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Reason Foundation Issues Commentary: Idaho Gets Housing Policy Right and Sets Up Future Success
LOS ANGELES, California, Aug. 19 -- The Reason Foundation issued the following commentary by Eliza Terziev, housing and land use policy analyst:
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Idaho gets housing policy right and sets up future success
Idaho's 2026 housing package treats affordability as a supply problem caused by excessive regulation.
-
During the 2026 legislative session, Idaho enacted landmark housing bills addressing the state's persistent housing challenges. As of June 2026, the median sale price of a home in Idaho had risen to $479,611. According to Federal Reserve Economic Data's All Transactions House Price ... Show Full Article LOS ANGELES, California, Aug. 19 -- The Reason Foundation issued the following commentary by Eliza Terziev, housing and land use policy analyst: * * * Idaho gets housing policy right and sets up future success Idaho's 2026 housing package treats affordability as a supply problem caused by excessive regulation. - During the 2026 legislative session, Idaho enacted landmark housing bills addressing the state's persistent housing challenges. As of June 2026, the median sale price of a home in Idaho had risen to $479,611. According to Federal Reserve Economic Data's All Transactions House PriceIndex, home prices in the state increased nearly 71% between quarter one of 2020 and quarter one of 2026. A 2024 estimate finds that this rapid home price appreciation has left 28.3% of Idaho households cost-burdened, meaning they spend more than 30% of their income on housing. As affordability plummeted, legislative action became increasingly necessary.
Idaho's housing challenges are largely driven by rapid population growth pressing against restrictive land-use regulations. A recent analysis from the Mercatus Center finds that Idaho had the highest net in-migration rate per 1,000 residents of any state in the country between 2018 and 2023. An analysis by the Gem State Housing Alliance found that, before the current reforms, Idaho's municipalities had many varying restrictions that limited diverse housing types and were especially restrictive of infill and smaller units.
Idaho's recent construction boom has not yet overcome years of supply constraints and stabilized or lowered home prices (see Figure 1). Recent estimates found that the state was short over 45,000 homes, despite leading the nation in per-capita housing growth. Recognizing this challenge, legislators liberalized housing markets to encourage the level of development needed to meet growing demand.
A restructuring of land use laws was necessary, not only to deal with current housing affordability concerns, but to create a resilient market capable of adapting to changing needs. States that act sooner rather than later will be better positioned to attract people looking for places to build their lives and careers without pricing them out of the market. Idaho's sweeping reforms have poised the state for future success.
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Figure 1: Home Price Change vs. Building Permits Issued in Idaho 2000-2025
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Idaho's housing package
Senate Bill 1354: Accessory dwelling units
Idaho's SB 1354 requires cities with more than 10,000 residents to allow homeowners to build at least one accessory dwelling unit (ADU) on a single-family lot. It also prohibits owner-occupancy requirements, additional parking requirements in most cases, excessive setbacks, or other development standards that are more restrictive than those applied to the primary residence.
The law also prevents local governments and homeowners associations (HOAs) from applying other overly restrictive regulations. Applying such restrictions to local governments is crucial, since that has been the source of the extreme supplier restrictions, but most states passing similar laws have allowed homeowners associations to restrict ADUs, which is appropriate since those are private contractual agreements that all property purchasers agreed to in advance.
This is a mostly well-designed example of state preemption. Beyond simply legalizing ADUs, the legislation anticipates and blocks many of the regulatory barriers that local governments have used to limit their construction following statewide housing reforms. This foresight creates an avenue for Idaho's housing supply to keep up with demand in perpetuity while offering several advantages for both homeowners and lawmakers.
ADUs offer several advantages that make them an effective housing supply strategy. Because they are typically smaller than traditional single-family homes, they are a naturally more affordable housing option. They also serve as infill, meaning they do not require lots of additional infrastructure to facilitate their use. Their size and lower cost also make them well suited to households with distinct housing needs, such as college students seeking affordable accommodations or older adults who want to downsize while remaining close to family.
Further, where ADUs have been supported by comprehensive statewide reforms, they have been able to meaningfully increase housing supply. After easing ADU regulations, California permitted more than 139,000 ADUs between 2018 and 2024. California's success suggests that well-designed state legislation enables significant new housing production.
Senate Bill 1352: Minimum lot size reform
The United States faces a nationwide shortage of starter homes, and Idaho is no exception. Starter homes are designed to provide an entry point to homeownership, but as home prices have climbed and the supply of smaller homes has dwindled, this first step has become increasingly out of reach.
SB 1352 addresses one of the regulatory barriers to building starter homes by reducing minimum lot size requirements for qualifying new starter-home developments. This step makes it easier for developers or parcel owners to build smaller and more affordable houses without the regulatory hurdles that typically make this endeavor too inconvenient or costly to take on.
For qualifying starter-home subdivisions of at least four acres, the law prevents municipalities with more than 10,000 residents from requiring lots larger than 1,500 square feet for single-family detached homes. It also standardizes front and rear setback minimums, allowing more of each lot to be used for housing.
Larger minimum lot size requirements are consistently associated with higher housing costs, requiring unnecessarily large land purchases and making the building of smaller homes unprofitable. Reducing these minimums can substantially increase the number of homes that can be built on available land. Estimates from the American Enterprise Institute (AEI) find that just by lowering the minimum lot size for new subdivisions to 1,200 square feet, Idaho could add roughly 6,200 additional homes annually at prices below the current median. While this bill sets the minimum slightly higher than 1,200 square feet, it takes a critical step toward making it legal to build smaller homes across the state.
Not every new home in Idaho will be built on the smallest possible lot, but SB 1352 creates the option where it may be desired. Evidence suggests there is growing nationwide demand for smaller homes on smaller lots. Although the national median lot size remains well above 1,500 square feet, it has been declining for decades. In a comparison of median lot sizes across different regions in the United States, the National Association of Home Builders (NAHB) finds that the Mountain division, which includes Idaho, already has among the smallest median lot sizes in the country, trailing only the Pacific division. Allowing even smaller lots builds on these long-term market trends and expands opportunities for more diverse housing types.
House Bill 707: Lot splits
HB 707 complements SB 1352 by extending small-lot housing reforms to existing residential properties. While SB 1352 applies to new starter-home subdivisions on undeveloped sites, HB 707 allows owners of qualifying existing residential lots to split their property if the resulting parcels meet applicable minimum lot-size requirements.
Rather than requiring the full subdivision platting process, which is the legal process of dividing a piece of land into individual lots, the bill creates a streamlined administrative process for dividing off a lot containing an existing ADU or other qualifying secondary structure. The bill is narrowly targeted, with the lot split needing to be supported by a lender's letter demonstrating that separate financing or refinancing is needed, and it cannot create more density than local zoning already permits. It allows a homeowner to separate a backyard cottage or similar dwelling onto its own legal lot while retaining ownership of the primary home.
Previously, many ADUs and similar secondary dwellings could not be sold or financed separately from the main house, even when they functioned as independent homes. A backyard cottage or garage apartment might be physically complete and occupied, but without its own legal lot, it could not be bought, sold, or mortgaged on its own terms, effectively keeping that housing off the market. HB 707 creates a straightforward administrative path to separate that unit, giving lenders and buyers a clear process to work with. The result is that existing housing that was previously locked in place can now be on the market like any other home.
House Bill 800: Manufactured homes
HB 800 requires local governments to allow manufactured homes on any lot zoned for single-family or multifamily housing, unless an HOA in that area restricts it. The bill also lowers and standardizes the minimum size local governments can require for manufactured homes: 400 square feet for single-section homes, like single-wide or tiny homes, and 800 square feet for multi-sectional homes, including manufactured duplexes. It updates the legal definition of "manufactured home" to explicitly cover these multi-dwelling unit homes built to federal HUD standards.
Manufactured homes cost an estimated 48% less per square foot than comparable site-built homes. Despite these cost savings, many communities have historically restricted where they can be located through zoning and design standards, limiting them to designated parks or the outskirts of cities.
By requiring qualifying manufactured homes to be treated like site-built homes for zoning purposes, Idaho law reduces barriers to their placement. This change makes it easier for homebuyers to choose manufactured housing while limiting local zoning practices that have excluded these homes for reasons unrelated to community health or safety. Communities with an HOA can still choose to limit manufactured housing, preserving that option for homeowners.
House Bill 706: Single-stairway reform
HB 706 allows small apartment buildings up to six stories to be built with a single stairway instead of the currently required two. Apartments eligible to be built under this new rule are capped at four units per floor and 6,000 square feet per story. Automatic sprinklers and other fire protection must be included, with no more than two such buildings allowed per lot.
Research comparing fire death rates in existing single-stair buildings in New York City and Seattle to other residential buildings found no difference. This finding was further reinforced by separate research from the Netherlands, where single-stair buildings are common. Having the option to build without a second staircase opens new savings without compromising safety.
The intent is to continue to make it economically feasible to build smaller units, since the two-stairway requirement has been one of the biggest obstacles to constructing these more affordable buildings. For four- to six-story buildings, estimates indicate that a second staircase can add between 6% and 13% to construction costs. Having the option to avoid these additional costs can manifest in real savings for builders and buyers.
Notably, the bill doesn't mandate the change, giving local governments the option to allow single-stairway buildings, while cities that prefer their current rules can keep them.
House Bill 585: Third-party inspections
HB 585 establishes statewide timelines for electrical, plumbing, heating, ventilation, and air conditioning inspections performed by state or local governments. If a requested inspection is not completed within 48 business hours, the permit holder may hire a qualified third-party inspector and receive a refund of the government inspection fee. The law also requires that when a building fails an inspection, the inspecting authority must provide the reason for the failure in writing within three business days or issue a partial refund. The legislation is intended to reduce inspection delays while preserving existing safety and inspection standards.
Long approval timelines at all stages of construction are a significant contributing factor to long home-building timelines. Research consistently finds that longer approval timelines are associated with higher costs for finished homes, which are passed down to the buyer. These delays also influence how much housing is ultimately built. Recent evidence from multifamily construction in Los Angeles found that reducing approval timelines by 25% could have increased housing production by 12.7% over the 12-year study period.
If city inspectors in Idaho cannot keep pace, builders can now turn to a credible third party. HB 585 eases the administrative burden on local governments and gives builders a path to keep projects moving in the event of a delay.
House Bill 583: Short-term rentals
HB 583 shows that Idaho is correctly diagnosing its housing problem and taking appropriate steps to deal with it. The state's housing package takes direct steps to allow the development of new homes while making clear that increasing housing supply will not come at the expense of homeowners' right to use their property as they see fit.
Under HB 583, local governments cannot ban short-term rentals (STRs) in residential zones, require a special-use or conditional-use permit specific to short-term rentals, cap the number of STRs allowed in a neighborhood, or mandate owner-occupancy as a condition of operating an STR. Additionally, local governments cannot place more-stringent rules on STRs than standard homes in many respects. For example, they cannot require more-stringent fire safety standards, additional parking, the reporting or use of additional data, or require that hosts purchase additional insurance.
The bill also requires STR platforms to register with the Idaho State Tax Commission to collect and remit applicable state and local taxes on the bookings they facilitate, while barring local governments from imposing taxes or fees specifically on the operation of a rental marketplace. By establishing a uniform statewide framework, the bill reduces regulatory fragmentation that makes it difficult for online STR platforms to operate. This approach considers the reality that these platforms play a huge role in facilitating the STR market, and that undermining their operation creates a real barrier to entry for hosts.
Cities can still enforce nuisance ordinances and set safety standards, so long as those rules apply equally to all residential properties. When STRs create genuine disturbances, neighbors retain avenues for recourse, while compliant properties are protected from unnecessary interference.
This vigilance on property rights and willingness to create laws that reflect what online platforms are built to handle is a model for how other states should approach this controversial issue.
STRs have faced increasing hostility from many state and local governments across the country because they can cause small increases in home prices. However, overly restrictive land use rules are largely to blame for the current housing crisis. Robust, well-functioning housing markets should be able to handle both the demands of the permanent housing market and the desire of some people to use their homes as STRs.
Idaho's cumulative housing package, including HB 583, indicates lawmakers' keen awareness of the causes of the housing crisis. It signals their willingness to address the challenges directly without encroaching on property rights.
Takeaways
Idaho's 2026 housing package is the outcome of lawmakers treating housing affordability as a systemic supply problem caused by excessive regulation rather than a challenge that can be managed at the margins. Instead of searching for a single solution, or simply setting aside additional funding, the legislature systematically removed barriers that make it harder to bring new housing to market, while prioritizing property rights. These individual reforms work synergistically, creating a regulatory environment that allows housing supply to respond to changing market conditions. No state can predict future population shifts, but states can pass laws that allow supply to keep pace with changing demand. In doing the latter through this housing package, Idaho has created an exemplary model for other states.
