WASHINGTON (July 14, 2026) — A new report by the Progressive Policy Institute (PPI) finds that career and technical education programs that include high-quality work-based learning require not just an entrepreneurial mindset on the part of school leaders but support from policymakers, industry, and philanthropy. While there are many structured learning experiences available today, the report advocates for building the basic infrastructure that ensures every student has access to programs that help them complete graduation requirements, understand employer expectations, and build a foundation for future educational or career opportunities.
Authored by Rachel Canter, PPI’s Director of Education Policy, and Bruno Manno, Senior Advisor of PPI’s What Works Lab, “A Practical Guide to Work-Based Learning: Lessons from Six Programs at the Cutting-Edge of Career Education,” highlights six innovative career education programs across the country. While these programs differ in student demographics, geography, and industry focus, they all reflect a model called opportunity pluralism, an idea that young adults should have more than one credible route to a good and dignified life.
“The best work-based learning programs give students’ high school experience purpose by authentically connecting academic learning to their career field of interest,” said Canter. “With proper infrastructure, these programs can transform children’s lives and better prepare them for their lives after high school graduation.”
To expand the number of career and technical education programs that offer high-quality work-based learning nationwide, Canter and Manno outline recommendations for policymakers, school leaders, employers, and philanthropies:
Policymakers should
Treat work-based learning as a core part of high school design, not as an optional enrichment activity.
Fund the real costs of earn-and-learn programs.
Create more opportunities for industry experts to teach or supervise career-related coursework.
Support regional collaboration.
School leaders should
Recognize that work-based learning is a systems problem, not simply a scheduling problem.
Design pathways backward from meaningful experiences.
Start small and focused.
Industry should
View earn-and-learn programs as part of their talent strategy.
Begin with manageable commitments like job shadows, workplace visits, short projects, or summer internships.
Strengthen programs by participating early in pathway design.
Philanthropy should
Help earn-and-learn programs move from idea to implementation.
Invest not only in program grants but in systems and structures.
Convene partners.
“These programs cannot be seen as merely an add-on,” said Manno. “Policymakers, schools, industry, and philanthropic partners must take action to help work-based learning move beyond a niche offering to part of a widespread career and technical education system that ensures student success.”
The Reinventing America’s Schools Project seeks to refocus national leadership around proven strategies to improve public schools and educational achievement. We believe that American public schools must prepare children academically to be successful adults and citizens; families should have a voice in their child’s education, including a choice within the public system to find a school that best fits their child’s needs; and, though education is the province of the states, the federal government must protect the promise that every child will have access to a quality public education.
The What Works Lab (WWL) gathers evidence on the effectiveness of programs that create education and training career pathways to jobs and opportunities for students and workers. This information helps policymakers, practitioners, employers, and other stakeholders foster continuous learning and enhance the effectiveness of career pathways programs.
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.
Career education programs that include work-based learning are becoming an important part of American high schools. At their best, these programs connect classroom learning with real work experience, giving students a chance to explore careers, build practical skills, learn workplace habits, and understand how academic knowledge is used beyond school.
Increasingly, the most promising models connect school, work, and postsecondary preparation through career pathways that allow students to gain real experience while still in high school. Students may participate in job shadowing, internships, apprenticeships, simulated workplaces, or service-learning projects. The strongest programs are not simply jobs for students. In high-quality programs, students perform real tasks, receive adult supervision and feedback, work toward clear learning goals, and connect the experience to a broader pathway that may include credentials, college credit, further training, or employment. They are structured learning experiences tied to school goals, employer expectations, and future educational or career opportunities.
These programs reflect a broader movement toward a model we call opportunity pluralism. The idea is that young people should have more than one credible route to a good and dignified life. In K-12 education, opportunity pluralism means moving beyond a single expected path from high school to a four-year college and then to a career. It supports multiple pathways that combine academic knowledge, career-oriented skills, credentials, and professional networks. Unlike old-style vocational tracking, which too often narrowed opportunity, opportunity pluralism aims to expand it such that students leave high school not only with a diploma but also with college credit. That includes college credit, industry-recognized credentials, supervised work experience, employer relationships, and a clearer sense of what comes next.
