc., and $250 billion goes in.) That would be about 3% of the $18 trillion in annual worldwide maritime goods trade. For context, this is roughly 60% of the world’s $26 trillion in goods exports, or, relative to output, about (a) 15% of the world’s $118 trillion ‘GDP’, and (b) 64% of the global $29 trillion in value-added manufacturing, agriculture, forestry, mining, and fisheries output. (Land trade and air cargo are about $6 trillion; the three transport ‘modes’ overlap a bit, so the numbers don’t sum perfectly to $26 trillion.) Here’s an evocative visualization —done in 2012, so a bit dated — of these ships as they move across oceans and through narrows.

The military arm: The world’s navies are much smaller than the commercial and fishing fleets, operating 4,000 warships with a combined tonnage of 18 million deadweight tons. The U.S. Navy’s 290 ships combine for 8.6 million DWT, or about 45% of the worldwide total. According to the U.S. Naval Institute’s fleet tracker, 18 of these ships, including two of the 11 carrier groups, are in the Persian Gulf at a cost of about $15 million a day:

Two Nimitz-class aircraft carriers with two Carrier Air Wings’ worth of fighters, strike aircraft, and helicopters (Wings 9 and 7) aboard
Twelve Arleigh Burke-class guided missile destroyers (DDGs)
One Ticonderoga-class guided missile cruiser
One amphibious assault ship
One amphibious dock landing ship
One amphibious transport dock ship

FURTHER READING

PPI’s four principles for response to tariffs and economic isolationism:

  • Defend the Constitution and oppose rule by decree;
  • Connect tariff policy to growth, work, prices and family budgets, and living standards;
  • Stand by America’s neighbors and allies;
  • Offer a positive alternative.

PPI’s Director of National Security Policy Danielle Steitz, a Joint Staff and House Armed Services Committee alumna, tracks U.S. military and security policy.Centcom reports on Gulf operations.

The U.S. Naval Institute’s Fleet Tracker tells you, more or less, where the Navy ships are.

Commercial vessels:

UNCTAD’s Review of Maritime Transport summarizes the world’s commercial fleet as of 2025.

… and a one-page data update for 2026.

BRS Shipbrokers tallies shipbuilding orderbooks.

The Hanwha Philly Shipyard, Hanwha Oceans’ joint-build project, hopes to revive U.S. civilian
shipbuilding.

Fishing fleets:

UN FAO tallies on the world fishing fleet – about 4.1 million vessels in total, of which 2.5 million have motors, and 45,000 are large vessels of 100 tons or more.

And the “freedom of navigation” backstory:

19th century: Thomas Jefferson’s spirited response (1807) to the U.K.’s Orders in Council during the Napoleonic Wars; Admiral Mahan argues (1890) for a powerful American fleet, as “the necessity of a navy springs from the existence of a peaceful commerce.”

20th century: The second of Wilson’s Fourteen Points (1918), on encouraging peaceful trade, starts with “absolute freedom of navigation upon the seas”; the Atlantic Charter’s seventh clause (1941) states a right for all to “traverse the high seas and oceans without hindrance.”

21st century: The Navy’s 21st-century “FONOPS” (“Freedom of Navigation Operations”) program asserts the right of passage in tense waters.

ABOUT ED

Ed Gresser is Vice President and Director for Trade and Global Markets at PPI.

Ed returns to PPI after working for the think tank from 2001-2011. He most recently served as the Assistant U.S. Trade Representative for Trade Policy and Economics at the Office of the United States Trade Representative (USTR). In this position, he led USTR’s economic research unit from 2015-2021, and chaired the 21-agency Trade Policy Staff Committee.

Ed began his career on Capitol Hill before serving USTR as Policy Advisor to USTR Charlene Barshefsky from 1998 to 2001. He then led PPI’s Trade and Global Markets Project from 2001 to 2011. After PPI, he co-founded and directed the independent think tank ProgressiveEconomy until rejoining USTR in 2015. In 2013, the Washington International Trade Association presented him with its Lighthouse Award, awarded annually to an individual or group for significant contributions to trade policy.

Ed is the author of Freedom from Want: American Liberalism and the Global Economy (2007). He has published in a variety of journals and newspapers, and his research has been cited by leading academics and international organizations including the WTO, World Bank, and International Monetary Fund. He is a graduate of Stanford University and holds a Master’s Degree in International Affairs from Columbia Universities and a certificate from the Averell Harriman Institute for Advanced Study of the Soviet Union.

Read the full email and sign up for the Trade Fact of the Week.