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Eliza Terziev is a housing and land use policy analyst at Reason Foundation.
* * *
Original text here: https://reason.org/commentary/idaho-gets-housing-policy-right-and-sets-up-future-success/
* * *
Idaho gets housing policy right and sets up future success
Idaho's 2026 housing package treats affordability as a supply problem caused by excessive regulation.
-
During the 2026 legislative session, Idaho enacted landmark housing bills addressing the state's persistent housing challenges. As of June 2026, the median sale price of a home in Idaho had risen to $479,611. According to Federal Reserve Economic Data's All Transactions House Price ... Show Full Article LOS ANGELES, California, Aug. 19 -- The Reason Foundation issued the following commentary by Eliza Terziev, housing and land use policy analyst: * * * Idaho gets housing policy right and sets up future success Idaho's 2026 housing package treats affordability as a supply problem caused by excessive regulation. - During the 2026 legislative session, Idaho enacted landmark housing bills addressing the state's persistent housing challenges. As of June 2026, the median sale price of a home in Idaho had risen to $479,611. According to Federal Reserve Economic Data's All Transactions House PriceIndex, home prices in the state increased nearly 71% between quarter one of 2020 and quarter one of 2026. A 2024 estimate finds that this rapid home price appreciation has left 28.3% of Idaho households cost-burdened, meaning they spend more than 30% of their income on housing. As affordability plummeted, legislative action became increasingly necessary.
Idaho's housing challenges are largely driven by rapid population growth pressing against restrictive land-use regulations. A recent analysis from the Mercatus Center finds that Idaho had the highest net in-migration rate per 1,000 residents of any state in the country between 2018 and 2023. An analysis by the Gem State Housing Alliance found that, before the current reforms, Idaho's municipalities had many varying restrictions that limited diverse housing types and were especially restrictive of infill and smaller units.
Idaho's recent construction boom has not yet overcome years of supply constraints and stabilized or lowered home prices (see Figure 1). Recent estimates found that the state was short over 45,000 homes, despite leading the nation in per-capita housing growth. Recognizing this challenge, legislators liberalized housing markets to encourage the level of development needed to meet growing demand.
A restructuring of land use laws was necessary, not only to deal with current housing affordability concerns, but to create a resilient market capable of adapting to changing needs. States that act sooner rather than later will be better positioned to attract people looking for places to build their lives and careers without pricing them out of the market. Idaho's sweeping reforms have poised the state for future success.
* * *
Figure 1: Home Price Change vs. Building Permits Issued in Idaho 2000-2025
* * *
Idaho's housing package
Senate Bill 1354: Accessory dwelling units
Idaho's SB 1354 requires cities with more than 10,000 residents to allow homeowners to build at least one accessory dwelling unit (ADU) on a single-family lot. It also prohibits owner-occupancy requirements, additional parking requirements in most cases, excessive setbacks, or other development standards that are more restrictive than those applied to the primary residence.
The law also prevents local governments and homeowners associations (HOAs) from applying other overly restrictive regulations. Applying such restrictions to local governments is crucial, since that has been the source of the extreme supplier restrictions, but most states passing similar laws have allowed homeowners associations to restrict ADUs, which is appropriate since those are private contractual agreements that all property purchasers agreed to in advance.
This is a mostly well-designed example of state preemption. Beyond simply legalizing ADUs, the legislation anticipates and blocks many of the regulatory barriers that local governments have used to limit their construction following statewide housing reforms. This foresight creates an avenue for Idaho's housing supply to keep up with demand in perpetuity while offering several advantages for both homeowners and lawmakers.
ADUs offer several advantages that make them an effective housing supply strategy. Because they are typically smaller than traditional single-family homes, they are a naturally more affordable housing option. They also serve as infill, meaning they do not require lots of additional infrastructure to facilitate their use. Their size and lower cost also make them well suited to households with distinct housing needs, such as college students seeking affordable accommodations or older adults who want to downsize while remaining close to family.
Further, where ADUs have been supported by comprehensive statewide reforms, they have been able to meaningfully increase housing supply. After easing ADU regulations, California permitted more than 139,000 ADUs between 2018 and 2024. California's success suggests that well-designed state legislation enables significant new housing production.
Senate Bill 1352: Minimum lot size reform
The United States faces a nationwide shortage of starter homes, and Idaho is no exception. Starter homes are designed to provide an entry point to homeownership, but as home prices have climbed and the supply of smaller homes has dwindled, this first step has become increasingly out of reach.
SB 1352 addresses one of the regulatory barriers to building starter homes by reducing minimum lot size requirements for qualifying new starter-home developments. This step makes it easier for developers or parcel owners to build smaller and more affordable houses without the regulatory hurdles that typically make this endeavor too inconvenient or costly to take on.
For qualifying starter-home subdivisions of at least four acres, the law prevents municipalities with more than 10,000 residents from requiring lots larger than 1,500 square feet for single-family detached homes. It also standardizes front and rear setback minimums, allowing more of each lot to be used for housing.
Larger minimum lot size requirements are consistently associated with higher housing costs, requiring unnecessarily large land purchases and making the building of smaller homes unprofitable. Reducing these minimums can substantially increase the number of homes that can be built on available land. Estimates from the American Enterprise Institute (AEI) find that just by lowering the minimum lot size for new subdivisions to 1,200 square feet, Idaho could add roughly 6,200 additional homes annually at prices below the current median. While this bill sets the minimum slightly higher than 1,200 square feet, it takes a critical step toward making it legal to build smaller homes across the state.
Not every new home in Idaho will be built on the smallest possible lot, but SB 1352 creates the option where it may be desired. Evidence suggests there is growing nationwide demand for smaller homes on smaller lots. Although the national median lot size remains well above 1,500 square feet, it has been declining for decades. In a comparison of median lot sizes across different regions in the United States, the National Association of Home Builders (NAHB) finds that the Mountain division, which includes Idaho, already has among the smallest median lot sizes in the country, trailing only the Pacific division. Allowing even smaller lots builds on these long-term market trends and expands opportunities for more diverse housing types.
House Bill 707: Lot splits
HB 707 complements SB 1352 by extending small-lot housing reforms to existing residential properties. While SB 1352 applies to new starter-home subdivisions on undeveloped sites, HB 707 allows owners of qualifying existing residential lots to split their property if the resulting parcels meet applicable minimum lot-size requirements.
Rather than requiring the full subdivision platting process, which is the legal process of dividing a piece of land into individual lots, the bill creates a streamlined administrative process for dividing off a lot containing an existing ADU or other qualifying secondary structure. The bill is narrowly targeted, with the lot split needing to be supported by a lender's letter demonstrating that separate financing or refinancing is needed, and it cannot create more density than local zoning already permits. It allows a homeowner to separate a backyard cottage or similar dwelling onto its own legal lot while retaining ownership of the primary home.
Previously, many ADUs and similar secondary dwellings could not be sold or financed separately from the main house, even when they functioned as independent homes. A backyard cottage or garage apartment might be physically complete and occupied, but without its own legal lot, it could not be bought, sold, or mortgaged on its own terms, effectively keeping that housing off the market. HB 707 creates a straightforward administrative path to separate that unit, giving lenders and buyers a clear process to work with. The result is that existing housing that was previously locked in place can now be on the market like any other home.
House Bill 800: Manufactured homes
HB 800 requires local governments to allow manufactured homes on any lot zoned for single-family or multifamily housing, unless an HOA in that area restricts it. The bill also lowers and standardizes the minimum size local governments can require for manufactured homes: 400 square feet for single-section homes, like single-wide or tiny homes, and 800 square feet for multi-sectional homes, including manufactured duplexes. It updates the legal definition of "manufactured home" to explicitly cover these multi-dwelling unit homes built to federal HUD standards.
Manufactured homes cost an estimated 48% less per square foot than comparable site-built homes. Despite these cost savings, many communities have historically restricted where they can be located through zoning and design standards, limiting them to designated parks or the outskirts of cities.
By requiring qualifying manufactured homes to be treated like site-built homes for zoning purposes, Idaho law reduces barriers to their placement. This change makes it easier for homebuyers to choose manufactured housing while limiting local zoning practices that have excluded these homes for reasons unrelated to community health or safety. Communities with an HOA can still choose to limit manufactured housing, preserving that option for homeowners.
House Bill 706: Single-stairway reform
HB 706 allows small apartment buildings up to six stories to be built with a single stairway instead of the currently required two. Apartments eligible to be built under this new rule are capped at four units per floor and 6,000 square feet per story. Automatic sprinklers and other fire protection must be included, with no more than two such buildings allowed per lot.
Research comparing fire death rates in existing single-stair buildings in New York City and Seattle to other residential buildings found no difference. This finding was further reinforced by separate research from the Netherlands, where single-stair buildings are common. Having the option to build without a second staircase opens new savings without compromising safety.
The intent is to continue to make it economically feasible to build smaller units, since the two-stairway requirement has been one of the biggest obstacles to constructing these more affordable buildings. For four- to six-story buildings, estimates indicate that a second staircase can add between 6% and 13% to construction costs. Having the option to avoid these additional costs can manifest in real savings for builders and buyers.
Notably, the bill doesn't mandate the change, giving local governments the option to allow single-stairway buildings, while cities that prefer their current rules can keep them.
House Bill 585: Third-party inspections
HB 585 establishes statewide timelines for electrical, plumbing, heating, ventilation, and air conditioning inspections performed by state or local governments. If a requested inspection is not completed within 48 business hours, the permit holder may hire a qualified third-party inspector and receive a refund of the government inspection fee. The law also requires that when a building fails an inspection, the inspecting authority must provide the reason for the failure in writing within three business days or issue a partial refund. The legislation is intended to reduce inspection delays while preserving existing safety and inspection standards.
Long approval timelines at all stages of construction are a significant contributing factor to long home-building timelines. Research consistently finds that longer approval timelines are associated with higher costs for finished homes, which are passed down to the buyer. These delays also influence how much housing is ultimately built. Recent evidence from multifamily construction in Los Angeles found that reducing approval timelines by 25% could have increased housing production by 12.7% over the 12-year study period.
If city inspectors in Idaho cannot keep pace, builders can now turn to a credible third party. HB 585 eases the administrative burden on local governments and gives builders a path to keep projects moving in the event of a delay.
House Bill 583: Short-term rentals
HB 583 shows that Idaho is correctly diagnosing its housing problem and taking appropriate steps to deal with it. The state's housing package takes direct steps to allow the development of new homes while making clear that increasing housing supply will not come at the expense of homeowners' right to use their property as they see fit.
Under HB 583, local governments cannot ban short-term rentals (STRs) in residential zones, require a special-use or conditional-use permit specific to short-term rentals, cap the number of STRs allowed in a neighborhood, or mandate owner-occupancy as a condition of operating an STR. Additionally, local governments cannot place more-stringent rules on STRs than standard homes in many respects. For example, they cannot require more-stringent fire safety standards, additional parking, the reporting or use of additional data, or require that hosts purchase additional insurance.
The bill also requires STR platforms to register with the Idaho State Tax Commission to collect and remit applicable state and local taxes on the bookings they facilitate, while barring local governments from imposing taxes or fees specifically on the operation of a rental marketplace. By establishing a uniform statewide framework, the bill reduces regulatory fragmentation that makes it difficult for online STR platforms to operate. This approach considers the reality that these platforms play a huge role in facilitating the STR market, and that undermining their operation creates a real barrier to entry for hosts.
Cities can still enforce nuisance ordinances and set safety standards, so long as those rules apply equally to all residential properties. When STRs create genuine disturbances, neighbors retain avenues for recourse, while compliant properties are protected from unnecessary interference.
This vigilance on property rights and willingness to create laws that reflect what online platforms are built to handle is a model for how other states should approach this controversial issue.
STRs have faced increasing hostility from many state and local governments across the country because they can cause small increases in home prices. However, overly restrictive land use rules are largely to blame for the current housing crisis. Robust, well-functioning housing markets should be able to handle both the demands of the permanent housing market and the desire of some people to use their homes as STRs.
Idaho's cumulative housing package, including HB 583, indicates lawmakers' keen awareness of the causes of the housing crisis. It signals their willingness to address the challenges directly without encroaching on property rights.
Takeaways
Idaho's 2026 housing package is the outcome of lawmakers treating housing affordability as a systemic supply problem caused by excessive regulation rather than a challenge that can be managed at the margins. Instead of searching for a single solution, or simply setting aside additional funding, the legislature systematically removed barriers that make it harder to bring new housing to market, while prioritizing property rights. These individual reforms work synergistically, creating a regulatory environment that allows housing supply to respond to changing market conditions. No state can predict future population shifts, but states can pass laws that allow supply to keep pace with changing demand. In doing the latter through this housing package, Idaho has created an exemplary model for other states.
