Foreign Policy & Defense Archives - Page 17 of 43

Marshall for CNN: Can Cameron hold U.K. together?

Posted on May 8, 2015 by The Progressive Policy Institute

In what must surely rank as the oddest British election in memory, the Conservative Party has won a smashing victory. But so did its nemesis, the Scottish National Party, which ran the table north of Hadrian’s Wall. The vote leaves three big questions hanging: Will Scotland leave Britain, will Britain leave Europe, and will the Labour Party learn how to win again?

Although pre-election polls showed the Conservatives and Labour running neck and neck, the Tories look set to win an outright Parliamentary majority of 331. Labour, annihilated in Scotland, also failed to make inroads in England. Top Labour figures like Ed Balls and Douglas Alexander lost their seats and party leader Ed Miliband announced his resignation.

Election night was even bleaker for the Liberal Democrats, the junior partner in the governing coalition. Getting a paltry 8% of the national vote, they went from having 57 MPs to just nine. That makes the upstart SNP Britain’s third largest party.

Even though the incumbent Tories won, the election confirmed a new configuration in British politics shaped by resurgent nationalism and the rise of new parties that are chipping away at the long-dominant Conservative-Labour duopoly. As analysts sift through the election results, some clear conclusions and lessons are emerging…

Continue reading at CNN.

Marshall for CNN: Suddenly Britain looks like Italy

Posted on May 6, 2015 by The Progressive Policy Institute

Staid old Britain suddenly looks more like Italy. No less than seven parties are vying for seats in the parliamentary election taking place Thursday, a contest that has underscored the unraveling of any national consensus around certain fundamental assumptions about Britain’s role in Europe, its special relationship with the United States and even its own political cohesion and identity. But perhaps what’s most distressing about the campaign debate, from a trans-Atlantic perspective, is its utter insularity.

On Prime Minister David Cameron’s watch, Britain’s customary global role seems to be shrinking before our eyes. Indeed, London has been absent from the Ukraine crisis and has played only a marginal role in the U.S.-led campaign against ISIS. Meanwhile, to the consternation of UK military chiefs, Cameron reportedly refused to guarantee defense spending would not sink below the NATO-recommended threshold of 2% of gross domestic product. Britain’s army is reportedly set to be smaller than it was in Napoleonic times.

“David Cameron has presided over the biggest loss of influence for our country in a generation,” charges Ed Miliband, the main opposition Labour Party leader. While chiding the government’s “pessimistic isolationism,” however, Miliband seems likely to disappoint those looking to revive Anglo-American ties. His outlook on foreign policy seems to be an amalgam of soft multilateralism and post-Iraq wariness of security cooperation with Washington. Indeed, when challenged to show he is tough enough to confront Vladimir Putin, Miliband instead cited his opposition to President Barack Obama’s calls for strikes on Syria in response to chemical attacks on civilians. “I think standing up to the leader of the free world shows a certain toughness,” he said.

Continue reading at CNN.

CNN: Why trade is in the national interest

Posted on April 17, 2015 by The Progressive Policy Institute

Withstanding intense pressure from anti-trade “progressives” — an oxymoron if ever there was one — Sen. Ron Wyden, D-Oregon, has struck a deal with Congressional Republicans to move a bipartisan trade promotion authority bill.

Wyden’s display of grit is good news for the cooling U.S. economy, which needs a lift from export-led growth; for American workers, who need the jobs and rising pay that come with rising exports and stronger growth; and for President Barack Obama, who needs the authority to complete negotiations over three major trade pacts and get them through Congress.

Wyden is a staunch liberal, but one with an independent streak who’d rather solve problems than strike poses. But committing acts of political leadership is dangerous in Washington these days, and Wyden can expect more abuse from “populists” within his own party. That’s a shame, because the Oregon Democrat has actually moved trade promotion authority (TPA) in a more progressive direction.

