Category: Uncategorized

Jacoby for Washington Monthly: Europe Struggles to Respond to Russian Attacks

Posted on by Alex Terr

The Ukrainian team visiting Oslo in late August came armed with a hefty research report—73 packed pages of open-source intelligence and policy proposals designed to help Norway prepare for a confrontation with Russia. The most likely scenario, the paper warned, would be more like the Battle of Britain than Operation Barbarossa, Nazi Germany’s 3.8 million-man World War II invasion of the Soviet Union. Moscow is unlikely to send tanks or troops to Norway, the report said. Russian strongman Vladimir Putin knows he can’t win a direct military clash with NATO. More likely would be a combined blitz of drone assaults, sabotage, and cyberattacks—what the paper compiled by the Kyiv-based Sahaidachnyi Security Center and paid for by the Ukrainian drone manufacturer Buntar Aerospace called the “Battle of Norway.”

But even the hawkish Ukrainian team was unprepared for what hit Norway just days later on August 24. The day after Prime Minister Jonas Gahr Støre visited Kyiv, promising continued support and a fourth annual payment of $9.1 billion, a pro-Russia hacker group calling itself Server Killers startled the Nordic nation with social media post. “We declare cyber war” on Norway, the message read—white letters against a fiery background featuring an image of the Kremlin and a Russian flag.

Server Killers is an experienced hacking collective with documented Moscow connections and a long rap sheet—attacks in Britain, Canada, Denmark, Spain, and Romania. Over the next three days, it targeted Digdir, the agency overseeing Norway’s cutting-edge digitization of public services, bombarding its servers with so much spam that government websites stopped working for citizens. The “distributed denial of service attack” was the largest in Norway’s history—if not the start of the battle of Norway, certainly an alarming warning.

Disruptive as it was for Norwegians, the Server Killer attack hardly made international news—Russia is now launching so many so-called “hybrid” or “gray-zone” assaults on Europe that it can be hard to keep track of them.

Read more in Washington Monthly

Kahlenberg and Lin in Real Clear Politics: Higher Education Must Overcome Comforting Delusions

Posted on by Alex Terr

[…]

Earlier this year in the Wall Street Journal, Richard Kahlenberg, director of the American Identity Project at the Progressive Policy Institute, and Lief Lin, a PPI policy research fellow, offered dramatic evidence of scholarship’s corruption by progressive bias, with baleful implications for liberal education throughout the nation.

In “American Studies Can’t Stand Its Subject,” Kahlenberg and Lin argued that “many of the serious scholars who study America – its history, literature and culture – fail to provide a balanced and nuanced account of the country’s complex tale.” The authors’ Journal op-ed drew on their report, “The Distortion of American Studies,” for which they reviewed the almost 100 articles that appeared in American Quarterly – a peer-reviewed journal edited by scholars and published by Johns Hopkins University – over three years.

According to Kahlenberg and Lin, American Quarterly, “widely considered the country’s premier journal of American studies,” overwhelmingly featured scholarship that advances the outlook of “the academic left” by presenting “a one-sided and unrelentingly negative portrait of the U.S.” The authors report that “80% of articles published between 2022 and 2024 were critical of America, 20% were neutral, and none were positive.” Criticism “focused on American racism, imperialism, classism, sexism, xenophobia, homophobia and transphobia.” Some scholarly attacks on America passed over into the absurd: “One essay posited that thermodynamics – the science dealing with the relationship between energy, heat, work and temperature – is ‘an abstract settler-capitalist theory that influenced the plunder of Indigenous lands and lives.’”

Kahlenberg and Lin “couldn’t find a single positive article” about America in the prestigious journal from 2022 to 2024. Not one contribution during that three-year period explored “American ingenuity” or examined “why as of 2020 the U.S., representing about 4% of the world’s population, won 42% of the individual Nobel Prizes since the awards’ creation in 1901.” Not one considered “why the U.S. was the first country to land a man on the moon.” Not one dealt with “America’s vanquishing Nazi Germany in World War II or the Soviet Union in the Cold War.” And not one contained a “discussion of why the U.S. is rated as the most desirable destination for immigrants across the world.”