* * *
Eliza Terziev is a housing and land use policy analyst at Reason Foundation.
* * *
Original text here: https://reason.org/commentary/idaho-gets-housing-policy-right-and-sets-up-future-success/
Foundation for Economic Education Posts Commentary Entitled 'Inequality Is Not the Problem'
DETROIT, Michigan, Aug. 19 -- The Foundation for Economic Education posted the following commentary by research professional and podcaster Lipton Matthews:
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Inequality Is Not the Problem
And a wealth tax is not the answer.
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Few slogans travel through modern politics with as much confidence and as little scrutiny as the claim that inequality is a social ill to be corrected at nearly any cost. Yet a fair reading of the evidence suggests the opposite conclusion. Inequality is not a defect in the system. It is the primary mechanism by which human achievement compounds, wealth spreads, and ... Show Full Article DETROIT, Michigan, Aug. 19 -- The Foundation for Economic Education posted the following commentary by research professional and podcaster Lipton Matthews: * * * Inequality Is Not the Problem And a wealth tax is not the answer. - Few slogans travel through modern politics with as much confidence and as little scrutiny as the claim that inequality is a social ill to be corrected at nearly any cost. Yet a fair reading of the evidence suggests the opposite conclusion. Inequality is not a defect in the system. It is the primary mechanism by which human achievement compounds, wealth spreads, andliving standards rise for the great majority of people who never come close to the top of the distribution.
Consider what a world without inequality of talent and reward would actually look like. Strip away the possibility that some minds could rise far above the rest, and Newton never isolates the laws of motion, Einstein never reconceives space and time, and the intellectual scaffolding of modern physics simply does not exist. Glaring mediocrity, not shared flourishing, is what awaits a society that refuses to let exceptional minds pursue exceptional outcomes. The same logic extends from the laboratory to the marketplace. Had the founders of Amazon and Google possessed only ordinary ambition and ordinary intelligence, neither company would have grown into the infrastructure of daily life that it is today. Millions of people rely on Amazon to have packages delivered to their door within two days, sometimes in a matter of hours, while billions of search queries flow through Google each year because someone was allowed to become exceptionally rich by building something extraordinarily useful. The founders of these companies did not become billionaires by extracting value from society. They became billionaires by creating it, and the rest of us have been made better off in the bargain.
It is worth pausing on where that kind of wealth actually comes from, since so much of the case against inequality rests on the assumption that fortunes are inherited or simply extracted from others. According to one estimate that explored the wealth of the 10 richest men in 2024, none built his fortune through inheritance, and most grew up in middle- or upper-middle-class households before building companies worth hundreds of billions or trillions of dollars. Nor does that wealth sit idle. Among that same group, a median of about 89% of net worth was concentrated in the companies they built, which means that their fortunes rise and fall with the performance of the businesses they created rather than sitting in a cash hoard or a stockpile of assets. The economy, in fact, depends on some people having more wealth than they need to consume, because it is precisely that surplus, channeled into capital markets, that funds business operations, research, inventories, payrolls, and private lending across the country. Strip that surplus away, and the machinery that finances new enterprises loses its fuel.
That machinery has a name, and it happens to be one of America's most underappreciated advantages. The United States possesses the deepest and most dynamic venture capital ecosystem in the world, and it is no accident that this ecosystem has produced companies like Facebook and Oracle. These enterprises began as ideas funded by investors willing to risk capital on unproven ventures and now anchor entire sectors of the global economy. Without a surplus of wealthy individuals willing to deploy their capital into early-stage companies, private credit, and long-shot ventures, the American entrepreneurial system would be starved of the very funding that allows a garage startup to become a Fortune 500 company. Every dollar of wealth a billionaire earns from a company he built typically generates seven or more dollars for other investors, whether active traders or ordinary Americans whose retirement accounts track a rising stock market, which means that the surplus wealth concentrated at the top does not sit apart from the rest of the economy, but continuously reinvests itself into it.
This same confusion between enrichment and impoverishment runs through the popular narrative about the American middle class. Politicians on both sides of the aisle have insisted for years that the middle class is disappearing, hollowed out by decades of stagnation and elite capture. Turning to the data tells a different story, and a more encouraging one. The share of American families in the "core" middle class did fall, from 36% in 1979 to 31% in 2024, but that decline was not the product of families sliding into hardship. It was the product of families experiencing social advancement. The upper middle class, home to just 10% of families in 1979, grew to 22% by 2001 and then to 31% by 2024, a tripling that left it as large as the core middle-class itself and nearly as large as the two downscale groups combined. By 2024, America achieved a milestone: more families sat above the core middle class threshold than below it, and the combined share of families in the lower, core, and upper middle classes rose from 70% to 78% since 1979. Whichever way the numbers are sliced, the story is the same. Families are not falling out of the middle class. They are graduating out of it and into a tier of prosperity that scarcely existed a half-century ago.
The gains show up just as clearly in the share of the nation's income each group commands. The upper middle class alone now receives half of all family income, and its share of the total nearly doubled between 1979 and 2024. Combined with the richest Americans, the upper middle class and the rich together saw their share of income rise from 28% in 1979 to 68% in 2024. Even families near the bottom of the distribution shared in this progress, with those at the 10th percentile ending up approximately 30% better off than their peers a generation earlier. That is not a portrait of stagnation. It is a portrait of an economy that has manufactured upward mobility on a scale large enough to reshape the entire class structure of the country. Nor is the richer classes' larger share of the pie evidence of a stalled economy. Wealthy Americans tend to work longer hours than their peers, and the innovations they have driven have made the broader economy more productive, which means that their growing share of income reflects a growing pie rather than a shrinking one for everyone else. What critics label a shrinking middle class is, more accurately, a booming upper middle class, and it is difficult to see how a nation becoming more prosperous at that pace constitutes a crisis.
Given this record, it is worth asking why calls for a wealth tax have grown louder on the political left, culminating in proposals such as California's billionaire tax, arguably the most direct assault yet on accumulated wealth itself. The trouble is that the empirical case for such a tax is thin at best, and where evidence does exist, it points toward harm rather than benefit. A study using data from 20 OECD countries between 1980 and 1999 found that wealth taxes dampen economic growth in a manner that is remarkably consistent across statistical methods, estimating that a one-percentage-point increase in the wealth tax rate reduces economic growth by roughly 0.035 percentage points. That relationship held up under a battery of robustness checks, with estimated effects ranging narrowly between 0.026 and 0.042 percentage points regardless of which variables were treated as endogenous or which instruments were used. Wealth taxes, in other words, do not merely fail to help growth. They actively work against it.
Spain offers perhaps the clearest illustration of just how little a wealth tax accomplishes relative to the damage it inflicts. In 2002, despite levying rates as high as 2.5% on net wealth exceeding roughly Euros10.7 million ($12.2 million), Spain's wealth tax generated a mere 0.002% of GDP in revenue, a figure so small that it barely registers against the country's overall tax base. Compare that with countries like Switzerland and Luxembourg, which collected far more relative to GDP despite far lower rates, and the disconnect between statutory ambition and actual collection becomes impossible to ignore.
More recent research on Spain only deepens the case against the tax. After Spain reintroduced its wealth tax in 2011 in the wake of the Great Recession, researchers found that taxpayers responded aggressively to avoid it. A 0.1 percentage point increase in the average wealth tax rate led to a 3.21% reduction in taxable wealth over four years, driven largely by taxpayers shifting assets into exempt categories, particularly business-related exemptions. Taxpayers also restructured their income and asset portfolios to take advantage of the limit on total tax liability, a maneuver that accounted for 92.6% of the impact on revenue reduction. The cumulative effect was staggering. Between 2012 and 2015, revenue losses attributable to these avoidance strategies amounted to 2.75 times the wealth tax revenue collected in 2011.
Norway supplies a third case study, and it confirms just how mobile wealth becomes the moment it is taxed. When the small northern municipality of Bo cut its marginal wealth tax rate from 0.85% to 0.35% in 2021, average taxable wealth in the municipality rose by 60% for every one percentage point cut in the rate, and by 68.7% among those actually subject to the tax. The mechanism behind that surge was migration. In the year before the reform took effect, 68% of the net wealth held in Bo belonged to people who had just moved there, and wealthy individuals with a net worth above NOK 10 million ($1 million) became more than three times as likely to relocate to the municipality once its wealth tax fell. If a single town of fewer than 3,000 residents can pull in dozens of wealthy taxpayers simply by cutting its rate, it should surprise no one that wealth flees jurisdictions that raise theirs. A tax base that is this responsive to rate changes is not a reliable source of revenue. It is a reminder that capital, unlike labor, can simply get up and leave.
Similarly, Jamaica presents a cautionary tale for anyone eager to punish the wealthy through the tax code. In the 1970s, Jamaica experimented with democratic socialism under Prime Minister Michael Manley, who was bold enough to tell his critics that they were free to leave for Miami if they disliked his policies. Many of the country's elite families took him up on the offer. Without their financial and human capital, the economy contracted, and Jamaica's real GDP per capita, adjusted for inflation, was 20% lower in 2022 than it had been in 1970. Half a century later, similar rhetoric has resurfaced in American politics, with democratic socialists once again berating the wealthy for having too much. And just as in 1970s Jamaica, the elites targeted by that rhetoric are not staying to absorb the blow. They are leaving states like California and New York for Miami, taking their capital and their businesses with them.
Wherever it has been tested, punishing wealth does not redistribute prosperity so much as drive prosperity elsewhere, and the closer a society comes to Jamaica's experiment, the more of its own future it forfeits in the process. Inequality of talent, ambition, and reward is not the disease afflicting American life. It is the engine that has driven scientific discovery, built the companies that define modern convenience, financed the venture capital ecosystem responsible for firms like Facebook and Oracle, and lifted millions of families into the upper middle class over the past half-century. Attempting to legislate that inequality away through instruments like the wealth tax or statist policies will not narrow the gap between rich and poor so much as slow the very growth that has allowed so many Americans to climb the ladder in the first place, all while failing, as Spain, Norway, and Jamaica each demonstrate in their own way, to deliver the revenue and fairness its advocates promise.
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Lipton Matthews is a research professional and podcaster. His work has been featured in CapX, the American Spectator, The Federalist, Mises.org and other publications.
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Original text here: https://fee.org/articles/inequality-is-not-the-problem/
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Inequality Is Not the Problem
And a wealth tax is not the answer.
-
Few slogans travel through modern politics with as much confidence and as little scrutiny as the claim that inequality is a social ill to be corrected at nearly any cost. Yet a fair reading of the evidence suggests the opposite conclusion. Inequality is not a defect in the system. It is the primary mechanism by which human achievement compounds, wealth spreads, and ... Show Full Article DETROIT, Michigan, Aug. 19 -- The Foundation for Economic Education posted the following commentary by research professional and podcaster Lipton Matthews: * * * Inequality Is Not the Problem And a wealth tax is not the answer. - Few slogans travel through modern politics with as much confidence and as little scrutiny as the claim that inequality is a social ill to be corrected at nearly any cost. Yet a fair reading of the evidence suggests the opposite conclusion. Inequality is not a defect in the system. It is the primary mechanism by which human achievement compounds, wealth spreads, andliving standards rise for the great majority of people who never come close to the top of the distribution.
Consider what a world without inequality of talent and reward would actually look like. Strip away the possibility that some minds could rise far above the rest, and Newton never isolates the laws of motion, Einstein never reconceives space and time, and the intellectual scaffolding of modern physics simply does not exist. Glaring mediocrity, not shared flourishing, is what awaits a society that refuses to let exceptional minds pursue exceptional outcomes. The same logic extends from the laboratory to the marketplace. Had the founders of Amazon and Google possessed only ordinary ambition and ordinary intelligence, neither company would have grown into the infrastructure of daily life that it is today. Millions of people rely on Amazon to have packages delivered to their door within two days, sometimes in a matter of hours, while billions of search queries flow through Google each year because someone was allowed to become exceptionally rich by building something extraordinarily useful. The founders of these companies did not become billionaires by extracting value from society. They became billionaires by creating it, and the rest of us have been made better off in the bargain.