Continue Reading at CNN

PPI Returns from 2015 Digital Trade Mission to Europe

Posted on April 15, 2015September 18, 2024 by The Progressive Policy Institute

Dear Friend,

We’re just back from Europe, where last week PPI led a bipartisan delegation of Congressional staff on a four-day swing through three capitals: London, Brussels and Berlin. Our goal was twofold: 1) to learn more about the European Union’s ambitious plan to create a “digital single market” and, 2) to press PPI’s case for moving digital trade from the periphery to the center of the transatlantic agenda.

Why is this so important? Consider these facts:

The free movement of data raises the productivity of businesses and reduces trade costs, creating jobs and growth on both sides of the Atlantic.
US/EU cross-border data flows are by far the highest in the world, 50 percent more than between the United States and Asia.
America runs a large trade surplus in services, of which 61 percent are delivered digitally.
The Internet is becoming a powerful export platform for small enterprises, connecting them to global customers at low cost.

As PPI has documented in a series of groundbreaking reports, digital innovation and commerce are increasingly driving economic investment and growth in America and Europe. We believe the transatlantic partners share a common interest in ensuring that digital trade enjoys the same legal protections as trade in physical goods and services. Instead of joining forces to extend free trade principles to digital commerce, however, Europe and America are embroiled in a raft of disputes that threaten to erect barriers to cross-border data flows.

Such disputes, for example, involve calls for data localization, for national or European clouds, for taxing data flows and for imposing stringent privacy or data protection rules on businesses. Right now, the European Court of Justice is considering a challenge to the “safe harbor” rules that have allowed US tech companies to operate in Europe. In addition, new tensions have arisen around issues of copyright protection, “platform competition,” tax avoidance and many core provisions of the proposed Transatlantic Trade and Investment Partnership (T-TIP).

As you probably know, PPI has long been a catalyst for transatlantic dialogue, going back to the Clinton-Blair “Third Way” conversations we helped to launch in the 1990s. Over the last four years, our work in Europe has focused on reviving transatlantic economic cooperation, with a particular emphasis on the rise of data-driven innovation and growth. At a time when authoritarian countries seek to limit the free flow of information, we think it’s crucial that the Western democracies work together to prevent the balkanization of the Internet and defend free digital trade.

That’s why we organized this second “Digital Trade Study Group”—a bipartisan group of 12 senior House and Senate staffers, whose bosses have oversight of issues related to trade, digital commerce, copyright, intellectual property, privacy, cyber security, and communications and technology. (We took the first such group to Europe in April 2014). Last week’s trip featured a productive round of high-level talks with prominent political, business, policy and media leaders.

Here are the highlights:

In London, our traveling party met with Daniel Korski, Special Advisor to Prime Minister David Cameron, and Guy Levin, formerly special advisor to Chancellor of the Exchequer George Osborne, to discuss UK technology policy. As Michael Mandel, PPI’s chief economic strategist, has documented, London has emerged as one of the world’s premier centers for tech entrepreneurship.
Vanessa Houlder, who covers economics for the Financial Times, briefed our group on the Cameron government’s controversial new “diverted profits tax.” Aimed ostensibly at discouraging tax avoidance, it slaps a 25 percent tax on the local profits of U.S. and other foreign companies operating in the UK, and has been dubbed the “Google tax” by detractors.
Also in London, PPI released a new policy brief by Mandel, Taxing Intangibles: The Law of Unintended Consequences. It notes that digitized information differs from physical goods and services in that it can be duplicated at negligible cost and used by different consumers at once. As such, Mandel argues, it makes little sense to tax this intangible knowledge as one would a car or the provision of a unique service. In fact, new proposals for taxing intangibles will undermine global growth and thus be self-defeating, the report argues.
In Brussels, two officials of the European Commission’s DG Connect unit, Eric Peters, Deputy Head of the Single Market Unit and Tamas Kenessey, Legal Officer, briefed the group. The Digital Single Market, they stressed, is the EU’s top priority. It would enable tech companies that start in one of the Union’s 28 countries to grow to continental scale, and speed the onset of what we call the “Internet of Things.”
Over dinner, the Digital Trade Study Group heard from Ken Propp, Legal Counsel with the US Mission to the EU, and Paul Hofheinz, President of the Lisbon Council, PPI’s think tank partner in Brussels. The discussion centered on the headwinds T-TIP has encountered and political differences within the EU on digital policy.
Then it was on to Berlin, for lunch with two leading Green Party officials, Konstantin von Notz, a Member of the German Bundestag, and Dieter Janacek, the party’s spokesman on economic issues. The Greens are strong backers of Europe’s Data Protection Regulation, which our speakers noted reflects Germany’s unhappy experience with secret police agencies of the past. Joining us for dinner was Torsten Riecke, an international correspondent for Handelsblatt, who gave our group an insider’s perspective of German domestic politics, as well as its increasingly central role in European politics. The next morning, we drilled deeper into German concerns about data protection and privacy with Marcus Loning of the Stiftung Neue Verantwortung and former Free Democratic Party Member of the German Bundestag.
Our group received an insightful briefing on Industrie 4.0—Germany’s equivalent of the “Internet of Things.” As explained by Boris Petschulat, Deputy Director General at the German Federal Ministry for Economic Affairs & Energy, Industrie 4.0 seeks to digitize production without disrupting its finely honed industrial export machine.
We paid a visit to the Federal Association of German Newspaper and Magazine Publishers, which has been battling tech companies, especially Google, over copyrightand content issues. A lively debate ensued with Managing Director Christoph Fiedler and Christoph Keese, Vice President of the Axel Springer publishing empire. For more on this important subject, check out another just-released policy brief by Mandel, Copyright in the Digital Age: Key Economic Issues.
Thomas Jarzombek, a member of the German Bundestag, who sits on the committee responsible for the digital agenda, elaborated on the German government’s efforts to build a digital infrastructure and nurture a more entrepreneurial, start-up culture.
We finished our mission at the US Embassy in Berlin, where Ambassador John Emerson, a longtime PPI friend, offered a wide-ranging and insightful perspective on US-German relations.

PPI’s Digital Trade Study Group excursions to Europe serve two important purposes. First, they enable key Congressional staff from both parties to get a better understanding of European views on innovation policy, T-TIP, digital trade, privacy, copyright and other interests of mutual concern and transmit that knowledge to Members of Congress. Second, they underscore to our European friends the importance Congress attaches to transatlantic commerce in general and to data trade specifically.

This year’s mission advanced both of these goals. And it added important new dimensions to the extensive network of European political leaders, industry professionals, and policy analysts that PPI has built over the years. As always, I welcome any feedback you may have.

Sincerely,

Will Marshall
PPI President

Taxing Intangibles: The Law of Unintended Consequences

Posted on April 8, 2015 by The Progressive Policy Institute

Can efforts to put new and stricter tax rules on tech and other knowledge companies actually backfire and hurt global growth?

There’s a sense of outrage and worry in Europe that American tech giants such as Google and Apple seem to be beating European rivals soundly. At the same time, governments claim that many global companies—including but not exclusively American tech companies—have been able to game the international tax system to great advantage. Given the need for revenue to support social benefits, that puts global companies in the cross-hairs of policymakers.

In an effort to stop global companies from escaping the grasp of domestic tax collectors, experts at the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD), the Paris-based group of developed countries, are developing a new set of principles for international tax cooperation. This effort, known as the Base Ero-sion and Profit Shifting (BEPS) project, has resulted in a series of documents out-lining some of these new principles, with more to come over the next year

These new principles—called ‘Actions’—are intended to transform the global tax system. As one OECD document says: “The BEPS project marks a turning point in the history of international co-operation on taxation.” (OECD 2013). Moreover, even though international tax policy is generally a matter for bilateral treaties be-tween individual governments—the BEPS project is developing the first multilat-eral “instrument” that would supersede and modify existing bilateral treaties.

Download “2015.04-Mandel_Taxing-Intangibles_The-Law-of-Unintended-Consequences.pdf”

The Hill: How the Obama trade agenda can advance progressive goals

Posted on April 7, 2015 by The Progressive Policy Institute

In the last month, protesters have camped out in the Washington office of Sen. Ron Wyden (D-Ore.) and have even flown a 30-foot blimp over his town halls in Oregon. The senator’s offense? As the ranking member of the Senate Finance Committee, Wyden is negotiating with the Obama administration and pro-trade Republicans and Democrats on Trade Promotion Authority (TPA)—legislation that would set requirements for new trade agreements and rules for how they’re considered by Congress.