This report draws on interviews with leaders from six work-based learning programs across the country: CAST Schools in San Antonio, Texas; the Career Academy Network of Public Charter Schools in South Bend, Indiana; the Fremont Multidistrict Initiative in rural Colorado; Launchpad Philly with Building21 in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania; Purdue Polytechnic Charter High Schools in Indiana; and the Rural Alliance Zone, or RAZ32, in Randolph County, Indiana. These programs differ in structure, geography, governance, and industry focus, yet they point to a common lesson: Work-based learning succeeds when schools and communities work together to build the structures and systems that allow young people to move effectively between classrooms and workplaces.
The programs profiled here show that these models require more than willing schools and employers or motivated students. They depend on bigger system conditions that many states cannot yet offer for schools: state graduation and accountability policies that recognize work-based learning; dedicated funding for costs that traditional school budgets often overlook; flexibility in teacher licensure and staffing; strong employer partnerships; full-time personnel to manage relationships; and transportation plans that allow students to reach placements. When these conditions are missing, schools must create workarounds. When they are present, career pathways can become permanent systems rather than isolated opportunities. With this in mind, the report concludes with recommendations directed to policymakers, school leaders, employers, and philanthropy.
Jacoby appeared on CNN to discuss her experience of the Russian bombardment of Kyiv on the July 2 Russian bombardment of Kyiv. She described navigating the attacks firsthand and addressed the pending approval for Ukraine to begin manufacturing Patriot interceptors to strengthen its defense capabilities. Also, Jacoby noted that this approval remains contingent on President Trump, highlighting that while his current support is encouraging, uncertainty persists regarding his long-term commitment and the level of cooperation from industry partners.
When skills minister Jacqui wrote to Skills England on June 22 to commission an urgent review of apprenticeship funding, she did something British ministers rarely do. She admitted a well-intentioned policy produced the opposite of its intended result, concluding “…the apprenticeship system is in need of reform.”
Apprenticeships among 16–24-year-olds fell by 40 per cent over the previous decade. More than half of new apprenticeships went to learners over 25. An employer levy to open the career ladder became a way to subsidize incumbent workers. The first rung of the career ladder was missing.
Across the Atlantic, the U.S. was watching, though not carefully. It never had a national apprenticeship system. It has a patchwork of federal goals that shift with presidential administrations, federally registered programs, state agencies, and industry intermediaries.
The retail auto parts market is dominated by four major competitors: O’Reilly, NAPA, AutoZone, and Advance Auto Parts. A combination of O’Reilly and NAPA would sharply change that structure, notes Diana Moss, vice president and director of competition policy at the Progressive Policy Institute.
“Antitrust enforcers will carefully examine this deal because it reduces the number of rivals, increases concentration, and changes competitive incentives,” Moss told Inc. “Enforcers will look at how the merger eliminates head-to-head competition between NAPA and O’Reilly.”
She said regulators would likely examine both national competition and local markets, much as they do in retail grocery mergers. The risk, Moss says, is that fewer major rivals could lead to higher prices, less choice, lower quality, less variety, and slower innovation.
That lands at a difficult moment for consumers. Auto parts have already become more expensive, Moss says, citing tariffs, supply chain disruptions, patent protection, and right-to-repair restrictions. “In sum, the merger spells even more pricing pressure for U.S. consumers, at the worst possible time,” Moss says.
FACT: 32 of the world’s 100 tallest buildings to open by the end of 2028.
THE NUMBERS: World’s tallest building by date* –-
2028?
3,281 feet (Jeddah Tower, Saudi Arabia)
2010
2,716 feet (Burj Khalifa, UAE)
2004
1,666 feet (Taipei 101, Taipei)
1998
1,482 feet (Petronas Towers, Kuala Lumpur)
1974
1,450 feet (Sears Tower, Chicago; now “Willis Tower”)
1972
1,368 feet (World Trade Center, New York)
1931
1,250 feet (Empire State Building, New York)
1930
1,046 feet (Chrysler Building, New York)
1913
792 feet (Woolworth Building, New York)
1908
612 feet (Singer Building, New York)
1901
548 feet (City Hall, Philadelphia)
1311
525 feet** (Lincoln Cathedral, U.K.)
