Washington, D.C. — Today, Elan Sykes, Director of PPI’s Energy and Climate Solutions Initiative, issued the following statement praising the introduction of new permitting reform legislation led by Senators Joe Manchin (I-W.Va.) and John Barrasso (R-Wyo.):
“The Energy Permitting Reform Act of 2024 is a major step forward in the necessary effort to speed up environmental reviews, federal permits, and electric transmission development. PPI thanks Senators Manchin and Barrasso for their efforts and calls upon Democrats to uphold the spirit of the 2022 Schumer-Manchin agreement to implement the Inflation Reduction Act alongside the permitting reforms needed to harness the IRA’s clean energy programs to the fullest.
“The clean energy transition requires the manufacture and installation of millions of new machines for generating, moving, and using clean power — without passing these reforms, America will not be able to deploy sufficient clean technology fast enough. While the bill also increases the frequency of oil, gas, and coal leasing, the reforms to renewable energy and storage permitting (especially for geothermal), the use of public lands, expansion of Categorical Exclusions, and especially changes to planning, paying, and permitting for new lines and technologies on the electricity grid will far outweigh any increases in fossil fuel production while keeping consumer costs low and maintaining public support for the energy transition.
“The same is true for the changes to LNG export permits, which should aid our allies and trading partners in transitioning from coal to gas while benefiting from the Biden administration’s methane mitigation policies. PPI also calls on state and local governments to match these reforms with parallel changes to their own planning and permitting authorities to ensure that all levels of government work together to unleash clean energy growth.”
The Progressive Policy Institute (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. Learn more about PPI by visiting progressivepolicy.org. Find an expert at PPI and follow us on Twitter.
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Media Contact: Ian O’Keefe — iokeefe@ppionline.org
Even after 100 years, Paris/1924 has a strong claim for the best U.S. “away” Olympics ever. That year’s awe-inspiring team, featuring — among many — Hawaiian surfing legend Duke Kahanamoku, Hollywood action-hero Johnny Weissmuller, women’s pro tennis pioneer Helen Wills Moody, and first African-American gold medalist DeHart Hubbard, won 45 of the summer’s 129 gold medals. Only the Mexico City/1968 team has matched that total, and by then there were 210 medal events. As a sample, here’s the NYT’s Paris correspondent joyfully reporting demoralized French crowds booing the U.S. rugby team after its 17-3 finals win (adding that “the three points scored by the French were lucky”) and concluding that after a rare U.S. silver:
“[W]hen a non-American winner was called up for the official tribute, the crowd cheered lustily, and the band ceased to play the Star-Spangled Banner for a moment.”
A century on, Paris/2024 has 329 medal events, from Friday’s first archery shots to the women’s marathon tape on the 11th. So expect a lot of antheming as Team USA meets its familiar rivals: Caribbean sprinters, Aussie swimmers, Southeast Asian boxers and badminton aces, Chinese divers and gymnasts, East African distance stars, Japan’s martial artists, Brit cyclers and rowers, South American and Baltic basketballers, Ukraine’s sentimental favorites in track and boxing, France’s high-expectations home team – tipped by a personality no less than President Macron for their most medals since the 31 golds of 1900 – et al. Specifically, an Olympic anthem arrangement has to be 80 seconds or less. So even if there are no ties, expect six and a half hours of music, nearly as much as all the track races combined. Whose idea was this, anyway? Here you go:
Warmups: Like the Red Cross (1863), the metric system (1875), international patent and copyright agreements (1883 & 1886), time zones (1884), and Nobel Prizes (1895), the Olympics (1896) are a survivor of the pre-World War I “globalization” era, centered on Europe and organized by aristocrats and business executives as much as by governments.
The first “anthems,” meanwhile, are a bit older and weren’t originally composed for ‘nations’ as such, but for European royal families. The earliest, Het Wilhelmus, is a 15-verse marathon honoring the House of Orange. Dating to 1572, it stood alone for 170 years until joined by Britain’s God Save the King (the anthem in longest continuous use) in 1745. France’s La Marseillaise (1792) seems to be the first specifically for a country rather than a ruling family, but also has a long discontinuity. (Banned by Napoleon and subsequent Bourbons, not re-designated until the 1870s.) Japan’s Kimi Ga Yo, officially adopted in 1879 as a Meiji-era westernizing reform, laps the field in Katie Ledecky-like style for the most venerable lyrics, drawn from a 1250-year-old poem recorded in the Heian anthology Kokinshu.
