The United States needs to urgently reinstate the Generalized System of Preferences (GSP), the country’s largest and oldest trade preference program. First implemented in 1976, GSP was designed to facilitate economic growth in developing countries by allowing certain products, such as jewelry, carpets, some agricultural and fishery products, and many types of chemicals and minerals,…
The United States needs to urgently reinstate the Generalized System of Preferences (GSP), the country’s largest and oldest trade preference program. First implemented in 1976, GSP was designed to facilitate economic growth in developing countries by allowing certain products, such as jewelry, carpets, some agricultural and fishery products, and many types of chemicals and minerals,…
At this year’s Ukraine Recovery Conference in Rome, all eyes were on the country’s fast-growing defense-technology sector. With Kyiv now in its fourth year of war with Russia, Ukraine’s home-grown firms urgently need fresh capital – public, private, and blended – to offset gaps in allied arms deliveries and anchor Ukraine’s long-term recovery. Longstanding prohibitions…
For three decades Central Asia has remained largely peripheral to Washington’s strategic horizon. Yet Kazakhstan now supplies more than forty percent of the world’s mined uranium, while Turkmenistan controls one of the planet’s largest natural-gas deposits. No sitting US president has visited one of the region’s five countries – Kazakhstan, Uzbekistan, Kyrgyzstan, Tajikistan and Turkmenistan. President Trump has an opportunity…
Guyana, a rainforest republic of fewer than 800,000 people, is poised to become the Western Hemisphere’s newest petro-power. The small Caribbean nation is sitting on an estimated 11.6 billion barrels of recoverable oil-equivalent—a volume greater than Mexico’s six billion. As foreign investors rush to stake claims in Guyana’s petroleum sector, the United States should act…
At Congo’s Inga Falls, the world’s deepest river plunges down a 315-foot drop, releasing more raw hydraulic energy than any site on Earth. Engineers have long envisioned harnessing that surge through the Grand Inga hydroelectric complex — a seven-station project that, if fully built, would dwarf China’s Three Gorges Dam and generate enough electricity to…
Introduction Last week, the Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE) notified the Millennium Challenge Corporation (MCC) that it would “shutter” the agency, instructing the MCC to terminate all its compact and threshold agreements with partner countries, terminate all contracts, and fire or retire its staff within 90 days.1 While this may seem aligned with President Trump’s executive order (EO) pausing…
Daniel F. Runde 