It is worth pausing on where that kind of wealth actually comes from, since so much of the case against inequality rests on the assumption that fortunes are inherited or simply extracted from others. According to one estimate that explored the wealth of the 10 richest men in 2024, none built his fortune through inheritance, and most grew up in middle- or upper-middle-class households before building companies worth hundreds of billions or trillions of dollars. Nor does that wealth sit idle. Among that same group, a median of about 89% of net worth was concentrated in the companies they built, which means that their fortunes rise and fall with the performance of the businesses they created rather than sitting in a cash hoard or a stockpile of assets. The economy, in fact, depends on some people having more wealth than they need to consume, because it is precisely that surplus, channeled into capital markets, that funds business operations, research, inventories, payrolls, and private lending across the country. Strip that surplus away, and the machinery that finances new enterprises loses its fuel.
That machinery has a name, and it happens to be one of America's most underappreciated advantages. The United States possesses the deepest and most dynamic venture capital ecosystem in the world, and it is no accident that this ecosystem has produced companies like Facebook and Oracle. These enterprises began as ideas funded by investors willing to risk capital on unproven ventures and now anchor entire sectors of the global economy. Without a surplus of wealthy individuals willing to deploy their capital into early-stage companies, private credit, and long-shot ventures, the American entrepreneurial system would be starved of the very funding that allows a garage startup to become a Fortune 500 company. Every dollar of wealth a billionaire earns from a company he built typically generates seven or more dollars for other investors, whether active traders or ordinary Americans whose retirement accounts track a rising stock market, which means that the surplus wealth concentrated at the top does not sit apart from the rest of the economy, but continuously reinvests itself into it.
This same confusion between enrichment and impoverishment runs through the popular narrative about the American middle class. Politicians on both sides of the aisle have insisted for years that the middle class is disappearing, hollowed out by decades of stagnation and elite capture. Turning to the data tells a different story, and a more encouraging one. The share of American families in the "core" middle class did fall, from 36% in 1979 to 31% in 2024, but that decline was not the product of families sliding into hardship. It was the product of families experiencing social advancement. The upper middle class, home to just 10% of families in 1979, grew to 22% by 2001 and then to 31% by 2024, a tripling that left it as large as the core middle-class itself and nearly as large as the two downscale groups combined. By 2024, America achieved a milestone: more families sat above the core middle class threshold than below it, and the combined share of families in the lower, core, and upper middle classes rose from 70% to 78% since 1979. Whichever way the numbers are sliced, the story is the same. Families are not falling out of the middle class. They are graduating out of it and into a tier of prosperity that scarcely existed a half-century ago.
The gains show up just as clearly in the share of the nation's income each group commands. The upper middle class alone now receives half of all family income, and its share of the total nearly doubled between 1979 and 2024. Combined with the richest Americans, the upper middle class and the rich together saw their share of income rise from 28% in 1979 to 68% in 2024. Even families near the bottom of the distribution shared in this progress, with those at the 10th percentile ending up approximately 30% better off than their peers a generation earlier. That is not a portrait of stagnation. It is a portrait of an economy that has manufactured upward mobility on a scale large enough to reshape the entire class structure of the country. Nor is the richer classes' larger share of the pie evidence of a stalled economy. Wealthy Americans tend to work longer hours than their peers, and the innovations they have driven have made the broader economy more productive, which means that their growing share of income reflects a growing pie rather than a shrinking one for everyone else. What critics label a shrinking middle class is, more accurately, a booming upper middle class, and it is difficult to see how a nation becoming more prosperous at that pace constitutes a crisis.
Given this record, it is worth asking why calls for a wealth tax have grown louder on the political left, culminating in proposals such as California's billionaire tax, arguably the most direct assault yet on accumulated wealth itself. The trouble is that the empirical case for such a tax is thin at best, and where evidence does exist, it points toward harm rather than benefit. A study using data from 20 OECD countries between 1980 and 1999 found that wealth taxes dampen economic growth in a manner that is remarkably consistent across statistical methods, estimating that a one-percentage-point increase in the wealth tax rate reduces economic growth by roughly 0.035 percentage points. That relationship held up under a battery of robustness checks, with estimated effects ranging narrowly between 0.026 and 0.042 percentage points regardless of which variables were treated as endogenous or which instruments were used. Wealth taxes, in other words, do not merely fail to help growth. They actively work against it.
Spain offers perhaps the clearest illustration of just how little a wealth tax accomplishes relative to the damage it inflicts. In 2002, despite levying rates as high as 2.5% on net wealth exceeding roughly Euros10.7 million ($12.2 million), Spain's wealth tax generated a mere 0.002% of GDP in revenue, a figure so small that it barely registers against the country's overall tax base. Compare that with countries like Switzerland and Luxembourg, which collected far more relative to GDP despite far lower rates, and the disconnect between statutory ambition and actual collection becomes impossible to ignore.
More recent research on Spain only deepens the case against the tax. After Spain reintroduced its wealth tax in 2011 in the wake of the Great Recession, researchers found that taxpayers responded aggressively to avoid it. A 0.1 percentage point increase in the average wealth tax rate led to a 3.21% reduction in taxable wealth over four years, driven largely by taxpayers shifting assets into exempt categories, particularly business-related exemptions. Taxpayers also restructured their income and asset portfolios to take advantage of the limit on total tax liability, a maneuver that accounted for 92.6% of the impact on revenue reduction. The cumulative effect was staggering. Between 2012 and 2015, revenue losses attributable to these avoidance strategies amounted to 2.75 times the wealth tax revenue collected in 2011.
Norway supplies a third case study, and it confirms just how mobile wealth becomes the moment it is taxed. When the small northern municipality of Bo cut its marginal wealth tax rate from 0.85% to 0.35% in 2021, average taxable wealth in the municipality rose by 60% for every one percentage point cut in the rate, and by 68.7% among those actually subject to the tax. The mechanism behind that surge was migration. In the year before the reform took effect, 68% of the net wealth held in Bo belonged to people who had just moved there, and wealthy individuals with a net worth above NOK 10 million ($1 million) became more than three times as likely to relocate to the municipality once its wealth tax fell. If a single town of fewer than 3,000 residents can pull in dozens of wealthy taxpayers simply by cutting its rate, it should surprise no one that wealth flees jurisdictions that raise theirs. A tax base that is this responsive to rate changes is not a reliable source of revenue. It is a reminder that capital, unlike labor, can simply get up and leave.
Similarly, Jamaica presents a cautionary tale for anyone eager to punish the wealthy through the tax code. In the 1970s, Jamaica experimented with democratic socialism under Prime Minister Michael Manley, who was bold enough to tell his critics that they were free to leave for Miami if they disliked his policies. Many of the country's elite families took him up on the offer. Without their financial and human capital, the economy contracted, and Jamaica's real GDP per capita, adjusted for inflation, was 20% lower in 2022 than it had been in 1970. Half a century later, similar rhetoric has resurfaced in American politics, with democratic socialists once again berating the wealthy for having too much. And just as in 1970s Jamaica, the elites targeted by that rhetoric are not staying to absorb the blow. They are leaving states like California and New York for Miami, taking their capital and their businesses with them.
Wherever it has been tested, punishing wealth does not redistribute prosperity so much as drive prosperity elsewhere, and the closer a society comes to Jamaica's experiment, the more of its own future it forfeits in the process. Inequality of talent, ambition, and reward is not the disease afflicting American life. It is the engine that has driven scientific discovery, built the companies that define modern convenience, financed the venture capital ecosystem responsible for firms like Facebook and Oracle, and lifted millions of families into the upper middle class over the past half-century. Attempting to legislate that inequality away through instruments like the wealth tax or statist policies will not narrow the gap between rich and poor so much as slow the very growth that has allowed so many Americans to climb the ladder in the first place, all while failing, as Spain, Norway, and Jamaica each demonstrate in their own way, to deliver the revenue and fairness its advocates promise.
* * *
Lipton Matthews is a research professional and podcaster. His work has been featured in CapX, the American Spectator, The Federalist, Mises.org and other publications.
* * *
Original text here: https://fee.org/articles/inequality-is-not-the-problem/
Asia Foundation: Highlighting the Women Workers Shaping Bangladesh's Garment Sector
SAN FRANCISCO, California, Aug. 19 -- The Asia Foundation issued the following news:
* * *
Highlighting the Women Workers Shaping Bangladesh's Garment Sector
Bangladesh's ready-made garment sector employs millions of women and is a cornerstone of the country's economy. Yet environmental pressures, changing industry demands, and barriers such as limited access to skills development, unequal economic opportunities, and unpaid care responsibilities can make it difficult for women workers to benefit from the sector's transition toward more sustainable and technology-enabled production. The Asia ... Show Full Article SAN FRANCISCO, California, Aug. 19 -- The Asia Foundation issued the following news: * * * Highlighting the Women Workers Shaping Bangladesh's Garment Sector Bangladesh's ready-made garment sector employs millions of women and is a cornerstone of the country's economy. Yet environmental pressures, changing industry demands, and barriers such as limited access to skills development, unequal economic opportunities, and unpaid care responsibilities can make it difficult for women workers to benefit from the sector's transition toward more sustainable and technology-enabled production. The AsiaFoundation's Oporajita program helps women build the skills, resilience, and leadership needed to succeed as the industry evolves.
In June 2026, The Meaning of Oporajita, an eight-minute branded film produced for H&M Foundation by BBC StoryWorks Commercial Productions debuted to a global audience. The film is part of the Fashion Redressed II series presented by the Global Fashion Agenda. Filmed in Gazipur, Bangladesh, the film follows garment workers Rushia Khatun and Akhi Akter. It highlights how Oporajita and its partners are supporting women workers while contributing to the future of Bangladesh's garment sector. Through the experiences of the two women and insights from Oporajita representatives and partner organizations, the film demonstrates how coordinated action can address the interconnected challenges facing women in the industry.
The film showcases Oporajita's collective-impact approach through the experiences of workers participating in programs delivered by multiple partners. Viewers see how CARE Bangladesh's soft-skills training and Women Friendly Spaces centers help strengthen confidence, leadership, and well-being; how Save the Children's childcare services enable women to remain employed while supporting their families; and how Swisscontact's Green Skills training equips workers with new capabilities to adapt to changing industry needs and environmental challenges. By connecting these initiatives through the lived experiences of Rushia and Akhi, the film highlights how coordinated support can strengthen resilience, expand opportunities, and improve quality of life while bringing these stories to decision-makers, brands, investors, and development practitioners around the world.
"Women carry so much: our families, our homes, our communities. Being part of this film reminded me that we deserve to carry ourselves forward, too, and watching Akhi's story alongside my own, her struggles and her strength, made me think, yes, we can achieve great things," said Rushia Khatun, a quality inspector for the manufacturing company Iris Group.
She added that Oporajita's training sessions have increased her confidence. "What we learn here does not stay here," she said. "I walk away from this experience feeling more capable and more determined, and I intend to carry that into everything I do, on the factory floor and beyond."
The film represents an important milestone in Oporajita's efforts to support women garment workers and demonstrate how cross-sector partnerships can support the future of work in Bangladesh.
Fashion Redressed makes clear that Oporajita is a model for addressing complex workforce challenges through collaboration. It also shows that strengthening women's skills, resilience, and leadership is both a social priority and an important component of a more sustainable, competitive, and future-ready garment industry. By continuing to share lessons from Bangladesh's collective-impact approach, the initiative aims to strengthen partnerships, encourage new investment, and keep women workers at the center of conversations about the future of the garment sector.
* * *
Original text here: https://asiafoundation.org/highlighting-the-women-workers-shaping-bangladeshs-garment-sector/
* * *
Highlighting the Women Workers Shaping Bangladesh's Garment Sector
Bangladesh's ready-made garment sector employs millions of women and is a cornerstone of the country's economy. Yet environmental pressures, changing industry demands, and barriers such as limited access to skills development, unequal economic opportunities, and unpaid care responsibilities can make it difficult for women workers to benefit from the sector's transition toward more sustainable and technology-enabled production. The Asia ... Show Full Article SAN FRANCISCO, California, Aug. 19 -- The Asia Foundation issued the following news: * * * Highlighting the Women Workers Shaping Bangladesh's Garment Sector Bangladesh's ready-made garment sector employs millions of women and is a cornerstone of the country's economy. Yet environmental pressures, changing industry demands, and barriers such as limited access to skills development, unequal economic opportunities, and unpaid care responsibilities can make it difficult for women workers to benefit from the sector's transition toward more sustainable and technology-enabled production. The AsiaFoundation's Oporajita program helps women build the skills, resilience, and leadership needed to succeed as the industry evolves.
In June 2026, The Meaning of Oporajita, an eight-minute branded film produced for H&M Foundation by BBC StoryWorks Commercial Productions debuted to a global audience. The film is part of the Fashion Redressed II series presented by the Global Fashion Agenda. Filmed in Gazipur, Bangladesh, the film follows garment workers Rushia Khatun and Akhi Akter. It highlights how Oporajita and its partners are supporting women workers while contributing to the future of Bangladesh's garment sector. Through the experiences of the two women and insights from Oporajita representatives and partner organizations, the film demonstrates how coordinated action can address the interconnected challenges facing women in the industry.