Wyden believes that—if done right—new trade deals with Asia (TPP) and Europe (TTIP) coupled with strong enforcement can promote stronger growth and good jobs in his trade-dependent state, while also advancing important values like environmental protection, labor rights and an open Internet.

For the protesters, however, opposition to free trade agreements is an article of faith in their version of the progressive cannon. Since the great NAFTA debate of the 1990s, trade has often been a polarizing issue among progressives. But key developments since then—the rise of China, the dramatic growth in digital trade via the Internet, and concerns about a long-term slowdown in U.S. growth—give progressives good reasons to think again.

Trade-skeptical Democrats should use the debate on Trade Promotion Authority to take a fresh look at President Obama’s far-reaching trade initiatives. As we’ve detailed in a recent Progressive Policy Institute report, open-minded progressives can find many examples of how the Administration is combining smart trade policy and progressive ideals to advance vital goals while strengthening both the United States and the global economy:

Tapping into Global Growth. Assuring that Americans have a fairer slice of the economic pie is easier when the pie is growing.

In the past, America’s middle class fueled growth in the rest of the world. Now, an exploding global middle class—especially in Asia—can return the favor. By 2030, Asia will add 1.2 billion new middle class consumers to the global economy. These global consumers will want to buy what America has to sell—from wholesome food and cutting-edge consumer products to modern financial services and health care.

Trade initiatives like the TPP can help America’s businesses and workers tap into growing global demand by eliminating high duties, discriminatory standards, and other significant barriers to U.S. exports. And—if combined with progressive initiatives in areas like education and training—growing trade can help support broad-based American prosperity.

Democratizing Trade. Trade agreements can also “democratize” trade by empowering small business and global consumers.

The Internet and services like eBay and FedEx make it increasingly possible for America’s small exporters to sell globally as easily as their bigger rivals. Small firms that export do well—with 20 percent greater productivity and 20 percent higher job growth than those that don’t. But an array of trade barriers—including high duties and fees and complex standards—still make it difficult for smaller exporters to compete.

U.S. trade negotiators are focusing intensively on eliminating small business trade barriers in the TPP and T-TIP. And they’re working to foster a robust trade ecosystem for small traders by promoting transparent rules, open electronic commerce, and strong protection for innovation. Opening up modern Internet-enabled trade can provide global consumers with greater choice, freedom, and economic power, as well.

Leading on Fairer Trade. Trade agreements like TPP and T-TIP help America lead coalitions of like-minded countries that seek a fairer global trading system in which abuses like exploiting workers, despoiling the environment, or blocking the Internet are not longer accepted means of competition.

Based on a 2007 deal initiated by House Democrats, U.S. trade agreements now include strong and enforceable rules that require trading partners to abide by and enforce fundamental labor rights and key environmental laws and agreements. TPP and T-TIP negotiations afford the opportunity to extend these—and other important progressive principles—to two-thirds of global trade. If America doesn’t lead, however, countries like China may succeed with a competing trade model—one that ignores values like worker rights, environmental protection, and an open Internet.

Updating Trade Rules. New trade deals also provide the opportunity to update old trade rules and write important new ones.

Critics of NAFTA, for example, have long complained that its “side agreements” on labor and the environment contain weaker requirements that are neither part of NAFTA nor enforceable under that agreement. Negotiating with Canada and Mexico in the TPP can help assure that trade with America’s first and third largest trading partners is governed by strong, modern, and enforceable labor and environmental rules.

Additionally, new trade agreements can address an array of emerging challenges to U.S. trade, including State-Owned Enterprises that use government subsidies and special privileges to gain unfair advantages, and a growing list of barriers to innovation and electronic commerce.

Supporting a Progressive Growth Agenda. Finally, progressives can use a thoughtful trade debate to remind colleagues that trade is only one piece of America’s larger economic puzzle.

