Think Tanks
Here's a look at documents from think tanks
Featured Stories
The Buckeye Institute Urges SCOTUS to Protect Rights of New York's Amish Community
COLUMBUS, Ohio, Nov. 2 [Category: Think Tank] -- The Buckeye Institute, an independent research and educational institution that says its mission is to advance free-market public policy, posted the following news release:
* * *
The Buckeye Institute Urges SCOTUS to Protect Rights of New York's Amish Community
*
Columbus, OH - On Monday, The Buckeye Institute filed an amicus brief with the U.S. Supreme Court urging the justices to hear Miller v. McDonald. In 2019, New York state stopped allowing religious exemptions to its state vaccine mandate, something it had allowed for more than 50 years, ... Show Full Article COLUMBUS, Ohio, Nov. 2 [Category: Think Tank] -- The Buckeye Institute, an independent research and educational institution that says its mission is to advance free-market public policy, posted the following news release: * * * The Buckeye Institute Urges SCOTUS to Protect Rights of New York's Amish Community * Columbus, OH - On Monday, The Buckeye Institute filed an amicus brief with the U.S. Supreme Court urging the justices to hear Miller v. McDonald. In 2019, New York state stopped allowing religious exemptions to its state vaccine mandate, something it had allowed for more than 50 years,even for children who attend private Amish schools.
"For hundreds of years, the Amish have eschewed modern worldly influences, including modern medicine. It is a core part of their religious beliefs and a right that the U.S. Constitution protects," said David C. Tryon, director of litigation at The Buckeye Institute.
In its brief, The Buckeye Institute argues that lower courts have misread Jacobson v. Massachusetts, a 1905 Supreme Court decision that upheld a $5 fine for refusing a smallpox vaccine, as giving governments nearly free rein whenever they invoke public health. The brief points out that the court later relied on that same decision to justify forced sterilization in the infamous Buck v. Bell, a warning about how far Jacobson's reasoning can be stretched. The Buckeye Institute asks the court to clarify that health laws must respect religious freedom and parents' rights and may not favor nonreligious exemptions over religious ones.
First Liberty Institute represents the Amish families in Miller v. McDonald.
***
Original text here: https://www.buckeyeinstitute.org/research/detail/the-buckeye-institute-urges-scotus-to-protect-rights-of-new-yorks-amish-community
* * *
The Buckeye Institute Urges SCOTUS to Protect Rights of New York's Amish Community
*
Columbus, OH - On Monday, The Buckeye Institute filed an amicus brief with the U.S. Supreme Court urging the justices to hear Miller v. McDonald. In 2019, New York state stopped allowing religious exemptions to its state vaccine mandate, something it had allowed for more than 50 years, ... Show Full Article COLUMBUS, Ohio, Nov. 2 [Category: Think Tank] -- The Buckeye Institute, an independent research and educational institution that says its mission is to advance free-market public policy, posted the following news release: * * * The Buckeye Institute Urges SCOTUS to Protect Rights of New York's Amish Community * Columbus, OH - On Monday, The Buckeye Institute filed an amicus brief with the U.S. Supreme Court urging the justices to hear Miller v. McDonald. In 2019, New York state stopped allowing religious exemptions to its state vaccine mandate, something it had allowed for more than 50 years,even for children who attend private Amish schools.
"For hundreds of years, the Amish have eschewed modern worldly influences, including modern medicine. It is a core part of their religious beliefs and a right that the U.S. Constitution protects," said David C. Tryon, director of litigation at The Buckeye Institute.
In its brief, The Buckeye Institute argues that lower courts have misread Jacobson v. Massachusetts, a 1905 Supreme Court decision that upheld a $5 fine for refusing a smallpox vaccine, as giving governments nearly free rein whenever they invoke public health. The brief points out that the court later relied on that same decision to justify forced sterilization in the infamous Buck v. Bell, a warning about how far Jacobson's reasoning can be stretched. The Buckeye Institute asks the court to clarify that health laws must respect religious freedom and parents' rights and may not favor nonreligious exemptions over religious ones.
First Liberty Institute represents the Amish families in Miller v. McDonald.
***
Original text here: https://www.buckeyeinstitute.org/research/detail/the-buckeye-institute-urges-scotus-to-protect-rights-of-new-yorks-amish-community
Blaming Tariffs Won't Fix the Cost-of-Living Crisis
WASHINGTON, Nov. 2 [Category: ThinkTank] -- The Coalition for a Prosperous America posted the following news release:
* * *
Blaming Tariffs Won't Fix the Cost-of-Living Crisis
*
Since September, there have been at least six surveys showing a general disagreement with the Trump administration's tariff policy. The main takeaways are that the public is against the recent, new tariff impositions on Canada - and that tariffs are contributing to the rising cost of living. That these new polls are coming out during an election cycle is no surprise. But regardless of the timing, tariffs and their impacts ... Show Full Article WASHINGTON, Nov. 2 [Category: ThinkTank] -- The Coalition for a Prosperous America posted the following news release: * * * Blaming Tariffs Won't Fix the Cost-of-Living Crisis * Since September, there have been at least six surveys showing a general disagreement with the Trump administration's tariff policy. The main takeaways are that the public is against the recent, new tariff impositions on Canada - and that tariffs are contributing to the rising cost of living. That these new polls are coming out during an election cycle is no surprise. But regardless of the timing, tariffs and their impactson the rising cost of living could use some better explaining.
The September CPI put prices up 3.7% over the past year. Gasoline is up 34.2%, shelter 3.2%, airfares 22.4%. The slice of the index tariffs actually touch (everyday goods excluding food and energy) rose just 0.7%. There is no tariff on a lease, a hospital bill, or a plane ticket.
Despite this, tariffs are under attack more so than they have been since Trump was elected two years ago this month, with the Wall Street Journal referring to them as "the most hated word in politics" in an article posted Oct. 23.
What are the polls saying?
WDIV/Detroit News, Sept. 9: 64.2% oppose Canada tariffs. None of the surveys ask for specific tariffs as Canada is subject to sectoral Section 232 tariffs, as well as the new ones imposed following failed trade negotiations this summer.
Marquette Law School, Sept. 16: 30% support tariffs, lower number since Marquette started asking this question in May 2025. Back then it was 37%.
Politico/Public First, Sept. 23: 25% support Canada tariffs. Oddly, 75% of Canadians support retaliatory tariffs, seemingly uninterested in the cost of living impacts.
Navigator Research/Global Strategy Group, Sept. 22: 60% oppose the Canada tariff policy. Another 57% oppose tariffs globally, with 89% Democrats opposing and 83% Trump Republicans supporting.
Marquette Law School, Sept. 30: 70% oppose new Canada tariffs imposed by Trump after the failed trade talks. 65% say tariffs hurt farmers.
Echelon Insights, Oct. 20: 65% said the high cost of living and 51% said the war in Iran could cause the Republicans to lose the midterms in the House of Representatives. Some 25% said tariffs. Of note, respondents said ending the war in Iran (74%) was the No. 1 way to lower the cost of living. Tariff elimination ranked fourth, at 65% saying lowering them would "help a lot."
The International Emergency Economic Powers Act tariffs (IEEPA), what is known more broadly as the Liberation Day tariffs, took a lot of people by surprise in the spring of 2025 because the tariff scope was global, and the high percentage rates seemed sporadic. Soon after announcing them on Apr. 2, the White House opted for a pause until July, then paused again until August. They lasted less than a year due to a Supreme Court decision, were replaced by short term Section 122 tariffs at a lower, global rate of around 10%, then those expired in July 2026 and were largely replaced by Section 301 tariffs under the guise of forced labor protections.
In other words, tariffs were announced, paused for four months, cut in half six months later in late February 2026 when the Section 122 tariffs replaced them, and remained at similar rates - 10 to 12.5% - under the Section 301 regime.
The New York Fed's ownOctober study confirms it. Tariffs' contribution to goods inflation peaked at 2.9 percentage points in February 2026 as a one-time adjustment. Now, according to the Fed, tariffs' contribution to inflation has fallen to roughly zero by August. Tariffs delivered a brief small step up in the price level. That is behind us, but inflation is not.
Critics argue that the Section 301 tariffs are less about forced labor than about preserving a global tariff regime under a different legal authority. In their view, Washington is finding new ways to keep trade barriers in place rather than returning to freer trade--rewriting, in real time, the U.S. approach to the post-World War II trading system.
Even the European Union faces tariffs under this forced-labor policy. The administration's justification is not that European manufacturers necessarily use forced labor, but that the EU inadequately prevents goods made with forced labor from entering its market and supply chains. Product exemptions apply, however, so the tariffs do not fall on every EU shipment.
The result can look like a patchwork of legal authorities, country-specific rules, and exemptions. But that complexity should not obscure the direction of the recent changes: tariffs have come down, not continued their relentless march upward. You would hardly know it from surveys of public sentiment about tariffs. Those surveys can leave the impression that duties are rising across the board--from beef and cars to baby blankets. That impression confuses the continued existence of tariffs with continued increases in tariff rates. They are not the same thing.
Beef Prices: Tariffs Are Lower, Imports Rising.
Beef is often a marker, like gasoline, for how consumers feel the inflation pain. Beef prices have been rising since Covid, and for a variety of reasons, not the least being the New World Screwworm disease in Mexico, a top source of live cattle exports to the U.S. Those live cattle exports are returning to normal. The Trump administration, much to the chagrin of ranchers trying to compete with imports, has lowered tariffs and increased duty free import quotas on beef from Argentina and Brazil this year. Tariffs cannot be blamed for higher beef prices.
New Car Prices: Lower Than Inflation Despite Tariffs
European, Japanese, and Korean car imports are subject to 15% tariffs. Every other foreign-built vehicle pays the full 25%. Mexico and Canada cars, which once entered here duty free, also now also face Section 232 tariffs on the non-U.S. content. If the car's engines, transmission, and onboard electronics were all imported from Asia or Europe, they paid a low 3.5% Most Favored Nation rate to come into the U.S. via Mexico and Canada.
Those days are gone.
Yet, new car prices are up 1.4% over 24 months vs 5.7% core inflation. Over the last year ending in September, new car prices have risen by 0.6%. Rolling 12-month inflation is 3.7%.
Geico and Aetna Aren't Imported
An imported Swiss watch costs more than it used to. But no one needs a Swiss watch. Everyone needs car insurance. Here is a look at the cost of living impacts for car insurance based on some state's combined average premiums, according to the National Association of Insurance Commissioners (NAIC) 2024 numbers. These are the most recent numbers from NAIC for a single driver.
Geography
2022 combined avg. premium
2024 combined avg. premium
Dollar change
Percent change
United States
$1,257.59
$1,612.81
+$355.22
+28.2%
Massachusetts
$1,256.62
$1,610.84
+$354.22
+28.2%
New York
$1,676.06
$2,149.87
+$473.81
+28.3%
Florida
$1,669.01
$2,174.55
+$505.54
+30.3%
Illinois
$1,080.15
$1,382.89
+$302.74
+28.0%
Texas
$1,469.27
$1,917.05
+$447.78
+30.5%
California
$1,252.41
$1,690.23
+$437.82
+35.0%
This 28% jump in costs happened between 2022 and 2024, entirely before the Liberation Day tariffs existed. Health insurance also adds to the cost of living pressures. KFF, a health policy organization, has measures for state marketplace premiums for an average 40-year old adult. The rates are not surprising.