The film showcases Oporajita's collective-impact approach through the experiences of workers participating in programs delivered by multiple partners. Viewers see how CARE Bangladesh's soft-skills training and Women Friendly Spaces centers help strengthen confidence, leadership, and well-being; how Save the Children's childcare services enable women to remain employed while supporting their families; and how Swisscontact's Green Skills training equips workers with new capabilities to adapt to changing industry needs and environmental challenges. By connecting these initiatives through the lived experiences of Rushia and Akhi, the film highlights how coordinated support can strengthen resilience, expand opportunities, and improve quality of life while bringing these stories to decision-makers, brands, investors, and development practitioners around the world.
"Women carry so much: our families, our homes, our communities. Being part of this film reminded me that we deserve to carry ourselves forward, too, and watching Akhi's story alongside my own, her struggles and her strength, made me think, yes, we can achieve great things," said Rushia Khatun, a quality inspector for the manufacturing company Iris Group.
She added that Oporajita's training sessions have increased her confidence. "What we learn here does not stay here," she said. "I walk away from this experience feeling more capable and more determined, and I intend to carry that into everything I do, on the factory floor and beyond."
The film represents an important milestone in Oporajita's efforts to support women garment workers and demonstrate how cross-sector partnerships can support the future of work in Bangladesh.
Fashion Redressed makes clear that Oporajita is a model for addressing complex workforce challenges through collaboration. It also shows that strengthening women's skills, resilience, and leadership is both a social priority and an important component of a more sustainable, competitive, and future-ready garment industry. By continuing to share lessons from Bangladesh's collective-impact approach, the initiative aims to strengthen partnerships, encourage new investment, and keep women workers at the center of conversations about the future of the garment sector.
* * *
Original text here: https://asiafoundation.org/highlighting-the-women-workers-shaping-bangladeshs-garment-sector/
WLF Asks Texas Appeals Court to Block Trial on Federally Rejected Qui Tam Theory
WASHINGTON, Aug. 18 [Category: Law/Legal] -- The Washington Legal Foundation issued the following news release:
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WLF Asks Texas Appeals Court to Block Trial on Federally Rejected Qui Tam Theory
*
Click HERE to read WLF's brief.
(Washington, DC)-Yesterday Washington Legal Foundation (WLF) urged Texas's Fifteenth Court of Appeals to grant mandamus relief and direct summary judgment for Gilead Sciences. WLF contends that the trial court's unexplained denial of summary judgment forces a punitive trial on a kickback theory that Texas law and federal authorities have already foreclosed. WLF's ... Show Full Article WASHINGTON, Aug. 18 [Category: Law/Legal] -- The Washington Legal Foundation issued the following news release: * * * WLF Asks Texas Appeals Court to Block Trial on Federally Rejected Qui Tam Theory * Click HERE to read WLF's brief. (Washington, DC)-Yesterday Washington Legal Foundation (WLF) urged Texas's Fifteenth Court of Appeals to grant mandamus relief and direct summary judgment for Gilead Sciences. WLF contends that the trial court's unexplained denial of summary judgment forces a punitive trial on a kickback theory that Texas law and federal authorities have already foreclosed. WLF'sbrief was filed with the pro bono assistance of Andrew Bean and Grant Schmidt of Willkie Farr & Gallagher LLP in Dallas.
The case arises from a serial qui tam suit by Health Choice Advocates, a shell entity in a network that files copycat claims against pharmaceutical manufacturers. The relator alleges that Gilead's patient-support programs, such as teaching patients to self-inject prescribed medicines, amount to illegal remuneration under the Texas Medicaid Fraud Prevention Act. Federal courts and the United States have rejected this exact theory, and Health Choice abandoned its prior federal suits against Gilead. After a complete summary-judgment record, the Harrison County trial court denied Gilead's motion without explanation and cleared the claim for trial.
In its amicus brief, WLF argues that the Act is a penal statute that must be strictly construed and applied in harmony with parallel federal law, which holds that product-integrated patient support is not remuneration. Sending a legally foreclosed theory to a high-stakes punitive trial inflicts irreparable harm that no later appeal can cure, and it invites parallel suits across Texas. WLF urges the Fifteenth Court of Appeals to grant the petition, vacate the denial, and direct summary judgment for Gilead.
***
Original text here: https://www.wlf.org/2026/08/18/communicating/wlf-asks-texas-appeals-court-to-block-trial-on-federally-rejected-qui-tam-theory/
* * *
WLF Asks Texas Appeals Court to Block Trial on Federally Rejected Qui Tam Theory
*
Click HERE to read WLF's brief.
(Washington, DC)-Yesterday Washington Legal Foundation (WLF) urged Texas's Fifteenth Court of Appeals to grant mandamus relief and direct summary judgment for Gilead Sciences. WLF contends that the trial court's unexplained denial of summary judgment forces a punitive trial on a kickback theory that Texas law and federal authorities have already foreclosed. WLF's ... Show Full Article WASHINGTON, Aug. 18 [Category: Law/Legal] -- The Washington Legal Foundation issued the following news release: * * * WLF Asks Texas Appeals Court to Block Trial on Federally Rejected Qui Tam Theory * Click HERE to read WLF's brief. (Washington, DC)-Yesterday Washington Legal Foundation (WLF) urged Texas's Fifteenth Court of Appeals to grant mandamus relief and direct summary judgment for Gilead Sciences. WLF contends that the trial court's unexplained denial of summary judgment forces a punitive trial on a kickback theory that Texas law and federal authorities have already foreclosed. WLF'sbrief was filed with the pro bono assistance of Andrew Bean and Grant Schmidt of Willkie Farr & Gallagher LLP in Dallas.
The case arises from a serial qui tam suit by Health Choice Advocates, a shell entity in a network that files copycat claims against pharmaceutical manufacturers. The relator alleges that Gilead's patient-support programs, such as teaching patients to self-inject prescribed medicines, amount to illegal remuneration under the Texas Medicaid Fraud Prevention Act. Federal courts and the United States have rejected this exact theory, and Health Choice abandoned its prior federal suits against Gilead. After a complete summary-judgment record, the Harrison County trial court denied Gilead's motion without explanation and cleared the claim for trial.
In its amicus brief, WLF argues that the Act is a penal statute that must be strictly construed and applied in harmony with parallel federal law, which holds that product-integrated patient support is not remuneration. Sending a legally foreclosed theory to a high-stakes punitive trial inflicts irreparable harm that no later appeal can cure, and it invites parallel suits across Texas. WLF urges the Fifteenth Court of Appeals to grant the petition, vacate the denial, and direct summary judgment for Gilead.
***
Original text here: https://www.wlf.org/2026/08/18/communicating/wlf-asks-texas-appeals-court-to-block-trial-on-federally-rejected-qui-tam-theory/
Royal Society of Edinburgh Announces Return of Enterprise Fellowship Programme for Postdoctoral Researchers
EDINBURGH, Scotland, Aug. 18 -- The Royal Society of Edinburgh issued the following news:
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Enterprise Fellowship Scheme returns
The Royal Society of Edinburgh has announced the relaunch of its successful Enterprise Fellowship programme, which will support the next generation of entrepreneurial academics to turn their ideas into practical applications that improve the lives of ordinary Scots.
The renewed Fellowship is aimed at postdoctoral researchers based at a UK higher education institution looking to translate their research into a commercial venture.
Led by RSE Fellows Professor Simon ... Show Full Article EDINBURGH, Scotland, Aug. 18 -- The Royal Society of Edinburgh issued the following news: * * * Enterprise Fellowship Scheme returns The Royal Society of Edinburgh has announced the relaunch of its successful Enterprise Fellowship programme, which will support the next generation of entrepreneurial academics to turn their ideas into practical applications that improve the lives of ordinary Scots. The renewed Fellowship is aimed at postdoctoral researchers based at a UK higher education institution looking to translate their research into a commercial venture. Led by RSE Fellows Professor SimonBest, world-renowned cyclist Mark Beaumont, and other Fellows of the RSE, the scheme has returned following extensive work with previous Enterprise Fellows and the RSE's networks in the research and business communities.
Mark Beaumont FRSE said: "The RSE Enterprise Fellowship Scheme has a brilliant track record of transforming research into real world application and turning ambition into business success.
"We are excited to relaunch it in 2026, backing the next generation of entrepreneurs and bringing to life the RSE's motto of 'knowledge made useful' through funding, peer group learning and business-world experience."
The scheme originally ran between 1997 and 2021, supporting 272 Fellows from 36 UK universities, and created 166 new businesses. It was paused during the COVID-19 pandemic to be reviewed to ensure it properly met the changing needs of the business sector.
Enterprise Fellows receive financial support for their idea, one year's salary, as well as training, networking and mentorship from a wide range of Fellows of the Royal Society of Edinburgh, and previous Enterprise Fellowship awardees.
Enterprise Fellowships are designed to enable individuals to commercialise the output of their academic research for the public good, while receiving business training and mentoring to bolster their chances of success.
The Fellowships, administered by the Royal Society of Edinburgh, include a development fund of up to pound sterling10,000 to develop their businesses. The business start-ups could be in a wide range of areas, including aerospace and defence, life sciences, manufacturing, chemical sciences, creative industries and tourism.
The renewed version of the Fellowships includes a potential extra pound sterling10, of funding specifically geared towards international expansion. This is intended to help Fellows broaden their commercial perspective, build lasting international relationships, learn from international best practice and strengthen links between Scotland's research and innovation community and key innovation centres across the world. This is a new addition to the scheme that was not part of the previous iteration.
Professor Simon Best FRSE, Chair of the Enterprise Fellowship , added: "I am very excited by the relaunch of the RSE's Enterprise Fellowships.
"We are ready to empower a new generation of serial entrepreneurs with realistic ambitions for global, social, and commercial impact. What sets this scheme apart is the depth of knowledge and the mentoring power, experience and networks of our Fellows - in Scotland, the UK and around the world."
Professor Caroline Barelle was part of the 2015 Enterprise Fellowship cohort. She had spent time in academia, gaining her PhD in biochemistry at the University of Aberdeen and then holding a post-doctoral position there, before working with major pharmaceutical company Wyeth, and latterly with Pfizer.
A bridge from research to business
Around that time she, along with her, team was made redundant by Pfizer, when they had been developing a library of antibody-like molecules that she believed could be put to use in combatting cancer and auto-immune conditions in humans.
Professor Barelle said: "The timing of my Enterprise Fellowship was absolutely perfect. I was just on the cusp of thinking I could start a biotech company, I knew the science because I had been a scientist for a long time - I knew hee-haw about business.
"I worked in science, I was a team leader at Wyeth and at Pfizer, these big pharmaceutical corporations, and also had experience in a small biotech company as well, but I was in the belly of the science.
"Never ever had I ever considered starting my own company and never ever would I have considered starting a biotech company - but I knew what the science could do and I was excited about it and myself and the team knew that the technology had legs and that it could do something for patients.
Perfect timing - and the gift of time
"The timing of the Enterprise Fellowship was absolutely critical for me. It was a year's worth of support, and the form it took was regular training with the rest of the Enterprise Fellows, business fundamentals, landscape scoping, market analysis, how to pitch.
"The other thing it gave me is it gave me time. Time is the most precious thing that anyone can give you. It gave me time to formulate the plan, to think through what we were going to do with the business."
The time was invaluable to Caroline and what would become Elasmogen, as the drug platform could theoretically be turned to many different uses in cancer treatment or auto-immune conditions. Eventually Caroline and her team have settled on a drug-conjugate system for anti-inflammatory uses in patients with hidradenitis suppurativa (HS). HS is a chronic auto-immune condition chronic inflammatory skin condition characterised by painful lesions, abscesses and scarring, affecting various parts of the body. Beyond physical discomfort, HS has profound mental impact on people affected by it.
On the benefits of the Fellowship, Caroline added: "One: becoming business savvy; Two: time; and three is something that I maintain today is the power of the network which is great."
The importance of building relationships
Caroline was an RSE Enterprise Fellow in 2015, and maintains relationships with the other 2015 Fellows, as well as the previous Fellows who had already been through the process as the RSE keeps those networks alive through events and other means.
"Really what the Enterprise Fellowship gave me what that sense of: you can do it, Caroline, what's the worst that can happen?
"And you're mixing with people who are all giving it a go as well, which is really lovely, and then you maintain those relationships. Sometimes that might just be a digital coffee and put the world to rights, because it can be quite a lonely experience being a CEO of a small company.
Elasmogen is seeking new investors for their next stage of getting their drug through to the clinic.