[…]

Read more in Real Clear Education

Kahlenberg and Lin in New Republic: Dems Want to Regulate AI. But Will AI Money Divide Them?

Posted on by Alex Terr

[…]

At the centrist Progressive Policy Institute, Richard D. Kahlenberg and Lief Lin pen a new report on “Teaching American Democracy,” probing “where civics [education] went wrong” and how to “revitalize” it. One of the recommendations: “All states should require three years of American Democracy, just as they typically require three years in math and reading. Helping all students understand who we are as Americans and why,” Kahlenberg and Lin write, “is of enormous importance in a country where liberal democratic norms are under steady attack—as important as literacy and numeracy.”

[…]

Read more in The New Republic

Jacoby in Nordic Defence Watch: Denmark offers Ukraine’s arms makers a safe base to expand, expert explains

Posted on by Alex Terr

Ukraine’s defence industry sees several advantages in setting up production in Denmark.

So says Tamar Jacoby, the Kyiv-based director of the Progressive Policy Institute’s New Ukraine Project. She writes regularly about the Ukrainian defence industry for American media and is a frequent expert commentator on the sector.

“Primarily, it’s about security and reducing the risk of being bombed. Most Ukrainian companies have distributed production sites across Ukraine and must hide where they are,” Jacoby says.

Read more in Nordic Defence Watch

Amicus Curiae Brief of Ed Gresser and Progressive Policy Institute Against Forced Tariffs

Posted on by Alex Terr

INTEREST OF THE AMICI CURIAE

Amici Ed Gresser is Vice President and Director for Trade and Global Markets at the Progressive Policy Institute (PPI), a 501(c)(3) non-profit think-tank, established in 1989 and active on a broad range of public policy issues.1 PPI institutionally, and Gresser personally, have an interest in this case given their long-time advocacy for trade policy grounded in sound economic analysis and careful assessment of facts and trade statistics, and their assessment that forced labor is an egregious violation of human rights. Amici submit this brief to assist the court on a discrete question of statutory authority: whether Section 301 permits USTR to impose tariffs on 60 economies accounting for nearly all U.S. imports, based on general assertions that trade anywhere in the world in goods of an indeterminate amount that have potentially been made with forced labor sufficiently demonstrates a burden on U.S. commerce.

INTRODUCTION

USTR’s June 2nd, 2026, Report entitled “Section 301 Investigations of Acts, Policies, and Practices of Various Economies Related to the Failure of Each Economy to Impose and Effectively Enforce a Prohibition on the Importation of Goods Produced with Forced Labor” (hereafter “the Report”), covers 60 economies. Together they provided about 99% of America’s imported goods in 2025. The Report provides the justification for USTR’s “Final Determination”2 imposing tariffs of 12.5% above MFN rates on goods from 41 of these economies, 10% above MFN rates on goods from 17, and 10% on two, as a “remedy” for their lack of a law similar to America’s ban on imports of goods made wholly or partially with the use of forced labor, or for supposed failure to sufficiently enforce such a law. Extrapolating from ten months’ experience with the 10% worldwide tariff temporarily imposed by Executive Order 14257, this will likely cost American goods-buyers – families, manufacturers, construction firms, restaurants, clinics, retail shops, and so on – about $100 billion annually. This is roughly double the money raised by the lawful and Congressionally authorized Harmonized Tariff Schedule, and nearly 100 times the combined $1.3 billion average annual value of goods shipments Customs and Border Protection has blocked or seized over the last five years on “reasonable suspicion”, or actual demonstration, of forced labor content.

We at PPI share the view expressed in the Report that forced labor is an egregious violation of human rights. We likewise agree that U.S. policy has an important role in eliminating it worldwide as well as at home. We are not, however, persuaded by the Report’s premise that the self-evident effectiveness and superiority of U.S. policy justify imposing tariff penalties on virtually all U.S. imports from every other major economy. And as a matter of law and policy, we are not persuaded that the Report’s recommendations are genuinely intended to address forced labor, given the lack of any discussion of using the tariffs as leverage to eliminate the offending practices or adopt stronger enforcement mechanisms.

