Trump's 'Liberation Day' Tariffs: Fair trade or global trade war?

美2024大选 Trump Rally In Iowa LIVE | Donald Trump Speech In Iowa LIVE | US News LIVE | Trump News Live | N18L CNN-News18 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NfbugesZPE4 DISCLAIMER: This video may contain allegations that are factually questionable or cannot be independently confirmed by CNN News18. OFFICIAL RESULTS OF US ELECTIONS 2020: https://www.fec.gov/introduction-camp... INDIANOLA, IOWA - Former President Donald Trump campaigns a day before the Iowa Caucus. Rally in Indianola, Iowa. As former President Donald Trump cancels all but one of his in-person rallies this weekend, he's expected to spend the final days ahead of the Iowa caucuses holding tele-rallies and meeting with voters at smaller campaign stops. Friday night, the Trump campaign canceled three out of the four in-person rallies scheduled for Saturday and Sunday amid continued severe weather across Iowa, instead announcing a series of virtual rallies. Now, the only in-person rally the campaign has in the books is its Commit to Caucus rally in Indianola, Iowa, Sunday afternoon. But the campaign stresses that that's not 爱阿华初选在即 川普似乎赢定了 这件事更重要 随着2024美国总统大选的日益临近，共和党爱阿华州初选将于1月15日登场，有分析指出，爱阿华州15日初选川普似乎赢定了，但赢多少很重要，事关他能否在其他州继续击溃对手，一路赢到获得共和党提名。 路透社报道，紧接着1月15日的爱阿华州，接下来23日新罕布夏州的初选，民调显示前驻联合国大使黑莉的支持度紧追其后，落后的佛州州长德桑提斯只能寄望在爱阿华有黑马表现，才能稳住继续往前的脚步。综合各民调、计算平均支持率的FiveThirtyEight网站指出，川普1月8日在爱阿华的支持度达52%，赢黑莉和德桑提斯至少30个百分点。尽管川普团队故意降低大家对川普赢得爱阿华州的期望值。但路透社访问的四名政治分析家都说，川普确实需要如民调所显示大赢对手30个百分点，才能挫伤黑莉的民调锐气。专家分析，川普只赢15-20%的话，“王者”的气势就会受挫，黑莉或德桑提斯可能趁机崛起，重挫川普“一路赢到提名”的威望。要知道，一旦川普赢不了那么多的话，说他风凉话的人就会不吝提出他的弱点。此外，投票率是一大变数。川普自己也怕选民看到他反正赢定了的民调数据，躲在家里避寒不出来投票。 对川普而言，黑莉的得票万一冲高，也是一大风险。分析家指出，如果黑莉在爱阿华德票第二高，稳定“党内老二”地位的话，新罕布夏选民可能会再助她一臂之力，奠定“男女、老中生代”对决的基础。CNN与新罕布夏大学合作民调显示，川普在该州只赢海理7个百分点。维吉尼亚大学选举分析家康迪克认为，即使黑莉在新罕布夏打败川普，川普仍是赢得提名的“看好”人选。 加薩的更大目標 為了持久和平，以色列必須結束巴勒斯坦土地的佔領 馬爾萬·穆阿舍爾 不要轟炸胡塞武裝 謹慎的外交可以阻止紅海的攻擊 亞歷珊卓·史塔克 為什麼慈善家應該成為異端 捐助者必須挑戰而不是安撫現有秩序 馬克·馬洛赫·布朗 台灣與威懾的真正來源 為什麼美國必須安撫中國，而不僅僅是威脅中國 邦妮·S·格拉澤、傑西卡·陳·韋斯和托馬斯·J·克里斯滕森 Trump Is Already Reshaping Geopolitics How U.S. Allies and Adversaries Are Responding to the Chance of His Return By Graham Allison January 16, 2024 Former U.S. President Donald Trump at the New York State Supreme Court in New York City, January 2024 Shannon Stapleton / Reuters In the decade before the great financial crisis of 2008, the chair of the Federal Reserve, Alan Greenspan, became a virtual demigod in Washington. As U.S. Senator John McCain, Republican of Arizona, famously advised, “If he’s alive or dead it doesn’t matter. If he’s dead, just prop him up and put some dark glasses on him.” During Greenspan’s two decades as chair, from 1987 to 2006, the Fed played a central role in a period of accelerated growth in the U.S. economy. Among the sources of Greenspan’s fame was what financial markets called the “Fed put.” (A “put” is a contract that gives the owner the right to sell an asset at a fixed price until a fixed date.) During Greenspan’s tenure, investors came to believe that however risky the new products that financial engineers were creating, if something went awry, the system could count on Greenspan’s Fed to come to the rescue and provide a floor below which stocks would not be allowed to fall. The bet paid off: when Wall Street’s mortgage-backed securities and derivatives led to the collapse of Lehman Brothers, triggering the 2008 financial crisis that sparked the Great Recession, the U.S. Treasury and the Fed stepped in to prevent the economy from sliding into a second Great Depression. That dynamic is worth recalling when considering the effect that the 2024 U.S. presidential election is already having on the decisions of countries around the world. Leaders are now beginning to wake up to the fact that a year from now, former U.S. President Donald Trump could actually be returning to the White House. Accordingly, some foreign governments are increasingly factoring into their relationship