~2550 BC:
481 feet (Great Pyramid, Egypt)
* Council on Tall Buildings and Urban Habitat. Their list doesn’t count free-standing towers like the 555-foot Washington Monument (1884), the 986-foot Eiffel Tower (1889), or the Great Pyramid. The Lincoln Cathedral’s height is a modern best guess, as the original spire fell down in 1548.
WHAT THEY MEAN:
Having topped 100 floors last month, the Jeddah Tower on the Arabian coast will add 67 more by its mid-2028 opening date. At exactly a thousand meters (3281 feet), it will overtop the world’s current tallest building (Burj Khalifa on the other side of the peninsula in Dubai, which has held the “tallest building” title for 16 years) by 172 meters. For context, the Mt. Everest peak is about 3600 meters above the Tibetan plateau. A rundown on giant buildings:
A generation ago, in 1990, according to the New York-based Council on Tall Buildings and Urban Habitat, the U.S. was home to 87 of the world’s 100 tallest buildings, including 9 of the top 10. Seventeen U.S. cities had at least one top-100 building Since then, computer-aided design and new materials — twisted facades instead of “rectangular block” silhouettes to reduce wind torque and stress; lightweight aluminum and titanium alloy cladding to resist heat; specialized concretes chemically designed to flow easily up through spouts — have (a) given architects wholly new ways to combine space, glass, and metal, (b) replaced all but five of the 100 buildings on the 1990 list, and (c) enabled builders in other countries, especially China, to metaphorically put the American skyline a bit in the shade. Looking ahead to 2028, and assuming no unexpected cancellations, the top 100 will look like this:
(1) 53 in mainland China, 3 in Hong Kong. In 1980, mainland China’s tallest building was the Shanghai Exhibition Center, at a meager 361 feet or 115 meters. Now China is home to 46 of the world’s 100 tallest buildings, and five of the top ten. At the very top, the Shanghai Tower (2015, 2073 feet) joins Merdeka 118 in Kuala Lumpur, Burj Khalifa, and the Makkah Royal Clock Tower among the four officially recognized “mega skyscrapers” (i.e., buildings above 1,968 feet). Hong Kong currently has another five, though two will drop off the bottom of the list by 2028.
(2) 13 in the United Arab Emirates, including the top-ranked Burj Khalifa. If you count by cities rather than countries, Dubai will be the world leader with 15, followed by Shenzhen’s 12, New York’s 9, and Shanghai’s 7.
(3) 10 in the United States. The Council’s lists go back to 1890, just before America’s urban skyscraper boom. That year’s top 100 featured 20 American buildings, topped by the Illinois State Capitol at #23. Thus, the current U.S. share looks like the lowest since the mid-19th century. As of 2028, all 10 of the U.S. top-100 entries will be in New York and Chicago; One World Trade Center will rank 8th at 1,776 feet. The American skyline’s rise and (relative) eclipse:
Year U.S. Top-100 Building Count 202810
2024 14
2020 14
2010 29
2000 47
1990 87
1950 91
1930 89
1900 38
1890 20
(4) 21 elsewhere: Malaysia has four top-100 buildings, including second-ranked Merdeka 118 and the joint 1998-2004 record-holders, Petronas Towers. Saudi Arabia will have three when the Jeddah Tower opens, followed by Korea, Taiwan, and Russia with three each. Japan, Vietnam, Kuwait, Egypt, and Indonesia have one apiece. By 2028, Mexico’s Torre Rise and Cote d’Ivoire’s Tour F (said to be modeled on West African ceremonial masks) will join the list.
If it’s a consolation, though the American skyline may no longer tower over its rivals, the U.S.’s intellectual role in skyscraper design and construction remains large. Chicago-based Adrian Smith & Gordon Gill handled architectural design for both the Jeddah Tower and Burj Khalifa. (They seem cost-effective: the J.T. is supposed to cost $1.2 billion, only twice the $600 million estimate for the Trump administration’s “ballroom.”) New York-based Leslie E. Robertson Associates has the world’s most ambitious concept piece, though it seems unlikely to get built: a 5,700-foot “Sky Mile Tower” in Tokyo, nearly twice as high as Jeddah Tower and burying every conceivable competitor.
