American Affairs

American Affairs is a quarterly publication focused on public policy and political ideas. It was established to create a space for individuals who think that traditional political parties are not addressing the critical issues our nation faces today. Outdated beliefs and expectations from past decades limit our political conversations. The extreme partisanship in our politics often hides a deeper conformity and lack of critical thinking in our discussions. In contrast, American Affairs aims to foster a more meaningful dialogue about the core challenges and divisions of our era.

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Trump’s Tariff Gamble and the Decay of the Neoliberal Order

1 month ago | americanaffairsjournal.org | Lee Jones |Julius Krein |Lee Jones

What meaning—if any—can we discern in President Trump’s decisions to impose, and then pause, tariffs on the entire world? And what does this mean for the future of world order? At the time of writing, Trump seems to be retreating from the most aggressive tariff actions, promising a new round of trade “deals,” including with China. Nonetheless, the economic and geopolitical shockwaves unleashed by “liberation day” have yet to subside.
A Shining City on the Sea: Rebuilding America’s Maritime Industry

1 month ago | americanaffairsjournal.org | William Cahill |Jacqueline N. Deal |Julius Krein

China’s rise as a strategic adversary and maritime power has finally triggered much-needed introspection and shaken America out of a multigenerational hibernation. The U.S. maritime industrial base (MIB) faces a Chinese counterpart hundreds of times larger in both shipbuilding capacity and commercial orders. China’s penetration of U.S. ports through Xi Jinping’s “military-civil fusion” strategy—exploiting dual-use technologies such as smart cranes—gives the Chinese MIB an additional edge.
It’s So Over, We’re So Back: Doomer Techno-Optimism

1 month ago | americanaffairsjournal.org | Paul Casinelli |Julius Krein

REVIEW ESSAYBoom: Bubbles and the End of Stagnationby Byrne Hobart and Tobias HuberStripe Press, 2024, 304 pagesThe New Lunar Society:An Enlightenment Guide to the Next Industrial Revolutionby David A. MindellMIT Press, 2025, 288 pagesTyler Cowen caused quite a stir when he published The Great Stagnation in 2011, claiming America achieved success by eating “all the low-hanging fruit of modern history” and was in for a period of stagnation.
Democracy Means Agreeing with Me: Electrification Past and Present

1 month ago | americanaffairsjournal.org | Emmet Penney |Julius Krein

REVIEW ESSAYDemocracy in Power:A History of Electrification in the United Statesby Sandeep VaheesanUniversity of Chicago Press, 2024, 400 pagesThe American grid is in trouble. For years, our country has been retiring reliable power plants and building unreliable wind and solar resources. Moreover, most of the country’s power gets allocated in complex power markets where decisions are made beyond the public eye.
Renewing the Democratic Party

1 month ago | americanaffairsjournal.org | Richard D. Kahlenberg |Julius Krein

The Democratic Party has lost its way. A party whose very purpose has been to fight for working families has forfeited their trust and confidence. The losses are most obvious among white working-class voters. In 1960, John F. Kennedy won white working-class (noncollege) voters but lost white college graduates by two to one.
China’s Past, America’s Present: Revisiting Wang Hui

1 month ago | americanaffairsjournal.org | Jacob Dreyer |Julius Krein

Late last October, we were in the basement of an obscure academic building in Berlin’s southwestern suburb of Dahlem, a group of twenty or thirty people assembled to hear Wang Hui talk about nationalism; my friends at the Berggruen Institute Europe had organized a residency in Venice and Berlin for him, to engage with European thought before the Trump victory that everybody saw coming.
Economic Security Is National Security: The Future of the Defense Production Act

1 month ago | americanaffairsjournal.org | Joel Dodge |Julius Krein

The Defense Production Act of 1950 (DPA) is one of America’s oldest and most important industrial policy laws, reemerging in recent years as a vital tool for addressing urgent national crises. Yet for decades, the DPA was rarely used outside of the Department of Defense, and was hardly the subject of major policy debates or headline news. That changed over the last five years, as both presidents Trump and Biden increasingly came to rely on the law for a number of emergent needs.
The Limits of Consumption Deepening: Why Consuming More Makes Us Poorer

1 month ago | americanaffairsjournal.org | Philip Pilkington |Julius Krein

Today’s consumer capitalist societies present us with a paradox: We are told year in and year out that living standards are rising, but many people—especially younger people—can feel their quality of life decline as time goes on. This feeling is palpable and can be seen in the hardest of the quality of life indices, such as the suicide rate and the rates of drug addiction and overdose.
Building the Builders: A Workforce Development Strategy for the AI Economy

1 month ago | americanaffairsjournal.org | Ashwin Lalendran |Brent Parton |Julius Krein

Call it reindustrialization, reshoring, or rebuilding U.S. manufacturing. Whatever the name, the objective is the same, and it is increasingly a national priority. Leaders across the ideological spectrum are backing the movement with diverse but interrelated aims in mind: strengthening supply chains, outcompeting China, reviving blue-collar jobs, and accelerating advanced technology at home. This is not just another Washington fad.
Solving America’s Chip Manufacturing Crisis

1 month ago | americanaffairsjournal.org | Kenneth Flamm |William B. Bonvillian |Julius Krein

In the previous issue of American Affairs, we argued that the demise of leading-edge chip manufacturing in the United States has created an acute defense industrial base crisis with major geopolitical implications. Recently departed Intel CEO Pat Gelsinger has characterized the former U.S. chip manufacturing champion’s problems as resulting from a fundamental qualitative shift in the economics of leading-edge chip manufacturing for which Intel—and U.S. national security interests—were unprepared.