Geography
2024 benchmark premium / month
2026 benchmark / month
Monthly $ change
Annualized $ change
Percent change
United States
$477
$625
+$148
+$1,776
+31.0%
Massachusetts
$419
$494
+$75
+$900
+17.9%
New York
$736
$817
+$81
+$972
+11.0%
Florida
$489
$683
+$194
+$2,328
+39.7%
Illinois
$473
$646
+$173
+$2,076
+36.6%
Texas
$475
$661
+$186
+$2,232
+39.2%
California
$468
$570
+$102
+$1,224
+21.8%
The Energy Information Administration says the average electricity bill in the U.S. has gone up 9.2% in the last two years, with some states in worse shape. Illinois electricity bills have gone up 22% between August. 2024 and August 2026.
The above surveys all point to cost of living pressures, with many pundits pointing to tariffs as an added pressure point. But if one were to ask those respondents what was their biggest expense, it would likely be on items impacted by higher commodity prices caused by tensions in the Persian Gulf, and mandatory service fees such as rent and insurance.
Congress and Tariffs
Congress has often complained about the way in which the Trump administration has imposed tariffs. In listening to members during hearings, despite the partisan bickering, their main concern is about the uncertainty of tariff policy. Many see the tariffs as erratic.
But it is worth noting that very few members of Congress criticize the Section 232 sectoral tariffs. This is true even among members who tend to be free traders.
In August, California Gov. Gavin Newsom said couldn't "guarantee" that if he or a Democrat were president that they would roll back President Trump's tariffs on Canada and elsewhere. If he was being more specific, it is likely he was talking about the 232s rather than tariffs on Canadian beer.
The United Autoworkers and its leadership support tariffs on passenger vehicles and heavy trucks.
"We are fighting to end the free trade disaster. Free trade pits workers against each other across borders and is fueled by corporate greed. That's why we will always support strategic tariffs, including the 232 tariffs on auto and heavy trucks."
The United Steelworkers Union also supports Section 232 tariffs, though they are open to tweaks.
The Section 232 tariffs are the crown jewel of the Trump administration's tariff policy. More are in the works, with an investigation into robotics and industrial machinery announced on Oct. 28.
Tariffs, coupled with industrial policies, will lead to greater investment in the U.S., and the stated goal of reshoring. U.S. manufacturers and foreign direct investors announced 247,000 manufacturing jobs through reshoring and foreign direct investment in 2025, according to a new report from the Reshoring Initiative.
A Sept. 24 roundtable discussion with eight Republican voters conducted by Echelon deepens the cost of living narrative as it relates to tariffs, and the bigger economic picture. The takeaway from the roundtable was the cost of living was high, the economy was a problem, but the costs were associated with gasoline, food, utilities and rent.
The squeeze is real, but it is coming from the gas pump, the rent check, and the insurance premium. The Fed's own economists now put the tariff contribution to goods inflation at roughly zero now. Blaming tariffs isn't just wrong on the numbers, it distracts the country from the real culprits at the root of the cost of living crisis.
MADE IN AMERICA.
CPA is the leading national, bipartisan organization exclusively representing domestic producers and workers across many industries and sectors of the U.S. economy.
***
Original text here: https://prosperousamerica.org/blaming-tariffs-wont-fix-the-cost-of-living-crisis/
* * *
Blaming Tariffs Won't Fix the Cost-of-Living Crisis
*
Since September, there have been at least six surveys showing a general disagreement with the Trump administration's tariff policy. The main takeaways are that the public is against the recent, new tariff impositions on Canada - and that tariffs are contributing to the rising cost of living. That these new polls are coming out during an election cycle is no surprise. But regardless of the timing, tariffs and their impacts ... Show Full Article WASHINGTON, Nov. 2 [Category: ThinkTank] -- The Coalition for a Prosperous America posted the following news release: * * * Blaming Tariffs Won't Fix the Cost-of-Living Crisis * Since September, there have been at least six surveys showing a general disagreement with the Trump administration's tariff policy. The main takeaways are that the public is against the recent, new tariff impositions on Canada - and that tariffs are contributing to the rising cost of living. That these new polls are coming out during an election cycle is no surprise. But regardless of the timing, tariffs and their impactson the rising cost of living could use some better explaining.
The September CPI put prices up 3.7% over the past year. Gasoline is up 34.2%, shelter 3.2%, airfares 22.4%. The slice of the index tariffs actually touch (everyday goods excluding food and energy) rose just 0.7%. There is no tariff on a lease, a hospital bill, or a plane ticket.
Despite this, tariffs are under attack more so than they have been since Trump was elected two years ago this month, with the Wall Street Journal referring to them as "the most hated word in politics" in an article posted Oct. 23.
What are the polls saying?
WDIV/Detroit News, Sept. 9: 64.2% oppose Canada tariffs. None of the surveys ask for specific tariffs as Canada is subject to sectoral Section 232 tariffs, as well as the new ones imposed following failed trade negotiations this summer.
Marquette Law School, Sept. 16: 30% support tariffs, lower number since Marquette started asking this question in May 2025. Back then it was 37%.
Politico/Public First, Sept. 23: 25% support Canada tariffs. Oddly, 75% of Canadians support retaliatory tariffs, seemingly uninterested in the cost of living impacts.
Navigator Research/Global Strategy Group, Sept. 22: 60% oppose the Canada tariff policy. Another 57% oppose tariffs globally, with 89% Democrats opposing and 83% Trump Republicans supporting.
Marquette Law School, Sept. 30: 70% oppose new Canada tariffs imposed by Trump after the failed trade talks. 65% say tariffs hurt farmers.
Echelon Insights, Oct. 20: 65% said the high cost of living and 51% said the war in Iran could cause the Republicans to lose the midterms in the House of Representatives. Some 25% said tariffs. Of note, respondents said ending the war in Iran (74%) was the No. 1 way to lower the cost of living. Tariff elimination ranked fourth, at 65% saying lowering them would "help a lot."
The International Emergency Economic Powers Act tariffs (IEEPA), what is known more broadly as the Liberation Day tariffs, took a lot of people by surprise in the spring of 2025 because the tariff scope was global, and the high percentage rates seemed sporadic. Soon after announcing them on Apr. 2, the White House opted for a pause until July, then paused again until August. They lasted less than a year due to a Supreme Court decision, were replaced by short term Section 122 tariffs at a lower, global rate of around 10%, then those expired in July 2026 and were largely replaced by Section 301 tariffs under the guise of forced labor protections.
In other words, tariffs were announced, paused for four months, cut in half six months later in late February 2026 when the Section 122 tariffs replaced them, and remained at similar rates - 10 to 12.5% - under the Section 301 regime.
The New York Fed's ownOctober study confirms it. Tariffs' contribution to goods inflation peaked at 2.9 percentage points in February 2026 as a one-time adjustment. Now, according to the Fed, tariffs' contribution to inflation has fallen to roughly zero by August. Tariffs delivered a brief small step up in the price level. That is behind us, but inflation is not.
Critics argue that the Section 301 tariffs are less about forced labor than about preserving a global tariff regime under a different legal authority. In their view, Washington is finding new ways to keep trade barriers in place rather than returning to freer trade--rewriting, in real time, the U.S. approach to the post-World War II trading system.
Even the European Union faces tariffs under this forced-labor policy. The administration's justification is not that European manufacturers necessarily use forced labor, but that the EU inadequately prevents goods made with forced labor from entering its market and supply chains. Product exemptions apply, however, so the tariffs do not fall on every EU shipment.
The result can look like a patchwork of legal authorities, country-specific rules, and exemptions. But that complexity should not obscure the direction of the recent changes: tariffs have come down, not continued their relentless march upward. You would hardly know it from surveys of public sentiment about tariffs. Those surveys can leave the impression that duties are rising across the board--from beef and cars to baby blankets. That impression confuses the continued existence of tariffs with continued increases in tariff rates. They are not the same thing.
Beef Prices: Tariffs Are Lower, Imports Rising.
Beef is often a marker, like gasoline, for how consumers feel the inflation pain. Beef prices have been rising since Covid, and for a variety of reasons, not the least being the New World Screwworm disease in Mexico, a top source of live cattle exports to the U.S. Those live cattle exports are returning to normal. The Trump administration, much to the chagrin of ranchers trying to compete with imports, has lowered tariffs and increased duty free import quotas on beef from Argentina and Brazil this year. Tariffs cannot be blamed for higher beef prices.
New Car Prices: Lower Than Inflation Despite Tariffs
European, Japanese, and Korean car imports are subject to 15% tariffs. Every other foreign-built vehicle pays the full 25%. Mexico and Canada cars, which once entered here duty free, also now also face Section 232 tariffs on the non-U.S. content. If the car's engines, transmission, and onboard electronics were all imported from Asia or Europe, they paid a low 3.5% Most Favored Nation rate to come into the U.S. via Mexico and Canada.
Those days are gone.
Yet, new car prices are up 1.4% over 24 months vs 5.7% core inflation. Over the last year ending in September, new car prices have risen by 0.6%. Rolling 12-month inflation is 3.7%.
Geico and Aetna Aren't Imported
An imported Swiss watch costs more than it used to. But no one needs a Swiss watch. Everyone needs car insurance. Here is a look at the cost of living impacts for car insurance based on some state's combined average premiums, according to the National Association of Insurance Commissioners (NAIC) 2024 numbers. These are the most recent numbers from NAIC for a single driver.
Geography
2022 combined avg. premium
2024 combined avg. premium
Dollar change
Percent change
United States
$1,257.59
$1,612.81
+$355.22
+28.2%
Massachusetts
$1,256.62
$1,610.84
+$354.22
+28.2%
New York
$1,676.06
$2,149.87
+$473.81
+28.3%
Florida
$1,669.01
$2,174.55
+$505.54
+30.3%
Illinois
$1,080.15
$1,382.89
+$302.74
+28.0%
Texas
$1,469.27
$1,917.05
+$447.78
+30.5%
California
$1,252.41
$1,690.23
+$437.82
+35.0%
This 28% jump in costs happened between 2022 and 2024, entirely before the Liberation Day tariffs existed. Health insurance also adds to the cost of living pressures. KFF, a health policy organization, has measures for state marketplace premiums for an average 40-year old adult. The rates are not surprising.