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;
Burj Khalifa, record-holder since 2010, has 160 floors, a spiral shape to minimize upper-story wind torque, and specialized glass and heat-resistant glazed aluminum/stainless steel cladding on the outer walls.
New York’s One World Trade Center (2014) is currently the world’s 7th-highest building at 1776 feet, and likely 8th in 2030.
And the ‘vision’ outline of the imaginary Tokyo Sky Mile Tower. On a clear day, a viewer on the top floor could see Mt. Fuji 62 miles away.
Then:
A brief survey of tall-building record-holders and techniques —
1. Pyramids & Ziggurats: The 481-foot Great Pyramid outside Cairo held the world’s tallest record for 3,800 years. Not just a lame pile of rocks, it is a “smart pyramid” with a complex interior network of chambers, tunnels, and ventilation shafts meant for ceremonial, religious, and astronomical purposes. All point to sophisticated, though unrecorded, ancient Egyptian architectural drafting and engineering capacity. Since the Council limits its top-100 lists to some sort of occupancy beyond “single corpse,” neither pyramids nor free-standing towers like the Eiffel make the cut. But if they did, the G.P. would have held the record for nearly 3,000 years, and remained in the top 10 as late as 1900. The slightly younger ziggurats in neighboring Sumer and Akkad were made of brick, a squishier material, and topped out at around 170 feet.
2. Cathedrals: Designed without printing presses, standardized weights and measures, or mathematics beyond flat-plane geometry, cathedrals got started in the 11th century and overtook pyramids by 1310. Contemporary comment:
“It was as though the world had shaken herself and cast off her old age, and clothed herself everywhere in a white garment of churches…”
Except for Philadelphia’s City Hall (548 feet, 1901) and Turin’s Mole Antonelliana (originally meant as a synagogue, but opened as a Risorgimento civic building in 1890), cathedrals remain the world’s tallest stone on stone buildings. The Ulm Munster (1890) is the tallest existing one.
3. Skyscrapers: As noted above, stone buildings can’t get much above 500 feet, since the weight of the upper tiers will crack the load-bearing pillars and walls beneath. Steel-skeleton buildings with curtain walls designed in Chicago and New York — blueprints, slide rules, etc. — solved the height problem, while the Otis hydraulic elevator system settled the 50-story-climb-to-the-top challenge. The Empire State Building, looking ahead to its 2031 centennial, has a retrospective.
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.
If you’re one of the thousands who cashed in on the historic launch of SpaceX’s stock, you owe NASA a thank you. After all, the company’s trillion-dollar initial public offering is a triumph of public policy as well as a testament to Elon Musk’s talents as an entrepreneur.
SpaceX’s rise can be traced back to NASA’s controversial 2004 decision to transition away from its old shuttle program towards a new generation of commercial launch vehicles to get cargo — and eventually crew — to the International Space Station.
The company was chosen to compete to build one of these next-generation rocket systems and eventually produced the Falcon 9, which allows customers from NASA to the Department of Defense to other commercial companies to launch more frequently and for less than was thought possible.
Thanks to these lower launch costs, America is also now home to a broad, vibrant commercial space industry that is the envy of the world, encompassing everything from the low-Earth orbit satellites that provide Internet to rural areas to the remote sensing satellites that help Ukraine stave off Russian aggression.
Support for tough anti-fraud rules is overwhelming and bipartisan, and it survives the industry’s best arguments. 89% of Democrats say they’d be less likely to back a candidate who lets Trump and his family profit from a crypto law.
WASHINGTON (July 8, 2026)— Days after a federal disclosure filing revealed that President Trump personally took in roughly $1.2 billion from crypto ventures last year, a new national survey from the Progressive Policy Institute (PPI) and Democratic polling firm GBAO shows voters want the industry, and the officials cashing in on it, reined in.