with the United States what may come to be known as the “Trump put”—delaying choices in the expectation that they will be able to negotiate better deals with Washington a year from now because Trump will effectively establish a floor on how bad things can get for them. Others, by contrast, are beginning to search for what might be called a “Trump hedge”—analyzing the ways in which his return will likely leave them with worse options and preparing accordingly. THE GHOST OF PRESIDENCIES PAST Russian President Vladimir Putin’s calculations in his war against Ukraine provide a vivid example of the Trump put. In recent months, as a stalemate has emerged on the ground, speculation has grown about Putin’s readiness to end the war. But as a result of the Trump put, it is far more likely that the war will still be raging this time next year. Despite some Ukrainians’ interest in an extended cease-fire or even an armistice to end the killing before another grim winter takes its toll, Putin knows that Trump has promised to end the war “in one day.” In Trump’s words: “I would tell [Ukrainian President Volodymyr] Zelensky, no more [aid]. You got to make a deal.” Facing a good chance that a year from now, Trump will offer terms much more advantageous for Russia than anything U.S. President Joe Biden would offer or Zelensky would agree to today, Putin will wait. Ukraine’s allies in Europe, by contrast, must consider a Trump hedge. As the war approaches the end of its second year, daily pictures of destruction and deaths caused by Russian airstrikes and artillery shells have upended European illusions of living in a world in which war has become obsolete. Predictably, this has led to a revival of enthusiasm for the NATO alliance and its backbone: the U.S. commitment to come to the defense of any ally that is attacked. But as reports of polls showing Trump besting Biden are beginning to sink in, there is a growing fear. Germans, in particular, remember former Chancellor Angela Merkel’s conclusion from her painful encounters with Trump. As she described it, “We must fight for our future on our own.” Trump is not the only U.S. leader to ask why a European community that has three times the population of Russia and a GDP more than nine times its size has to continue to depend on Washington to defend it. In an oft-cited interview with The Atlantic’s chief editor, Jeffrey Goldberg, in 2016, U.S. President Barack Obama lacerated Europeans (and others) for being “free riders.” But Trump has gone further. According to John Bolton, who was then Trump’s national security adviser, Trump said, “I don’t give a shit about NATO” during a 2019 meeting in which he talked seriously about withdrawing from the alliance altogether. In part, Trump’s threats were a bargaining ploy to force European states to meet their commitment to spend two percent of GDP on their own defense—but only in part. After two years of attempting to persuade Trump about the importance of the United States’s alliances, Secretary of Defense James Mattis concluded that his differences with the president were so profound that he could no longer serve, a position he explained candidly in his 2018 letter of resignation. Today, Trump’s campaign website calls for “fundamentally reevaluating NATO’s purpose and NATO’s mission.” When considering how many tanks or artillery shells to send to Ukraine, some Europeans are now pausing to ask whether they might need those arms for their own defense were Trump to be elected in November. Leaders are waking up to the fact that Trump could return to the White House. Expectations derived from a Trump put were also at work during the recently concluded COP28 climate change summit in Dubai. Historically, COP agreements about what governments will do to address the climate challenge have been long on aspirations and short on performance. But COP28 stretched even further into fantasy in heralding what it called a historic agreement