Geography
2024 benchmark premium / month
2026 benchmark / month
Monthly $ change
Annualized $ change
Percent change
United States
$477
$625
+$148
+$1,776
+31.0%
Massachusetts
$419
$494
+$75
+$900
+17.9%
New York
$736
$817
+$81
+$972
+11.0%
Florida
$489
$683
+$194
+$2,328
+39.7%
Illinois
$473
$646
+$173
+$2,076
+36.6%
Texas
$475
$661
+$186
+$2,232
+39.2%
California
$468
$570
+$102
+$1,224
+21.8%
The Energy Information Administration says the average electricity bill in the U.S. has gone up 9.2% in the last two years, with some states in worse shape. Illinois electricity bills have gone up 22% between August. 2024 and August 2026.
The above surveys all point to cost of living pressures, with many pundits pointing to tariffs as an added pressure point. But if one were to ask those respondents what was their biggest expense, it would likely be on items impacted by higher commodity prices caused by tensions in the Persian Gulf, and mandatory service fees such as rent and insurance.
Congress and Tariffs
Congress has often complained about the way in which the Trump administration has imposed tariffs. In listening to members during hearings, despite the partisan bickering, their main concern is about the uncertainty of tariff policy. Many see the tariffs as erratic.
But it is worth noting that very few members of Congress criticize the Section 232 sectoral tariffs. This is true even among members who tend to be free traders.
In August, California Gov. Gavin Newsom said couldn't "guarantee" that if he or a Democrat were president that they would roll back President Trump's tariffs on Canada and elsewhere. If he was being more specific, it is likely he was talking about the 232s rather than tariffs on Canadian beer.
The United Autoworkers and its leadership support tariffs on passenger vehicles and heavy trucks.
"We are fighting to end the free trade disaster. Free trade pits workers against each other across borders and is fueled by corporate greed. That's why we will always support strategic tariffs, including the 232 tariffs on auto and heavy trucks."
The United Steelworkers Union also supports Section 232 tariffs, though they are open to tweaks.
The Section 232 tariffs are the crown jewel of the Trump administration's tariff policy. More are in the works, with an investigation into robotics and industrial machinery announced on Oct. 28.
Tariffs, coupled with industrial policies, will lead to greater investment in the U.S., and the stated goal of reshoring. U.S. manufacturers and foreign direct investors announced 247,000 manufacturing jobs through reshoring and foreign direct investment in 2025, according to a new report from the Reshoring Initiative.
A Sept. 24 roundtable discussion with eight Republican voters conducted by Echelon deepens the cost of living narrative as it relates to tariffs, and the bigger economic picture. The takeaway from the roundtable was the cost of living was high, the economy was a problem, but the costs were associated with gasoline, food, utilities and rent.
The squeeze is real, but it is coming from the gas pump, the rent check, and the insurance premium. The Fed's own economists now put the tariff contribution to goods inflation at roughly zero now. Blaming tariffs isn't just wrong on the numbers, it distracts the country from the real culprits at the root of the cost of living crisis.
MADE IN AMERICA.
CPA is the leading national, bipartisan organization exclusively representing domestic producers and workers across many industries and sectors of the U.S. economy.
***
Original text here: https://prosperousamerica.org/blaming-tariffs-wont-fix-the-cost-of-living-crisis/
Arizona's Administrative State Laid an Egg
PHOENIX, Arizona, Nov. 2 [Category: ThinkTank] -- The Goldwater Institute posted the following news:
* * *
Arizona's Administrative State Laid an Egg
*
An Arizona judge this morning struck down the state's controversial "cage-free egg rule" in a lawsuit brought on behalf of consumers and restaurant owners by the Goldwater Institute and the Pacific Legal Foundation. That rule--which required all eggs sold in Arizona be from "cage free" hens--was adopted in 2022 by Hobbs administration bureaucrats in an effort to prevent voters from having a say on the question. But shortly after the rule was ... Show Full Article PHOENIX, Arizona, Nov. 2 [Category: ThinkTank] -- The Goldwater Institute posted the following news: * * * Arizona's Administrative State Laid an Egg * An Arizona judge this morning struck down the state's controversial "cage-free egg rule" in a lawsuit brought on behalf of consumers and restaurant owners by the Goldwater Institute and the Pacific Legal Foundation. That rule--which required all eggs sold in Arizona be from "cage free" hens--was adopted in 2022 by Hobbs administration bureaucrats in an effort to prevent voters from having a say on the question. But shortly after the rule wasadopted, Gov. Katie Hobbs began postponing its implementation, due the fact that it would have significantly increased food prices throughout the state. The egg rule remains a prime example of administrative state overreach.
When the Arizona Department of Agriculture adopted the rule, they weren't deterred by the fact that the people's elected representatives never created or even considered such an idea. On the contrary, the department claimed it could act under a law that gives the agency power to "adopt rules for poultry husbandry and the production of eggs"--language so broad that it would seem to enable the agency to do whatever it likes.
That's a problem, because such a broad grant of power violates the constitutional principle that laws must be made by the legislature, not by unelected bureaucrats. What's more, five years ago, the Goldwater Institute helped write and pass HB 2599, a pathbreaking new limit on administrative power in Arizona, which says that agencies may not "make a rule that is not specifically authorized by statute." A statute that lets bureaucrats "adopt rules for poultry husbandry and the production of eggs" is general, not specific. So, using HB 2599, we went to court on behalf of restauranteur Grant Krueger, arguing that the egg rule is not "specifically authorized."
And in today's ruling, the Maricopa County Superior Court agreed: "'Specific,'" it declared, "generally means...explicit or tending to specify. 'Authorized' generally means...permitted or directed or possessed of authority. [So]...the language of the statute must...be specific enough to suggest that the Legislature contemplated or anticipated the mandates or standards in the proposed rule. [Yet] the statute on which [the Department] relies, A.R.S. SS 3-710(J), is...so broad and vague that it could be used to authorize nearly any rule."
Today's ruling is not only a win for businesses and consumers in Arizona, but a superb example of how the administrative state--perhaps the single largest threat to constitutional democracy in this country--can be reined in. Bureaucratic agencies too often exercise the legislative, executive, and judicial powers together, in violation of one of our most important constitutional principles, in order to write rules that have the force of the law--even though the employees of these agencies have never been elected by the people. And it's not just questions about food production--which are important enough. Virtually every aspect of our lives today is touched in some manner by the power of the administrative state. That threatens to turn our free society into what we call the Permission Society--in which the individual has no rights, but only permissions, and must ask the government "mother may I?" for every act in his or her life.
But there is a better way. Arizona's "specifically authorized" requirement is just one of the many ways the Goldwater Institute has pioneered for making these agencies accountable to the people once again. Along with our Permit Freedom legislation, our Right to Earn a Living law, our Judicial Deference Reform Act, and other legislation--all of which have been, or are being adopted by states across the country--we have shown that states do have it within their power to push back against administrative overreach.
You can read today's ruling here and learn more about our work on the problem of the administrative state here.
Timothy Sandefur is the Vice President for Legal Affairs at the Goldwater Institute's Scharf-Norton Center for Constitutional Litigation.
***
Original text here: https://www.goldwaterinstitute.org/arizonas-administrative-state-laid-an-egg/
* * *
Arizona's Administrative State Laid an Egg
*
An Arizona judge this morning struck down the state's controversial "cage-free egg rule" in a lawsuit brought on behalf of consumers and restaurant owners by the Goldwater Institute and the Pacific Legal Foundation. That rule--which required all eggs sold in Arizona be from "cage free" hens--was adopted in 2022 by Hobbs administration bureaucrats in an effort to prevent voters from having a say on the question. But shortly after the rule was ... Show Full Article PHOENIX, Arizona, Nov. 2 [Category: ThinkTank] -- The Goldwater Institute posted the following news: * * * Arizona's Administrative State Laid an Egg * An Arizona judge this morning struck down the state's controversial "cage-free egg rule" in a lawsuit brought on behalf of consumers and restaurant owners by the Goldwater Institute and the Pacific Legal Foundation. That rule--which required all eggs sold in Arizona be from "cage free" hens--was adopted in 2022 by Hobbs administration bureaucrats in an effort to prevent voters from having a say on the question. But shortly after the rule wasadopted, Gov. Katie Hobbs began postponing its implementation, due the fact that it would have significantly increased food prices throughout the state. The egg rule remains a prime example of administrative state overreach.
When the Arizona Department of Agriculture adopted the rule, they weren't deterred by the fact that the people's elected representatives never created or even considered such an idea. On the contrary, the department claimed it could act under a law that gives the agency power to "adopt rules for poultry husbandry and the production of eggs"--language so broad that it would seem to enable the agency to do whatever it likes.
That's a problem, because such a broad grant of power violates the constitutional principle that laws must be made by the legislature, not by unelected bureaucrats. What's more, five years ago, the Goldwater Institute helped write and pass HB 2599, a pathbreaking new limit on administrative power in Arizona, which says that agencies may not "make a rule that is not specifically authorized by statute." A statute that lets bureaucrats "adopt rules for poultry husbandry and the production of eggs" is general, not specific. So, using HB 2599, we went to court on behalf of restauranteur Grant Krueger, arguing that the egg rule is not "specifically authorized."
And in today's ruling, the Maricopa County Superior Court agreed: "'Specific,'" it declared, "generally means...explicit or tending to specify. 'Authorized' generally means...permitted or directed or possessed of authority. [So]...the language of the statute must...be specific enough to suggest that the Legislature contemplated or anticipated the mandates or standards in the proposed rule. [Yet] the statute on which [the Department] relies, A.R.S. SS 3-710(J), is...so broad and vague that it could be used to authorize nearly any rule."
Today's ruling is not only a win for businesses and consumers in Arizona, but a superb example of how the administrative state--perhaps the single largest threat to constitutional democracy in this country--can be reined in. Bureaucratic agencies too often exercise the legislative, executive, and judicial powers together, in violation of one of our most important constitutional principles, in order to write rules that have the force of the law--even though the employees of these agencies have never been elected by the people. And it's not just questions about food production--which are important enough. Virtually every aspect of our lives today is touched in some manner by the power of the administrative state. That threatens to turn our free society into what we call the Permission Society--in which the individual has no rights, but only permissions, and must ask the government "mother may I?" for every act in his or her life.
But there is a better way. Arizona's "specifically authorized" requirement is just one of the many ways the Goldwater Institute has pioneered for making these agencies accountable to the people once again. Along with our Permit Freedom legislation, our Right to Earn a Living law, our Judicial Deference Reform Act, and other legislation--all of which have been, or are being adopted by states across the country--we have shown that states do have it within their power to push back against administrative overreach.
You can read today's ruling here and learn more about our work on the problem of the administrative state here.
Timothy Sandefur is the Vice President for Legal Affairs at the Goldwater Institute's Scharf-Norton Center for Constitutional Litigation.
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Original text here: https://www.goldwaterinstitute.org/arizonas-administrative-state-laid-an-egg/
Jamestown Foundation Issues Commentary: Party Pitches Global Governance in Xi's Potemkin City
WASHINGTON, Oct. 31 -- The Jamestown Foundation issued the following commentary on Oct. 30, 2026, in the foundation's China Brief:
* * *
Party Pitches Global Governance in Xi's Potemkin City
Arran Hope
Executive Summary:
* The 2026 Global Governance Forum was carefully stage-managed by the Chinese People's Institute of Foreign Affairs--part of the united front system--to present an image of the People's Republic of China (PRC) as a benevolent provider of techno-utopian solutions for the rest of the world.