Whatever the administration’s intent, the Report does not satisfy the basic requirement Section 301 imposes for imposition of tariffs – that is, it does not demonstrate that each foreign government’s “unreasonable or discriminatory” “acts, policies or practices” have created a “burden” on American commerce. The Report does not show that any of the 60 listed economies actually import goods made with the use of forced labor. Neither does it show that such imports, if they actually occur, have any necessary effect on U.S. exports or American import-competing businesses and workers. The Report does not establish any burden on U.S. commerce. Therefore the tariff action taken pursuant to it is illegal.

Read the full amicus curiae

Manno for Real Clear Education: School Satisfaction Reaches All-Time Low

Posted on by Alex Terr

Americans’ satisfaction with K-12 education has fallen to 32%, the lowest level Gallup has recorded in its 27-year trend, while dissatisfaction has climbed to a record 67%.

The September 7, 2026, Walton Family Foundation/Gallup poll shows satisfaction down 11 points over two years, driven largely by a 19-point drop among Democrats since the start of President Trump’s second term. Independents are down 10 points and Republicans down 6 points. Only 20% of respondents rated schools favorably on preparing students to think critically and solve problems.

Any single poll invites the question of whether it’s an outlier. This one isn’t.

A second survey, the most recent available Phi Delta Kappa Poll, released in August 2025, asks a different question and comes from a different pollster. It has Americans grade schools like a report card rather than rate their satisfaction. It finds the same decline under a different name. Just 13% of respondents gave the nation’s public schools an A or B, with scores falling every year since 2017.

A third measure comes from Gallup’s separate 2026 annual survey of confidence in U.S. institutions, released in July 2026, which asks a different question. It’s not about satisfaction or a grade but about how much confidence Americans have in “the public schools” as an institution. That poll puts confidence in schools at 27%, a point above its all-time low.

Read more in Real Clear Education

Ideological Wars Have Contributed to the Decline of Civics Education, New PPI Report Finds

Posted on by Alex Terr

Time for a Renaissance in Teaching the American Political Tradition

WASHINGTON (September 10, 2026) — Nearly four in five American eighth graders score below proficient in civics, the federal government spends roughly 100 times less per student on the subject compared with STEM, and about one-third of Americans under 30 say democracy is no longer a viable system of government. A report released today by the Progressive Policy Institute (PPI) argues those phenomena are connected, and calls for rebuilding American civics education from the ground up.

The report, titled “Teaching American Democracy: Understanding Who We Are as Americans and Why” and authored by Richard D. Kahlenberg, director of PPI’s American Identity Project, and Lief Lin, a policy analyst at PPI, makes two top-line recommendations: rebrand the course now called “civics” as “American Democracy,” and require three years of it in high school, the same as most states require in math and reading.

“Across the country, civics education is falling short on all fronts,” said Kahlenberg. “Without a course that teaches students who we are as Americans and what makes America unique, the nation is unlikely to regain its place as the world’s leading example of how a multiethnic liberal democracy can flourish.”

The report documents deficits on three fronts:

  • On knowledge of American government … the 2022 National Assessment of Educational Progress found 79% of eighth graders below proficient in civics and 86% below proficient in U.S. history, the weakest results of any subject tested.
  • On belief in Democracy … 31% of Americans ages 18 to 29 agreed that the country should explore alternatives to democracy, compared with 5% of those over 65, and four in 10 young Americans describe the founders as villains rather than heroes.
  • On voter participation … U.S. voter turnout trails the OECD average, and only a quarter of Americans report a strong sense of belonging to a community.

Kahlenberg and Lin trace the decline to five failures: ideological fights that have drained state standards of content and chilled classroom debate, chronic underfunding and weak accountability, poor teacher preparation, a failure to teach students what life in nondemocratic societies actually looks like, and cuts to extracurriculars such as debate and student newspapers that build civic habits.

The scale of the neglect is measurable. Elementary classrooms devote 16 minutes a day to social studies, against 89 minutes for reading. All 50 states test reading and math, though only 21 test social studies. Nearly half of states earn a “D” or “F” from the Fordham Institute for their civics standards, U.S. history standards, or both. And 65% of teachers nationally report limiting classroom discussion of political and social issues, including 55% of those facing no state or local restriction at all.