After studying Business and Entrepreneurship at the University of Stirling, Callum Murray launched his first business, a painting and decorating contractor with a pound sterling1,000 startup support grant from the Prince's Trust.
From fast growth to court cases
Building a reputation for reliability and service, his company grew quickly from a standing start to a team of ten via client referral and ease of doing business with same day online quotes and mobile card payments.
Having progressed into larger scale clients across hotels, restaurants and construction contracts when the 2008 financial crash hit, the business collapsed whilst pursuing unpaid debts from large scale contractors. Callum navigated the civil court process whilst gaining judgment in his favour, the financial impact effectively ended the business entirely.
"It's a complex, time consuming and paper-based process to access legal help, it should be fast and easy regardless of who you are and what resources you have to make better decisions and navigate regulated services online"
Based on his experience, Callum set out with a group of co-founders to solve the problem and enable trusted routes to access help online.
Uncovering the upstream opportunity
In 2016, Callum secured an RSE Enterprise Fellowship, providing him the initial funding, network and support structure to develop further prototypes and engage with early prospective clients.
With a second-hand laptop and some introductions, the early feedback revealed a deeper issue: the real friction wasn't triaging legal cases or engaging with experts online, but navigating the paper driven compliance challenges to first engage with regulated professions, products and services.
"The feedback we got was that the cost, risk and complexity of doing business online meant that the real opportunity was to solve the onboarding compliance bottleneck".
Based on previous experience, he took the client feedback directly on board and shifted focus to build what the market actually wanted and needed to unlock the longer-term objective for Amiqus.
That pivot created the foundation of Amiqus.
Building for Scale
Callum credits the validation, credibility and initial network as an RSE Enterprise Fellow as a foundational advantage prior to engaging with external investors at the crucial early stages of Amiqus whilst pre product and pre revenue.
"The cohort learning based approach of the fellowship and the timing of support on our journey has played a huge part in our long-term success. It was a great early step whilst also proving that the intent and belief we had in Amiqus was also backed by the RSE."
Today, the business is delivering against a 10x growth plan and counts government, tier one banks and global scale organisations as clients with a team of 55 across the UK and annual revenues approaching pound sterling10 million.
From early validation and support as an RSE Fellow, Callum Murray has long term ambition and impact in mind for Amiqus whilst sharing time and support to other entrepreneurs as an alumni of the RSE fellowship programme.
Applications for the Enterprise Fellowship scheme open at 12pm on 17th August. The call closes on 12th October. Applications are made via the RSE's website.
* * *
Original text here: https://rse.org.uk/enterprise-fellowship-scheme-returns/
* * *
Enterprise Fellowship Scheme returns
The Royal Society of Edinburgh has announced the relaunch of its successful Enterprise Fellowship programme, which will support the next generation of entrepreneurial academics to turn their ideas into practical applications that improve the lives of ordinary Scots.
The renewed Fellowship is aimed at postdoctoral researchers based at a UK higher education institution looking to translate their research into a commercial venture.
Led by RSE Fellows Professor Simon ... Show Full Article EDINBURGH, Scotland, Aug. 18 -- The Royal Society of Edinburgh issued the following news: * * * Enterprise Fellowship Scheme returns The Royal Society of Edinburgh has announced the relaunch of its successful Enterprise Fellowship programme, which will support the next generation of entrepreneurial academics to turn their ideas into practical applications that improve the lives of ordinary Scots. The renewed Fellowship is aimed at postdoctoral researchers based at a UK higher education institution looking to translate their research into a commercial venture. Led by RSE Fellows Professor SimonBest, world-renowned cyclist Mark Beaumont, and other Fellows of the RSE, the scheme has returned following extensive work with previous Enterprise Fellows and the RSE's networks in the research and business communities.
Mark Beaumont FRSE said: "The RSE Enterprise Fellowship Scheme has a brilliant track record of transforming research into real world application and turning ambition into business success.
"We are excited to relaunch it in 2026, backing the next generation of entrepreneurs and bringing to life the RSE's motto of 'knowledge made useful' through funding, peer group learning and business-world experience."
The scheme originally ran between 1997 and 2021, supporting 272 Fellows from 36 UK universities, and created 166 new businesses. It was paused during the COVID-19 pandemic to be reviewed to ensure it properly met the changing needs of the business sector.
Enterprise Fellows receive financial support for their idea, one year's salary, as well as training, networking and mentorship from a wide range of Fellows of the Royal Society of Edinburgh, and previous Enterprise Fellowship awardees.
Enterprise Fellowships are designed to enable individuals to commercialise the output of their academic research for the public good, while receiving business training and mentoring to bolster their chances of success.
The Fellowships, administered by the Royal Society of Edinburgh, include a development fund of up to pound sterling10,000 to develop their businesses. The business start-ups could be in a wide range of areas, including aerospace and defence, life sciences, manufacturing, chemical sciences, creative industries and tourism.
The renewed version of the Fellowships includes a potential extra pound sterling10, of funding specifically geared towards international expansion. This is intended to help Fellows broaden their commercial perspective, build lasting international relationships, learn from international best practice and strengthen links between Scotland's research and innovation community and key innovation centres across the world. This is a new addition to the scheme that was not part of the previous iteration.
Professor Simon Best FRSE, Chair of the Enterprise Fellowship , added: "I am very excited by the relaunch of the RSE's Enterprise Fellowships.
"We are ready to empower a new generation of serial entrepreneurs with realistic ambitions for global, social, and commercial impact. What sets this scheme apart is the depth of knowledge and the mentoring power, experience and networks of our Fellows - in Scotland, the UK and around the world."
Professor Caroline Barelle was part of the 2015 Enterprise Fellowship cohort. She had spent time in academia, gaining her PhD in biochemistry at the University of Aberdeen and then holding a post-doctoral position there, before working with major pharmaceutical company Wyeth, and latterly with Pfizer.
A bridge from research to business
Around that time she, along with her, team was made redundant by Pfizer, when they had been developing a library of antibody-like molecules that she believed could be put to use in combatting cancer and auto-immune conditions in humans.
Professor Barelle said: "The timing of my Enterprise Fellowship was absolutely perfect. I was just on the cusp of thinking I could start a biotech company, I knew the science because I had been a scientist for a long time - I knew hee-haw about business.
"I worked in science, I was a team leader at Wyeth and at Pfizer, these big pharmaceutical corporations, and also had experience in a small biotech company as well, but I was in the belly of the science.
"Never ever had I ever considered starting my own company and never ever would I have considered starting a biotech company - but I knew what the science could do and I was excited about it and myself and the team knew that the technology had legs and that it could do something for patients.
Perfect timing - and the gift of time
"The timing of the Enterprise Fellowship was absolutely critical for me. It was a year's worth of support, and the form it took was regular training with the rest of the Enterprise Fellows, business fundamentals, landscape scoping, market analysis, how to pitch.
"The other thing it gave me is it gave me time. Time is the most precious thing that anyone can give you. It gave me time to formulate the plan, to think through what we were going to do with the business."
The time was invaluable to Caroline and what would become Elasmogen, as the drug platform could theoretically be turned to many different uses in cancer treatment or auto-immune conditions. Eventually Caroline and her team have settled on a drug-conjugate system for anti-inflammatory uses in patients with hidradenitis suppurativa (HS). HS is a chronic auto-immune condition chronic inflammatory skin condition characterised by painful lesions, abscesses and scarring, affecting various parts of the body. Beyond physical discomfort, HS has profound mental impact on people affected by it.
On the benefits of the Fellowship, Caroline added: "One: becoming business savvy; Two: time; and three is something that I maintain today is the power of the network which is great."
The importance of building relationships
Caroline was an RSE Enterprise Fellow in 2015, and maintains relationships with the other 2015 Fellows, as well as the previous Fellows who had already been through the process as the RSE keeps those networks alive through events and other means.
"Really what the Enterprise Fellowship gave me what that sense of: you can do it, Caroline, what's the worst that can happen?
"And you're mixing with people who are all giving it a go as well, which is really lovely, and then you maintain those relationships. Sometimes that might just be a digital coffee and put the world to rights, because it can be quite a lonely experience being a CEO of a small company.
Elasmogen is seeking new investors for their next stage of getting their drug through to the clinic.
After studying Business and Entrepreneurship at the University of Stirling, Callum Murray launched his first business, a painting and decorating contractor with a pound sterling1,000 startup support grant from the Prince's Trust.
From fast growth to court cases
Building a reputation for reliability and service, his company grew quickly from a standing start to a team of ten via client referral and ease of doing business with same day online quotes and mobile card payments.
Having progressed into larger scale clients across hotels, restaurants and construction contracts when the 2008 financial crash hit, the business collapsed whilst pursuing unpaid debts from large scale contractors. Callum navigated the civil court process whilst gaining judgment in his favour, the financial impact effectively ended the business entirely.
"It's a complex, time consuming and paper-based process to access legal help, it should be fast and easy regardless of who you are and what resources you have to make better decisions and navigate regulated services online"
Based on his experience, Callum set out with a group of co-founders to solve the problem and enable trusted routes to access help online.
Uncovering the upstream opportunity
In 2016, Callum secured an RSE Enterprise Fellowship, providing him the initial funding, network and support structure to develop further prototypes and engage with early prospective clients.
With a second-hand laptop and some introductions, the early feedback revealed a deeper issue: the real friction wasn't triaging legal cases or engaging with experts online, but navigating the paper driven compliance challenges to first engage with regulated professions, products and services.
"The feedback we got was that the cost, risk and complexity of doing business online meant that the real opportunity was to solve the onboarding compliance bottleneck".
Based on previous experience, he took the client feedback directly on board and shifted focus to build what the market actually wanted and needed to unlock the longer-term objective for Amiqus.
That pivot created the foundation of Amiqus.
Building for Scale
Callum credits the validation, credibility and initial network as an RSE Enterprise Fellow as a foundational advantage prior to engaging with external investors at the crucial early stages of Amiqus whilst pre product and pre revenue.
"The cohort learning based approach of the fellowship and the timing of support on our journey has played a huge part in our long-term success. It was a great early step whilst also proving that the intent and belief we had in Amiqus was also backed by the RSE."
Today, the business is delivering against a 10x growth plan and counts government, tier one banks and global scale organisations as clients with a team of 55 across the UK and annual revenues approaching pound sterling10 million.
From early validation and support as an RSE Fellow, Callum Murray has long term ambition and impact in mind for Amiqus whilst sharing time and support to other entrepreneurs as an alumni of the RSE fellowship programme.
Applications for the Enterprise Fellowship scheme open at 12pm on 17th August. The call closes on 12th October. Applications are made via the RSE's website.
* * *
Original text here: https://rse.org.uk/enterprise-fellowship-scheme-returns/
Freedom From Religion Foundation: Texas Families Urge Supreme Court to Hear 10 Commandments Law Challenge
MADISON, Wisconsin, Aug. 18 -- The Freedom From Religion Foundation issued the following news release:
* * *
Texas families urge Supreme Court to hear 10 Commandments law challenge
More than two dozen Texas families are asking the U.S. Supreme Court to hear their challenge to a state law that requires public schools to post a Protestant version of the Ten Commandments in every classroom.
The nonreligious, Unitarian Universalist, Christian, Jewish, Hindu and Baha'i families challenging the Texas law attend 22 school districts across the state and are represented by the Freedom From Religion ... Show Full Article MADISON, Wisconsin, Aug. 18 -- The Freedom From Religion Foundation issued the following news release: * * * Texas families urge Supreme Court to hear 10 Commandments law challenge More than two dozen Texas families are asking the U.S. Supreme Court to hear their challenge to a state law that requires public schools to post a Protestant version of the Ten Commandments in every classroom. The nonreligious, Unitarian Universalist, Christian, Jewish, Hindu and Baha'i families challenging the Texas law attend 22 school districts across the state and are represented by the Freedom From ReligionFoundation, the American Civil Liberties Union of Texas, the ACLU and Americans United for Separation of Church and State, with Simpson Thacher & Bartlett LLP serving as pro bono counsel. The request, filed today, urges the court to protect students' and parents' religious freedom by blocking Texas Senate Bill 10 (SB 10), ensuring that families -- not politicians -- have the right to decide what role religion plays in their lives. Today's petition seeks review of lower court rulings in two separate but similar cases: Nathan v. Alamo Heights Independent School District and Cribbs Ringer v. Comal Independent School District.
Under SB 10, Texas public schools must permanently display a state-mandated version of the Ten Commandments, drawn from the Protestant King James Bible, in a "conspicuous" place in each classroom, from kindergarten through 12th grade. The families challenging SB 10 object to the law because the displays will pressure children to conform to the state's favored religious beliefs and interfere with parents' right to guide their children's religious instruction.