Qualifying Heats:Anthems spread worldwide a bit later. The Ottoman Empire hired an Italian bandleader to write an anthem in 1844; two founders of newly independent Liberia wrote one in 1847; Francisco Acuna wrote two, Uruguay’s and Paraguay’s, in 1833 and 1846. China, though austerely declining for a while, gave in after the 1912 nationalist revolution. Americans were technically even later adopters: though frequently played in the 19th century and chosen as the military anthem under the Wilson administration, the SSB only got official “national” designation in 1931. The newest is South Sudan Oyee!, composed by University of Juba students for independence in 2011. Given the South Sudan basketball team’s remarkablepre-Olympics matches, SSO! has at least a long-shot hope for an August 11th performance.
Medal Round: How, then, did ‘country-specific’ anthems join up with the ‘internationalist’ Olympics? The abstract “playing anthems at sports events” concept has several origins. Americans for example note regular SSB performance at sports events since the 1918 World Series, but Wales says they started it at a 1905 rugby match with New Zealand. Probably it has multiple independent authors. As to the Olympics, the aggravated French crowds of 1924 had only themselves to blame. It was their government’s idea to launch the “playing anthems at medal ceremonies” concept as a new thing for that year’s Paris Games, and it has held on ever since.
What comes next? PPI’s Diana Moss and Jason Gold ponder NCAA chaos, antitrust law for student-athletes, and the implications for the “non-revenue” college sports programs that stock U.S. Olympic teams.
More about anthems –
Almost all anthems use the Western military-march or hymnal arrangements popular in the 19th century, though Latin America has a few experiments with operatic style, and some Persian Gulf monarchies use concise trumpet flourishes. Few concede anything to modern musical forms or non-western music theory: Jamaica’s Week 2 sprinters will hear no reggae on the stand, Indonesian and Malaysian badminton standouts no gamelan, and Japanese judoka and Nadashiko stars no shakuhachi solo. South Asia is an exception, with India, Bangladesh, Bhutan, Nepal, Pakistan and Sri Lanka all at times using South Asian musical forms.
How good are anthems as music? The BBC’s Music Magazine, bravely or recklessly attempting a ranking for quality and emotional impact last month, put Het Wilhelmus first by virtue of longevity, with the SSB second, La M. third, and Argentina’s Himno Nacional Argentina fourth. Next come Germany’s Das Lied der Deutschen, Italy’s similarly titled Canto degli Italiani, and Kimi Ga Yo, with Kenya, Ethiopia, Jamaica, Liechtenstein, South Africa, Spain, Russia, and Wales next. (“As stirring as it gets — even the stoniest-hearted Englishman surely feels the hairs standing on the back of his neck at the sound of ‘Gwlad! Gwlad!’” Perhaps so.) The BBC’s top 14…
And if there were “last-place” medals –
If Paris/1924 has a claim for the best U.S. “away” team, what’s the best of the nine “home” teams? LA/1984 for top modern-era medal count? Lake Placid/1980 for inspiration? Your call, of course, but don’t let raw medal counts trick you into picking St. Louis/1904.
In that third Olympiad, the U.S. team won 239 of the 280 possible medals, but the garishly big total is more travesty than triumph. The bumbling business group that ran the Games strung them out for four months, from July to November, to build publicity for a money-losing World’s Fair they were managing at the same time. Few foreign delegations could afford the lodging bill, so 523 of the Games’ 651 competitors were Americans. The managers later claimed this didn’t matter since U.S. athletes were so good that foreigners wouldn’t have won much anyway. (Defiant sample: “It is doubtful, indeed, if a single Frenchman could have finished even fourth in any of the events”; conceding that “one” Brit had a chance, they add “and that man’s name was Shrubb.”) The Games’ many lowlights, from swimming events held in a muddy temporary pond to competitions invented on the spot with crowd-sourced competitors, all culminate in the infamous 1904 Marathon, whose official record begins with a bang — “The Marathon race, from a medical standpoint, demonstrated that drugs are of much benefit to athletes along the road” — and only gets better as it recounts a race which, 120 years and 30 Games later, still has a good bid for “worst-run, most dangerous Olympic event ever held”.
* Two of the 31 runners nearly died. Eventual winner Thomas Hicks was, in fact, almost killed by his managers, who refused to give him any water and instead made him drink an experimental “energy” potion made of raw eggs, brandy, and strychnine. (A kind of rat poison). Hicks began to hallucinate at 20 miles, became obsessed with food, and collapsed after crossing the finish line. He finished at 3:28:53, the slowest winning time in Olympic history by more than half an hour, and spent the next two weeks in a hospital.
* Two more contestants collapsed from heat, dehydration, and dust kicked up by automobiles on the course, ten dropped out with stomach cramps after drinking contaminated water, and a loose dog chased another man off the course.
* Clever New Yorker Fred Lorz dropped out after 9 miles, hitched a ride on a car until he was close to the finish line, then jumped back in and pretended he won. He temporarily got the medal, but they later took it back and gave it to Hicks.