* Beijing is adept at using events like the forum, which capped a year of impressive ... Show Full Article WASHINGTON, Oct. 31 -- The Jamestown Foundation issued the following commentary on Oct. 30, 2026, in the foundation's China Brief: * * * Party Pitches Global Governance in Xi's Potemkin City Arran Hope Executive Summary: * The 2026 Global Governance Forum was carefully stage-managed by the Chinese People's Institute of Foreign Affairs--part of the united front system--to present an image of the People's Republic of China (PRC) as a benevolent provider of techno-utopian solutions for the rest of the world. * Beijing is adept at using events like the forum, which capped a year of impressiveconsensus-building, particularly at the United Nations, and particularly among Global South countries, to enhance its legitimacy and expand its influence within the international system.
* Outcomes included position papers on shaping international rules for new frontiers (the deep sea, polar regions, and outer space) and for emerging domains (artificial intelligence and cyberspace). Concerted efforts were also made to shape the international human rights regime, which received support from the UN High Commissioner for Refugees.
* The forum's aims are explicitly hostile to the West. Foreign Minister Wang Yi's speech accused the United States of pursuing a model that "monopolizes power and practices double standards," while a Party think tank report on the Global Governance Initiative described Beijing's approach as "breaking away from the traditionally Western-dominated narrative framework."
-
Over four days in late October, the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) staged an ambitious event to stake its claim to global leadership to the outside world. This was the 2026 Global Governance Forum, which brought together members of the "strategic, political, academic, and business communities of 97 countries and international organizations" to provide a sheen of legitimacy to Beijing's attempts to refashion the international system in a way that better reflects its interests. The forum's theme was "Rebuilding Confidence and Cooperation: Changes Unseen in A Century and Reforming and Improving Global Governance" (Xinhua, October 26).
United Front Fingerprints
The primary host for the event was the Chinese People's Institute of Foreign Affairs (CPIFA, a "mass organization" that operates under the direction of the Office of the Central Institutional Organization Commission. [1] Although it does not have direct ties to the Party's United Front Work Department, the institute functions as part of the Party's wider united front system--as do other mass organizations, such as the All-China Federation of Returned Overseas Chinese and the Chinese People's Association for Friendship with Foreign Countries (China Brief, May 9, 2019, June 21, 2024).
The involvement of CPIFA, through which the Party works to shape foreign perceptions of the People's Republic of China (PRC), is key to understanding the forum's messaging function. While General Secretary Xi Jinping spent the weeks surrounding the forum stoking nationalism by exalting the heroes of the Party's "Long March" and doubling down on the Party's endemic corruption issues, the forum sought to dispel fears of the country's persistent economic problems by projecting a vision of a high-tech future.
The venue for the forum, Xiong'an New Area, underscored the propaganda value of the occasion. One of Xi's signature projects, Xiong'an is a planned city located just outside Beijing. The government argues that its functional role is to relieve congestion in the capital by relocating non-essential government offices, but in practice it is much more than this. Xiong'an is a hubristic project that, in under a decade, has sought to create a new type of digitally integrated city, incorporating the various emerging technologies that Beijing has championed in recent years.
Foreign Minister Wang Yi, in his keynote speech at the forum, hit all of the propaganda points used in the Party's messaging to describe the city. He called it "a project of millennial significance", "a city of the future", "a brand-new endeavor in exploring modernized governance", and "an exemplar of high-quality development" (PRC Ministry of Foreign Affairs [MFA], October 23).
External observers have been more skeptical. Around the time that Wang Yi announced the Global Governance Forum earlier this year, the urban studies scholar Andrew Stokols wrote that Xiong'an "has been largely seen as a failure so far" (Substack/Sinocities, May 20). [2] The critique is largely based on concerns about the decision to build the city on a floodplain, the lack of demand from people wishing to relocate into the city, and the enormous investments made that are yet to realize returns.
Xiong'an nevertheless has significant propaganda value. As Stokols notes, the city is a "showcase for a new ideology of the urban under Xi Jinping" (Stokols, 2025). [3] Its conceptual structure of three cities in one--the built environment above ground, an underground network of over 100 kilometers of utility tunnels below ground, and a digital twin in the cloud--is supposed to show the benefits of Chinese-style modernization and provide a model to the world. During the forum, a video pushed by a number of state media and PRC embassy accounts on Western social media platforms tried to dispel doubts about Xiong'an. But as of October 30, the short video, which is hosted by the Western, PRC-based influencer Tom Shanahan and funded by the Hebei International Communication Center, had accrued fewer than 200 views (YouTube/iHebei, October 26).
Participants literally signed on to the official narrative about Xiong'an at the forum, which the People's Daily framed as "both a grand gathering of ideas on global governance and an important window for the world to observe China's governance" (People's Daily, October 25). After tours around the city, including to its "smart city innovation center," all participants affirmed in the "Forum Vision Document" released at the event that "we ... believe that the principles upheld in [Xiong'an's] planning and construction have important reference value for reforming and improving global governance" (Xinhua, October 26).
Xiong'an's importance for international messaging is evident in the sensitivity about the topic within the PRC. Stokols recounts an attempt to interview officials involved in the city's planning, but was rebuffed, with one professor declining to write a letter of introduction for fear of reprisals (Substack/Sinocities, May 20). Blunter commentators have described Xiong'an as a "Potemkin metropolis" (Hudson Institute, May 13).
Human Rights Hypocrisy Among Forum Outcomes
Beijing is adept at using events like the Global Governance Forum to enhance its legitimacy and expand its influence within the international system. Despite the fragile foundations of the event itself--echoed ironically in the choice of venue--the forum capped a year of impressive consensus-building, particularly at the United Nations, and particularly among Global South countries. Chinese experts have praised these efforts as helping the PRC "acquire the institutional capacity to coordinate positions and form a collective voice within the UN framework" (Guangming Daily, October 26).
Following Xi's proposal of the Global Governance Initiative (GGI)--his fourth global initiative--at the Tianjin Summit of the Shanghai Cooperation Organization in September 2025, Beijing first set up a "Friends of Global Governance Group" at the UN in New York. This group has branches in Geneva and Vienna, and in May released a joint communique with signatories from over 60 countries (PRC Mission to the UN, December 9, 2025; MFA, May 29; People's Daily, May 30). In June, the State Council released a detailed white paper on "Building a More Just and Reasonable Global Governance System", providing more detail on the specifics of Beijing's plans to reform global governance (SCIO, June 6; China Brief, June 26). Beijing already claims tangible results of the GGI, presenting the Hong Kong-based International Court of Mediation, the Shanghai-based World AI Cooperation Organization, and the Beijing-based World Data Organization as "vivid implementations" of the initiative (Guangming Daily, October 26).
Beijing's sought to use the forum to advance its agenda in several key directions. Amid the expected advocacy for expanding the discourse power of Global South countries within the UN system, including through reforms to the UN Security Council, and reforming the global financial and trade systems, two areas of intent stood out. The first is Beijing's desire to shape international rules in both new frontiers--such as the deep sea, polar regions, and outer space--and emerging domains--AI, cyberspace, and outer space. The clearest evidence for this was the release of a "Progress Report on the AI Capacity-Building Action Plan for Good and for All" and a paper titled "China's Position on Strengthening Outer Space Governance" (MFA, October 23; October 26).
As these and other documents released at the summit make clear, Beijing's institutional and normative innovations are explicitly anti-Western. Wang Yi presented his audience with a "stark" choice between a model that "exalts strength, favors self-interest, monopolizes power, and practices double standards" and one that "champions multilateralism, and upholds sovereign equality, mutual respect and international law" (MFA, October 23). A report released at the event by the Xi Jinping Thought on Diplomacy Studies Centre, meanwhile, lambasts the United States explicitly for "relying on self-defined legal standards such as the "effects doctrine" and "minimum contacts", extends the reach of its domestic law infinitely across the globe, exercising jurisdiction without the consent of other states, even carrying out arrests on the territory of third countries, completely disregarding the legal sovereignty and judicial jurisdiction of the states where the conduct occurs." It describes the GGI as "breaking away from the traditionally Western-dominated narrative framework of global governance, and avoiding the outdated discourse traps of 'a strong country is bound to seek hegemony' and 'bloc confrontation,'" while criticizing the "rules-based international order" for serving as "an ideological tool for a small number of states to pursue hegemonism and construct a hierarchical order" (Xi Jinping Thought on Diplomacy Studies Centre, October 2026). The outer space position paper, meanwhile, "opposes any country abusing its domestic laws to obstruct or impose unilateral sanctions on other countries' external airspace activities".
Another area in which Beijing used the forum to press for material changes to the international system was in human rights. It was well placed to do so, as the event was co-organized by the United Nations Association of China, and its partners included the China Society for Human Rights Studies and the China Foundation for Human Rights Development. Also in attendance were UN Under-Secretary-General for Policy Guy Bernard Ryder, the UN Human Rights Council's Independent Expert on the Promotion of a Democratic and Equitable International Order George Katrougalos, and, most pertinently, the UN High Commissioner for Refugees Barham Salih. Remarkably, Salih praised Xi's signature initiative, stating that the Human Rights Council "looks forward to building a close partnership with China ... jointly addressing the refugee challenge within the framework of the GGI" (People's Daily, October 24).
Such statements help fuel Beijing's revisionist approach to the international human rights regime. As Wang Yi declared in his speech, the PRC "promotes the recalibration of global human rights governance", aiming to "place the right to development high on the multilateral human rights agenda"--in other words, to undermine individual human rights and censor critics of its own practices (MFA, October 23). The report from the Xi Jinping Thought on Diplomacy Studies Centre made this unambiguous, arguing that "we must reject the misguided notion of 'human rights above sovereignty,' and make it clear that it is up to the people of each country to assess and improve their own human rights situation" (Xi Jinping Thought on Diplomacy Studies Centre, October 2026).
Holding the forum in Xiong'an only underscored the reality of Beijing's approach to human rights. Not only were the homes of tens of thousands of villagers demolished to make way for the city, but the entire edifice is an exemplar of a technologically empowered surveillance state (Substack/Sinocities, May 20). As an article in the People's Daily lays out, the "Eye of Xiong'an"--which in English sounds unfortunately like the "Eye of Sauron"--integrates data feeds to allow for live monitoring of the entire city. And in the neighborhood of Nanwenying, which Xi inspected in 2023, "each of the more than 3,700 households has its own file"that is "dynamically updated" every two months (Xinhua, June 23, 2023; People's Daily, October 24).