to “transition away from fossil fuels.” In reality, the signatories are doing precisely the opposite. Major producers and consumers of oil, gas, and coal are currently increasing—not reducing—their use of fossil fuels. Moreover, they are making investments to continue doing so for as far ahead as any eye can see. The world’s largest producer of oil, the United States, has been expanding its production annually for the past decade and set a new record for output in 2023. The third-largest emitter of greenhouse gases, India, is celebrating its own superior economic growth driven by a national energy program whose centerpiece is coal. This fossil fuel accounts for three-quarters of India’s primary energy production. China is the number one producer of both “green” renewable energy and “black” polluting coal. So although China installed more solar panels in 2023 than the United States has in the past five decades, it is also currently building six times as many new coal plants as the rest of the world combined. Thus, although COP28 saw many pledges about targets for 2030 and beyond, attempts to get governments to take any costly, irreversible actions today were resisted. Leaders know that if Trump returns and pursues his campaign pledge to “drill, baby, drill,” such actions will be unnecessary. As a bad joke that made its way around the bars at COP28 went: “What is COP28’s unstated plan to transition away from fossil fuels? To burn them up as rapidly as possible.” A DISORDERED WORLD A second Trump term promises a new world trading order—or disorder. On his first day in office in 2017, Trump withdrew from the Trans-Pacific Partnership trade agreement. The weeks that followed saw the end of discussions to create a European equivalent as well as other free-trade agreements. Using the unilateral authority that Section 301 of the Trade Act of 1974 gives the executive branch, Trump imposed 25 percent tariffs on $300 billion worth of Chinese imports—tariffs that Biden has largely kept in place. As the Trump administration’s trade negotiator Robert Lighthizer—whom the Trump campaign has identified as its lead adviser on these issues—explained in his recently published book, No Trade Is Free, a second Trump term would be much bolder. In the current campaign, Trump calls himself “Tariff Man.” He is promising to impose a ten percent universal tariff on imports from all countries and to match countries that levy higher tariffs on American goods, promising “an eye for an eye, a tariff for a tariff.” The cooperation pact with Asia-Pacific countries negotiated by the Biden administration—the Indo-Pacific Economic Framework for Prosperity—will, Trump says, be “dead on day one.” For Lighthizer, China is the “lethal adversary” that will be the central target of protectionist U.S. trade measures. Beginning with the revocation of the “permanent normal trading relations” status China was granted in 2000 ahead of joining the World Trade Organization, Trump’s goal will be to “eliminate dependence on China in all critical areas,” including electronics, steel, and pharmaceuticals. Since trade is a major driver of global economic growth, most leaders find the possibility that U.S. initiatives could essentially collapse the rules-based trading order almost inconceivable. But some of their advisers are now exploring futures in which the United States may be more successful in decoupling itself from the global trading order than in forcing others to decouple from China. Trade liberalization has been a pillar of a larger process of globalization that has also seen the freer movement of people around the world. Trump has announced that on the first day of his new administration, his first act will be to “close the border.” Currently, every day, more than 10,000 foreign nationals are entering the United States from Mexico. Despite the Biden administration’s best efforts, Congress has refused to authorize further economic assistance