“America has an extraordinary tale to tell,” said Lin. “Instead of students yawning about our country’s story, we need to take pride in our democracy and teach how our nation’s ups and downs over the last 250 years created a government envied by the world.”

Kahlenberg and Lin’s recommendations for the federal government include:

  • Creating a Race to the Top competition that rewards states for content-rich standards, nonpartisan hands-on learning and robust classroom debate
  • Reviving substantial federal funding along the lines of the Civics Secures Democracy Act, which would authorize $1 billion annually, with guardrails against politicized curricula
  • Requiring state participation in the NAEP civics and U.S. history exams every two years, so state-by-state comparisons become possible
  • Earmarking a share of Title II-A professional development dollars for civics and history. In 2020-21, 47% of districts spent none of that money on either subject
  • Funding grants to expand enrollment in AP Comparative Government, so students learn firsthand what life without democracy looks like
  • Providing competitive grants to Title I schools for debate teams, student newspapers, and programs such as the We the People competition

At the state and local level, the authors point to models already working: exemplary standards in Alabama, California, Massachusetts, Tennessee, and Washington, D.C., Utah’s Local Innovations Civics Education Pilot Program, and the Massachusetts law requiring every eighth grader and high school student to complete a student-led, nonpartisan civics project.

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

Teaching American Democracy: Understanding Who We Are As Americans and Why

Posted on by Alex Terr

America has an extraordinary tale to tell. In a world of kings and queens, the founders created a revolutionary system of self-governance aimed at honoring political equality and human liberty. Legendary fights erupted over how to empower a functioning government without threatening the freedom of individuals and how to address the country’s gravest failure to live up to its own professed values — chattel slavery. Learning about the American political tradition ought to be exciting for students, especially since the ideals underpinning the Declaration of Independence still fuel today’s battles for social and economic justice.

Yet for as long as schools have been teaching the topic of “civics,” it has evoked yawns from young people. Worse, students perform abysmally on the subject. At a time when liberal democracy in America is under enormous stress, school boards, states, and the federal government must rethink how we pass on America’s civic inheritance.

This report lays out the disappointing civics outcomes for students, outlines where civics went wrong, discusses promising practices that localities and states can replicate, and ends with recommendations for a federal role in revitalizing civics education. (A separate PPI report will address the best ways to teach an honest and hopeful account of American history.)

We have two top-line recommendations. First, educators should rename the course now known as “civics” as “American Democracy.” The new nomenclature signals that school children are not learning merely about one type of government among many, but about a thrilling advancement for liberty and equality in the history of the world. The course will explain not only how the American system works but will draw upon the historical drama of how it came into being, and why. Having said that, American Democracy will differ from American history in important ways. It will focus on that subset of American history that explains the development of our liberal democratic system as opposed to the broader topics covered in American history such as economic, technological, and cultural developments, American foreign policy, frontier expansion, and the like. Conversely, unlike history classes, American Democracy will help students engage in the contemporary practice of self-governance through hands-on learning.

Second, all states should require three years of American Democracy, just as they typically require three years in math and reading. Helping all students understand who we are as Americans and why is of enormous importance in a country where liberal democratic norms are under steady attack — as important as literacy and numeracy.

Read the full report

Manno for Daita K12: What the New International PISA Scores Actually Tell District Leaders

Posted on by Alex Terr

American 15-year-olds just posted their worst international reading scores in a quarter century, though it was also one of their best relative rankings in decades.

Untangling how this happened is the real lesson of the most recent international test results for district leaders who have to explain them to school boards, parents, and teachers.

The Programme for International Student Assessment, or PISA, is administered by the Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development. It tests what 15-year-olds can do in reading, math, and science and includes 760,000 students in 91 countries. Its 2025 results report that U.S. reading scores fell 14 points since 2022, near a 25-year low. Math and science held roughly flat.

Because most other countries fell by similar or larger margins, the United States actually rose in the international rankings. That makes it a good-news story built on a bad-news backdrop.

