Jim Lokay talks with journalist Tamar Jacoby, who recaps President Trump’s recent efforts to end the war in Ukraine. Jacoby, based in Kyiv, provides insight on what it would take to broker a deal to stop the fighting, even as Putin’s forces continue their assault on Ukraine days after his summit in Alaska.
The seven European leaders who accompanied President Volodymyr Zelensky to the White House on Monday made little secret of why they had suddenly interrupted their summer vacations to make the trip. They believed they might need to shield the Ukrainian leader from the disparagement and bullying he had to endure on his last Oval Office in February.
In the end, that wasn’t necessary. Host Donald Trump was jovial and eager to get along with his guests. He complimented Zelensky on his suit-like attire and flattered the seven Europeans— NATO Secretary-General Mark Rutte, European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen, German Chancellor Friedrich Merz, French President Emmanuel Macron, British Prime Minister Keir Starmer, Italian Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni, and Finnish President Alexander Stubb—each with a personalized compliment. They flattered back with even more lavish and ingratiating thanks and praise, and everyone seemed to go home happy.
The questions left hanging amid all the smiles and good cheer: what exactly did they discuss—and what issues, if any, were settled?
| July 2025 | 1.69 million | |
| July 2024 | 2.68 million |
WHAT THEY MEAN:
Then-President Ronald Reagan’s closing, bringing the U.S.-Canada Free Trade Agreement into force in September 1988:
“Let the 5,000-mile border between Canada and the United States stand as a symbol for the future. No soldier stands guard to protect it. Barbed wire does not deface it. And no invisible barrier of economic suspicion and fear will extend it. Let it forever be not a point of division but a meeting place between our great and true friends.”
Reagan’s brief 729-word talk enthuses over the North American future in practical as well as idealistic terms — “lower prices for consumers, job galore for workers, new markets for producers”; “a rich flow of agriculture and energy resources from one country to another” — and takes some particular pride in the agreement’s innovative services provisions “in such areas as accounting, insurance, tourism, and engineering.”
A generation later, he doesn’t seem to have gotten much wrong. The U.S. and Canada have the world’s largest goods-trade relationship: $412 billion in Canadian energy, metals, grains, etc., serve American homes, utilities, and factories, while Canadians buy $350 billion in U.S. goods, more than any other country and fully a sixth of the U.S.’ $2.1 trillion worldwide export total. Nor was Reagan off on services and tourism. Last year, American figures show 20.1 million Canadian tourist arrivals, a number equivalent to half of the 41 million Canadians. An example from Las Vegas, an especially tourism-dependent city: Canadian visitors typically stay 5.5 days at a stretch, and spend more per day on hotels, shopping, and meals than anyone but Australians. By the University of Nevada/Las Vegas count, they support about 43,200 Clark County jobs, add $3.6 billion to Nevada GDP, and lift local per capita income by $368.
This is what Mr. Trump is inexplicably trying to throw away, beginning with a bad-faith Feb. 1 “emergency” decree citing border issues, in particular drug trafficking, as justification for a 25% tariff on Canadian-made goods. (Tariffs and bans on legal products are rarely if ever useful responses to narcotics issues, and there’s very little there anyway: per U.S. Customs and Border Protection stats report “northern border” patrols accounted for 0.1% of last year’s fentanyl seizures, 0% for heroin, 3% for marijuana, and 0.1% for methamphetamine.) Following that have come months of “51st state” insults and veiled threats, oscillating tariff decrees for cars and aluminum, and wholly unfounded claims that the U.S. is somehow “subsidizing” Canada.
This has done some visible economic harm to Canada — GDP growth down a point, unemployment and inflation visibly, if not drastically up — and brought a reaction, both from the Canadian public and in Canada’s larger strategy. That in turn is helping to sap American growth and employment. Two examples:
(1) Export losses: Canadians this summer have been looking for visibly American consumer goods, so as not to buy them. This has cut American wine, spirits, and beer exports by more than half, from $247 million in the first half of 2024 to $91 million so far this year, or by about 7 million gallons:
| U.S. exports to Canada | Jan-June 2024 | Jan-June 2025 |
| Wine | 24.4 million liters | 11.6 million liters |
| Spirits | 9.1 million liters | 6.1 million liters |
| Beer | 14.5 million liters | 6.9 million liters |
(2) Tourist visits: Much the same shows up in canceled air routes, lower searches for homes, and especially tourist visits. Just as they helped to show the success of North American integration through 2024, they now show unraveling and loss. StatCanada suggests Canadian tourist visits are down by a third: they counted 2.7 million returning Canadian cars in July 2024, and 1.7 million last month. As a particular case study, Las Vegas’s 1.4 million Canadian tourist visits make up more than a quarter of all international arrivals. This year’s sharp drop in Canadian arrivals has accordingly made 2025 a bad one, with total visitor counts down by more than 10% and Clark County unemployment rolls up by 8,000 from April to June.