A new study by Progressive Economy concludes that trade is likely not a major cause—nor a major solution—for the serious problem of income inequality. The study notes that trade policy can make key contributions by, for example, driving stronger growth and reducing high duties that particularly impact lower-income Americans. But, ultimately, solving America’s major economic problems will also require many domestic initiatives long championed by progressives, including better access to education and training, and investment in innovation and infrastructure.

When it comes to trade, not all progressive-leaning Americans are flying protest blimps. Indeed, according to recent polling, some 60 percent of Democrats and 65 percent of millennials believe that trade deals like TPP and T-TIP are “good” for America. It’s time for progressives to avoid reflexive opposition and take a fresh look at the U.S. trade agenda.

The Iran deal and collective security

Posted on April 6, 2015 by The Progressive Policy Institute

A buoyant President Obama announced on April 2 “a historic understanding with Iran” to defang its nuclear program. Chalk one up for the president’s oft-criticized Middle East diplomacy.

If it holds, the deal will indeed be a major foreign policy accomplishment for a president who badly needs one. But equally, if not more important, it could breathe new life into collective security.

That’s the vision of liberal internationalists like Presidents Franklin Roosevelt and Harry Truman. After the colossal failure of balance-of-power politics to keep peace in Europe, they envisioned a new order upheld by great powers acting through legitimizing organizations like the United Nations and formal alliances like NATO.

Continue reading at the Hill.

The Hill: Obama trade agenda

Posted on March 17, 2015 by The Progressive Policy Institute

PPI President Will Marshall was quoted by Kevin Cirilli in The Hill on the growing tensions in the Democratic party over President Obama’s trade agenda:

Will Marshall, president of centrist Democratic think tank the Progressive Policy Institute, said that “Democratic candidates in 2016 aren’t going to get into trouble for supporting” the trade agreements.

“Most voters understand that America can’t prosper in isolation and they have little interest in yet another reenactment of the long-ago battle of NAFTA,” he said.

Continue reading at The Hill.

National Journal: The Long War

Posted on March 7, 2015 by The Progressive Policy Institute

PPI President Will Marshall was quoted in an article in National Journal regarding the continued fight against Islamic extremism:

“Obama has been imprisoned by the Iraq and Afghanistan experience,” maintains Will Marshall, president of the Progressive Policy Institute, a centrist Democratic group. “You have to pick your fights carefully … but just staying out of a conflict is no guarantee that you’re going to escape worse consequences.” Critics like Marshall believe that the United States has been forced to pursue greater military intervention against ISIS now partly because it failed to support a moderate Syrian opposition earlier.

Read the piece in its entirety at National Journal

Politico Pro: Report urges progressives to reconsider Obama trade agenda

Posted on February 26, 2015 by The Progressive Policy Institute

PPI Senior Fellow Ed Gerwin’s latest report was featured in a trade story by Politico Pro‘s Doug Palmer:

A new report urges progressive Democrats opposed to President Barack Obama’s trade agenda with countries in the Asia-Pacific to give it another look, arguing that trade deals support progressive goals in a variety of ways, including by helping economic growth.

“Trade-skeptical progressives … should take a thoughtful look at the details of the Obama trade agenda and how it might better position America in the modern global economy,” Ed Gerwin, a senior fellow at the Progressive Policy Institute, said in the report. “If they do, they’re likely to find important policies and initiatives for progressives to like.”

“A progressive society that is both prosperous and fair requires strong and inclusive economic growth. The Administration’s trade agenda can play an important role in assuring that America can tap into one key source of economic vitality — surging demand in key foreign markets,” Gerwin said.

The report comes as Congress is gearing up for action on trade promotion authority, also known as fast-track trade legislation because it would allow the White House to submit trade agreements to Congress for straight up-or-down votes without any amendments.

The Obama Trade Agenda: Five Things for Progressives to Like

Posted on February 26, 2015 by The Progressive Policy Institute

In his recent State of the Union address, President Obama went all in on international trade.