to Israel and Ukraine without major changes that significantly slow this mass migration from Central America and elsewhere. On the campaign trail, Trump is making Biden’s failure to secure U.S. borders a major issue. He has announced his own plans to round up millions of “illegal aliens” in what he calls “the largest domestic deportation operation in American history.” In the thick of their own presidential election, Mexicans are still searching for words to describe this nightmare in which their country could be overwhelmed by millions of people coming across both their northern and southern borders. FOUR MORE YEARS Historically, there have been eras when differences between Democrats and Republicans on major foreign policy issues were so modest that it could be said that “politics stops at the water’s edge.” This decade, however, is not one of them. Unhelpful as it may be to foreign-policy makers and their counterparts abroad, the U.S. Constitution schedules quadrennial equivalents of what in the business world would be an attempted hostile takeover. As a result, on every issue—from negotiations on climate or trade or NATO’s support for Ukraine to attempts to persuade Putin, Chinese President Xi Jinping, or Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman to act—Biden and his foreign policy team are finding themselves increasingly handicapped as their counterparts weigh Washington’s promises or threats against the likelihood that they will be dealing with a very different government a year from now. This year promises to be a year of danger as countries around the world watch U.S. politics with a combination of disbelief, fascination, horror, and hope. They know that this political theater will choose not only the next president of the United States but also the world’s most consequential leader. GRAHAM ALLISON is Douglas Dillon Professor of Government at the Harvard Kennedy School and the author of Destined for War: Can America and China Escape Thucydides’s Trap? Bracing for Trump 2.0 His Possible Return Inspires Fear in America’s Allies—and Hope in Its Rivals Daniel W. Drezner German Chancellor Olaf Scholz at a news conference in Berlin, October 2022 How to Trump-Proof the Transatlantic Alliance First, Europe Must Realize That He Might Return Peter Wittig Bracing for Trump 2.0 His Possible Return Inspires Fear in America’s Allies—and Hope in Its Rivals By Daniel W. Drezner September 5, 2023 Former U.S. President Donald Trump at a campaign rally in Erie, Pennsylvania, July 2023 Lindsay DeDario / Reuters For most countries, the Biden administration’s foreign policy represents a return to normality after the chaos of the Trump years. Long-standing allies and partners have seen their relationships strengthened. Autocrats no longer deal with a U.S. president who wants to emulate them. Great-power rivals face a United States that is dedicated to outcompeting them. For many observers, it is hard not to conclude that under President Joe Biden, the United States has returned to the postwar tradition of liberal internationalism. In this view, the Trump administration was an ephemeral blip rather than an inflection point. Equilibrium has been 為什麼慈善家應該成為異端 捐助者必須挑戰而不是安撫現有秩序 馬克·馬洛赫·布朗 2024 年 1 月 15 日 卡佩爾·彭佩爾/路透社 慈善事業和權力從來都是緊密相連的。古代雅典的富人在所謂的禮拜制度下支付公共物品和服務的費用，例如海軍防禦，其中最富有的公民為國家的某些職能提供資金。在許多伊斯蘭社會，有產的穆斯林已將部分財富捐給慈善宗教與社團組織實體，這些實體為施粥處和醫院等服務提供資金。在近代早期的歐洲，美第奇家族和其他統治者創建了當時的小額信貸計劃，向貧困公民提供小額貸款。 這些慈善家面臨著接受現有秩序和尋求挑戰之間的持久權衡。如同上面的例子所顯示的，他們最常選擇前一種選擇，在現行結構內工作，同時試圖減輕其缺點。然而，也有一些特殊時刻，慈善家為系統性變革做出了貢獻：例如，商人幫助神學家馬丁路德在宗教改革初期傳播他的思想，而十九世紀繁榮的英國激進分子，如經濟學家托馬斯·阿特伍德，則支持擴張的民主選舉權。 這種權衡的結果幾乎總是會更廣泛地影響政治秩序，並隨之影響國際關係。從禮儀系統在雅典崛起中的作用，到比爾及梅琳達蓋茲基金會和其他機構在COVID-19 大流行期間為更公平的全球疫苗分配提供資金方面所發揮的作用，慈善家所採取的策略塑造了更廣泛的活動。 隨時了解狀況。 每週提供深入分析。 在當今如此混亂的世界中，這一點顯得尤為重要。2024 年世界經濟論壇在達沃斯召開，危機極為複雜、環環相扣。這個動盪的全球時刻也是慈善事業的轉捩點。富有的捐助者有時可以實現其他實體無法實現的目標；他們比大多數國家和企業擁有更大的自由來嘗試和尋求非正統的解決方案來解決共同問題。但在如此激烈的破裂和變化的時代，慈善事業必須發揮更具破壞性的作用，從舊秩序搖搖欲墜的支柱和圍牆下走出來，幫助為新的、更好的秩序奠定基礎。 