“[L]ack of Canadian visitors to casino resorts is a significant factor in Las Vegas traffic falling … Las Vegas Convention and Visitors Authority (LVCVA) and major casino operators data for June released this week showed that total visitation to the resort city fell by 11.3% to 3.1 million. June was the sixth month in a row in which the number of Vegas travelers fell year-over-year, but the first month in which the drop-off was in the double digits in more than four years.”
More generally, as jobs and income seep away out of U.S. casinos, distilleries, vineyards and hotels, an assessment this spring from Canadian Prime Minister Carney provides a chilly next-generation counterpoint to Reagan’s enthusiastic and then-bipartisan vision of trust, integration, and shared destiny:
“Our old relationship with the United States, a relationship based on steadily increasing integration, is over. … When I sit down with President Trump, it will be to discuss the future economic and security relationship between two sovereign nations. And it will be with our full knowledge that we have many, many other options than the United States to build prosperity for all Canadians.”
Those seeking a useful case study in folly and unprovoked self-harm won’t do much better than those. Those seeking a bright spot: Canadians probably haven’t quite given up. A recent Pew poll, for example, finds that while “approval” of the U.S. is badly down at 34%, and 59% of Canadians view the U.S. as their “greatest threat,” a slightly smaller majority of 55% also still thinks of the U.S. as “greatest ally.”
PPI’s four principles for response to tariffs and economic isolationism:
In better times:
Then-Pres. Reagan signs the U.S.-Canada Free Trade Agreement, September 1988.
PM Mulroney pitches the idea to anxious Canadians, December 1987.
… and from the Canadian Embassy, U.S.-Canada state-by-state trade data.
Now:
The Trump administration’s Feb. 1 emergency decree claims a northern-border “emergency.”
… CBP drug-seizure stats don’t show one.
Up north:
PM Mark Carney assesses in April …
… responds to August 1 tariff threats: preserve USMCA, diversify Canada’s options, reform at home.
… and speculates on a Canada-EU future.
And the Pew Center polls Canadians on views of President Biden, Mr. Trump, and the United States.
Nevada focus:
StatCanada counts shrinking numbers of tourists returning home.
… Air Canada likewise.
UNLV’s Center for Business and Economic Research has research and data updates on Las Vegas, Clark County, and Nevada.
Las Vegas hotels and casinos gloomily report falling occupancy and revenue.
… and the Las Vegas Review-Journal concurs, finding the city’s employment rate the second-highest in the U.S. this year.
Hawaii’s tourist authority has a similar but not quite as bleak outlook.
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.
It’s not as though we couldn’t have seen it coming. Section 4.26 of the Heritage Foundation’s Project 2025 made the case for tariffs on imported goods. The document argued that tariffs will force U.S. companies to onshore manufacturing.
Trump’s style of threatening and coercing U.S. trading partners with high tariffs has increased the toxicity of trade policy. This has all made for a rough start, with initial tariff announcements roiling the stock and bond markets and stoking consumer fear and uncertainty.
But now, two things have become clear. First, the Trump approach to tariffs has confused companies and the financial markets. Since March, employment has plummeted in industries with increased exposure to higher tariff-related costs. Second, and more important, the price of the chaos has come due, and it’s being paid largely by working Americans.
The trade wars reveal just how much Trump has sold a bill of goods to his political base. Tariffs drive up prices to U.S. consumers, both directly and indirectly. Tariffs on imported finished goods, and components that are used in domestic manufacturing, are passed on to consumers directly through higher prices, as we’ve seen with coffee. Tariffs also stifle competition from abroad by making imports more expensive. This loss of competition can spur domestic price increases, as we’ve seen with tariffs on imported solar panels.