Conclusion
The success of the 2026 Global Governance Forum in Xiong'an is hard to assess. On the one hand, it was able to attract a diverse and influential international crowd: beyond the UN representatives listed above, World Economic Forum founder Klaus Schwab, former Chancellor of Germany Gerhard Schroder, the Asia Society's John L. Thornton, and even New York Times columnist Thomas Friedman were in attendance; and prominent Western scholars, such as the political scientist David Shambaugh, sat on panels to opine on topics such as "Multilateral Solutions for Global Governance." On the other hand, no world leaders made appearances, and Xi himself only sent a letter, which Wang Yi duly read out. The active politicians that did attend were largely those already clearly aligned with the Party (or with the Party in opposition to the West).
The event itself nevertheless does appear to have advanced Beijing's international standing. It helped show that the PRC is serious about changing the rules of the game and is building support to shape how the world approaches emerging frontiers and domains; and through its efforts to build new governance institutions and enlist other countries to endorse its initiatives and adopt its standards, it will continue capitalize on a lack of a positive vision from the rest of the world.
* * *
Arran Hope is the editor of China Brief at The Jamestown Foundation, where he also has responsibility for additional China-related publications and programming.
* * *
Original text here: https://jamestown.org/party-pitches-global-governance-in-xis-potemkin-city/
[Category: ThinkTank]
* * *
Party Pitches Global Governance in Xi's Potemkin City
Arran Hope
Executive Summary:
* The 2026 Global Governance Forum was carefully stage-managed by the Chinese People's Institute of Foreign Affairs--part of the united front system--to present an image of the People's Republic of China (PRC) as a benevolent provider of techno-utopian solutions for the rest of the world.
* Beijing is adept at using events like the forum, which capped a year of impressive ... Show Full Article WASHINGTON, Oct. 31 -- The Jamestown Foundation issued the following commentary on Oct. 30, 2026, in the foundation's China Brief: * * * Party Pitches Global Governance in Xi's Potemkin City Arran Hope Executive Summary: * The 2026 Global Governance Forum was carefully stage-managed by the Chinese People's Institute of Foreign Affairs--part of the united front system--to present an image of the People's Republic of China (PRC) as a benevolent provider of techno-utopian solutions for the rest of the world. * Beijing is adept at using events like the forum, which capped a year of impressiveconsensus-building, particularly at the United Nations, and particularly among Global South countries, to enhance its legitimacy and expand its influence within the international system.
* Outcomes included position papers on shaping international rules for new frontiers (the deep sea, polar regions, and outer space) and for emerging domains (artificial intelligence and cyberspace). Concerted efforts were also made to shape the international human rights regime, which received support from the UN High Commissioner for Refugees.
* The forum's aims are explicitly hostile to the West. Foreign Minister Wang Yi's speech accused the United States of pursuing a model that "monopolizes power and practices double standards," while a Party think tank report on the Global Governance Initiative described Beijing's approach as "breaking away from the traditionally Western-dominated narrative framework."
-
Over four days in late October, the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) staged an ambitious event to stake its claim to global leadership to the outside world. This was the 2026 Global Governance Forum, which brought together members of the "strategic, political, academic, and business communities of 97 countries and international organizations" to provide a sheen of legitimacy to Beijing's attempts to refashion the international system in a way that better reflects its interests. The forum's theme was "Rebuilding Confidence and Cooperation: Changes Unseen in A Century and Reforming and Improving Global Governance" (Xinhua, October 26).
United Front Fingerprints
The primary host for the event was the Chinese People's Institute of Foreign Affairs (CPIFA, a "mass organization" that operates under the direction of the Office of the Central Institutional Organization Commission. [1] Although it does not have direct ties to the Party's United Front Work Department, the institute functions as part of the Party's wider united front system--as do other mass organizations, such as the All-China Federation of Returned Overseas Chinese and the Chinese People's Association for Friendship with Foreign Countries (China Brief, May 9, 2019, June 21, 2024).
The involvement of CPIFA, through which the Party works to shape foreign perceptions of the People's Republic of China (PRC), is key to understanding the forum's messaging function. While General Secretary Xi Jinping spent the weeks surrounding the forum stoking nationalism by exalting the heroes of the Party's "Long March" and doubling down on the Party's endemic corruption issues, the forum sought to dispel fears of the country's persistent economic problems by projecting a vision of a high-tech future.
The venue for the forum, Xiong'an New Area, underscored the propaganda value of the occasion. One of Xi's signature projects, Xiong'an is a planned city located just outside Beijing. The government argues that its functional role is to relieve congestion in the capital by relocating non-essential government offices, but in practice it is much more than this. Xiong'an is a hubristic project that, in under a decade, has sought to create a new type of digitally integrated city, incorporating the various emerging technologies that Beijing has championed in recent years.
Foreign Minister Wang Yi, in his keynote speech at the forum, hit all of the propaganda points used in the Party's messaging to describe the city. He called it "a project of millennial significance", "a city of the future", "a brand-new endeavor in exploring modernized governance", and "an exemplar of high-quality development" (PRC Ministry of Foreign Affairs [MFA], October 23).
External observers have been more skeptical. Around the time that Wang Yi announced the Global Governance Forum earlier this year, the urban studies scholar Andrew Stokols wrote that Xiong'an "has been largely seen as a failure so far" (Substack/Sinocities, May 20). [2] The critique is largely based on concerns about the decision to build the city on a floodplain, the lack of demand from people wishing to relocate into the city, and the enormous investments made that are yet to realize returns.
Xiong'an nevertheless has significant propaganda value. As Stokols notes, the city is a "showcase for a new ideology of the urban under Xi Jinping" (Stokols, 2025). [3] Its conceptual structure of three cities in one--the built environment above ground, an underground network of over 100 kilometers of utility tunnels below ground, and a digital twin in the cloud--is supposed to show the benefits of Chinese-style modernization and provide a model to the world. During the forum, a video pushed by a number of state media and PRC embassy accounts on Western social media platforms tried to dispel doubts about Xiong'an. But as of October 30, the short video, which is hosted by the Western, PRC-based influencer Tom Shanahan and funded by the Hebei International Communication Center, had accrued fewer than 200 views (YouTube/iHebei, October 26).
Participants literally signed on to the official narrative about Xiong'an at the forum, which the People's Daily framed as "both a grand gathering of ideas on global governance and an important window for the world to observe China's governance" (People's Daily, October 25). After tours around the city, including to its "smart city innovation center," all participants affirmed in the "Forum Vision Document" released at the event that "we ... believe that the principles upheld in [Xiong'an's] planning and construction have important reference value for reforming and improving global governance" (Xinhua, October 26).
Xiong'an's importance for international messaging is evident in the sensitivity about the topic within the PRC. Stokols recounts an attempt to interview officials involved in the city's planning, but was rebuffed, with one professor declining to write a letter of introduction for fear of reprisals (Substack/Sinocities, May 20). Blunter commentators have described Xiong'an as a "Potemkin metropolis" (Hudson Institute, May 13).
Human Rights Hypocrisy Among Forum Outcomes
Beijing is adept at using events like the Global Governance Forum to enhance its legitimacy and expand its influence within the international system. Despite the fragile foundations of the event itself--echoed ironically in the choice of venue--the forum capped a year of impressive consensus-building, particularly at the United Nations, and particularly among Global South countries. Chinese experts have praised these efforts as helping the PRC "acquire the institutional capacity to coordinate positions and form a collective voice within the UN framework" (Guangming Daily, October 26).
Following Xi's proposal of the Global Governance Initiative (GGI)--his fourth global initiative--at the Tianjin Summit of the Shanghai Cooperation Organization in September 2025, Beijing first set up a "Friends of Global Governance Group" at the UN in New York. This group has branches in Geneva and Vienna, and in May released a joint communique with signatories from over 60 countries (PRC Mission to the UN, December 9, 2025; MFA, May 29; People's Daily, May 30). In June, the State Council released a detailed white paper on "Building a More Just and Reasonable Global Governance System", providing more detail on the specifics of Beijing's plans to reform global governance (SCIO, June 6; China Brief, June 26). Beijing already claims tangible results of the GGI, presenting the Hong Kong-based International Court of Mediation, the Shanghai-based World AI Cooperation Organization, and the Beijing-based World Data Organization as "vivid implementations" of the initiative (Guangming Daily, October 26).
Beijing's sought to use the forum to advance its agenda in several key directions. Amid the expected advocacy for expanding the discourse power of Global South countries within the UN system, including through reforms to the UN Security Council, and reforming the global financial and trade systems, two areas of intent stood out. The first is Beijing's desire to shape international rules in both new frontiers--such as the deep sea, polar regions, and outer space--and emerging domains--AI, cyberspace, and outer space. The clearest evidence for this was the release of a "Progress Report on the AI Capacity-Building Action Plan for Good and for All" and a paper titled "China's Position on Strengthening Outer Space Governance" (MFA, October 23; October 26).
As these and other documents released at the summit make clear, Beijing's institutional and normative innovations are explicitly anti-Western. Wang Yi presented his audience with a "stark" choice between a model that "exalts strength, favors self-interest, monopolizes power, and practices double standards" and one that "champions multilateralism, and upholds sovereign equality, mutual respect and international law" (MFA, October 23). A report released at the event by the Xi Jinping Thought on Diplomacy Studies Centre, meanwhile, lambasts the United States explicitly for "relying on self-defined legal standards such as the "effects doctrine" and "minimum contacts", extends the reach of its domestic law infinitely across the globe, exercising jurisdiction without the consent of other states, even carrying out arrests on the territory of third countries, completely disregarding the legal sovereignty and judicial jurisdiction of the states where the conduct occurs." It describes the GGI as "breaking away from the traditionally Western-dominated narrative framework of global governance, and avoiding the outdated discourse traps of 'a strong country is bound to seek hegemony' and 'bloc confrontation,'" while criticizing the "rules-based international order" for serving as "an ideological tool for a small number of states to pursue hegemonism and construct a hierarchical order" (Xi Jinping Thought on Diplomacy Studies Centre, October 2026). The outer space position paper, meanwhile, "opposes any country abusing its domestic laws to obstruct or impose unilateral sanctions on other countries' external airspace activities".
Another area in which Beijing used the forum to press for material changes to the international system was in human rights. It was well placed to do so, as the event was co-organized by the United Nations Association of China, and its partners included the China Society for Human Rights Studies and the China Foundation for Human Rights Development. Also in attendance were UN Under-Secretary-General for Policy Guy Bernard Ryder, the UN Human Rights Council's Independent Expert on the Promotion of a Democratic and Equitable International Order George Katrougalos, and, most pertinently, the UN High Commissioner for Refugees Barham Salih. Remarkably, Salih praised Xi's signature initiative, stating that the Human Rights Council "looks forward to building a close partnership with China ... jointly addressing the refugee challenge within the framework of the GGI" (People's Daily, October 24).
Such statements help fuel Beijing's revisionist approach to the international human rights regime. As Wang Yi declared in his speech, the PRC "promotes the recalibration of global human rights governance", aiming to "place the right to development high on the multilateral human rights agenda"--in other words, to undermine individual human rights and censor critics of its own practices (MFA, October 23). The report from the Xi Jinping Thought on Diplomacy Studies Centre made this unambiguous, arguing that "we must reject the misguided notion of 'human rights above sovereignty,' and make it clear that it is up to the people of each country to assess and improve their own human rights situation" (Xi Jinping Thought on Diplomacy Studies Centre, October 2026).