從鍍金時代的大亨到科技大亨 當今時代的慈善傳統始於安德魯·卡內基、約翰·洛克菲勒和十九世紀末其他鍍金時代的工業巨頭。正如卡內基在 1889 年出版的《財富福音》一書中所寫，這種捐贈的目的不是「滿足我們的自負，而是養活飢餓的人並幫助人們自助」。然而，這些努力從根本上來說是家長式的：富人回饋他們累積財富的社會，並宏偉地頒布法令如何使用他們的贈款。 在接下來的幾十年裡，這一信條將面臨挑戰，其中包括新政時代的進步人士對富人將慈善事業歸咎於國家領域的擔憂，以及麥卡錫派保守派將慈善基金會作為反共恐嚇的一部分。但家長式作風——將某種公民秩序中所賺取的收入回收到同一秩序中——將持續到二十世紀下半葉。 以福特基金會 (Ford Foundation) 為例，該基金會由亨利福特 (Henry Ford) 的兒子艾德塞爾 (Edsel) 於 1936 年創立。1950 年，保羅霍夫曼 (Paul Hoffman) 被任命為主席，當時他剛擔任歐洲馬歇爾計畫 (Marshall Plan) 的管理者，該計畫是戰後美國外交政策的核心支柱。後來他採用了同樣的頭銜，即行政長官，作為聯合國開發計劃署的首任負責人，後來我也擔任了這個職位。霍夫曼在福特的繼任者之一是麥克喬治·邦迪，他在肯尼迪和約翰遜政府擔任了五年的美國國家安全顧問，並在擔任越南戰爭升級的主要策劃者之一之後，從1966 年到1979 年領導了該基金會。在邦迪擔任總統期間，該基金會透過支持民權事業來支持約翰遜的議程，甚至在 1968 年甘迺迪遇刺後向總統候選人羅伯特甘迺迪的工作人員提供補助金。 也要看看洛克斐勒基金會和福特基金會在南亞農業「綠色革命」中所扮演的角色，這是一項與美國冷戰要求密切相關的發展計畫（其名稱中的「綠色」與「綠色」形成鮮明對比）紅色”，如共產主義）。他們既是美國海外政策議程的忠實夥伴，也是美國國內的權力盟友。 在破裂和變化的時代，慈善事業必須扮演破壞性的角色。 回想起來，霍夫曼和邦迪這樣的人就像世俗主教，他們的合法性來自於他們的社會地位、他們所經營的慈善事業背後的財富，以及他們在華盛頓政治世界和紐約基金會世界之間穿梭的各種旅行。基金會領導階層處於社會和職業生活的頂峰；我仍然記得大約 20 年前，一位基金會主席向我透露，他曾拒絕被提名為美國內閣秘書，以保住自己目前擔任的職位的名聲。 1970 年代的危機——石油危機、水門事件和越南戰爭的血腥結局——給慈善事業和其他自由主義機構帶來了損失。但這些組織在冷戰結束後再次蓬勃發展。正是在這個時候，喬治·索羅斯（George Soros）開始擴大捐贈規模，他的慈善事業由我今天負責管理的開放社會基金會（Open Society Foundations）：於1991 年開設中歐大學，為後種族隔離時期的南非的無數組織提供資金，並向團體提供第一筆贈款在以色列和巴勒斯坦領土，以及其他地方的許多其他工作。 記者馬修畢肖普 (Matthew Bishop) 和麥可格林 (Michael Green)在 2008 年出版的著作《慈善資本主義》中記錄了西方慈善事業新黃金時代可能被視為儀式性的高潮。他們描述了2006 年6 月在紐約公共圖書館舉行的一次盛大活動中，著名投資者沃倫·巴菲特如何簽署了一系列信件，承諾將其大部分財產捐贈給他的孩子們經營的基金會和蓋茲基金會。似乎單憑這一點還不足以體現新鍍金時代的巨頭與原始鍍金時代巨頭之間的親緣關係，巴菲特很早就給了蓋茨一本卡內基的《財富福音》，鼓勵他走上慈善之路。 然而，2006 年圖書館的聚會現在看來像是一個時代的結束。隔年開始的全球金融危機導致大眾對各種政治、社會和文化機構的信任迅速下降。在這個新環境中，慈善事業發現自己受到了前所未有的懷疑和懷疑，以及徹頭徹尾的陰謀論，例如針對蓋茲基金會和開放社會基金會的陰謀論。 部分是為了因應這一趨勢，慈善機構已經開始拋棄舊的家長式工作方式，更頻繁地讓受贈者決定如何使用他們的資金。這種「基於信任」的慈善事業以亞馬遜創始人傑夫·貝索斯的前妻麥肯齊·斯科特等捐贈者為代表，他們提供不附加任何條件的資金，因為從業者最了解這些資源在哪裡可以產生最大的影響。它將受資助者放在第一位，並減少了慈善家的積極參與——在一個更懷疑的時代，這是一個更謙虛的形象。 開放社會基金會一直擁護索羅斯所說的「政治慈善事業」——這一方向對權力和人民能動性的現實保持敏銳的警覺——因此能夠透過向變革機構提供大量資金來發揮先鋒作用。例如，9月份，我們向一個新基金會承諾了1.09億美元，以維護歐洲羅姆人的權利——這是一個由羅姆人社區人士領導的組織。在「黑人生命也是命」運動之後，我們向在美國各地黑人社區建立權力的新興組織和領導人投資了 2.2 億美元。 尋找新事物 顯然，這種基於信任的捐贈比舊的自上而下的家長式作風更適合目前的情況。然而，該行業還需要走得更遠。全域儀表板呈紅色閃爍。聯合國永續發展目標實施已過半，只有15%步入正軌，48%中度或嚴重偏離軌道，其餘37%停滯或倒退。大約 60% 的低收入國家處於債務困境或處於債務困境的高風險。2022 年，國家衝突中的年度死亡人數自1986 年以來首次超過20 萬人。聯合國難民事務高級專員報告稱，目前因武力而流離失所的人數在9 月份突破了創紀錄的1.14 億，高於創紀錄的1.08 億僅在今年初。當然，與這一切密切相關的是一個令人震驚的現實，即 2023 年是有史以來最熱的一年，這提醒人們解決氣候危機的緊迫性。 現行的權力和政府範式正在失敗。二戰後出現的新政秩序和 20 世紀 70 年代和 80 年代繼之的新自由主義秩序，其思想根源都在於華盛頓和倫敦相距幾個街區的一小群智囊團。後繼範式很可能既不會回歸到前者的嚴厲國家幹預，也不會回歸到後者的市場原教旨主義，而是社會、市場和政府的新綜合體，而這在今天可能很難想像，尤其是來自主要國家的社會、市場和政府。西方權力中心。它將從世界各地（通常是在全球南方）的一系列社會機構、大學、街頭運動和實地實驗中產生。 慈善事業面臨的挑戰是找出並支持大海撈針。這樣做需要對世界可能走向的不同方向有強烈的認知。在慈善領域工作的專案官員必須尋找引領這項變革的領導者、活動家和思想家，然後幫助他們以自己的方式進行變革。 異教徒，不是牧師 在困難時期，慈善事業有其合理的作用，但慈善事業必須反映困難時期的情況。對於知名人物來說，利用基金會和其他慈善機構來支撐現有秩序已經不夠了。霍夫曼或邦迪的世界已不復存在，更不用說卡內基和洛克斐勒的世界了。如今，該行業只有以其他方式無法幫助應對多重危機的能力，才能找到其合法性。 政治學家 Rob Reich在 2018 年出版的《Just Giving》一書中，對基金會在自由民主國家中是否有任何有效目的的問題持懷疑態度，但得出的結論是，通過履行只有基金會才能承擔的角色，它們確實可以透過其獨特的作用而受益。憲法。賴希特別指出了兩個：多元化（基金會可以在沒有明確的選舉或市場理由的情況下，通過追求特殊目標來挑戰正統觀念）和發現（基金會可以充當民主社會的“風險資本”，進行長期試驗和投資）。正是因為慈善領域的實體不向選民或股東負責，所以它們既非常緊迫又非常耐心：在應對危機或機會時比其他參與者更快地採取行動，但也擁有更大的持久力，因此有能力支持專案的成功是用幾十年而不是幾個月來判斷的。 這種做法要求那些曾經是世俗牧師的人──慈善界的領袖──放棄他們的袈裟，接受異端的衣缽。只有透過挑戰體制並煽動其邊緣，他們才能在當今充滿危機的世界中充分發揮潛力。 Why Philanthropists Should Become Heretics Donors Must Challenge, Not Comfort, the Existing Order By Mark Malloch-Brown January 15, 2024 Kacper Pempel / Reuters Philanthropy and power have always been closely intertwined. Wealthy men in ancient Athens paid for public goods and services, such as naval defenses, under the so-called liturgical system, in which the richest citizens financed some functions of the state. In many Islamic societies, propertied Muslims have ceded parts of their fortunes to charitable waqf entities that have funded services such as soup kitchens and hospitals. In early-modern Europe, the Medicis and other potentates created what were the microfinance schemes of their time, lending small sums of money to poor citizens. Those philanthropists faced an abiding tradeoff between embracing an existing order and seeking to challenge