When Democratic primary voters selected Joe Biden to be the Party’s standard bearer in 2020, the faithful made their choice in a very specific context: the Trump administration. Like with Labour facing a Tory government gone off the rails, progressive in the U.S. were determined to nominate a candidate who would appeal to the electorate as a whole—who would, namely, be capable of drawing together the anti-Trump vote. Joe Biden was, without a doubt, perfectly suited to play that role. The man from Scranton—a figure with bipartisan sensibilities rooted in his experience growing up as a working-class kid in Pennsylvania—met the moment and succeeded. He vanquished the incumbent populist.
But then things changed. In an odd twist ostensibly fueled by a moderate’s determination to unite progressives, the man who ran most notably as a beacon of the center chose to govern as a paragon of the left. There’s no mystery to why Sen. Bernie Sanders, the self-described socialist who competed against Biden in the 2020 primaries, was among the most vociferous figures hoping to keep the incumbent atop the ticket. The rationale was clear: Biden had allowed himself to become a vehicle for Sanders’ leftist agenda. Ironically, it was the party’s centrists, figures who had originally propelled Biden’s candidacy, who now wanted him to exit. They wanted the change not only based on the debate debacle but based on defending an agenda they did not sign up for.
Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer announced on July 23 that he is planning to bring two bills regulating the online experience of children to a vote. These bills, Kids Online Safety Act (KOSA) and the Children and Teens’ Online Privacy Protection Act (COPPA 2.0), address very real issues. Who among us has not seen our children or grandchildren transfixed by screens, without wondering how hours of videos, social networks, or computer games are affecting their mental state and long-term development? And who is not concerned about data being collected online about our children?
In addition, there’s a growing understanding that intentional design decisions are being made that range from simply improving user experience to reinforcing screen time in manipulative ways. The country needs to have a serious discussion about which “design features” of online platforms are unethical and manipulative, and which ones merely make online interactions more enjoyable and productive, just like a good television show draws a larger audience.
Unfortunately, even though work has been done to improve the two bills, they are still not focused enough. For example, in the case of KOSA, the definition of a regulated “design feature” is extremely broad, including infinite scrolling or auto play; rewards for time spent on the platform; notifications; personalized recommendation systems; in-game purchases; and appearance altering filters. So rather than clearly identifying manipulative practices, KOSA would effectively regulate almost every aspect of the online experience for children — a restrictive regime.
Equally important, the U.S. does not have a digital identity system that would allow children to be conclusively distinguished from adults online. That means platforms could come under pressure to apply the restrictions that cover children to everyone. This issue affects COPPA 2.0 as well as KOSA.
These bills tackle key problems. But in their current form, they still open the door to excessively broad regulation of the internet.
President Joe Biden’s historic decision to withdraw from the 2024 presidential election has left Democrats beginning to debate what the future of the party should look like. While coming to voters with a new candidate at the top of the ticket, Democrats should also come to them with new ideas.
Vice President Kamala Harris — now the party’s presumptive nominee — should take the opportunity to not only embrace the president’s many accomplishments but also craft a governing agenda that improves on some areas where he could have done better. A new report published Tuesday by my colleagues at the Progressive Policy Institute (PPI) and I, titled Paying for Progress: A Pragmatic Blueprint to Cut Costs, Boost Growth, and Expand American Opportunity, offers one possible framework for that agenda.
Washington, D.C. — As the Democratic Party begins to chart its path forward following President Joe Biden’s historic decision to end his re-election campaign, a new report from the Progressive Policy Institute (PPI) argues Democrats must adopt new ideas in addition to a new candidate at the top of the ticket.
The report, titled “Paying for Progress: A Pragmatic Blueprint to Cut Costs, Boost Growth, and Expand American Opportunity,” was compiled by PPI’s Center for Funding America’s Future with contributions from more than a dozen PPI experts covering a wide variety of policy areas. The report argues that, although President Biden successfully led the country in revitalizing major public investments and bringing unemployment to historic lows, failure to tackle the federal government’s $2 trillion annual budget deficit and the inflationary pressures it creates puts those successes in jeopardy.
“Voters are unlikely to support expanding the role of any government that they believe can’t even pay for the promises it’s already making,” said Ben Ritz, PPI’s Vice President of Policy Development and lead author of the report. “Demonstrating to the American people that we have an ambitious vision to cut costs, boost growth, and expand American opportunity — along with an economically pragmatic plan to pay for it — would help progressives restore confidence in the government’s ability to tackle big problems and build a more prosperous society for all.”
PPI’s report proposes a comprehensive blueprint for achieving many of the uncompleted goals from the Biden administration’s Build Back Better agenda while simultaneously putting the federal budget on a path to balance within 20 years. The report also offers the next administration a series of ideas to address major upcoming fiscal deadlines, including the reinstatement of the federal debt limit, the expiration of the Tax Cuts and Jobs Act, and the impending exhaustion of the Social Security and Medicare trust funds.