Holding the forum in Xiong'an only underscored the reality of Beijing's approach to human rights. Not only were the homes of tens of thousands of villagers demolished to make way for the city, but the entire edifice is an exemplar of a technologically empowered surveillance state (Substack/Sinocities, May 20). As an article in the People's Daily lays out, the "Eye of Xiong'an"--which in English sounds unfortunately like the "Eye of Sauron"--integrates data feeds to allow for live monitoring of the entire city. And in the neighborhood of Nanwenying, which Xi inspected in 2023, "each of the more than 3,700 households has its own file"that is "dynamically updated" every two months (Xinhua, June 23, 2023; People's Daily, October 24).
Conclusion
The success of the 2026 Global Governance Forum in Xiong'an is hard to assess. On the one hand, it was able to attract a diverse and influential international crowd: beyond the UN representatives listed above, World Economic Forum founder Klaus Schwab, former Chancellor of Germany Gerhard Schroder, the Asia Society's John L. Thornton, and even New York Times columnist Thomas Friedman were in attendance; and prominent Western scholars, such as the political scientist David Shambaugh, sat on panels to opine on topics such as "Multilateral Solutions for Global Governance." On the other hand, no world leaders made appearances, and Xi himself only sent a letter, which Wang Yi duly read out. The active politicians that did attend were largely those already clearly aligned with the Party (or with the Party in opposition to the West).
The event itself nevertheless does appear to have advanced Beijing's international standing. It helped show that the PRC is serious about changing the rules of the game and is building support to shape how the world approaches emerging frontiers and domains; and through its efforts to build new governance institutions and enlist other countries to endorse its initiatives and adopt its standards, it will continue capitalize on a lack of a positive vision from the rest of the world.
* * *
Arran Hope is the editor of China Brief at The Jamestown Foundation, where he also has responsibility for additional China-related publications and programming.
* * *
Original text here: https://jamestown.org/party-pitches-global-governance-in-xis-potemkin-city/
[Category: ThinkTank]
Ifo Institute: Rising Energy Prices and Low Water Levels Have Only a Limited Impact on the German Economy
MUNICH, Germany, Oct. 31 -- ifo Institute issued the following news release:
* * *
30 October 2026
Rising Energy Prices and Low Water Levels Have Only a Limited Impact on the German Economy
The sharp rise in energy prices and low water levels in German rivers weighed on industrial activity and the consumer economy in Germany in the third quarter of 2026. "Nevertheless, the upturn in the German economy has slowed only slightly," says Timo Wollmershauser, Head of Forecasts at ifo, commenting on the increase in gross domestic product by 0.2 percent. In the three previous quarters, economic output ... Show Full Article MUNICH, Germany, Oct. 31 -- ifo Institute issued the following news release: * * * 30 October 2026 Rising Energy Prices and Low Water Levels Have Only a Limited Impact on the German Economy The sharp rise in energy prices and low water levels in German rivers weighed on industrial activity and the consumer economy in Germany in the third quarter of 2026. "Nevertheless, the upturn in the German economy has slowed only slightly," says Timo Wollmershauser, Head of Forecasts at ifo, commenting on the increase in gross domestic product by 0.2 percent. In the three previous quarters, economic outputhad grown on average by 0.3 percent.
According to Wollmershauser, the German economy is likely to pick up steam again by the end of the year, and the upswing is expected to continue.
The improvement in the ifo Business Climate in recent months indicates that. While fiscal policy continues to provide a boost, recovery in the crisis-stricken manufacturing sector is gradually spreading.
As a result, companies in the electronics industry and mechanical engineering are benefiting from growing foreign demand and have significantly revised their export forecasts upward. Private consumption, on the other hand, continues to suffer from inflation, which is expected to pick up again during the winter half-year.
* * *
Original text here: https://www.ifo.de/en/pressemitteilung/2026-10-30/energiepreisanstieg-und-niedrigwasser-bremsen-deutsche-wirtschaft-nur-wenig-aus
[Category: ThinkTank]
* * *
30 October 2026
Rising Energy Prices and Low Water Levels Have Only a Limited Impact on the German Economy
The sharp rise in energy prices and low water levels in German rivers weighed on industrial activity and the consumer economy in Germany in the third quarter of 2026. "Nevertheless, the upturn in the German economy has slowed only slightly," says Timo Wollmershauser, Head of Forecasts at ifo, commenting on the increase in gross domestic product by 0.2 percent. In the three previous quarters, economic output ... Show Full Article MUNICH, Germany, Oct. 31 -- ifo Institute issued the following news release: * * * 30 October 2026 Rising Energy Prices and Low Water Levels Have Only a Limited Impact on the German Economy The sharp rise in energy prices and low water levels in German rivers weighed on industrial activity and the consumer economy in Germany in the third quarter of 2026. "Nevertheless, the upturn in the German economy has slowed only slightly," says Timo Wollmershauser, Head of Forecasts at ifo, commenting on the increase in gross domestic product by 0.2 percent. In the three previous quarters, economic outputhad grown on average by 0.3 percent.
According to Wollmershauser, the German economy is likely to pick up steam again by the end of the year, and the upswing is expected to continue.
The improvement in the ifo Business Climate in recent months indicates that. While fiscal policy continues to provide a boost, recovery in the crisis-stricken manufacturing sector is gradually spreading.
As a result, companies in the electronics industry and mechanical engineering are benefiting from growing foreign demand and have significantly revised their export forecasts upward. Private consumption, on the other hand, continues to suffer from inflation, which is expected to pick up again during the winter half-year.
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Original text here: https://www.ifo.de/en/pressemitteilung/2026-10-30/energiepreisanstieg-und-niedrigwasser-bremsen-deutsche-wirtschaft-nur-wenig-aus
[Category: ThinkTank]
Hudson Institute Issues Commentary: Latin America Policy Is About to Get More Complicated
WASHINGTON, Oct. 31 -- Hudson Institute, a research organization that says it promotes leadership for a secure, free and prosperous future, issued the following commentary to The Dispatch:
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Oct 30, 2026
The Dispatch
Latin America Policy Is About to Get More Complicated
Gil Guerra
When future historians try to pinpoint the high-water mark of the second Trump administration's Latin America policy, they may very well settle on March 7, 2026, and the inaugural Shield of the Americas summit.
That Saturday, at his golf resort in Doral, Florida, President Donald Trump addressed a dozen leaders ... Show Full Article WASHINGTON, Oct. 31 -- Hudson Institute, a research organization that says it promotes leadership for a secure, free and prosperous future, issued the following commentary to The Dispatch: * * * Oct 30, 2026 The Dispatch Latin America Policy Is About to Get More Complicated Gil Guerra When future historians try to pinpoint the high-water mark of the second Trump administration's Latin America policy, they may very well settle on March 7, 2026, and the inaugural Shield of the Americas summit. That Saturday, at his golf resort in Doral, Florida, President Donald Trump addressed a dozen leadersfrom Latin America and the Caribbean. On hand were old friends like Javier Milei, the Argentine firebrand whose ardent support Trump could always count on, and El Salvador's Nayib Bukele, one of the administration's most enthusiastic partners on immigration enforcement.
Promising new allies were present too, like Bolivia's Rodrigo Paz and Chile's Jose Antonio Kast. Even once-prickly partners like Panama's Jose Raul Mulino had come more fully into the fold.
The heads of the assembled countries were open to partnering with Washington, and it wasn't hard to understand why. Trump was riding high on the spectacular success of Operation Absolute Resolve, the January raid that had captured Venezuela's Nicolas Maduro and wiped out 32 of his Cuban bodyguards without losing a single American life. True, Venezuela had not democratized overnight, and some allies were uneasy about the new role of interim president Delcy Rodriguez. But the raid had demonstrated that Washington was serious about prioritizing the region, a shift that held tantalizing prospects of greater investment and security assistance.
It could pay to be America's friend, and it could be exceptionally painful to be its enemy. Cuba had been starved of oil for almost three months and was resorting to putting state workers on a four-day workweek to save fuel. On the day of the summit, about two-thirds of the island was without power, and the regime's total collapse was treated almost as a foregone conclusion. In Nicaragua, Daniel Ortega and Rosario Murillo's dictatorship had hurriedly scrapped its visa-free policy for Cubans shortly after the Maduro raid, in an apparent attempt to avoid drawing American ire. Nonstate actors were also feeling the weight of the new American commitment to the region: The U.S. had carried out 34 strikes on suspected drug boats to that point, and showed no signs of slowing down.
Relations with Mexico had been transformed too. Under the Biden administration, the border had served as a leverage point for Mexico. But now Claudia Sheinbaum's government was cooperating with the United States on border enforcement, and border encounter numbers had plunged to record lows. American pressure also had led Sheinbaum's government to halt oil shipments to Cuba, and it had extradited 92 cartel figures to American custody. Perhaps wary of the Trump administration's undisguised appetite for unilateral military operations on its soil, Mexico had also just worked with U.S. intelligence to carry out its most ambitious operation against a drug kingpin in years.
The United States seemed capable of squeezing friend and foe alike to get what it wanted, and no one could say with certainty what it might do next, or whether there were limits to what it could achieve. Almost eight months later, some of those limits are beginning to crystallize. The Iran war has become a counterexample to the decisive outcome of Operation Absolute Resolve, Trump's attention has been diverted by domestic political issues, and developments in the region have taken a few surprising turns.
Right-wing momentum stalls.
A string of right-wing political victories in the region has buoyed the Trump administration's strategy. From January 2025 to July 2026, conservative candidates won all seven presidential elections in Latin America. Trump ally Flavio Bolsonaro's lead in the first round of Brazil's election raised hopes that South America's largest country would soon throw its considerable weight behind the administration's regional efforts.
Instead, Bolsonaro lost in a surprise upset to leftist incumbent Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva and found himself going from being the president-in-waiting to having to flee the country for the United States for fear of being arrested by Lula's government.
Bolsonaro's loss is not the only complication for the administration's hemispheric strategy. The region's right has seen a drop in popularity: Seven of the 11 right-of-center presidents in Latin America have negative approval ratings, and only Bukele and Costa Rica's Laura Fernandez command the support of comfortable majorities.
Some are also hedging by strengthening ties with China. Ecuador's Daniel Noboa made his first state visit to China in August, Chile has reaffirmed the one-China policy, Kast is meeting with Xi Jinping at the APEC summit in Shenzhen next month, and Peru's Keiko Fujimori has reportedly assured China that Peru attaches great importance to its ties with the nation.
Progress in Venezuela, site of the administration's crowning foreign policy achievement, has been rocky. A devastating set of earthquakes in June set back the country's recovery efforts. Impatient with the private sector's unwillingness to commit to revitalizing Venezuela's oil industry, the White House directly facilitated and joined an oil deal some of its usual supporters have been critical of.