PPI Applauds Legislation to Restore Congressional Constitutional Authority Over Tariffs

Posted on by Alex Terr

WASHINGTON (July 22, 2026) — Today, Ed Gresser, Vice President and Director for Trade and Global Markets at the Progressive Policy Institute (PPI), released the following statement regarding Senator Ron Wyden’s (D-Ore.) introduction of the Congressional Trade Powers Reform Act of 2026:

“Since February of 2025, the Trump administration has produced a stream of ever-changing tariff decrees, ranging from across-the-board rate increases designed to restore Depression-level tariff rates and 19th-century taxation systems, to unprovoked attacks on Canada, to bizarre claims that condensed milk and balance beams are ‘steel or aluminum derivative products.’ These have damaged the Constitutional separation of powers, raised prices for American families, imposed tens of billions of dollars in new costs each month on goods-producing American businesses from factories and farms to restaurants and construction sites, and damaged national-security relationships with America’s neighbors and core allies abroad. The American public is deeply and understandably unhappy about all of this.

“In these circumstances, we at PPI are excited and enthusiastic about Finance Committee Ranking Member Wyden’s introduction of the Congressional Trade Powers Reform Act of 2026. Though good policy at any time, it is especially timely in this summer of 2026. His bill is the right response, providing a path back to constitutionally appropriate policymaking, and actual trade policies centered on growth, lower inflation, and revived business competitiveness rather than crank theories and presidential whims.

“By repealing Sections 122 and 338 of U.S. trade law as antiquated and unnecessary, and requiring Congressional votes to approve any use of Sections 301, 232, and 201 of U.S. trade law, Sen. Wyden’s bill would restore the fundamental Constitutional principle that Congress has authority over ‘Taxes, Duties, Imposts, and Excises.’ This will ensure that presidents hoping to use tariffs for policy goals cannot impose their own rates by decree as Mr. Trump has tried to do, but must instead win the assent of Congress. This would structurally improve future policy by confining use of these laws to the occasional cases in which Congress has a consensus that tariffs are an appropriate policy tool; and more immediately provide the public relief on consumer-goods affordability and business costs by terminating Trump administration decrees which do not meet that test. It is good policy and good economics and deserves support.”

Founded in 1989, PPI is a catalyst for policy innovation and political reform based in Washington, D.C. Its mission is to create radically pragmatic ideas for moving America beyond ideological and partisan deadlock. Find an expert and learn more about PPI by visiting progressivepolicy.org. Follow us at @PPI.

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Media Contact: Ian O’Keefe – iokeefe@ppionline.org

New PPI Report: Antitrust Whiplash Doesn’t Serve Competition and Consumers

Posted on by Alex Terr

WASHINGTON (July 22, 2026) — America’s worst cost-of-living crisis in 50 years has many causes, one of which is how well the U.S. antitrust laws are enforced against harmful consolidation and business practices that drive up prices. But in recent decades, antitrust enforcement has lurched from one ideological extreme to another, sacrificing vigorous, consistent, and pragmatic enforcement that promotes competition and protects consumers, according to a new report from the Progressive Policy Institute (PPI).

In “Charting a Center-Left Course For Antitrust Enforcement,” Diana Moss, Vice President and Director of Competition Policy at PPI, traces how U.S. antitrust over the last 50 years has included two major swings. One is four decades of Chicago School conservatism, which considered vigorous enforcement a drag on efficiency and innovation. Another, more recent, episode is Biden-era Anti-Monopoly progressivism, which stretched antitrust law to try to fix problems it was never built to solve.

PPI’s report is based on qualitative analysis and a deep dive into three decades of DOJ and FTC merger data. The results reveal that ideological swings in enforcement have a real impact on competition and consumers. For example, lax Chicago-School enforcement did significant damage, allowing harmful consolidation. Biden-era enforcers attempted to enjoin, or block, more mergers — especially in the digital markets — but suffered the lowest rate of wins-per-injunction across five administrations. The Obama administration had the highest rate, successfully stopping harmful consolidation in food, healthcare, and other consumer-facing markets.

“Every time antitrust swings to an ideological extreme, consumers pay for the reset,” said Moss. “Chicago School conservatism let market power run unchecked for forty years, for which U.S. consumers are still paying the price. Anti-Monopoly progressivism spent its capital on risky digital-sector fights, even as consolidation accelerated in food, healthcare, and housing — sectors where Americans acutely feel high prices. Now we’re watching the Trump administration politicize antitrust to reward allies and punish enemies. None of this serves competition and consumers.”

The report lays out a two-part platform for a center-left approach to vigorous, consistent, and pragmatic enforcement. This includes codifying principles that produced some of the most effective enforcement in the post-Chicago era under the Obama administration. The report also encourages going further with new reforms to strengthen and clarify the antitrust laws, lower burdens on plaintiffs, learn from failed remedies, and reallocate agency resources in key sectors like food, healthcare, and energy.