Today's Supreme Court filing, a joint petition for a writ of certiorari in both cases, follows an April decision by the en banc 5th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals allowing the state-selected version of the Ten Commandments to go up in the plaintiffs' classrooms. By a narrowly decided vote, the 5th Circuit ruled that SB 10 does not violate either the Establishment or Free Exercise Clauses of the First Amendment -- despite a 1980 Supreme Court case striking down a nearly identical Kentucky law.
"By requiring displays of religious doctrine in every classroom, the state is interfering with our family's decisions about how our children engage with religion," says plaintiff Nichole Manning (she/her), a Dallas-area atheist who is raising her children in a nonreligious tradition that gives them the space and autonomy to develop their own beliefs about religion. "As a parent, I intentionally choose to have my children attend public school because I prefer an educational environment without any religious affiliation. In a diverse public school environment, all students should be treated with equal respect, regardless of their religious beliefs, or lack thereof."
"As a rabbi and parent, forcing a Christian version of the Ten Commandments on children in every classroom is particularly upsetting," says plaintiff Rabbi Joshua Fixler (he/him) of Houston. "I am not only worried about my own kids, but I'm deeply concerned about all the children in my congregation. These displays put children in the position of having to defend themselves and their families' religious beliefs against a government mandate that makes them feel different and separate from their classmates."
"Texas politicians shouldn't have a seat at the table in deciding how our children receive their religious education. That decision belongs to our family," say plaintiffs Rebekah (she/her) and Ted Lowe (he/him), an Austin-based interfaith couple who are raising their children in the Christian and Jewish traditions. "This law puts one version of religious beliefs above all others in our public schools and sends a message to our children that what we teach them about religion at home is somehow wrong."
"The First Commandment, dictating which god must be worshipped, is the antithesis of our First Amendment," says Annie Laurie Gaylor (she/her), co-president of the Freedom From Religion Foundation. "It is not the government's role to daily expose young children to a coercive display of one religion's set of religious edicts in our public schools. Our public schools exist to educate, not to proselytize."
"The U.S. Supreme Court has rejected this kind of government-imposed religion before, and it should do so again," says Chloe Kempf (she/her), attorney at the ACLU of Texas. "Having these posters in Texas classrooms puts students at risk of bullying, stigmatization, and religious coercion. Our nation's bedrock principle of separating church and state means that families and faith communities -- not politicians -- get to decide what role religion plays in children's lives. Texas students deserve public schools that welcome them for who they are, respect their religious or nonreligious backgrounds, and give them the high-quality education they need to build their futures."
"Fifty years ago, the ACLU won a Supreme Court victory against a nearly identical Kentucky law -- and we aim to do it again," says Cecillia Wang (she/her), national legal director of the ACLU. "In our country, no legislature can force its preferred scripture on public school students and families."
"Families - not politicians or public school officials - get to decide how, if, and when children engage with religion," says Rachel Laser (she/her), president and CEO of Americans United. "We urge the Supreme Court to make clear that these Ten Commandments mandates violate students' and families' religious freedom as promised by the U.S. Constitution. With ever more states attempting to force one version of religion into public school classrooms, our nation must recommit to our foundational promise of church-state separation, the linchpin of religious liberty."
"This case concerns decisions about personal belief and religious instruction, and whether under our Constitution they remain with families and faith communities or are commandeered by the state," says Jon Youngwood (he/him), global co-chair of the Litigation Department at Simpson Thacher & Bartlett LLP. "The First Amendment has long protected the freedom of individuals to determine for themselves how they engage with spirituality and religion. Those protections are especially important in the public-school setting."
The Lowe and Fixler families share more about how they will be impacted by these Ten Commandments displays and why they oppose them in newly released, heartfelt videos that can be viewed here (https://www.au.org/TenC); transcripts are available here (https://www.au.org/wp-content/uploads/securepdfs/2026/08/Transcripts-Lowe-Fixler-Ten-Commandments-Videos-Aug.-2026.pdf).
* * *
The Freedom From Religion Foundation is a U.S.-based nonprofit dedicated to defending the constitutional principle of separation between state and church and educating the public on matters relating to nontheism. With about 41,000 members, FFRF is the largest association of freethinkers (atheists, agnostics and humanists) in North America. For more information, visit ffrf.org.
* * *
For more than 100 years, the ACLU has worked in courts, legislatures, and communities to protect the constitutional rights of all people. With a nationwide network of offices and millions of members and supporters, the ACLU takes on the toughest civil liberties fights in pursuit of liberty and justice for all.
* * *
The ACLU of Texas works with communities, at the state Capitol, and in the courts to protect and advance civil rights and civil liberties for every Texan, no exceptions.
* * *
Founded in 1947, Americans United for Separation of Church and State is a religious freedom advocacy organization that educates Americans about the importance of church-state separation in safeguarding religious freedom.
* * *
Simpson Thacher & Bartlett LLP (www.simpsonthacher.com) is one of the world's leading international law firms. The firm was established in 1884 and has approximately 2,000 lawyers. Headquartered in New York with offices in Beijing, Boston, Brussels, Dallas, Hong Kong, Houston, London, Los Angeles, Luxembourg, Palo Alto, San Francisco, Sao Paulo, Tokyo and Washington, D.C., the firm provides coordinated legal advice and transactional capability to clients around the globe.
* * *
Original text here: https://ffrf.org/news/releases/texas-families-urge-supreme-court-to-hear-10-commandments-law-challenge/
[Category: Religion]
* * *
Texas families urge Supreme Court to hear 10 Commandments law challenge
More than two dozen Texas families are asking the U.S. Supreme Court to hear their challenge to a state law that requires public schools to post a Protestant version of the Ten Commandments in every classroom.
The nonreligious, Unitarian Universalist, Christian, Jewish, Hindu and Baha'i families challenging the Texas law attend 22 school districts across the state and are represented by the Freedom From Religion ... Show Full Article MADISON, Wisconsin, Aug. 18 -- The Freedom From Religion Foundation issued the following news release: * * * Texas families urge Supreme Court to hear 10 Commandments law challenge More than two dozen Texas families are asking the U.S. Supreme Court to hear their challenge to a state law that requires public schools to post a Protestant version of the Ten Commandments in every classroom. The nonreligious, Unitarian Universalist, Christian, Jewish, Hindu and Baha'i families challenging the Texas law attend 22 school districts across the state and are represented by the Freedom From ReligionFoundation, the American Civil Liberties Union of Texas, the ACLU and Americans United for Separation of Church and State, with Simpson Thacher & Bartlett LLP serving as pro bono counsel. The request, filed today, urges the court to protect students' and parents' religious freedom by blocking Texas Senate Bill 10 (SB 10), ensuring that families -- not politicians -- have the right to decide what role religion plays in their lives. Today's petition seeks review of lower court rulings in two separate but similar cases: Nathan v. Alamo Heights Independent School District and Cribbs Ringer v. Comal Independent School District.
Under SB 10, Texas public schools must permanently display a state-mandated version of the Ten Commandments, drawn from the Protestant King James Bible, in a "conspicuous" place in each classroom, from kindergarten through 12th grade. The families challenging SB 10 object to the law because the displays will pressure children to conform to the state's favored religious beliefs and interfere with parents' right to guide their children's religious instruction.
Today's Supreme Court filing, a joint petition for a writ of certiorari in both cases, follows an April decision by the en banc 5th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals allowing the state-selected version of the Ten Commandments to go up in the plaintiffs' classrooms. By a narrowly decided vote, the 5th Circuit ruled that SB 10 does not violate either the Establishment or Free Exercise Clauses of the First Amendment -- despite a 1980 Supreme Court case striking down a nearly identical Kentucky law.
"By requiring displays of religious doctrine in every classroom, the state is interfering with our family's decisions about how our children engage with religion," says plaintiff Nichole Manning (she/her), a Dallas-area atheist who is raising her children in a nonreligious tradition that gives them the space and autonomy to develop their own beliefs about religion. "As a parent, I intentionally choose to have my children attend public school because I prefer an educational environment without any religious affiliation. In a diverse public school environment, all students should be treated with equal respect, regardless of their religious beliefs, or lack thereof."
"As a rabbi and parent, forcing a Christian version of the Ten Commandments on children in every classroom is particularly upsetting," says plaintiff Rabbi Joshua Fixler (he/him) of Houston. "I am not only worried about my own kids, but I'm deeply concerned about all the children in my congregation. These displays put children in the position of having to defend themselves and their families' religious beliefs against a government mandate that makes them feel different and separate from their classmates."
"Texas politicians shouldn't have a seat at the table in deciding how our children receive their religious education. That decision belongs to our family," say plaintiffs Rebekah (she/her) and Ted Lowe (he/him), an Austin-based interfaith couple who are raising their children in the Christian and Jewish traditions. "This law puts one version of religious beliefs above all others in our public schools and sends a message to our children that what we teach them about religion at home is somehow wrong."
"The First Commandment, dictating which god must be worshipped, is the antithesis of our First Amendment," says Annie Laurie Gaylor (she/her), co-president of the Freedom From Religion Foundation. "It is not the government's role to daily expose young children to a coercive display of one religion's set of religious edicts in our public schools. Our public schools exist to educate, not to proselytize."
"The U.S. Supreme Court has rejected this kind of government-imposed religion before, and it should do so again," says Chloe Kempf (she/her), attorney at the ACLU of Texas. "Having these posters in Texas classrooms puts students at risk of bullying, stigmatization, and religious coercion. Our nation's bedrock principle of separating church and state means that families and faith communities -- not politicians -- get to decide what role religion plays in children's lives. Texas students deserve public schools that welcome them for who they are, respect their religious or nonreligious backgrounds, and give them the high-quality education they need to build their futures."
"Fifty years ago, the ACLU won a Supreme Court victory against a nearly identical Kentucky law -- and we aim to do it again," says Cecillia Wang (she/her), national legal director of the ACLU. "In our country, no legislature can force its preferred scripture on public school students and families."
"Families - not politicians or public school officials - get to decide how, if, and when children engage with religion," says Rachel Laser (she/her), president and CEO of Americans United. "We urge the Supreme Court to make clear that these Ten Commandments mandates violate students' and families' religious freedom as promised by the U.S. Constitution. With ever more states attempting to force one version of religion into public school classrooms, our nation must recommit to our foundational promise of church-state separation, the linchpin of religious liberty."
"This case concerns decisions about personal belief and religious instruction, and whether under our Constitution they remain with families and faith communities or are commandeered by the state," says Jon Youngwood (he/him), global co-chair of the Litigation Department at Simpson Thacher & Bartlett LLP. "The First Amendment has long protected the freedom of individuals to determine for themselves how they engage with spirituality and religion. Those protections are especially important in the public-school setting."
The Lowe and Fixler families share more about how they will be impacted by these Ten Commandments displays and why they oppose them in newly released, heartfelt videos that can be viewed here (https://www.au.org/TenC); transcripts are available here (https://www.au.org/wp-content/uploads/securepdfs/2026/08/Transcripts-Lowe-Fixler-Ten-Commandments-Videos-Aug.-2026.pdf).
* * *
The Freedom From Religion Foundation is a U.S.-based nonprofit dedicated to defending the constitutional principle of separation between state and church and educating the public on matters relating to nontheism. With about 41,000 members, FFRF is the largest association of freethinkers (atheists, agnostics and humanists) in North America. For more information, visit ffrf.org.
* * *
For more than 100 years, the ACLU has worked in courts, legislatures, and communities to protect the constitutional rights of all people. With a nationwide network of offices and millions of members and supporters, the ACLU takes on the toughest civil liberties fights in pursuit of liberty and justice for all.
* * *
The ACLU of Texas works with communities, at the state Capitol, and in the courts to protect and advance civil rights and civil liberties for every Texan, no exceptions.
* * *
Founded in 1947, Americans United for Separation of Church and State is a religious freedom advocacy organization that educates Americans about the importance of church-state separation in safeguarding religious freedom.
* * *
Simpson Thacher & Bartlett LLP (www.simpsonthacher.com) is one of the world's leading international law firms. The firm was established in 1884 and has approximately 2,000 lawyers. Headquartered in New York with offices in Beijing, Boston, Brussels, Dallas, Hong Kong, Houston, London, Los Angeles, Luxembourg, Palo Alto, San Francisco, Sao Paulo, Tokyo and Washington, D.C., the firm provides coordinated legal advice and transactional capability to clients around the globe.
* * *
Original text here: https://ffrf.org/news/releases/texas-families-urge-supreme-court-to-hear-10-commandments-law-challenge/
[Category: Religion]
Foundation for Economic Education Posts Commentary: Korea and Brazil at the Negotiating Table
DETROIT, Michigan, Aug. 18 -- The Foundation for Economic Education posted the following commentary by political theorist Jake Scott:
* * *
Korea and Brazil at the Negotiating Table
The Asian powerhouse looks to strengthen Latin American trade links.