The return of Maria Corina Machado, Venezuela's leading opposition figure, also introduces an element of turbulence into the stability the administration has thus far enjoyed in Venezuela. Calls for elections are growing in strength, and the political situation threatens to begin taking on a life of its own.
Far from collapsing or acquiescing, Cuba and Nicaragua have only grown more brazen in their hostility toward the United States. At the U.N. this week, a Cuban diplomat tried to interrupt Ambassador Mike Waltz's remarks on the embargo and made physical contact with an American diplomat. Cuban President Miguel Diaz-Canel later swore that Cuba "will not back down ... in the face of Yankee pressures and orders."
The Nicaraguan regime has gone even further, shamelessly consolidating its grip on power through an announcement that the country would cease to hold elections, a declaration later converted to a formal constitutional reform process that would see Ortega and Murillo functionally installed as dictators for life.
Out of focus.
What happened? Rightly or wrongly, many actors in the region have determined that the American approach to the region is not going to be the one Washington seemed to be taking in March, for three broad reasons.
First, in his own rhetoric, Trump has repeatedly stated that the U.S. will deal with Cuba after it finishes with Iran. This may be honest and even prudent, but the lessons the Cubans (and the Nicaraguans, who are sometimes mentioned as being next on the administration's to-do list after Cuba) have taken from it are that they are safe as long as the U.S. remains mired in war with Iran. They have evidently decided that they can hold out until the midterm elections, when they expect Republican losses will weaken the president and potentially restrain his Western Hemisphere policy further.
Second, the administration's priorities have sometimes come across as inconsistent. The crux of current American regional strategy, as outlined at the Doral summit, is that the U.S. will not "allow hostile foreign influence to gain a foothold in this hemisphere." This was clearly aimed at China and Russia, but since then, Trump has made a state visit to China, hosted Xi Jinping at the White House, and generally taken a more conciliatory approach to U.S.-China relations than expected.
A military pact with Nicaragua that Russia ratified in April was not met with a dramatic response, and Trump has recently sought to bargain with Russia as well. These developments have made it more difficult for Latin American leaders to discern exactly where the administration's lines are when it comes to engaging with China and Russia.
Third, the United States has not always treated its friends in a friendly manner. Nine of the 12 governments in the Shield of the Americas coalition in March were hit by the forced-labor tariffs that Washington announced in July. These tariffs were particularly harsh for Chile, whose strategic importance and friendly president couldn't save it from being placed in the highest tariff tier of 12.5 percent. The message actions such as these have conveyed is that spending political capital to align with Washington doesn't necessarily buy protection or preferential treatment.
None of this means that Washington has walked away from the region, that it has neglected its partners, or that it has given up on Cuba and Nicaragua. The U.S. has announced plans for $1 billion in security assistance to Colombia, continues to signal forthcoming action in Cuba, and is increasing its scrutiny of the Ortega-Murillo regime.
But compared with how things stood in March, the regional order that Operation Absolute Resolve seemed to be ushering in now appears far less certain.
Running out the clock.
Next week's midterms could further complicate the administration's hemispheric strategy. If Democrats win the Senate and the House, they will likely use their subpoena power to investigate a number of the administration's actions in the region, from the drug-boat strikes to the terms of the Venezuelan oil deal to the State Department's role in the Brazilian election. They could also use spending bills to limit the tools at the White House's disposal. This could include barring funds for unauthorized military actions against Cuba or restricting the Pentagon office that holds Washington's stake in the Venezuelan oil deal.
However, it seems unlikely that Democrats will gain the supermajorities necessary to override a White House veto, and paradoxically a political environment that limits Trump's ability to pass his agenda in Congress could lead him to focus more on foreign policy, where the executive branch enjoys its broadest remit.
Regardless of the midterms' outcome, the administration will have its hands full in the region. Bolsonaro's flight to the U.S. will create another recurring issue in relations with Brazil, and consequential trade talks with Mexico are ongoing.
A military operation in Cuba could also be in the cards. Despite Trump's professed confidence that a deal with the island's communist leaders will come together, diplomacy appears to have stalled. While tensions with the Cuban government have been simmering for months, given Trump's particular loathing for being defied or insulted publicly, Cuban behavior at the U.N. this week could prove to be a tipping point.
While Cuba has rightly become a core issue in the administration's regional strategy, the U.S. might have an easier time reestablishing deterrence and credibility in the region by mounting a swift response to the growing problems in Nicaragua. The region is united in its view that Nicaragua has become a destabilizing presence, and the Nicaraguan regime has never faced the kind of pressure campaign the United States could bring to bear upon it. Taking decisive action against the Nicaraguan dictatorship would send a message to both the Cuban regime and remaining Chavista figures in Venezuela that Operation Absolute Resolve was not a one-off but rather the opening move toward establishing a safer, more prosperous democratic order.
The stability of that order will require the U.S. to demonstrate a willingness to make trade-offs that benefit its friends, such as conditional tariff relief for countries that continue to align with Washington. Perhaps most important, it will also require the U.S. to see the return of democracy to Venezuela through to the end. If the U.S. can prove that it is capable not only of destroying things that are evil but also of building things that are good, American power will seem like something to follow rather than to fear.
Read in The Dispatch (https://thedispatch.com/article/latin-america-trump-donroe-doctrine-venezuela-brazil/?gift_key=d7f35ea38a7c01a2&gift_ref=5022860&utm_source=giftlink&utm_campaign=membergift&utm_medium=copy_link).
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Gil Guerra is a fellow at Hudson Institute. He specializes in United States strategy for the Western Hemisphere, with a focus on the political, economic, and security dynamics shaping Latin America and the Caribbean and their implications for US interests.
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Original text here: https://www.hudson.org/foreign-policy/latin-america-policy-about-get-more-complicated-venezuela-mexico-argentinagil-guerra
[Category: ThinkTank]
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Oct 30, 2026
The Dispatch
Latin America Policy Is About to Get More Complicated
Gil Guerra
When future historians try to pinpoint the high-water mark of the second Trump administration's Latin America policy, they may very well settle on March 7, 2026, and the inaugural Shield of the Americas summit.
That Saturday, at his golf resort in Doral, Florida, President Donald Trump addressed a dozen leaders ... Show Full Article WASHINGTON, Oct. 31 -- Hudson Institute, a research organization that says it promotes leadership for a secure, free and prosperous future, issued the following commentary to The Dispatch: * * * Oct 30, 2026 The Dispatch Latin America Policy Is About to Get More Complicated Gil Guerra When future historians try to pinpoint the high-water mark of the second Trump administration's Latin America policy, they may very well settle on March 7, 2026, and the inaugural Shield of the Americas summit. That Saturday, at his golf resort in Doral, Florida, President Donald Trump addressed a dozen leadersfrom Latin America and the Caribbean. On hand were old friends like Javier Milei, the Argentine firebrand whose ardent support Trump could always count on, and El Salvador's Nayib Bukele, one of the administration's most enthusiastic partners on immigration enforcement.
Promising new allies were present too, like Bolivia's Rodrigo Paz and Chile's Jose Antonio Kast. Even once-prickly partners like Panama's Jose Raul Mulino had come more fully into the fold.
The heads of the assembled countries were open to partnering with Washington, and it wasn't hard to understand why. Trump was riding high on the spectacular success of Operation Absolute Resolve, the January raid that had captured Venezuela's Nicolas Maduro and wiped out 32 of his Cuban bodyguards without losing a single American life. True, Venezuela had not democratized overnight, and some allies were uneasy about the new role of interim president Delcy Rodriguez. But the raid had demonstrated that Washington was serious about prioritizing the region, a shift that held tantalizing prospects of greater investment and security assistance.
It could pay to be America's friend, and it could be exceptionally painful to be its enemy. Cuba had been starved of oil for almost three months and was resorting to putting state workers on a four-day workweek to save fuel. On the day of the summit, about two-thirds of the island was without power, and the regime's total collapse was treated almost as a foregone conclusion. In Nicaragua, Daniel Ortega and Rosario Murillo's dictatorship had hurriedly scrapped its visa-free policy for Cubans shortly after the Maduro raid, in an apparent attempt to avoid drawing American ire. Nonstate actors were also feeling the weight of the new American commitment to the region: The U.S. had carried out 34 strikes on suspected drug boats to that point, and showed no signs of slowing down.
Relations with Mexico had been transformed too. Under the Biden administration, the border had served as a leverage point for Mexico. But now Claudia Sheinbaum's government was cooperating with the United States on border enforcement, and border encounter numbers had plunged to record lows. American pressure also had led Sheinbaum's government to halt oil shipments to Cuba, and it had extradited 92 cartel figures to American custody. Perhaps wary of the Trump administration's undisguised appetite for unilateral military operations on its soil, Mexico had also just worked with U.S. intelligence to carry out its most ambitious operation against a drug kingpin in years.
The United States seemed capable of squeezing friend and foe alike to get what it wanted, and no one could say with certainty what it might do next, or whether there were limits to what it could achieve. Almost eight months later, some of those limits are beginning to crystallize. The Iran war has become a counterexample to the decisive outcome of Operation Absolute Resolve, Trump's attention has been diverted by domestic political issues, and developments in the region have taken a few surprising turns.
Right-wing momentum stalls.
A string of right-wing political victories in the region has buoyed the Trump administration's strategy. From January 2025 to July 2026, conservative candidates won all seven presidential elections in Latin America. Trump ally Flavio Bolsonaro's lead in the first round of Brazil's election raised hopes that South America's largest country would soon throw its considerable weight behind the administration's regional efforts.
Instead, Bolsonaro lost in a surprise upset to leftist incumbent Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva and found himself going from being the president-in-waiting to having to flee the country for the United States for fear of being arrested by Lula's government.
Bolsonaro's loss is not the only complication for the administration's hemispheric strategy. The region's right has seen a drop in popularity: Seven of the 11 right-of-center presidents in Latin America have negative approval ratings, and only Bukele and Costa Rica's Laura Fernandez command the support of comfortable majorities.
Some are also hedging by strengthening ties with China. Ecuador's Daniel Noboa made his first state visit to China in August, Chile has reaffirmed the one-China policy, Kast is meeting with Xi Jinping at the APEC summit in Shenzhen next month, and Peru's Keiko Fujimori has reportedly assured China that Peru attaches great importance to its ties with the nation.
Progress in Venezuela, site of the administration's crowning foreign policy achievement, has been rocky. A devastating set of earthquakes in June set back the country's recovery efforts. Impatient with the private sector's unwillingness to commit to revitalizing Venezuela's oil industry, the White House directly facilitated and joined an oil deal some of its usual supporters have been critical of.
The return of Maria Corina Machado, Venezuela's leading opposition figure, also introduces an element of turbulence into the stability the administration has thus far enjoyed in Venezuela. Calls for elections are growing in strength, and the political situation threatens to begin taking on a life of its own.