Read more in Daita K12

Steitz for Radically Pragmatic: Republicans Are Running From Trump’s Foreign Policy Record

Posted on by Alex Terr

Republican Party leaders have promised that their midterm convention, which begins tonight in Dallas, will be a primetime “Trumpapalooza” — a mega pep rally aimed at showcasing the president’s supposed successes and revving up his most hardcore fans so that they’ll turn out to the polls in November.

But judging by the event’s agenda, there appears to be at least one piece of our unpopular president’s record that’s so obviously politically toxic that his party is not even willing to pay it lip service in front of an adoring crowd. Across the two days of speeches, there is not one mention of national defense or foreign policy anywhere in the program.

Historically, the omission of these topics from a Republican Party convention would have been unthinkable. Since the late 1980s, voters have traditionally trusted Republicans over Democrats when it comes to keeping the country safe from international terrorism and military threats — at times by very wide margins. During those years, the GOP embraced the mantle of Reagan’s “peace through strength” Cold War legacy, and attached themselves to the rally-around-the-flag response that carried the George W. Bush administration in the months and years after September 11, 2001.

Read more on Radically Pragmatic

Protecting Competition in Eye Care

Posted on by Alex Terr

In the U.S. health care system, patients are often too far removed from the payment for specific services, which results in a lack of price transparency and consumer choice. However, there are pockets of health care that do allow patients to shop for the best prices. Eye care, specifically the buying of contact lenses, is one such area. It is important to protect this competition. 

Nearly 45 million Americans use contact lenses, which are considered “medical devices” that require a prescription to access. Patients can see the doctor of their choice, and after receiving a prescription for contact lenses, they are guaranteed the right to fulfill that prescription from their retailer of choice. They can buy from their doctor’s office, online retailers, or big box stores. This has not always been the case; in the early 2000s, Congress and the Federal Trade Commission (FTC) stepped in to protect patient choice and competition. 

The FTC’s contact lens rule (CLR) is designed to spur competition in access to contact lenses. In doing so, it guarantees patient choice and lowers prices. A simple mechanism in the CLR accomplishes this —requiring all prescribers to provide a patient with their prescription immediately after a contact lens fitting or renewal. To protect patient safety, the patient or prescriber must directly supply a retailer with the prescription. If this does not occur, the patient’s retailer of choice must verify the prescription directly with the prescriber via phone, fax, or email. The FTC requires retailers to gather and share specific information with the prescriber to ensure they provide the patient with the correct prescription.

Despite over two decades of success, including the FTC reviewing and updating the CLR,  Congress is now revisiting the process of how Americans get access to contact lenses. In July of 2025, Congress introduced HR 4282, the Contact Lens Prescription Verification Modernization Act. The bill, which has been championed by prescribers, would add more administrative burden to the process of accessing contact lenses. The additional burden would likely push patients back to buying from their prescriber, instead of shopping for the best prices from other retailers. 

If enacted, the bill would ban automated phone prescription verification. Verification by phone, email, or fax is merely a backstop for when prescribers fail to present patients with their prescription at the end of their fitting or renewal. The claim behind the bill is to make the verification process simpler, but the FTC has already addressed the effectiveness of using automated calls when updating the CLR in 2020. They found automated calls work in the majority of cases and were an efficient form of verification. This bill would create a bottleneck in the process by requiring retailers to use more expensive and less efficient methods to verify prescriptions, such as faxing or emailing. Instead, Congress and the FTC should address prescribers who are not complying with the CLR, consequently requiring verification. This does not serve patients by lowering prices, creating more efficient processes, or increasing access; all it does is complicate the process.

As inflation and the cost of health care continue to increase, patients are forced to make tough decisions between paying for health care services versus other living expenses. Congress should be focused on improving competition in health care, not complicating processes that have been working well for consumers for decades. 

The Contact Lens Prescription Verification Modernization Act does not meaningfully improve eye care for patients but will impact the market competition for contact lenses. With the health care market continuing to consolidate at an alarming rate, it is essential for Congress to prioritize bills that improve patients’ safety, access, and choice while not overburdening patients, providers, and retailers with administrative steps. Congress should move on from this bill.  