it. As the above examples suggest, they most commonly have opted for the former choice, working within prevailing structures while trying to mitigate their shortcomings. There have, however, been exceptional moments when philanthropists contributed to systemic change: merchants helped the theologian Martin Luther spread his ideas in the early Reformation, for example, and prosperous nineteenth-century British radicals, such as the economist Thomas Attwood, championed the expansion of the democratic franchise. The outcome of this tradeoff almost always influences the political order more broadly, and with it, international relations. From the liturgical system’s role in the rise of Athens to the part played by the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation and others in trying to fund a more equitable global distribution of vaccines during the COVID-19 pandemic, the strategies pursued by philanthropists have shaped wider events. Stay informed. In-depth analysis delivered weekly. That matters all the more in a world as chaotic as today’s. As the 2024 World Economic Forum gathers in Davos, it does so against the backdrop of dauntingly complex and interlocking crises. This tumultuous global moment is also an inflection point for philanthropy. Wealthy donors can sometimes achieve what other entities cannot; they have greater freedom than most states and businesses to experiment and pursue unorthodox solutions to common problems. But in a time of such intense rupture and flux, philanthropy must adopt a more disruptive role, moving out from under the tumbling pillars and walls of the old order and helping lay the foundations of a new, better one. FROM GILDED AGE TYCOONS TO TECH MOGULS The philanthropic tradition of the current era begins with Andrew Carnegie, John Rockefeller, and other Gilded Age titans of industry of the late nineteenth century. As Carnegie wrote in his 1889 book, The Gospel of Wealth, the purpose of such giving was not “to feed our egos, but to feed the hungry and help people to help themselves.” These endeavors, however, were fundamentally paternalistic: rich men giving back to the societies in which they had accumulated their fortunes and grandly decreeing how their grants should be used. Over subsequent decades, this credo would face challenges, including from New Deal–era progressives wary of rich men ascribing to charity what was properly the realm of the state and of McCarthyite conservatives targeting philanthropic foundations as part of anticommunist fearmongering. But the paternalistic approach—recycling the income earned within a certain civic order back into that same order—would continue well into the second half of the twentieth century. Take the Ford Foundation, founded in 1936 by Henry Ford’s son, Edsel. In 1950, it appointed as its president Paul Hoffman, fresh from his role as administrator of the Marshall Plan in Europe, a core pillar of U.S. foreign policy in the immediate postwar era. He later adopted the same title, administrator, as the inaugural head of the United Nations Development Program, a position that I would later hold myself. One of Hoffmann’s successors at Ford was McGeorge Bundy, who led the foundation from 1966 to 1979 after five years as U.S. national security adviser in the Kennedy and Johnson administrations, a post in which he was one of the leading architects of the escalation in Vietnam. Under Bundy’s presidency, the foundation supported Johnson’s agenda by backing civil rights causes and even offered grants to the staff of the presidential candidate Robert Kennedy after Kennedy’s assassination in 1968. Look, too, at the Rockefeller Foundation and Ford Foundation roles in the agricultural “Green Revolution” in South Asia, a development program closely tied to the Cold War imperatives of the United States (the “green” in its name an explicit contrast with “red,” as in communist). They were as much loyal partners of a U.S. policy