PPI recently released a report arguing that regulating artificial intelligence (AI) at the state level will create a patchwork of conflicting state laws that “risks stifling innovation, raising compliance costs, and repeating the federal failures seen in data privacy regulation.” That’s why we wholeheartedly support Colorado Governor Jared Polis’ move to encourage state legislators to delay implementation of Colorado’s first-of-its-kind comprehensive state law regulating the development and deployment of AI systems.
Last year, Gov. Polis signed the bill into law. However, in his signing statement, Gov. Polis criticized the law for instituting a “complex compliance regime.” He also warned of the potential harm to innovation and competition from state-level AI laws.
The law’s implementation was originally scheduled for February 2026. Now Polis has called Colorado state lawmakers back for a special session, starting August 21, to address the state’s budget problems, including the additional financial costs of enforcing the AI law.
Moreover, the law, if implemented in its current form, could paralyze Colorado’s tech-driven economic growth, which has been the envy of policymakers around the country. Since 2019, Colorado’s internet and software industries have added more than 20,000 jobs. Further growth could be choked off if the new law diverts AI spending to other states.
Let’s hope that Gov. Polis is able to successfully address Colorado’s impending economic and fiscal squeeze from the AI law during the upcoming special session. That would be beneficial not just for Colorado but as a good example for other states considering AI regulations.
Trump’s recent summit with Vladimir Putin in Anchorage, Alaska, ended not in toughness but in capitulation. Despite pledging red lines beforehand, Trump rolled out the red carpet, and has now appeared to endorse Moscow’s demands for the surrender of Ukrainian territory. In this week’s episode of the Washington Monthly politics roundtable, special guest Tamar Jacoby, Director of the New Ukraine Project at the Progressive Policy Institute, shares reaction on the ground in Kyiv to Trump’s betrayal of Ukraine. She also suggests steps Trump should be taking instead to regain the advantage over Putin.
Last week was a relatively good week in Kyiv. Despite all the hype and hoopla swirling in the Western media, few Ukrainians expected much from the summit in Anchorage. But in the run-up to the meeting, Vladimir Putin was eager to get on Donald Trump’s good side, and he showed some restraint in launching missile and drone attacks. There were no significant air alerts in the capital city for a week. Residents got their first full night’s sleep in many months, and it showed in the mood—everyone seemed just a little kinder and more cheerful. “Now, if only we can survive the peace,” one active-duty soldier joked, looking ahead to the Alaska talks.
When the news came late Friday, no one in Kyiv was surprised that the meeting had fizzled. If anything, there was a sigh of relief—no deal had been made above Ukrainian heads.
Now the grim reality is setting in—in Kyiv and across the West. If all the silly talk and false hope leading up the summit served any purpose, it was to remind the world that war is still raging in Europe. It also helped concentrate minds—among Western publics and politicians—on the end game in Ukraine.
On the 90th anniversary of Social Security, PPI’s Ben Ritz talks on News Nation about PPI’s recent proposal to award Social Security benefits based on how many years someone works rather than how much they earned throughout their career.
It’s back-to-school season, with an estimated 47.2 million K-12 public school students and 3.2 million teachers returning to their classrooms. They come back to a K-12 system offering an expanding menu of public education choices for families (and teachers) that are leading parents to reshape public education. A Tyton Partners report dubs them “activated parents.” While COVID-19 accelerated this parent uprising, other longer-term forces set the stage for it.
Three factors have fueled a slow but relentless wave of K-12-activated parent upheaval, one that began before COVID-19 but gained unstoppable momentum during and after the pandemic.
Since it was signed into law 90 years ago today, Social Security has become the most successful antipoverty program in American history and the foundation upon which most Americans plan their retirement. But changing demographics and policy mistakes have weakened that foundation and put the program on track for a crisis before the end of the next president’s term. Policymakers must act quickly to strengthen the program without imposing an unfair burden on vulnerable seniors or working Americans.
At its conception, Social Security was designed to be an “earned benefit” — workers pay a dedicated payroll tax on wages up to a certain level, and once these workers reach retirement age, they receive benefits to replace some fraction of the wages upon which they were taxed. But in practice, funds paid in by today’s workers are used to pay the benefits due to today’s retirees. And every year since 2010, the program has spent more on benefits than it raised in dedicated revenue because the ratio of workers to retirees is worsening as our population ages.