The roughly six dozen federal policy recommendations in the report are organized into 12 overarching priorities:
I. Replace Taxes on Work with Taxes on Consumption and Unearned Income II. Make the Individual Income Tax Code Simpler and More Progressive III. Reform the Business Tax Code to Promote Growth and International Competitiveness
IV. Secure America’s Global Leadership
V. Strengthen Social Security’s Intergenerational Compact
VI. Modernize Medicare
VII. Cut Health-Care Costs and Improve Outcomes
VIII. Support Working Families and Economic Opportunity
IX. Make Housing Affordable for All
X. Rationalize Safety-Net Programs
XI. Improve Public Administration
XII. Manage Public Debt Responsibly
An abridged version of PPI’s blueprint was featured this morning by the Peter G. Peterson Foundation’s 2024 Solutions Initiative alongside comprehensive budget plans by six other think tanks from across the political spectrum. Of all the proposals, PPI’s would achieve the most deficit reduction while maintaining the highest level of discretionary spending, demonstrating that fiscal responsibility and robust public investment can be complementary rather than contradictory policy objectives.
See how PPI’s plan compares to those of six other think tanks here.
Launched in 2018, the Progressive Policy Institute’s Center for Funding America’s Future works to promote a fiscally responsible public investment agenda that fosters robust and inclusive economic growth. To that end, the Center develops fiscally responsible policy proposals to strengthen public investments in the foundation of our economy, modernize health and retirement programs to reflect an aging society, transform our tax code to reward work over wealth, and put the national debt on a downward trajectory.
The Progressive Policy Institute (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. Learn more about PPI by visiting progressivepolicy.org. Find an expert at PPI and follow us on Twitter.
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Media Contact: Ian O’Keefe — iokeefe@ppionline.org
The next administration must confront the consequences that the American people are finally facing from more than two decades of fiscal mismanagement in Washington. Annual deficits in excess of $2 trillion during a time when the unemployment rate hovers near a historically low 4% have put upward pressure on prices and strained family budgets. Annual interest payments on the national debt, now the highest they’ve ever been in history, are crowding out public investments into our collective future, which have fallen near historic lows. Working families face a future with lower incomes and diminished opportunities if we continue on our current path.
The Progressive Policy Institute (PPI) believes that the best way to promote opportunity for all Americans and tackle the nation’s many problems is to reorient our public budgets away from subsidizing short-term consumption and towards investments that lay the foundation for long-term economic abundance. Rather than eviscerating government in the name of fiscal probity, as many on the right seek to do, our “Paying for Progress” Blueprint offers a visionary framework for a fairer and more prosperous society.
Our blueprint would raise enough revenue to fund our government through a tax code that is simpler, more progressive, and more pro-growth than current policy. We offer innovative ideas to modernize our nation’s health-care and retirement programs so they better reflect the needs of our aging population. We would invest in the engines of American innovation and expand access to affordable housing, education, and child care to cut the cost of living for working families. And we propose changes to rationalize federal programs and institutions so that our government spends smarter rather than merely spending more.
Many of these transformative policies are politically popular — the kind of bold, aspirational ideas a presidential candidate could build a campaign around — while others are more controversial because they would require some sacrifice from politically influential constituencies. But the reality is that both kinds of policies must be on the table, because public programs can only work if the vast majority of Americans that benefit from them are willing to contribute to them. Unlike many on the left, we recognize that progressive policies must be fiscally sound and grounded in economic pragmatism to make government work for working Americans now and in the future.
If fully enacted during the first year of the next president’s administration, the recommendations in this report would put the federal budget on a path to balance within 20 years. But we do not see actually balancing the budget as a necessary end. Rather, PPI seeks to put the budget on a healthy trajectory so that future policymakers have the fiscal freedom to address emergencies and other unforeseen needs. Moreover, because PPI’s blueprint meets such an ambitious fiscal target, we ensure that adopting even half of our recommended savings would be enough to stabilize the debt as a percent of GDP. Thus, our proposals to cut costs, boost growth, and expand American opportunity will remain a strong menu of options for policymakers to draw upon for years to come, even if they are unlikely to be enacted in their entirety any time soon.