agenda abroad as they were allies of power at home. In a time of rupture and flux, philanthropy must adopt a disruptive role. In retrospect, the likes of Hoffman and Bundy resemble secular bishops, legitimized by their social standing, the fortunes behind the philanthropies they ran, and their various trips through the revolving door between the political world of Washington and the foundation world of New York. The foundation leaderships ranked at the pinnacle of social and professional life; I still recall when one foundation president confided to me some 20 years ago that he had resisted nomination as a U.S. cabinet secretary to keep his name in the ring for the job he now held. The crises of the 1970s—the oil shock, the Watergate scandal, and the bloody denouement of the Vietnam War—would take their toll on philanthropies along with other liberal institutions. But these organizations flourished again in the immediate post–Cold War era. This was the time when George Soros, whose philanthropy the Open Society Foundations I today run, started to scale up his giving: opening the Central European University in 1991, funding myriad organizations in post-apartheid South Africa, and giving its first grants to groups in Israel and the Palestinian territories, along with much other work elsewhere. In their 2008 book, Philanthrocapitalism, the journalists Matthew Bishop and Michael Green document what might be considered the ceremonial high point of that new golden age of Western philanthropy. They describe how, at a grand event in June 2006 at the New York Public Library, the celebrated investor Warren Buffett signed a series of letters pledging swaths of his fortune to foundations run by his children and to the Gates Foundation. As if that alone did not crystallize the kinship between the titans of the new Gilded Age and those of the original one, Buffett had much earlier encouraged Gates on his philanthropic path by giving him a copy of Carnegie’s The Gospel of Wealth. The 2006 gathering at the library, however, now looks like the end of an era. The global financial crisis that began the following year brought a rapid decline in public trust in all kinds of political, social, and cultural institutions. In this new environment, philanthropies have found themselves subject to unparalleled degrees of suspicion and doubt—as well as outright conspiracy theories, such as those that have targeted the Gates Foundation and Open Society Foundations. Partly in reaction to this trend, philanthropies have begun to cast aside the old paternalistic way of working and more frequently let their grantees decide what to do with their money. This “trust-based” philanthropy is epitomized by givers such as MacKenzie Scott, the former wife of the Amazon founder Jeff Bezos, who provide funds without strings attached on the grounds that practitioners know best where such resources can have the greatest impact. It puts the grantees first and reduces the active involvement of the philanthropist—a humbler profile for a more skeptical era. The Open Society Foundations have always embraced what Soros calls “political philanthropy”—an orientation that is keenly alert to the realities of power and people’s agency—and have therefore been able to play a pioneering role by giving large sums to change-making institutions. In September, for example, we committed $109 million to a new foundation to champion the rights of Roma people in Europe—an organization led by people from the Roma community. In the wake of the Black Lives Matter movement, we made a $220 million investment in emerging organizations and leaders who are building power in Black communities across the United States. IN SEARCH OF THE NEW Clearly, this trust-based giving is a better match for the moment than the old top-down paternalism. Yet the sector needs to go further still. The global dashboard is flashing red. Halfway through the implementation period of the UN’s