Unfortunately, today’s policymakers have only compounded the problem. Last year, bipartisan majorities in Congress voted overwhelmingly to give higher-income retirees already receiving public pensions the opportunity to draw more generous benefits. And earlier this year, Republicans siphoned off a portion of the program’s revenue stream in their “One Big Beautiful Bill.”
| FY 2023* | 37,943 |
| FY 2022 | 40.245 |
| FY 2021 | 40.567 |
“Chip giants Nvidia and AMD have agreed to pay the US government 15% of Chinese revenues as part of an ‘unprecedented’ deal to secure export licences to China, the BBC has been told. The US had previously banned the sale of powerful chips used in areas like artificial intelligence (AI) to China under export controls usually related to national security.”
* Using a journalistic source, as the administration hasn’t made an official statement as of our publication time.
This policy lurch is the most recent in a three-year back-and-forth, which began with an October 2022 ban on sales to Chinese customers of exports of high-end semiconductors meant for artificial intelligence programming. Nvidia, the California-based graphics processing unit and AI chip designer, followed up by designing a version of its “H100” and “H200” chips (designated “H20”) meant to be useful only for commercial markets. Then-Commerce Secretary Gina Raimondo approved the idea in December 2023. The Trump administration, having re-blocked the H20 chip in mid-April, has now apparently changed its mind, allowing Nvidia (and AMD as well) to proceed if they give the U.S. government 15% of the money they earn from these sales.
Outside the trade-and-security world, this sort of direct and apparently long-term government involvement in particular companies usually means trouble. (See below for some thoughts on the implications for taxation and market economics.) Taken strictly as export control policy, it’s worse. Decisions like “should advanced tech companies sell a particular type of computer chip to China?” are complex judgment calls, but their foundation ought to be simple: the best national security analysis available. Adulterating that with revenue concerns is a bad mistake. In specific cases it poses both the risks of ill-advised high-tech sales to potential adversaries, and the risk of lost exports of safe products. More generally, it opens an essential policy area to systemic danger of corruption.
To pull back: “Export control” policy attempts to ensure that military-related technologies — not only actual weapons but software, specialized ceramics and alloys, advanced chips and computers, biotechnology, etc. — developed in America and allied countries don’t go to adversaries, or spill out onto world markets from which they can then flow to unfriendly places. Using a base in American law and four international “regimes” meant to coordinate policies to the extent possible with allies and major powers (also see below), government experts centered in the Commerce Department’s Bureau of Industry and Security (“BIS”) try to categorize, track and when necessary ban exports of 538 classes of physical goods and software in 9 industry groups. (Nuclear technology and firearms; special materials, chemicals, toxins, and microorganisms; materials processing; electronics; computers; telecommunications and ‘information security’; sensors and lasers; navigation and avionics; marine; aerospace and propulsion.) BIS’s 600 staffers are busy; their most recent Annual Report records decisions on 37,943 license applications — about 100 a day — covering $26.7 billion in total exports, or about 1.5% of all U.S. goods sales abroad. To make these calls they need to:
Without passing judgment on the technical questions in this one — did the 2022 freeze slow Chinese tech development, or, contrariwise, accelerate Huawei’s own chip-design program? if the H20 ban were to stay on, would other European or Asian suppliers simply replace U.S. firms? how would lost export revenue affect U.S. firms’ research budgets and next-generation products? — it’s enough to say that U.S. officials need to base their decision on impartial analysis and objective national security criteria.
Adding a government revenue interest to this mix risks warping not only this particular decision, but future export control policy in general. When favored transactions will bring in money, after all, government will have an incentive to allow transactions that might not be harmless. Contrariwise, if it can collect money from one company, it will have an incentive to ask others for similar fees. That can mean a large incentive for corruption of government and business alike, with both sides aware that flows of money could ease approval of transactions that pose risk, and that government could withhold approval for useful and low-risk transactions when companies choose not to pay.
In sum: Taking money in exchange for approving export licenses is poor semiconductor policy, risky for national security, and bad precedent for future export control policy. Congress should reverse this ill-advised and dangerous call as soon as it returns to work in September.
PPI’s four principles for response to tariffs and economic isolationism:
A BBC look at the 15% Nvidia/AMD arrangement. (Using a journalistic source since, as of this writing, we’ve seen no formal statements from the administration or the companies.)