The filing, analyzed by the Associated Press, shows Trump collected more than $500 million from his World Liberty Financial token sales and over $600 million from “meme” coins stamped with his face, even as the ordinary investors who bought in were left holding the losses. World Liberty’s tokens have fallen roughly 80%, and the meme coin has collapsed from a peak above $74 to under $2. Trump built that windfall while his own administration dismantled the Biden-era crackdown on the very industry enriching him. Asked about it, the president shrugged: “We’re all profiting.”
Voters see the arrangement for what it is, and the poll shows they want it stopped.
The numbers are lopsided. Voters view crypto unfavorably by more than 3-to-1 (57% to 17%), and crypto companies fare no better (55% to 19%). The hostility runs across the spectrum and is sharpest among Democrats, 69% of whom view crypto unfavorably. Voters reserve their trust for Main Street institutions instead: community banks are seen favorably 62% to 10%. And with the cost of living dominating, crypto barely registers as a concern; fewer than 1% name promoting it as a top priority for Congress, against 45% who name inflation.
That skepticism translates into demand for guardrails, on a striking bipartisan basis:
83% want crypto companies held to the same anti-money-laundering reporting rules banks already follow, including 80% of Republicans.
81% want federal prosecutors and local law enforcement to be given more tools to investigate crypto crime.
71% want federal officials and their families barred from promoting, issuing, or profiting from crypto, including 67% of Republicans.
Crucially, this support is durable. After a balanced back-and-forth weighing the strongest arguments on both sides, the backing held firm. Support for walling officials off from crypto profits actually rose from 71% to 75%, while the transaction-reporting requirement held at 80%.
Even after voters heard President Trump was defended as a successful businessman, a 66% majority, including 55% of Republicans, still wanted officials barred from profiting off crypto.
The electoral implications are hard to miss: against the backdrop of Trump’s $1.2 billion windfall, 89% of Democrats say they’d be less likely to support a candidate who backed a crypto law that lets Trump and his family profit, including 74% of Democrats currently undecided in the 2026 generic ballot, exactly the voters in play.
“Voters have watched the President turn the office into a crypto cash machine while regulating the very industry enriching him, and they want it to stop,” said economist Paul Weinstein Jr, PPI Senior Fellow and Board Member. “They want crypto playing by the same anti-fraud rules as everyone else, and they will hold candidates accountable for any law that lets the President’s family cash in at the public’s expense.”
Based on a national survey of 1,000 likely voters, including an 800-person representative sample with a Democratic oversample (532 Democrats and Democratic-leaning independents) weighted to the 2026 likely-voter electorate. Conducted May 22–28, 2026, by telephone with live interviewers and text-to-online.
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.
WASHINGTON (July 7, 2026) — Today, Ed Gresser, Vice President and Director for Trade and Global Markets of the Progressive Policy Institute (PPI), argued that the latest proposal by the United States Trade Representative (USTR) to impose tariffs on all major U.S. trading partners under “Section 301” on claims about trade in goods made with forced labor misuses U.S. trade law, and fails to offer any evidence about forced labor imports. Instead, it is merely an attempt to restore President Trump’s illegal 2025 tariffs under a different law, likely costing Americans $100 billion a year.
Gresser, the former Assistant USTR for Trade Policy and Economics, delivered the critique during a public hearing before the Section 301 Committee, a civil servant-level interagency policy review group. He testified that while USTR advertises the tariffs, set out in a June USTR report recommending tariffs of 12.5% and 10% on 60 U.S. trading partners (including the UK, Japan, Canada, the EU, and many others, including nations that already have laws in place banning forced labor) as a way to shield Americans from forced-labor competition, their effect will be quite different. While failing to enforce forced labor rules, they will drive up costs for American families and businesses, such as manufacturers, restaurants, and farmers, as the Trump administration once again tries to create new tariff systems without congressional approval.
“Just as the Trump administration’s IEEPA tariffs last year rested on a bad-faith claim of ‘international emergency,’ its 301 proposal this year uses an important human rights as a pretext for breaching the Constitutional separation of powers and raising costs for Americans,” said Gresser. “This proposal does not meet the standards of Section 301 required to implement tariffs, as it neither offers evidence of actual trade in forced-labor goods nor demonstrates any ‘burden’ on U.S. commerce.”