The Administration has already been aggressively pursuing the most ambitious set of trade agreements in decades—including potentially groundbreaking deals with 11 Asian-Pacific countries (the Trans Pacific Partnership, or TPP), and the European Union (the Transatlantic Trade and Investment Partnership, or T-TIP), as well as agreements in key sectors like services, information technology, and environmental products.

Now, to set the stage for eventual Congressional approval for these deals, the President has launched an Administration-wide effort to obtain Trade Promotion Authority (TPA) from Congress. Under TPA, Congress sets detailed priorities and extensive consultation requirements for U.S. trade negotiators, and agrees to follow special expedited procedures for agreements that meet these rules.

Congressional Republicans largely support TPA and the Administration’s trade agenda. There is less support, however, among Congressional Democrats, many of whom have doubts about new trade deals. And, because trade has long been a difficult political issue, it’s quite tempting for these trade skeptics to readily side with those who have consistently opposed trade agreements.

Download “2015.02-Gerwin_The-Obama-Free-Trade-Agenda”

The Hill: Ukraine crisis tests the West

Posted on February 13, 2015 by The Progressive Policy Institute

Thanks to determined diplomacy by Germany and France, Russia agreed Wednesday to a new cease-fire in Ukraine, to begin Sunday. But German Chancellor Angela Merkel was anything but triumphant, calling the deal a mere “glimmer of hope” for peace.

Merkel has good reasons for curbing her enthusiasm. The previous cease-fire agreement reached last September didn’t hold for long. And Russian strongman Vladimir Putin still holds the high cards in any peace negotiation with Ukraine and the West.

Under the new truce, both pro-Russian separatists and Ukrainian forces are to pull back heavy weapons from the front. But the deal still leaves separatists in control of a big chunk of territory in eastern Ukraine. If the cease-fire is violated and fighting resumes, Ukraine will again find itself in an unequal fight with rebels amply supplied with Russian weapons and, Kiev says, regular Russian troops.

Continue reading at The Hill.

CNN: We’re all culpable over CIA torture

Posted on December 12, 2014 by The Progressive Policy Institute

While studiously avoiding the word “torture,” CIA Director John Brennan told reporters on Thursday that the aggressive interrogation program yielded information that helped the agency find Osama bin Laden. He also called the Senate Intelligence Committee’s damning report on CIA abuses “flawed” by partisanship, as well as “exaggerations and misrepresentations.”

Brennan’s comments are certain to pour oil on the already raging debate over what constitutes torture, how effective it is and who authorized what in the chaotic days and months after the 9/11 attacks. They also put the Obama administration squarely in the crossfire between Democrats defending the committee’s handiwork and Republicans and former CIA chiefs trashing it.

The culmination of a six-year investigation, the committee Democrats’ report was intended to provide a moment of moral reckoning for America. Instead, it has underscored Washington’s inability to rise above partisan truths and forge a common view on how to defend the country from terrorist attacks.

As an exercise in political accountability, a comprehensive report on the CIA’s detention and interrogation of terrorist suspects after 9/11 is overdue. In its otherwise commendable zeal to avert further terrorist attacks, the agency sometimes overstepped the bounds of decency.

Continue reading at CNN.

The Hill: Shooting yourself in the foot

Posted on December 10, 2014 by The Progressive Policy Institute

What’s gotten into our European friends? Beset by slow growth, tensions over immigration and a rising fever of anti-Euro populism, some leaders are trying to deflect public discontent onto U.S. companies—a move that may turn out to backfire economically

The latest example comes from UK Chancellor of the Exchequer, George Osborne. He recently floated a proposed “diverted profits tax” on foreign companies doing business in Britain. It’s been called the “Google tax” and little wonder, since it’s clearly aimed at U.S. tech companies.

Osborne describes the idea as a way to foil tax avoidance strategies many companies use. That’s a legitimate issue. But what the Chancellor is proposing is a unilateral step that could torpedo the elaborate process the European Union and other governments already launched (through the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development) to develop a common approach to tax base erosion and profit-shifting.

This gambit by the government of Prime Minister David Cameron, a Conservative who is forever extolling Britain’s “special relationship” with America, is unfortunately not an isolated incident.

Continue reading at The Hill.