The roughly six dozen federal policy recommendations in this report are organized into 12 overarching priorities:
I. Replace Taxes on Work with Taxes on Consumption and Unearned Income II. Make the Individual Income Tax Code Simpler and More Progressive III. Reform the Business Tax Code to Promote Growth and International Competitiveness
IV. Secure America’s Global Leadership
V. Strengthen Social Security’s Intergenerational Compact
VI. Modernize Medicare
VII. Cut Health-Care Costs and Improve Outcomes
VIII. Support Working Families and Economic Opportunity
IX. Make Housing Affordable for All
X. Rationalize Safety-Net Programs
XI. Improve Public Administration
XII. Manage Public Debt Responsibly
The next administration must confront the consequences that the American people are finally facing from more than two decades of fiscal mismanagement in Washington. Annual deficits in excess of $2 trillion during a time when the unemployment rate hovers near a historically low 4% have put upward pressure on prices and strained family budgets. Annual interest payments on the national debt, now the highest they’ve ever been in history, are crowding out public investments into our collective future, which have fallen near historic lows. Working families face a future with lower incomes and diminished opportunities if we continue on our current path.
The Progressive Policy Institute (PPI) believes that the best way to promote opportunity for all Americans and tackle the nation’s many problems is to reorient our public budgets away from subsidizing short-term consumption and towards investments that lay the foundation for long-term economic abundance. Rather than eviscerating government in the name of fiscal probity, as many on the right seek to do, our “Paying for Progress” Blueprint offers a visionary framework for a fairer and more prosperous society.
Our blueprint would raise enough revenue to fund our government through a tax code that is simpler, more progressive, and more pro-growth than current policy. We offer innovative ideas to modernize our nation’s health-care and retirement programs so they better reflect the needs of our aging population. We would invest in the engines of American innovation and expand access to affordable housing, education, and child care to cut the cost of living for working families. And we propose changes to rationalize federal programs and institutions so that our government spends smarter rather than merely spending more.
Many of these transformative policies are politically popular — the kind of bold, aspirational ideas a presidential candidate could build a campaign around — while others are more controversial because they would require some sacrifice from politically influential constituencies. But the reality is that both kinds of policies must be on the table, because public programs can only work if the vast majority of Americans that benefit from them are willing to contribute to them. Unlike many on the left, we recognize that progressive policies must be fiscally sound and grounded in economic pragmatism to make government work for working Americans now and in the future.
If fully enacted during the first year of the next president’s administration, the recommendations in this report would put the federal budget on a path to balance within 20 years. But we do not see actually balancing the budget as a necessary end. Rather, PPI seeks to put the budget on a healthy trajectory so that future policymakers have the fiscal freedom to address emergencies and other unforeseen needs. Moreover, because PPI’s blueprint meets such an ambitious fiscal target, we ensure that adopting even half of our recommended savings would be enough to stabilize the debt as a percent of GDP. Thus, our proposals to cut costs, boost growth, and expand American opportunity will remain a strong menu of options for policymakers to draw upon for years to come, even if they are unlikely to be enacted in their entirety any time soon.
The roughly six dozen federal policy recommendations in this report are organized into 12 overarching priorities:
I. Replace Taxes on Work with Taxes on Consumption and Unearned Income II. Make the Individual Income Tax Code Simpler and More Progressive III. Reform the Business Tax Code to Promote Growth and International Competitiveness
IV. Secure America’s Global Leadership
V. Strengthen Social Security’s Intergenerational Compact
VI. Modernize Medicare
VII. Cut Health-Care Costs and Improve Outcomes
VIII. Support Working Families and Economic Opportunity
IX. Make Housing Affordable for All
X. Rationalize Safety-Net Programs
XI. Improve Public Administration
XII. Manage Public Debt Responsibly
On this episode of Radically Pragmatic’s Mosaic Moment, Mosaic alumna Talila Millman joins PPI’s Sarah Paden to discuss her new book, “The TRIUMPH Framework.” Millman draws upon her decades of experience in high-level Fortune 500 roles to provide her seven keys to leadership for the next generation of women leaders.
Washington, D.C. — Today, WillMarshall, President of the Progressive Policy Institute (PPI), issued the following statement in response to President Joe Biden’s decision to not seek re-election.
“It was a wrenching decision for a proud and deeply accomplished veteran of public service, but President Joe Biden made the right call yesterday by ending his re-election campaign.
“In putting his country’s interests over his personal ambitions, Biden has shown Americans what real patriotism looks like. Contrast his conduct to Donald Trump’s treacherous coup attempt after losing badly to Biden in 2020.
“What forced Biden’s hand was not the fact that he is running behind Trump in national and battleground state polls. He might have remedied that with a vigorous general election campaign.
“But Biden’s June 27 debate performance left nearly three-quarters of Americans worried about his ability to withstand the incredible rigors and stresses of the world’s toughest job for another four years.
“Biden’s departure from the race comes late — in truth, too late. This was a decision that should have been made in January.
“Nonetheless, it removes a daunting obstacle to Democrats’ prospects and shifts public attention to the 78-year-old Trump’s mental state. He’s never had a firm grasp on reality, and his meandering nomination speech in Milwaukee last week showed it’s getting even weaker.