Highlights from Gresser’s testimony regarding USTR’s report and tariff recommendations include:
The report aims to rebuild President Trump’s IEEPA tariffs, which the Supreme Court struck down last February, contrary to Congress’s intent in drafting Section 301.
The report lacks evidence that any of the 60 economies are actually importing forced-labor goods, instead noting that there is some forced-labor trade in the world, and these countries are “probably” buying some of those goods. Therefore, it does not establish a “burden” on U.S. commerce as the Section 301 statute requires.
The report also lacks evidence that if they were buying forced-labor goods, this would impose a “burden” on American commerce, again falling short of the statute’s minimum requirements.
The Trump administration has reduced 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.
PPI does not support broad tariff increases as economic policy, noting that tariffs function as regressive taxes that disproportionately burden lower-income households and goods-intensive industries, including farming, manufacturing, restaurants, retail, and construction. Despite administration hopes that higher tariffs would expand U.S. manufacturing, the sector has shed jobs and lost economic share since 2024.
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.
We 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 as Putin intensifies his bombardment of civilian targets in Kyiv ahead of the NATO summit after a 90 minute phone call with Trump on the 4th of July, we discuss what it is like when Russian ballistic missiles, cruise missiles and swarms of drones are heading for your apartment building
Chronic absenteeism remains high five years after the pandemic. More than 20% of students are still chronically absent, missing 10% or nearly a month of school each year. Progress has been real but uneven. Absenteeism rates dropped from 29% to 21% between 2021–22 and 2024–25, according to data from 31 states.
But only 29% of students are in districts on pace to meet the national goal of cutting 2022 chronic absenteeism rates in half by 2027. That suggests the pace of improvement may be stalling, and the standard way of measuring the problem may be sending schools in the wrong direction.
School is the first rung on the opportunity ladder. A student who isn’t there can’t learn, build the relationships and habits that carry them into adult life, and access the pathways that make upward mobility possible. Chronic absenteeism isn’t just an attendance problem. It’s an opportunity problem that needs a sharper diagnosis than is typically used.
In the latest episode of the Powering America Podcast, Neel Brown, Managing Director of the Progressive Policy Institute, discusses the potential of advanced recycling to address America’s plastic waste crisis. Brown explains how advanced recycling differs from traditional methods by breaking down contaminated plastics at a molecular level, allowing for the recycling of materials that are typically sent to landfills. He emphasizes the need for supportive policies and public awareness to enhance recycling rates and reduce landfill waste.
The administration wants its European allies to spend more on American weapons, but is making it impossible for them to do so.
As the leaders of NATO’s 32 member nations arrive this week in Turkey to discuss their implementation plans for a record military buildup, some are rightly starting to worry that Donald Trump has plunged them into a classic Catch-22.
On the one hand, the U.S. president has demanded that Europe spend more on its own defense and buy more American-made weapons. On the other hand, his administration is making it increasingly impossible to do just that by delaying the delivery of already-purchased weapons systems and implementing changes restricting future sales.
The paradox is drawing frustrated Joseph Heller references in Europe. And if it isn’t somehow resolved, it could fatally undermine Trump’s own stated goal of having the continent shoulder more of its own protection.
Trump’s pressure was instrumental in nudging America’s NATO allies to commit to spending 5% of GDP each year on defense by 2035 at last year’s summit in the Hague, up from the old 2% threshold that was itself rarely met. Since then, the administration has continued signaling that Europe will not be able to rely on America alone for its defense.
Over the past 8 weeks alone, the U.S. has notified allies that the United States would be reducing its contributions to the NATO Force Model and has announced a six-month review of its military posture in Europe. These actions are being undertaken by the U.S. under the guise of creating “NATO 3.0,” a European-led, “post-Cold War embodiment of the defense alliance” which the Department of Defense describes as “what President Donald J. Trump and Secretary of War Pete Hegseth believe the alliance should be.”
Thank you for this opportunity to provide comments on behalf of the Progressive Policy Institute on the tariffs recommended in USTR’s June 2 “Section 301” report entitled “Acts, Policies, and Practices of Various Economies Related to the Failure to Impose and Effectively Enforce a Prohibition on the Importation of Goods Produced with Forced Labor.”