U.S. background:
Former Undersecretary of Commerce Alan Estevez on export control policy as of 2024.
BIS explains the Export Administration Regulations.
… publishes the list of controlled technologies.
… and documents its work (though only up to FY2023) in Annual Reports.
International background:
The Nuclear Suppliers Group: 1974, covers nuclear-power technology, uranium, heavy water, and transport.
The Australia Group: 1985, on chemical and biological weapons and related technologies.
The Missile Technology Control Regime: 1987, for ballistic missiles and associated technologies such as avionics, sophisticated ceramics and metals, rocketry, etc.
The Waassenar Arrangement: 1994, covering conventional weapons and technologies of the “powerful chip” sort.
And two other things:
Through an export control policy, the “15%” decision has big implications for broader and more abstract questions of governance. Here are two:
Taxation and separation of powers: The Constitution flatly bans taxes on exports. (Article I, Section 9: “No Tax or Duty shall be laid on Articles exported from any State.”). It’s not clear whether payouts from AMD and Nvidia under this arrangement would be considered a tax, a donation, or something else. But constitutionally, it’s a strange arrangement, and fits into an unwholesome pattern of attempts to create extra-legal “revenue streams”. See also the administration’s attempts to impose tariffs by decree and its (probably unsubstantiated) claims about the investment sections of the still-unpublished tariff “deals” with the European Union, Japan, and Korea.
State capitalism: Likewise, this arrangement is a second ill-judged move away from normal markets in which companies subject to impartial regulation compete with one another on the basis of quality and price, and towards “state capitalism,” . The first example, earlier this year, is the administration’s insistence on getting a “golden share” in U.S. Steel, with rights to participate in future investment and personnel decisions, as a condition of approving Nippon Steel’s acquisition of U.S. Steel last June. This makes the U.S. government a direct competitor to American steel companies as well as international metal suppliers. In much the same way, the Nvidia/AMD payout would make the government a direct beneficiary of exports to China from two American companies and implicitly a rival to others. To put it mildly, that’s not healthy for competing businesses and startups, and it probably, over time, isn’t good for favored “national champions” either.
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.
We begin and go to Kyiv, Ukraine for an analysis of how Ukrainians feel about the upcoming summit between Putin and Trump to which they are not invited and must hope that Trump does not sell them out as many expect he will. Joining the show is 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. Now a regular contributor to Forbes.com, she is the author of Displaced: The Ukrainian Refugee Experience and discusses her article at The Washington Monthly, “Ukrainian Fighters Aren’t Expecting Much from the Trump-Putin Summit.”
Republicans love their boogeymen; the grotesquely exaggerated villains they use to justify their worst policy ideas. President Trump loves to parade his favorite boogeymen: the “criminal aliens,” the dishonest media, the Democrats, and so on. These dehumanizing caricatures help him rile up his base and lead them to back his cruelest initiatives.
As the GOP-controlled Congress argues the merits of the cuts included in Trump’s “big, beautiful bill” act — which is deeply unpopular with voters — they’re discovering new boogeymen to deflect criticism.
Republicans are very defensive about their $1 trillion cut in Medicaid, which will deprive almost 12 million, mostly low-income and working-class Americans, of their health care coverage.
Richard Kahlenberg joins Vox’s “Today, Explained” with Noel King.
The Trump Administration ordered universities to turn over data to prove they’re not considering race in admissions. But education expert Richard Kahlenberg argues that for college admissions to look at merit fairly, they need to look at class.
Economists offer a variety of overlapping explanations for why tariffs, once imposed, have a propensity to outlive the political circumstances that brought them about. Often, that happens because domestic constituencies that benefit from tariffs will fight to keep them around.
President Joe Biden, for example, left most of Trump’s first-term tariffs on Chinese goods in place, despite having said on the campaign trail in 2019 that even a freshman economics student would know they were harming the economy. Removing the tariffs risked angering unions and blue-collar workers that Biden and Democrats hoped to win back from Trump’s coalition.
In theory, the sweeping tariffs Trump has imposed this year should be easier to dislodge. They’re so broad that they create fewer industry-specific beneficiaries to lobby for their continuation, and they could be canceled with an executive order rather than requiring an act of Congress. The fact that the public “is very aware of the new tariffs and so far has taken a pretty strong negative view of them” could give a future Democratic president or congressional majority the necessary push to scrap them, Gresser added.