“Contrary to Trump’s over-the-top insults, Joe Biden has been a good president with many significant accomplishments to his credit. The U.S. economy is the strongest in the free world, and Biden deserves enormous credit for rededicating America to the defense of freedom and democracy abroad after Trump’s detour into a selfish and insular jingoism.
“More fundamentally, though, Biden restored decency, dignity, and integrity to a White House defaced by Trump. When Democrats needed an experienced national leader to unite the party and the country against Trump’s political vandalism, the old pro from Delaware rose to the occasion.
“That’s something that can never be taken away from Joe Biden, regardless of what happens in November.”
The Progressive Policy Institute (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. Learn more about PPI by visiting progressivepolicy.org. Find an expert at PPI and follow us on Twitter.
Last month, prices fell to their lowest levels almost two years. The June Consumer Price Index (CPI) dropped to 3.0% annually–down from 3.4% the prior month—and is now on the verge of hitting the Federal Reserve’s inflation target of 2%.
Almost immediately after the release of the CPI data, Republicans warned the Federal Reserve not to cut rates prior to the election in November. After Fed Chair Jerome Powell testified before the Senate Banking Committee Senator Kevin Cramer (R-N.D.) argued that “I personally don’t think they should…anything they do before November would be rightfully—would raise the question of their own independence.”
But will the Fed heed the call from Republicans to keep rates at their current level when its Federal Open Markets Committee meets on July 31 and September 18? Based on past history, the answer is a resounding no (assuming economic conditions require action).
In a modern economy, monitoring and supervising worker safety is a key function of government. From this perspective, it is completely appropriate for government regulators to pay special attention to Amazon’s worker safety record, given that the company has been the biggest creator of new jobs in recent years. It even makes sense that Senator Bernie Sanders should issue a report about Amazon’s worker safety record.
But speaking as an economist, the just-released Sanders report is weird and unhelpful. In particular, the report focuses on 2019, the equivalent of ancient history at this point. Not only did the pandemic dramatically transform e-commerce and fulfillment centers, but in the years since 2019, Amazon greatly improved its objectively measured safety performance. According to data officially reported to the government, Amazon reduced its U.S. “lost time incident rate” (which only includes more significant injuries that require an employee to miss at least one day of work) by 75% since 2019. Other safety indicators have improved as well.
The truth is thatAmazon is a safety success story. The ability to create hundreds of thousands of jobs while raising wages and improving worker safety at the same time is an example that should be emulated, not attacked.
The 2024 Republican platform is full of references to the “weaponization” of government by the “radical left.” Alleged Democratic weaponization has similarly been featured by speakers at the Republican convention this week in Milwaukee. Yet despite this consistent Republican rhetoric of victimization, it is their own nominee who has promised to radically politicize the federal government for his own ends.
In its waning days, the Trump White House issued an executive order establishing a new employment classification for civil servants, “Schedule F.” This new classification would allow many traditional civil servants, who are supposed to be non-partisan and hired by merit, to be reclassified as political appointees, who are selected by the president. This would give presidents the power to stock key executive branch agencies with people whose only qualification for the job is political loyalty. While the incoming Biden administration quickly rescinded the order, former President Trump has made restoring Schedule F a centerpiece of his campaign to “shatter the deep state,” promising to “wield [it] very aggressively” if reelected.
Implementing Schedule F would take America back to the patronage system that dominated in the early days of the republic. Under this so-called “spoils system,” incoming presidents replaced executive branch employees en masse at the start of every term based on their partisan loyalties rather than their performance in office. The transition to the modern civil service emerged through a series of significant reforms, starting with the Pendleton Act of 1883, which mandated that government positions be awarded based on merit rather than patronage. Subsequent legislation like the Hatch Act (1939) and Civil Service Reform Act (1978) established the system we now know today.
This system remains far from perfect. Meaningful reforms are needed to improve the quality of the civil service and make government agencies more swift, nimble, and responsive to citizens. Solutions to many 21st-century problems, such as climate change, are often as inhibited by government regulation as they are helped by it. To combat corroding public trust in government, civil servants must have the flexibility to reduce this type of procedural red tape when it is preventing viable solutions to public problems, rather than be incentivized to embrace it. In addition, the civil service needs to better promote meritocracy and attract talent by streamlining its personnel decisions and hiring process. Agencies need to hire, develop, and retain young talent in particular, given the aging federal workforce.