Sustainable Development Goals, only 15 percent are on track, 48 percent are moderately or severely off track, and the remaining 37 percent are stagnating or in regression. Around 60 percent of low-income countries are in or at high risk of debt distress. In 2022, the number of annual deaths in state-based conflicts surpassed 200,000 for the first time since 1986. The UN High Commissioner for Refugees reports that the number of people currently displaced by force surpassed a record 114 million in September, up from 108 million at the start of the year alone. Closely related to all this, of course, is the alarming reality that 2023 was the hottest year on record, a reminder of the urgency of addressing the climate crisis. The prevailing paradigms of power and government are failing. Both the New Deal order that arose after World War II and the neoliberal order that succeeded it in the 1970s and 1980s had their intellectual roots in a narrow cluster of think tanks within a few blocks of one another in Washington and London. The successor paradigm will probably comprise neither a return to the heavy-handed state intervention of the former nor to the market fundamentalism of the latter, but rather new syntheses of society, markets, and government that may today be hard to imagine, especially from major Western power centers. It will emerge from an array of social institutions, universities, street movements, and field experiments around the world, often in the global South. The challenge before philanthropies is to identify and support those needles in haystacks. Doing so will require a strong sense of the different directions the world might take. Program officers working in the philanthropic sector must seek out the leaders, campaigners, and thinkers pioneering that change, then help them get on with it on their own terms. HERETICS, NOT PRIESTS There is a legitimate role for philanthropy in troubled times, but one that has to reflect them. No longer is it enough for established figures to use foundations and other philanthropies to prop up an existing order. The world of Hoffman or Bundy no longer exists, let alone that of Carnegie and Rockefeller. Today, the sector will find legitimacy only in its ability to help confront the manifold crises in ways others cannot. In his 2018 book Just Giving, the political scientist Rob Reich brought a skeptical eye to the question of whether foundations have any valid purpose in liberal democracies but concluded that they can indeed be beneficial by fulfilling roles that only they can take on, through their distinctive constitutions. Reich identified two in particular: pluralism (foundations can challenge orthodoxies by pursuing idiosyncratic goals without clear electoral or market rationales) and discovery (foundations can serve as the “risk capital” for democratic societies, experimenting and investing for the long term). Precisely because entities in the philanthropic sector do not answer to voters or shareholders, they can be both radically urgent and radically patient: moving faster than other actors in response to a crisis or opportunity but also possessing far greater staying power, thus the ability to back projects whose success is judged in decades rather than months. This approach demands that those who were once secular priests—the leaders of the philanthropic sector—abandon their cassocks and accept the mantle of the heretic. Only by challenging the system and agitating on its fringes can they realize their full potential in today’s crisis-bound world. MARK MALLOCH-BROWN is President of the Open Society Foundations. How to Revitalize the World Bank, the IMF, and the Development Finance System The Urgent Need to Update Institutions Built for a Different Era Mia Amor Mottley and Rajiv J. Shah A mother and daughter at a Head Start program in Boston, MA, March 2013. Old Money, New Order American Philanthropies and the Defense of Liberal Democracy Darren Walker