“The antitrust laws exist to keep markets fair and support consumers,” said Moss. “Big swings in enforcement ideology defeat this goal, and U.S. consumers pay for the inconsistency.”

Read and download the report here.

Founded in 1989, PPI is a catalyst for policy innovation and political reform based in Washington, D.C. Its mission is to create radically pragmatic ideas for moving America beyond ideological and partisan deadlock. Find an expert and learn more about PPI by visiting progressivepolicy.org. Follow us at @ppi.

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Media Contact: Ian O’Keefe – iokeefe@ppionline.org

Charting a Center-Left Course For Antitrust Enforcement

Posted on by Alex Terr

The last 50 years have been marked by major shifts in the nation’s approach to enforcing U.S. antitrust laws. For example, laissez-faire or “Chicago School” conservatism captured antitrust for almost four decades beginning in the 1970s, persuading enforcers and judges that vigorous enforcement stifled efficiency and chilled innovation. In fact, enforcement protects the very competition that spurs incentives for firms to become more efficient and innovative. Diametrically opposed is the more recent theory of “Anti-Monopoly” progressivism, defined by far left attempts to use antitrust enforcement to rectify a variety of economic, political, and social injustices. U.S. antitrust laws, however, are not designed for such purposes. Instead, they are intended to serve the broad public interest by assuring a level playing field for competition and protecting consumers through fair prices, choice and innovation. There is a suite of other policy tools that can more efficiently and effectively tackle the problems that the Anti-Monopoly movement seeks to cure with antitrust enforcement.

This PPI analysis unpacks the downsides and high opportunity costs resulting from the ideological swings that divert antitrust enforcement from a more pragmatic, consistent, and effective course. As Americans face the worst cost-of-living crisis since the 1970s, the imperative of vigorous antitrust enforcement that works in the best interests of competition and consumers has never been higher. This includes focusing on consumer-facing sectors like food, healthcare, housing, and transportation, where the abuse of market power is highly visible and is felt keenly in pocketbooks and paychecks.

The adverse effect of Chicago School conservatism on antitrust is well established. But the downsides of major features of Anti-Monopoly enforcement under the Biden administration are not. The report takes a deep dive into this question and concludes that while Anti-Monopoly enforcers did work to temporarily slow down consolidation, they also incurred high costs in pursuing a specialized agenda.

PPI’s report concludes with pragmatic proposals for a center-left antitrust platform to rein in harmful market power with discipline and consistency. These include codifying the principles advanced by “post-Chicago” enforcers, especially under the Obama administration and fortifying them with principles that clarify, update, and strengthen antitrust enforcement.

Proposals in the first category include: adopting a broad interpretation of the consumer welfare standard to include price and nonprice dimensions of competition; enforcing the “structural presumption” against illegal horizontal mergers; applying the antitrust laws to competitive problems in input, output, and innovation markets; and taking a skeptical view of efficiency justifications for anticompetitive consolidation and conduct.

The second category of proposals includes: reaffirming the central role of the consumer welfare standard in antitrust enforcement; adding a presumption against anticompetitive vertical mergers; reducing burdens on antitrust plaintiffs; raising the bar on efficiency claims; updating remedies policy based on evidence of past failures; and consolidating expertise in sectors like food, healthcare, and energy in either the Federal Trade Commission (FTC) or U.S. Department of Justice (DOJ).

Read the full report.

PPI in The Times of London: ‘Neoliberalism’ was good enough for Tony Blair

Posted on by Alex Terr

In January 1993 Will Marshall of the Progressive Policy Institute took a meeting with two British politicians eager to learn about how Bill Clinton had revived the American left. One of them was Gordon Brown, earnest and engaged, the other seemed very nice, although afterwards Marshall couldn’t for the life of him remember his name.

Formally, the Progressive Policy Institute (PPI) was the think tank of the Democratic Leadership Council. Informally, it was the intellectual resource of a group known as the New Democrats, primarily southern governors and politicians who had reset their party after the Republicans had held the White House for more than a decade. Clinton had become their candidate, captured the party nomination and in 1992 won the presidency.

Shortly before Clinton achieved this victory, Labour had lost its fourth election in a row. By the time it got a chance to try again it would have been out of power for 18 years. So naturally its leading figures were keen to learn all they could about Clinton’s campaigning techniques — rapid rebuttal, a war room — but also about the policy and positioning of the New Democrats. It was the latter that had brought Brown and his friend to Marshall’s office.

Read more in The Times of London