The WTO’s ‘Agreement on Fisheries Subsidies’ will mark its first anniversary next week

Posted on by Alex Terr

The WTO’s “Agreement on Fisheries Subsidies” will mark its first anniversary next week.

THE NUMBERS: Share of marine fish stocks “overfished” –

2023 37.60%
2013 32.00%
2003 24.50%
1975 10.00%

* FAO State of World Fisheries and Aquaculture 2026. 2023 is the most recent available date.

WHAT THEY MEAN: 

It’s been sadly difficult to get countries to agree on good things in this century. But for those seeking sparks of hope, the World Trade Organization has one this week: The 166-member WTO’s most recent “multilateral” agreement — on fishery subsidies limits and transparency — marks its first anniversary next Tuesday. Background and implications:

Fish and Boats:  The State of World Fisheries and Aquaculture 2026, a biannual report from the UN’s Food and Agriculture Organization, estimates 4.7 million active fishing vessels around the world, of which 3.7 million are motorized, and 191,000 are large vessels above 24 meters long. Together they haul in 80 million tons of “capture” fish in the oceans and another 12 million tons from freshwater lakes and rivers. That is more than many fisheries can stand — FAO’s report says 37.6% of the world’s marine fish stocks were “overfished” as of 2023, up from 32% in 2013, 24.5% in 2003, and just 10% in the mid-1970s.

What to Do? A world whose 8 billion humans needing protein, but whose forests are badly stressed and has little new arable land, has no single way to ease pressure on marine life. Options range from aquaculture — fish farming produced 102.7 million tons of fish last year, about 11 million tons more than ocean and freshwater capture fisheries – to quota restrictions in relatively healthy fisheries, marine sanctuaries, limits on catches of particular species, bycatch reduction, and bans on especially destructive technologies. All have limits but can contribute in various ways. Another partial solution — the one the WTO members have been working on — is in principle among the simplest and easiest: stop paying people to catch more fish than they should.

Money: How much money are they spending? A widely used count of world subsidies to fishing fleets, done in 2019 by a University of British Columbia group (Sumaila et al), yields a figure of $35.4 billion. If the figures haven’t grown since then, this would be about 6.5% of the world’s $545 billion in annual fish sales, and a fifth of the $180 billion in annual fish trade. About $28 billion goes to the big boats — pretty easily identified as the least deserving recipients of free money — with $22 billion spent to enhance fishing capacity, including $7 billion to give them cheap fuel. By region and top eight countries (counting the EU as a single economy), Sumaila’s subsidy rundown looks like this:

WORLD TOTAL  $35.4 billion
Asia  $19.5 billion
… China   $7.5 billion
… Korea   $3.2 billion
… Japan   $2.9 billion
… Thailand   $1.1 billion
… Indonesia   $0.9 billion
Europe      $6.4 billion
… European Union   $3.8 billion
… Russia (pre-war)   $1.5 billion
North America      $4.4 billion
… United States   $3.4 billion
Latin America     $2.0 billion
Africa      $2.1 billion
Pacific      $0.8 billion

The WTO Agreement: So, a large environmental problem, a set of policies that make it worse, and money that (to put it mildly) would serve the world and its fishermen better if spent to support sustainable fishing. The WTO is well-placed to do something about it, in the abstract given its mission — agreements on trade and investment, policy reform, shared commitments and mutual benefits transparency in policy, mutual benefit from open markets – and in practice since its members include 49 of the world’s top 50 capture fishery countries (all but Iran) and catch about 97% of the fish.

The WTO members, despite taking frequent criticism for arguing more than agreeing on things, concluded a 9-page “Agreement on Fisheries Subsidies” in June 2022 — the largest “multilateral,” or essentially “worldwide,” agreement done in any forum in this decade, and maybe the only one. The Agreement bans three categories of subsidies: (i) those supporting illegal, unreported and unregulated (IUU) fishing; (ii) those supporting fishing in overfished stocks; and (iii) those supporting fleets on the unregulated high seas as opposed to national waters. It also requires the WTO members to file regular public reports — “notifications” in the jargon — on fishery health and catch levels, fishing fleet capacity and any subsidies the fleet might be getting (including identification of the specific vessels getting it), and any known “IUU” fishing. Finally, the agreement organizes a “Fish Fund” with about $20 million currently available to support small and very low-income countries as they implement the agreement.

