Julius Krein, American Affairs Journalist Profile

Articles

The Lessons of Liberation Day

3 weeks ago | americanaffairsjournal.org | Julius Krein

When American politicians start talking about “liberation,” it is usually not a good sign, at least in recent decades. Prior to President Trump’s “liberation day” tariff announcements on April 2, many of my generation associated the term with the George W. Bush administration’s insistence that Americans would be “greeted as liberators” after the invasion of Iraq. The latter proved to be a catastrophic blunder.
What a Mar-a-Lago Accord Can and Cannot Do

1 month ago | theamericanconservative.com | Julius Krein

Politics What a Mar-a-Lago Accord Can and Cannot Do A new monetary combination is but one piece of a larger, politically difficult puzzle. Featured in the May/June 2025 issue Loading the Elevenlabs Text to Speech AudioNative Player... Proposals for a new “Mar-a-Lago Accord”—an international currency agreement similar to the Plaza Accords of the 1980s or Bretton Woods in the 1940s—appear to have gained traction within the Trump administration.
Trump Does Actually Need to Legislate

1 month ago | nytimes.com | Julius Krein

For all the initiatives and proposals in the relentless opening weeks of the second Trump administration, there has been little in the way of a legislative agenda. Across his expansive address to a joint session of Congress, President Trump boasted about an array of executive branch initiatives and proposals - but very little about legislation. The limitations of this approach are becoming more visible.
American Industry Must Rise Again

Nov 3, 2024 | realcleardefense.com | Julius Krein

The U.S. has squandered its Cold War victory.
American industry must rise again

Nov 1, 2024 | unherd.com | Julius Krein

AmericaAusterityEconomyNeoliberalismreindustrialisationSocietyUS Austerity is rarely popular during election season, and already this campaign has featured a variety of budget-straining proposals. Donald Trump has called for exempting tips from taxation, which Kamala Harris subsequently endorsed. J.D. Vance has suggested increasing the child tax credit to $5,000; Harris later upped her bid to $6,000.
Statesmanship and Political Philosophy

Aug 26, 2024 | americanaffairsjournal.org | Julius Krein |Costin Alamariu |Tom Gallagher |Rob Copeland

REVIEW ESSAYGateway to Statesmanship: Selections from Xenophon to Churchilledited by John A.
Conference on the Political Economy of Artificial Intelligence – Ash Center

Apr 11, 2024 | ash.harvard.edu | Amba Kak |Julius Krein

The Political Economy of AI Conference is convened by the GETTING-Plurality Research Network, a project of the Allen Lab for Democracy Renovation, housed at the Harvard Kennedy School’s Ash Center for Democratic Governance and Innovation.
The university monopoly must be broken

Mar 8, 2024 | unherd.com | Julius Krein

AcademiaAmericaclaudine gayDEIPoliticsUnited StatesUniversitiesUS America has forgotten the point of educationA few months after the fact, the removal of Claudine Gay from the Harvard presidency increasingly looks like a watershed moment. Shortly after Gay‚Äôs ousting, the New York Times published a long piece titled ‚ÄúThe Misguided War on the SAT‚ÄĚ, defending standardised testing, which had fallen out of favour at elite colleges. In the past few weeks, Dartmouth, Yale and Brown have...
America after neoliberalism

Dec 22, 2023 | newstatesman.com | Julius Krein

Measured against the shocks of 2016 and chaos of the Trump presidency, the Biden era can seem like a return to normalcy. Media decorum and Oval Office professionalism aside, however, it is not a return to the status quo ante. Indeed, Joe Biden has, in terms of legislative achievements and official policy, presided over far greater change than his predecessor.
Why Don’t Democrats Want to Win?

Dec 21, 2023 | liberalpatriot.com | Julius Krein

Republicans are weak but Democrats don’t yet have a viable strategy for turning GOP dysfunction into durable majorities. (Graphic: Getty Images)In a two-party system, it is natural to assume that when one party is weak the other must be strong. Yet American politics has defied this seemingly inescapable logic in recent years. The Republican Party, and t…