Schedule F is anything but a reasonable reform. If reimplemented, it would take a sledgehammer to the civil service, politicizing, and destabilizing federal agencies in the process. Imagine what might have happened if, instead of impartial and technical experts, scores of political loyalists staffed public health agencies during the COVID-19 pandemic, or controlled the release of unemployment and inflation numbers. Some estimates claim that at least 50,000 senior civil servants would be subject to this order, likely representing the longest-tenured and most experienced officials. However, this likely underestimates how aggressively a second Trump administration might seek to reclassify employees. For example, the Office of Management and Budget (OMB), one of the few agencies that began implementing the order, was prepared to transition nearly 70% of its workforce to Schedule F positions. Despite the executive order’s claim to focus on more senior officials, administration officials showed no hesitancy to completely politicize agencies. Implementing Schedule F would allow the Trump administration to exert its control over many traditionally independent agencies, including the Department of Justice, the Federal Reserve, and the IRS.
Maintaining an impartial and merit-based civil service is essential to good governance. While policy changes across administrations, the implementation of any policy requires a neutral set of skills and expertise. Take energy regulation as an example. Whether the president favors long-distance transmission lines or drilling on public lands, the implementation requires the same understanding of existing systems, thorough consultation with stakeholders, and robust analysis of outcomes.
It is essential that the government be able to hire staff with these skills and retain them across administrations. Evidence confirms this: a review of 96 studies found that governments that rank higher on impartiality or professionalism are associated with higher economic growth, performance, and public trust. Conservatives argue that the civil service is undemocratic because it is accountable to the merit system and not the president. But precisely because the civil service faces different incentives, it can speak truth to power, particularly if the president tries to obtain an electoral advantage (e.g., by corruptly allocating spending) at the expense of the national interest. On this front, five different studies have found more meritocratic recruitment is associated with less corruption.
Trump’s promise to reinstate Schedule F would upend the modern civil service. Rather than engage in any real reform of the federal workforce, it would massively politicize federal jobs and turn back the clock to an antiquated patronage system. As the presidential campaign kicks into high gear, voters should not underestimate the radical nature of this proposal, or the consequences it would have for the basic functioning of government they might take for granted.
FACT: Kung Fu Panda 4’s Chinese box office earnings are down 65% from the Kung Fu Panda 3 record.
THE NUMBERS: Kung Fu Panda series box office –
World
U.S.
China
KFP1:
$632 million
$215 million
$26 million
KFP2:
$665 million
$165 million
$92 million
KFP3:
$520 million
$143 million
$154 million
KFP4:
$544 million
$193 million
$50 million*
* As of end-June 2024.
WHAT THEY MEAN:
Here’s the Smithsonian’s National Zoo happily joining First Lady Dr. Jill Biden last May to announce the coming arrival of a new pair of giant pandas — Bao Li and Qing Bao — this fall. As the bears prepared for the flight east from their suburban Sichuan home to Connecticut Avenue NW, their cartoon cousin Po from the Kung Fu Panda series’ fourth installment was crossing the Pacific in the other direction. His reception in China was a bit lukewarm though, with box office down nearly two-thirds from the third KFP film. Why the drop? Some possibilities …but some background [minor spoiler alert] first:
Set in an animated version of ancient China, DreamWorks Animation’s 4-film Kung Fu Panda series centers on martial arts enthusiast panda Po. Something of a bumbler as KFP1 opens, Po to everyone’s surprise turns out to be an incarnation of the legendary “Dragon Warrior.” Trained by elderly Master Shifu, Po leads other martial arts adepts to defeat evil, foil villains, and emerge as hero of the Valley of Peace and leader of the Panda Village. KFP’s first installment drew its largest audience in the United States. Chinese interest, with the incorporation of traditional wuxia storylines and qi themes, escalated over the first three films to the point at which KFP3’s $154 million Chinese box office was nearly a third of global revenue and outdid U.S. sales by $11 million. But eight years later, interest seems off. What happened?
1. Reviews not so good: One very simple explanation: Chinese viewers liked the earlier movies more. The major fan-sites rated each of the first three KPF’s above 70% (“enjoyable and well-made”), while KFP4 dropped to about 60% (“average and passable”). Among more formal reviewers, China Youth groans — “how surprised the audience was 16 years ago, how disappointed they are now” — and Xinhua concurs: “[T]he movie’s absorption and application of Chinese elements seems to have reached the end of its rope. … Po’s adventures have become less exciting.”
2. Growing preference for local films: There’s also a bigger picture, with Chinese-made films in general gaining relative to foreign productions. Chinese box-office revenue is up from $6.6 billion in 2016 to $7.3 billion in 2023, and from 17% to 23% of global box office. As the audience has grown, viewers’ tastes have changed noticeably though not drastically. While foreign films continue to draw, local productions have caught up over the past decade. Among the 423 films China screened in 2016, the 31 U.S. productions averaged $79 million, five times the $15.6 million average for Chinese-made films. By 2023, the Chinese-film average had jumped to $28 million, and the U.S. average dropped to an equal $28 million. From this perspective, KFP4’s lower earnings might illustrate local films’ rising entertainment value, and consequently diminishing passion for foreign movies. A table has the figures:
Year
# of movies shown in China
Total box office
Average box
office per movie
# of U.S.
movies*
Average box office
per U.S. movie
2016
423
$6.6 billion
$15.6 million
31
$79 million
2023
510
$7.3 billion
$14.3 million
35
$25 million
2024
YTD
104
$3.0 billion
$28.0 million
10
$28 million
3. Co-production and Cultural Match: A third explanation looks to some unique advantages for KFP3 as a U.S.-China co-production by DreamWorks and its joint venture with the China Film Group Corporation. (Oddly named Oriental DreamWorks; since updated to Pearl Studio after a buyout by the Chinese partner.) This appears to have given KFP3 special technical and cultural cachet, through work by the Chinese partner’s staff on costumes, hairstyles, etiquette, and lip-movement. One example is the female panda and ribbon dancer Mei Mei, for whom the Shanghai animation team corrected dynastic inconsistencies in clothing articles. Another is the production of a Mandarin version with new lip animation synchronized with Chinese words, to avoid ‘uncanny valley’ and dubbing issues and improve viewing. This anecdote got picked up by the U.S.-China Economics and Security Review Commission, as a relatively unobjectionable case of “Directed by Hollywood, Edited by China (as opposed to a more political “Made in Hollywood, Censored by Beijing”).
4. Co-production and Policy Advantage: Maybe a bit less subtly, official co-production status gave KFP3 a boost KFP4 lacked, with a prized launch-date and avoidance of revenue-sharing systems imposed on foreign content. The Chinese government now allows 34 foreign films in per year — up under WTO rules from quotas of 10 in 1994 and 20 in 2002 — and also regulates release dates. KFP3 got a great opening night during the blackout period before Chinese New Year and the subsequent Golden Week. (Lunar New Year often falls in February, and the vacation week afterwards means February often gets China’s largest box office.) Foreign films rarely if ever get this window; KFP4’s March 22, for example, wasn’t nearly so good.
So: Some mixed reviews, some changing tastes, some particularly good animation quality in KFP3, and some policy favoritism. All this noted, KFP4 still drew double the box office for this year’s Chinese films and topped all others during its opening weekend. So, not a rapturous but still a polite Chinese reception for animated Po, and by no means a bomb. Bao Li and Qing Bao will probably do better this fall at the Zoo, though.
Special Note: Research and drafting for this week’s Trade Fact by Ruowei Yu, a Google Public Policy Fellow with PPI this summer. Ms. Yu is a junior at Georgetown University, concentrating in Government and Economics.
The U.S.-China Security and Economic Commission’s Directed by Hollywood, Edited by China looks from Hollywood to Beijing and back, & asks who is changing whom?
Looking at 2023 global box office, trade journal Deadline feels pessimistic about future foreign-film growth in China.
And some prequels:
Three book recommendations on Chinese & American high and pop culture, film and TV, and their past collisions:
Jianying Zha’s China Pop (2000); a bit dated but lots of insight and human detail on high-end Chinese cinema, popular culture, and politics in the 1990s.
A little later, Rachel DeWoskin’s Foreign Babes in Beijing (2006) on expatriate life in the boom era, a well-deserved plug for the 1st-century BCE classic Biographies of Famous Women, and DeWoskin’s own experience starring in a “blonde home wrecker” role in a mass-market Chinese TV soap-opera.
And Yunte Huang’s Charlie Chan: The Untold Story of the Honorable Detective (2011) looks back at the Chan character’s long career, from the original real-world model (1890s Honolulu policeman Chang Apana) to the 1920s novels, the 1930s films and their reception in Nationalist China, Asian roles in old Hollywood, and more recent Asian-American community intellectual debate.
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.
As the Republican Convention continues this week, candidate Donald Trump’s ideas for a second-term trade policy look remarkably similar to those of his long-gone but never-quite-forgotten Republican predecessor: Herbert Hoover.
Hoover’s 1928 program — a higher tariff across the board — is the obvious ancestor of Trump’s proposed 2024 program of 10 percent tariffs on goods from all countries and 60 percent on Chinese-made products. This would mean a national rate of around 12.5 percent, the highest U.S. tariff since the late 1930s.
Would a Trump tariff in 2025 bring the same results Hoover’s Smoot-Hawley Act got then?
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A bipartisan policy of “more apprenticeships” is especially relevant now, when most good-paying jobs require at least some postsecondary education and employers report a serious shortage of skilled workers. It’s a policy that meets two needs with one deed — apprenticeships help reduce student debt and address employers’ workforce needs in a tight labor market. Tax incentives for apprenticeships have even gained bipartisan support in Congress, uniting conservatives and progressives. They have been successfully implemented in countries like Canada, the U.K., and Australia, where they have far more employer-sponsored apprenticeships on a per-capita basis.
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