The Agreement required ratification from two-thirds of the 166 WTO members — 111 of them — to “enter into force.” It got there on September 15th last year and now has 123 ratifiers, including all top ten fishing countries but Indonesia. As of last August, 21 WTO members had filed 33 “notifications,” and the Fish Fund has made 43 grants. One example: financing a readiness study for Pacific island state Tonga, where fisheries account for about 3% of GDP and 80% of the 107,000 Tongans engage in artisanal or professional fishing.

Next steps: The Agreement has a follow-up agenda, involving negotiations to limit subsidies contributing to “overcapacity” in national shipping fleets or to overfishing, in national waters as well as on the high seas. Right-minded WTO members are working on these in a fisheries subsidies negotiating group set to meet in two weeks. Their work entails not only improving but preserving the Agreement, whose high-stakes “Article 12” terminates the whole thing after four years (i.e., by September 2029) if the WTO members don’t agree on the additional subsidy limits.

And altogether: As much as the world of 2026 encourages pessimism and cynicism, this anniversary is sort of the opposite. Good news for the world environment; a success story for the too-often-undervalued WTO; and a reminder that governments, if they try, can cooperate for the common good.

FURTHER READING

The WTO Agreement:

The WTO’s Agreement on Fisheries Subsidies.

… the 123 ratifying Members as of September 2026.

… a Fish Fund update.

And evaluation and explanation from the Pew Center.

Fish and boats:

The FAO’s State of World Fisheries and Aquaculture 2026 reports on fish stocks, boat counts, the fishery workforce, policy, and more through 2026.

The World Bank has ‘capture’ fishery totals by country. The top ten are China, Indonesia, India, Peru, Russia, the U.S., Vietnam, Japan, Chile, and Norway. All have ratified, apart from Indonesia.

The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration “Status of Stocks” reports on the health of U.S. fisheries as of 2024.

And a local case study — The Great Lakes Fishery Commission explains fishery management on Lakes Superior, Huron, Michigan, Ontario, and Erie since 1981, with material on habitat, invasive species, tribal government roles, and more. This is an ‘inland water’ fishery, so outside the Agreement’s scope, but Canada and the U.S. are both Agreement ratifiers.

Money:

In Science Direct Rashid Sumaila et al. calculate a worldwide $35.4 billion in fishery subsidies by region, with breakdowns by subsidy purpose, large vs. small ships, and more.

Advocacy group Oceana estimates (2025) that these large boats account for about 60% of total world fish catch, and receive 80% of fisheries subsidies. Oceana’s earlier (2021) report found that $5.4 billion worth of subsidies were going to support fleets operating in other countries’ water.

Case studies:

The worst fishery-world offenders are the “IUU” — illegal, unreported, unregulated — fleets and vessels. Russian-flagged Vladivostok 2000 is a top-tier example: thought to be the world’s largest fishing vessel at 228 meters, it has been blacklisted for IUU offenses since 2014. Ship-tracking site marinetraffic.com places it in the Bering Sea this week.

And the really big picture:

From the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, a guess (2018, in dry-carbon terms excluding water) at the weight of all forms of life. They get 700 million tons for fish, which is about a third of all animal life, and would imply a global water-and-all weight somewhere around 3 billion to 5 billion tons. Fish and arthropods combined account for 85% of all animal-world weight, but plants rule the world, with microorganisms and fungi next.

All life  545,200 million tons
Plants 450,000 million tons
Microorganisms & viruses   81,200 million tons
Fungi   12,000 million tons
All animals     2,000 million tons
Insects, spiders, crustaceans     1,000 million tons
Fish       700 million tons
Worms       200 million tons
Farm animals       100 million tons
Jellyfish & sponges       100 million tons
Humans         60 million tons
Mollusks         20 million tons
Wild mammals, birds & reptiles         10 million tons

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.

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Canter for The Wall Street Journal: Mississippi Fixed Its Schools. Here’s How Other States Can Too.