-
In the coming weeks, a delegation of South Korean food safety officials will take an extensive tour of Brazilian meat processing plants, checking everything from chilling temperatures and drainage to the paper trail that charts the meat's journey. The mission of officials was agreed at a presidential summit in July 2026 and is, in every sense ... Show Full Article DETROIT, Michigan, Aug. 18 -- The Foundation for Economic Education posted the following commentary by political theorist Jake Scott: * * * Korea and Brazil at the Negotiating Table The Asian powerhouse looks to strengthen Latin American trade links. - In the coming weeks, a delegation of South Korean food safety officials will take an extensive tour of Brazilian meat processing plants, checking everything from chilling temperatures and drainage to the paper trail that charts the meat's journey. The mission of officials was agreed at a presidential summit in July 2026 and is, in every sensethat matters, the trade negotiation in action.
Long stalled, the Korea-Mercosur trade talks have been revived as each nation adapts to the shifting sands of the international order; but the gap between political theater and technical progress is unusually wide between the two sides. Each might publicly commit to increased trade, but institutionalized differences over practices, such as animal welfare, are the minutiae that can sink trade deals.
On July 27, South Korean President Lee Jae Myung and Brazilian President Lula da Silva agreed to accelerate trade talks and establish a bilateral working group, particularly after Lee described reaching an agreement as urgent. Yet Brasilia's own trade records show the seventh round of talks--held in 2021--as the most recent. Between the rhetoric and the reality, there yawn five years of silence on an apparently urgent issue.
It is a fundamental truth of trade negotiations that presidents and negotiators operate on different timescales: the political will might be there, but the technical alignment usually is not. Since talks between Korea and the Mercosur bloc opened in May 2018, the negotiating agenda has covered a litany of issues: goods, services, e-commerce, investment, rules of origin, sanitary and phytosanitary measures, technical barriers, intellectual property, and government procurement. The list goes on, as you can probably imagine.
The economic case almost makes itself. In 2025, Brazil exported roughly $5.5 billion worth of goods to Korea and imported roughly $5.3 billion--a bilateral trade relationship worth about $10.8 billion--and that's before the other Mercosur nations are taken into account. The trade between Korea and Brazil is instructive, however, because it is so complementary: Brazil sends petroleum, iron ore, cellulose, soy and meat to Korea, and receives in return semiconductors, electronics, machinery, and vehicles.
Korea is a wealthy food importer with a powerful manufacturing base that wants to sell into new markets; Mercosur as a bloc, and Brazil as a country, have the food and want the investment. Brazil's agricultural exports alone reached about $2.4 billion in 2025, and the country has already won access to export eggs and egg products to Korea, entirely outside of any free-trade agreement.
Present complementarity is one thing, but future prosperity is another. The case is there for a strengthening of existing trade flows, but does this mean that the two countries will definitely benefit, and equally so, from any trade deal? In 1703, England and Portugal signed the Methuen Treaty precisely because Portuguese wine and English cloth were so naturally complementary, and over two centuries later, economists in each country were arguing over which had benefited more from the deal. Brazilian industrialists are acutely aware of this history.
This is why the National Confederation of Industries (Confederacao Nacional da Industria, CNI) stated its preference for "the suspension of negotiations on the Mercosur-South Korea agreement or, alternatively, defend a partial agreement that reflects the interests of the private sector in market access and rules, and protects sectors against unfair competition." For Brazilian industrialists, it is a rational reading of the strengths of the Korean economy and the weaknesses of Brazil's: industry. Korea is strongest precisely where Mercosur's common external tariff has been the highest: automobiles and components, steel, chemicals, electrical and electronic equipment. The hardest bargaining between the two countries will therefore concern the speed and scope of liberalization, not merely the abstract desirability of a deal. The desirability is there, but as ever, rhetoric and reality need to match up.
So what has concretely changed since talks opened in 2018 and stalled in 2021? The answer is the same resource that has become vital to the emerging economies of the future: minerals, and specifically rare-earth minerals. When Korean Trade Minister Yeo Han-Koo convened the four Mercosur ambassadors in March, he highlighted the vast reserves of untapped lithium and nickel that sat beneath the Mercosur nations, and the summit in July produced a cooperation memorandum between the Brazilian and Korean mineral agencies on exactly this issue: "sustainable development of the mining sector." On a parallel track, Korea and Argentina have agreed on a similar understanding, as both Seoul and Buenos Aires have emphasized critical minerals and energy in the same register.
It might seem merely like adding one ingredient to the mix, but as it stands, minerals have become so vital that they have significantly rebalanced and reframed the trade discussions. Selling soybeans is selling into a market; but selling battery minerals is buying into a production system that cannot be easily reconfigured. Both governments understand what is at stake here: Brazil becoming a vital supplier, but one vulnerable to international trade disruptions; Korea securing valuable minerals, but becoming dependent in the process.
Alongside this balancing act is Mercosur's own expansion of trade negotiations. The trade bloc is increasingly active in pursuing trade agreements, and an equally significant one was launched at the end of June 2026: economic partnership negotiations with Japan. For Korea, this introduces another pressure: time. Seoul and Tokyo's interests overlap almost exactly, with vehicles, machinery, advanced manufacturing, and rare-earth minerals on the table. For Brasilia, this is leverage, as now there are two customers seeking access to the same goods.
Brazil ran a 45-day public consultation on the future of Korea-Mercosur trade, launching on May 15 and closing at the beginning of July, itself a fascinating move to seek a democratic mandate for a specific trade deal. It has catalyzed the discussions: ministers are meeting, working groups exist to refine language, and delegations are being sent to inspect meat processing plants, among other things.
For all of this promise, there is a conspicuous absence: the lack of any announced eighth round of negotiations. Lula has spoken of, and expressed his preference for, finishing in 2026, but--as mentioned above--this is a political objective that the economic reality might not validate. To send a signal that each nation is serious about a trade deal, a Round 8 date should be announced, or at least a schedule for completion. Until then, the summits are best understood as an agreement to keep agreeing.
* * *
Dr Jake Scott is a political theorist specialising in populism and its relationship to political constitutionality. He has taught at multiple British universities and produced research reports for several think tanks.
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Original text here: https://fee.org/articles/korea-and-brazil-at-the-negotiating-table/
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Korea and Brazil at the Negotiating Table
The Asian powerhouse looks to strengthen Latin American trade links.
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In the coming weeks, a delegation of South Korean food safety officials will take an extensive tour of Brazilian meat processing plants, checking everything from chilling temperatures and drainage to the paper trail that charts the meat's journey. The mission of officials was agreed at a presidential summit in July 2026 and is, in every sense ... Show Full Article DETROIT, Michigan, Aug. 18 -- The Foundation for Economic Education posted the following commentary by political theorist Jake Scott: * * * Korea and Brazil at the Negotiating Table The Asian powerhouse looks to strengthen Latin American trade links. - In the coming weeks, a delegation of South Korean food safety officials will take an extensive tour of Brazilian meat processing plants, checking everything from chilling temperatures and drainage to the paper trail that charts the meat's journey. The mission of officials was agreed at a presidential summit in July 2026 and is, in every sensethat matters, the trade negotiation in action.
Long stalled, the Korea-Mercosur trade talks have been revived as each nation adapts to the shifting sands of the international order; but the gap between political theater and technical progress is unusually wide between the two sides. Each might publicly commit to increased trade, but institutionalized differences over practices, such as animal welfare, are the minutiae that can sink trade deals.
On July 27, South Korean President Lee Jae Myung and Brazilian President Lula da Silva agreed to accelerate trade talks and establish a bilateral working group, particularly after Lee described reaching an agreement as urgent. Yet Brasilia's own trade records show the seventh round of talks--held in 2021--as the most recent. Between the rhetoric and the reality, there yawn five years of silence on an apparently urgent issue.
It is a fundamental truth of trade negotiations that presidents and negotiators operate on different timescales: the political will might be there, but the technical alignment usually is not. Since talks between Korea and the Mercosur bloc opened in May 2018, the negotiating agenda has covered a litany of issues: goods, services, e-commerce, investment, rules of origin, sanitary and phytosanitary measures, technical barriers, intellectual property, and government procurement. The list goes on, as you can probably imagine.
The economic case almost makes itself. In 2025, Brazil exported roughly $5.5 billion worth of goods to Korea and imported roughly $5.3 billion--a bilateral trade relationship worth about $10.8 billion--and that's before the other Mercosur nations are taken into account. The trade between Korea and Brazil is instructive, however, because it is so complementary: Brazil sends petroleum, iron ore, cellulose, soy and meat to Korea, and receives in return semiconductors, electronics, machinery, and vehicles.
Korea is a wealthy food importer with a powerful manufacturing base that wants to sell into new markets; Mercosur as a bloc, and Brazil as a country, have the food and want the investment. Brazil's agricultural exports alone reached about $2.4 billion in 2025, and the country has already won access to export eggs and egg products to Korea, entirely outside of any free-trade agreement.
Present complementarity is one thing, but future prosperity is another. The case is there for a strengthening of existing trade flows, but does this mean that the two countries will definitely benefit, and equally so, from any trade deal? In 1703, England and Portugal signed the Methuen Treaty precisely because Portuguese wine and English cloth were so naturally complementary, and over two centuries later, economists in each country were arguing over which had benefited more from the deal. Brazilian industrialists are acutely aware of this history.
This is why the National Confederation of Industries (Confederacao Nacional da Industria, CNI) stated its preference for "the suspension of negotiations on the Mercosur-South Korea agreement or, alternatively, defend a partial agreement that reflects the interests of the private sector in market access and rules, and protects sectors against unfair competition." For Brazilian industrialists, it is a rational reading of the strengths of the Korean economy and the weaknesses of Brazil's: industry. Korea is strongest precisely where Mercosur's common external tariff has been the highest: automobiles and components, steel, chemicals, electrical and electronic equipment. The hardest bargaining between the two countries will therefore concern the speed and scope of liberalization, not merely the abstract desirability of a deal. The desirability is there, but as ever, rhetoric and reality need to match up.
So what has concretely changed since talks opened in 2018 and stalled in 2021? The answer is the same resource that has become vital to the emerging economies of the future: minerals, and specifically rare-earth minerals. When Korean Trade Minister Yeo Han-Koo convened the four Mercosur ambassadors in March, he highlighted the vast reserves of untapped lithium and nickel that sat beneath the Mercosur nations, and the summit in July produced a cooperation memorandum between the Brazilian and Korean mineral agencies on exactly this issue: "sustainable development of the mining sector." On a parallel track, Korea and Argentina have agreed on a similar understanding, as both Seoul and Buenos Aires have emphasized critical minerals and energy in the same register.
It might seem merely like adding one ingredient to the mix, but as it stands, minerals have become so vital that they have significantly rebalanced and reframed the trade discussions. Selling soybeans is selling into a market; but selling battery minerals is buying into a production system that cannot be easily reconfigured. Both governments understand what is at stake here: Brazil becoming a vital supplier, but one vulnerable to international trade disruptions; Korea securing valuable minerals, but becoming dependent in the process.
Alongside this balancing act is Mercosur's own expansion of trade negotiations. The trade bloc is increasingly active in pursuing trade agreements, and an equally significant one was launched at the end of June 2026: economic partnership negotiations with Japan. For Korea, this introduces another pressure: time. Seoul and Tokyo's interests overlap almost exactly, with vehicles, machinery, advanced manufacturing, and rare-earth minerals on the table. For Brasilia, this is leverage, as now there are two customers seeking access to the same goods.
Brazil ran a 45-day public consultation on the future of Korea-Mercosur trade, launching on May 15 and closing at the beginning of July, itself a fascinating move to seek a democratic mandate for a specific trade deal. It has catalyzed the discussions: ministers are meeting, working groups exist to refine language, and delegations are being sent to inspect meat processing plants, among other things.
For all of this promise, there is a conspicuous absence: the lack of any announced eighth round of negotiations. Lula has spoken of, and expressed his preference for, finishing in 2026, but--as mentioned above--this is a political objective that the economic reality might not validate. To send a signal that each nation is serious about a trade deal, a Round 8 date should be announced, or at least a schedule for completion. Until then, the summits are best understood as an agreement to keep agreeing.
* * *
Dr Jake Scott is a political theorist specialising in populism and its relationship to political constitutionality. He has taught at multiple British universities and produced research reports for several think tanks.
* * *
Original text here: https://fee.org/articles/korea-and-brazil-at-the-negotiating-table/