By way of introduction, the Progressive Policy Institute (PPI) is a 501(c)(3) non-profit thinktank, established in 1989 and led by President Will Marshall, and publishes on a wide range of public policy topics. PPI has participated in U.S. trade policy debates since its founding, through public commentary, Congressional testimony, convenings, and participation in TPSC and U.S. Trade Representative Office hearings. I have served as PPI’s Vice President since 2021, and direct research and publishing on trade policy and global economy topics. Before joining PPI, I served as Assistant USTR for Policy and Economics, with responsibility for overseeing agency economic research and use of trade data, chairing the interagency Trade Policy Staff Committee, and administering the Generalized System of Preferences. The latter role included work with the Office of Labor Affairs and other USTR offices on GSP’s labor standards criterion, including an eventually successful benefit review for Uzbekistan related to forced labor in cotton harvesting.
USTR’s Report covers 60 economies, together providing about 97% of U.S. goods imports. It recommends imposing tariffs of 12.5% on goods from 54 of these economies, and 10% on goods from the other six. Extrapolating from last year’s attempt to impose a 10% worldwide “International Emergency Economic Powers Act” tariff, this will likely cost American goodsbuyers about $100 billion annually — a very large figure, over 100 times the average value of imported goods CBP blocks each year on suspicion of forced labor content. We believe the report does not make the case for such an action. My testimony explains this by examining four topics:
The apparent goal of this investigation, as set out early this year by senior administration officials, which we believe inconsistent with the purpose of the statute and a breach of the separation of powers;
The Report’s assertions about the 60 economies’ alleged imports of goods made with the use of forced labor, which appear to us to lack factual evidence;
The Report’s argument that flows of goods made with forced labor impose a burden on American commerce, which likewise appears to lack factual evidence; and
The appropriate approach for administrations wishing to create new U.S. tariff rates.
Eliminating the payroll tax cap would waste money on wealthy seniors and break the principles of Social Security without fixing its finances.
Capitol Hill has begun waking up to the fact that Social Security now faces insolvency before the end of the next presidential administration, threatening seniors with an automatic 22% benefit cut. In response, some lawmakers are already reaching for the simplest solution they can think of: eliminating the payroll tax cap.
Currently, the payroll tax that funds Social Security applies to just the first $184,500 of a worker’s wages. In a recent New York Times op-ed, Sens. Elizabeth Warren, a Democrat from Massachusetts, and Bernie Moreno, a Republican from Ohio, argued that Congress should do away with the limit to stabilize the program’s finances.
“Why should a middle-class nurse pay a larger share of her paycheck than a wealthy corporate lawyer?” the bipartisan duo wrote. “This is doubly unfair in an economy in which top earners’ wages, over time, have pulled far ahead of those of the average worker.”
Warren and Moreno are right to be concerned about the fairness of our present payroll tax system, which makes U.S. income taxes less progressive and eats into wages. And new revenue, particularly from the wealthiest Americans, must be part of any reasonable solution to our fiscal challenges. But simply eliminating the cap and pouring all the new money into Social Security would be an irresponsible waste — one that would put wealthy seniors above working Americans and would make it more difficult to address other pressing national priorities.
A family shopping for college today knows more about the cost of a mortgage than the real price of a college degree. That confusion isn’t only a technical problem inside financial aid offices. It’s a public trust problem for higher education.
This problem isn’t new. In 1998, the National Commission on the Cost of Higher Education, created by the U.S. Congress, issued a report titled“Straight Talk About College Costs and Prices.” I served as its executive director. It warned that colleges had allowed “a veil of obscurity” to settle over their financial operations. It cautioned that continued inattention would create “a gulf of ill will” between higher education and the public it serves.
More than a quarter-century later, that warning is less a prediction than a diagnosis.
Yes, colleges publish tuitions, offer online calculators and send financial aid letters. Yet too often, the answer to a family’s simplest question about what college will cost arrives late and varies by institution. It’s also wrapped in language that blurs the difference between free money, borrowed money, campus jobs, parent loans and the amount the family must pay.
