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America’s role in the Middle East

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This is the introduction to Checks and Balance, a weekly, subscriber-only newsletter bringing exclusive insight from our correspondents in America.

James Bennet, our Lexington columnist, says America neglects the Middle East at everyone’s peril

The secretary of state declared he was not going to waste his energy chasing peace among Israelis and Arabs. The region was a quagmire, he told an aide as he took office, and he was “not going to fly around the Middle East” like his predecessor. That attitude might sound familiar from the last three American administrations, but the secretary in state in question was James Baker, during the administration of President George H.W. Bush, as described by Peter Baker and Susan Glasser in their biography, “The Man Who Ran Washington”.

Mr Baker’s aide, Dennis Ross, responded to him with a warning that more recent administrations should also have heard: while Mr Baker “might want to ignore the Middle East, it would not ignore him”.

Like Donald Trump and Barack Obama, President Joe Biden came into office wanting to focus his attention on Asia. When it came to Israelis and Palestinians he stuck with the “outside-in” approach of Mr Trump, hoping that more Arab states would sign peace deals with Israel, and that that would somehow put pressure on the Palestinians eventually to strike a deal, too. As our briefing this week explains, both those goals now seem out of reach. 

It was the first Gulf war that prompted Mr Baker to embark on his own round of intense Middle East peacemaking, taking at least eight trips to the region, including one three-week marathon, that led to the Madrid peace conference in 1991. He did not achieve a peace deal; as Mr Ross had also warned him, he would need “heroes for dramatic breakthroughs”, leaders like Anwar Sadat of Egypt, who gave his life for peace with Israel. No such heroes were on offer. 

But Madrid paved the way, as did pressure from the Bush administration that brought down a right-wing Israeli government, elevating a new prime minister, Yitzhak Rabin. During the Clinton administration, Rabin sealed the Oslo accords, the interim peace agreements between Israel and the Palestinians. Then, like Sadat, he was killed. 

I’m not suggesting this war in Gaza is about to lead to some kind of reset, much less a breakthrough. But I found myself thinking about this history as I wrote this week about the public rupture between Chuck Schumer, the Senate majority leader and a champion of Israel within the Democratic Party, and Binyamin Netanyahu, the Israeli prime minister. It seems worth thinking back on the more hopeful moments and what made them possible, including the sort of intelligent, focused attention from American peacemakers that has been missing from the Israeli-Palestinian conflict for far too long.

Economics

China to impose 34% retaliatory tariff on all goods imported from the U.S.

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Chinese and U.S. flags flutter near The Bund, before U.S. trade delegation meet their Chinese counterparts for talks in Shanghai, China July 30, 2019.

Aly Song | Reuters

China’s finance ministry on Friday said it will impose a 34% tariff on all goods imported from the U.S. starting on April 10, following duties imposed by U.S. President Donald Trump’s administration earlier this week.

“China urges the United States to immediately cancel its unilateral tariff measures and resolve trade differences through consultation in an equal, respectful and mutually beneficial manner,” the ministry said, according to a Google translation.

It further criticized Washington’s decision to impose 34% of additional reciprocal levies on China — bringing total U.S. tariffs against the country to 54% — as “inconsistent with international trade rules” and “seriously” undermining Chinese interests, as well as endangering “global economic development and the stability of the production and supply chain,” according to a Google-translated report from Chinese state news outlet Xinhua.

Separately, China also added 11 U.S. firms to the “unreliable entities list” that the Beijing administration says have violated market rules or contractual commitments. China’s ministry of commerce also added 16 U.S. entities to its export control list and said it would implement export controls on seven types of rare-earth related items, including samarium, gadolinium and terbium.

CNBC has reached out to the White House for comment.

Beijing, which also entertained a tenuous trade relationship with Washington under Trump’s first term, had warned that it would take “resolute counter-measures” to safeguard its own interests after the White House disclosed its latest sweeping tariffs on Wednesday.

Other U.S. trading partners had held off from announcing retaliatory tariffs amid hopes of further negotiations, with the European Union nevertheless voicing a readiness to respond.

The mutual U.S.-China levies are set to impact a trade relationship worth $582.4 billion in goods in 2024, according to the Office of the U.S. Trade Representative.

Analysts expect the U.S.’ protectionist trade policies to steer China toward other trading partners and see it implement further stimulus measures in an effort to galvanize the economy. China has been battling a property crisis and weak consumer and business sentiment since the end of the Covid-19 pandemic.

China’s retaliatory tariffs announced Friday exacerbated declines in global markets which had already been thrust into turmoil by fears of inflationary, recessionary and global economic growth risks following the White House’s tariffs.

Mohamed Aly El-Erian, chief economic advisor for Allianz SE. 

El-Erian says U.S. recession risks are now ‘uncomfortably high’

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Economics

Donald Trump is attacking what made American universities great

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The conservative counter-revolution began with a secret memo, at least as the tale is often told on America’s political left, with the mix of fear and envy characteristic of the conspiracy-minded. In the summer of 1971 Lewis Powell was an eminent corporate lawyer, soon to be nominated and confirmed for the Supreme Court, when he drafted a confidential proposal for the US Chamber of Commerce. Powell laid out a costly, co-ordinated, years-long programme to counter the left’s influence in the media, the courts, the boardroom and, above all, universities. “There is reason to believe that the campus is the single most dynamic source” of an intensifying assault on free enterprise, he warned.

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How Donald Trump is shaping other countries’ politics

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He is boosting the centre and centre-left and delighting the hard right

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