Posted on by Alex Terr

For the past year, my phone hasn’t stopped ringing from callers wanting to learn more about how Mississippi improved its public schools.

Frustrated by sagging reading and math scores, educators, advocates and lawmakers across the country are curious about reforms that transformed Mississippi from a national punchline into a leader in reading and math proficiency—policies I spent much of my career championing.

Democrats, however, don’t often ask me how to replicate Mississippi’s success; they ask if it’s possible at all, given the power of teachers’ unions in their home states. As one audience member skeptically asked me at a recent panel discussion: “You’ve done your work in a red state. Do you really think blue states can do this?”

My answer is unequivocally yes, even if blue-state politics may make Mississippi-style reforms harder to pass.

Read more in The Wall Street Journal

Gresser in The Wall Street Journal: The States on the Front Lines of the Trade War With Canada

Posted on by Alex Terr

[…]

One of Maine’s top exports, seafood, was initially in Canada’s crosshairs, with Ottawa levying new tariffs on U.S. lobster and seafood. But Canada quickly scrapped those levies after protests from seafood processing companies in Canada, which rely on U.S. imports, according to Ed Gresser, a former assistant U.S. trade representative now working at the Progressive Policy Institute.

[…]

West Virginia has become more reliant on Canada as an export market in recent years largely due to its auto sector. The state’s roughly $2 billion in total exports to Canada last year included $972 million in auto parts and $372 million in engines and power transition equipment, according to Gresser.

[…]

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Jacoby on Background Briefing with Ian Masters: Russia’s Strike on Ukraine’s Intel HQ and the Shootout Between Rival Ukrainian Intel Agents

Posted on by Alex Terr

Background Briefing with Ian Masters · Russia’s Strike on Ukraine’s Intel HQ and the Shootout Between Rival Ukrainian Intel Agents

“We go to Kyiv to speak with Tamar Jacoby, the Kyiv-based director of the Progressive Policy Institute’s New Ukraine Project. She was a senior writer and justice editor at Newsweek and, before that, the deputy editor of the New York Times op-ed page. She is the author of The Ukrainian Refugee Experience and she has an article at The Washington Monthly we discuss, “The New Normal in Kyiv, Ukraine: Nonstop attacks by Russian jet-powered drones empty supermarket shelves and terrorize civilians” as well as the shootout between rival Ukrainian intelligence agents and the Russian strike on Ukraine’s Intelligence HQ in Kyiv.”

 

Manno for the 74: Without Part-Time Jobs or School Clubs, Teens Miss Out on Basic Life Skills

Posted on by Alex Terr

As teenagers return to school this fall, a new report suggests that many of them are moving through adolescence without the experiences that help prepare them for adulthood, activities like a part-time job, a club, a team and a regular family meal.

The clearest evidence is teen employment, which alone has been declining for nearly 50 years.

The report, “A Digital Divide in American Adolescence,” by Daniel Cox of the American Enterprise Institute’s Survey Center on American Life, was published in mid-August. It draws on the results of the American Teenagers Survey, whose interviews were conducted in January and February with teens aged 13 to 17.

The study’s first key finding is that the bottom rung of the career ladder is disappearing. A generation ago, a summer job or an afterschool shift was a routine rite of passage. It was a place where teenagers learned to show up on time, take direction from someone who wasn’t a parent or teacher and get paid for reliability rather than talent. But today, only 15% of teens in the survey reported having a part-time job, and just 28% even among 16- and 17-year-olds — the group most likely to work. Bureau of Labor Statistics data show teen labor force participation peaked at nearly 58% in the late 1970s and has been falling ever since.

The survey also shows that even within adolescence itself, opportunities for growth become rarer as students age. Travel sports participation among boys falls from 52% in early adolescence to 35% by age 16 or 17; choir and band participation among girls falls from 30% to 17%; and only 7% of teens are in student government or debate.

None of these activities is glamorous. But they’re the low-stakes, repeatable settings where teenagers practice commitment, teamwork and how to lose gracefully. They’re the soft infrastructure that makes a first real job, internship or semester of college survivable rather than disorienting.

Read more in The 74