Far from collapsing or acquiescing, Cuba and Nicaragua have only grown more brazen in their hostility toward the United States. At the U.N. this week, a Cuban diplomat tried to interrupt Ambassador Mike Waltz's remarks on the embargo and made physical contact with an American diplomat. Cuban President Miguel Diaz-Canel later swore that Cuba "will not back down ... in the face of Yankee pressures and orders."
The Nicaraguan regime has gone even further, shamelessly consolidating its grip on power through an announcement that the country would cease to hold elections, a declaration later converted to a formal constitutional reform process that would see Ortega and Murillo functionally installed as dictators for life.
Out of focus.
What happened? Rightly or wrongly, many actors in the region have determined that the American approach to the region is not going to be the one Washington seemed to be taking in March, for three broad reasons.
First, in his own rhetoric, Trump has repeatedly stated that the U.S. will deal with Cuba after it finishes with Iran. This may be honest and even prudent, but the lessons the Cubans (and the Nicaraguans, who are sometimes mentioned as being next on the administration's to-do list after Cuba) have taken from it are that they are safe as long as the U.S. remains mired in war with Iran. They have evidently decided that they can hold out until the midterm elections, when they expect Republican losses will weaken the president and potentially restrain his Western Hemisphere policy further.
Second, the administration's priorities have sometimes come across as inconsistent. The crux of current American regional strategy, as outlined at the Doral summit, is that the U.S. will not "allow hostile foreign influence to gain a foothold in this hemisphere." This was clearly aimed at China and Russia, but since then, Trump has made a state visit to China, hosted Xi Jinping at the White House, and generally taken a more conciliatory approach to U.S.-China relations than expected.
A military pact with Nicaragua that Russia ratified in April was not met with a dramatic response, and Trump has recently sought to bargain with Russia as well. These developments have made it more difficult for Latin American leaders to discern exactly where the administration's lines are when it comes to engaging with China and Russia.
Third, the United States has not always treated its friends in a friendly manner. Nine of the 12 governments in the Shield of the Americas coalition in March were hit by the forced-labor tariffs that Washington announced in July. These tariffs were particularly harsh for Chile, whose strategic importance and friendly president couldn't save it from being placed in the highest tariff tier of 12.5 percent. The message actions such as these have conveyed is that spending political capital to align with Washington doesn't necessarily buy protection or preferential treatment.
None of this means that Washington has walked away from the region, that it has neglected its partners, or that it has given up on Cuba and Nicaragua. The U.S. has announced plans for $1 billion in security assistance to Colombia, continues to signal forthcoming action in Cuba, and is increasing its scrutiny of the Ortega-Murillo regime.
But compared with how things stood in March, the regional order that Operation Absolute Resolve seemed to be ushering in now appears far less certain.
Running out the clock.
Next week's midterms could further complicate the administration's hemispheric strategy. If Democrats win the Senate and the House, they will likely use their subpoena power to investigate a number of the administration's actions in the region, from the drug-boat strikes to the terms of the Venezuelan oil deal to the State Department's role in the Brazilian election. They could also use spending bills to limit the tools at the White House's disposal. This could include barring funds for unauthorized military actions against Cuba or restricting the Pentagon office that holds Washington's stake in the Venezuelan oil deal.
However, it seems unlikely that Democrats will gain the supermajorities necessary to override a White House veto, and paradoxically a political environment that limits Trump's ability to pass his agenda in Congress could lead him to focus more on foreign policy, where the executive branch enjoys its broadest remit.
Regardless of the midterms' outcome, the administration will have its hands full in the region. Bolsonaro's flight to the U.S. will create another recurring issue in relations with Brazil, and consequential trade talks with Mexico are ongoing.
A military operation in Cuba could also be in the cards. Despite Trump's professed confidence that a deal with the island's communist leaders will come together, diplomacy appears to have stalled. While tensions with the Cuban government have been simmering for months, given Trump's particular loathing for being defied or insulted publicly, Cuban behavior at the U.N. this week could prove to be a tipping point.
While Cuba has rightly become a core issue in the administration's regional strategy, the U.S. might have an easier time reestablishing deterrence and credibility in the region by mounting a swift response to the growing problems in Nicaragua. The region is united in its view that Nicaragua has become a destabilizing presence, and the Nicaraguan regime has never faced the kind of pressure campaign the United States could bring to bear upon it. Taking decisive action against the Nicaraguan dictatorship would send a message to both the Cuban regime and remaining Chavista figures in Venezuela that Operation Absolute Resolve was not a one-off but rather the opening move toward establishing a safer, more prosperous democratic order.
The stability of that order will require the U.S. to demonstrate a willingness to make trade-offs that benefit its friends, such as conditional tariff relief for countries that continue to align with Washington. Perhaps most important, it will also require the U.S. to see the return of democracy to Venezuela through to the end. If the U.S. can prove that it is capable not only of destroying things that are evil but also of building things that are good, American power will seem like something to follow rather than to fear.
Read in The Dispatch (https://thedispatch.com/article/latin-america-trump-donroe-doctrine-venezuela-brazil/?gift_key=d7f35ea38a7c01a2&gift_ref=5022860&utm_source=giftlink&utm_campaign=membergift&utm_medium=copy_link).
* * *
Gil Guerra is a fellow at Hudson Institute. He specializes in United States strategy for the Western Hemisphere, with a focus on the political, economic, and security dynamics shaping Latin America and the Caribbean and their implications for US interests.
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Original text here: https://www.hudson.org/foreign-policy/latin-america-policy-about-get-more-complicated-venezuela-mexico-argentinagil-guerra
[Category: ThinkTank]
CSIS Issues Commentary: What Latin America Can Teach the U.S. About Drone Defense
WASHINGTON, Oct. 31 -- The Center for Strategic and International Studies issued the following commentary:
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What Latin America Can Teach the United States about Drone Defense
Commentary by Henry Ziemer
October 29, 2026
Threats to the U.S. homeland continue to proliferate at a concerning rate. The protection once afforded by oceans and friendly neighbors is eroding as new weapons systems increase the ability of adversaries to hold at risk critical civilian and military infrastructure. In particular, the threat of small uncrewed aerial systems (UASs), often referred to as drones, has attracted ... Show Full Article WASHINGTON, Oct. 31 -- The Center for Strategic and International Studies issued the following commentary: * * * What Latin America Can Teach the United States about Drone Defense Commentary by Henry Ziemer October 29, 2026 Threats to the U.S. homeland continue to proliferate at a concerning rate. The protection once afforded by oceans and friendly neighbors is eroding as new weapons systems increase the ability of adversaries to hold at risk critical civilian and military infrastructure. In particular, the threat of small uncrewed aerial systems (UASs), often referred to as drones, has attractedsignificant attention from homeland defense planners. Indeed, the 2026 U.S. National Defense Strategy highlights the need to "develop and deploy capabilities and systems to counter unmanned aerial systems" in its first line of effort.
However, the drone threats the United States is seeking to prepare for have already arrived in Latin America. According to recent data from the Armed Conflict Location and Event Data Project, approximately 480 weaponized drone attacks took place in the region between January 2025 and August 2026. These attacks have been highly concentrated in Mexico and Colombia, but the threat is metastasizing throughout the region. In Brazil, the Comando Vermelho gang, recently designated as a foreign terrorist organization, uses drones to strike at police forces as well as provide overhead surveillance in dense urban confines. In Ecuador, drones are used to smuggle weapons, explosives, and other contraband into the country's prisons, fueling deadly massacres. Still, Colombia stands out as a particularly dire warning of how cheap commercial drones can be leveraged by malign actors to gain an asymmetric advantage against state forces.
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Figure 1: Targets of Drone Incidents in Colombia, 2023-2026
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Colombia's armed forces remain some of the best-trained in the region, and they are key security partners for the United States. However, the rapid adoption of UASs has thus far outpaced the Colombian government's ability to respond, especially in rural areas where state presence was already weak. Drones allow nonstate armed groups to strike without exposing their fighters to direct retaliation, gather intelligence on military and police movements, and even threaten Colombia's ability to move forces by air.
The United States cannot stand by as its allies suffer the depredations of a criminal air force. Not only do nonstate drone attacks undermine the security and stability of partner governments in the Americas, but they also reveal similar vulnerabilities that adversaries could use to strike the U.S. homeland in the near future. Confronting the drone threat is accordingly a hemispheric challenge, and an area where the United States can play a leading role. More specifically, the United States should look to fortify cooperation between Joint Interagency Task Force-401 (JIATF-401), the Pentagon's dedicated counter-drone organization, and U.S. Southern Command's newly established Joint Task Force Western Hemisphere. In addition, the United States could consider piloting a "lend-lease" program in which it provides partner governments in the Americas with counter-UAS (cUAS) technology and training in exchange for data and operational insights that will allow it to further refine its own drone defenses.
The Evolving Drone Threat
More concerning than the mere rate of drone attacks is the sophistication of nonstate drone tactics in the Americas. For example, in February, Colombian authorities confirmed the first instance of an attack using a fiber-optic cable connected to a drone to render it immune to radio-frequency jamming. In October 2026, Mexico seized a cache of drones that included at least 15 fiber-optic spools. The adoption at scale of fiber-optic drones could leave regional governments further behind in the innovation battle. Indeed, at least in the case of Mexico, it seems likely that interest in fiber-optic technology is being driven by advances in rival cartels' cUAS capabilities, while the Mexican state's drone defenses are of even lesser concern.
Increasingly, criminal groups are recruiting from the ranks of foreign fighters serving in Ukrainian drone units. Mexico's Jalisco New Generation Cartel has reportedly been one of the most active in this regard, sending members to the front to learn drone tactics firsthand. Recent reporting from the Financial Times documented the emergence of an organized recruiting effort seeking to funnel Latin American foreign fighters from Ukraine into Colombian and Mexican criminal outfits. These individuals tend to be sought after for their knowledge of how to modify drones to make them more resilient to jamming, or their tactical expertise as pilots. In Colombia, for instance, recent attacks have employed "swarm" tactics, whereby multiple drones strike at the same targets near-simultaneously to overwhelm defenses. Such operations require close coordination among multiple pilots, expertise that can be difficult to acquire without the kind of instruction that service in Ukraine provides. However, this pipeline is hardly the only means for diffusing drone expertise and tactics, and as UASs are adopted by criminal and nonstate groups in the Americas, it seems likely that more regionally tailored expertise will emerge.
There is every reason to expect that the scale, sophistication, and geographic coverage of nonstate drone tactics in the Americas will continue to increase. Regional governments face steep learning curves, resource constraints, and bureaucratic hurdles that complicate the rollout of drone countermeasures at scale. All the while, criminals and insurgents are innovating at a rapid pace. Two especially concerning developments to watch for include the design and manufacturing of original drone models by criminal groups, as well as the diversification of drones away from UASs to ground and maritime platforms. There are already troubling signs that nonstate groups have begun experimentation in both areas.
While most criminal groups purchase commercial drones that are then modified to incorporate weapons, advances in 3D-printed firearms show that these groups could begin to manufacture their own custom platforms in the future. Many groups already make use of rudimentary 3D printing for certain components such as winglets for drone-dropped munitions, while a raid by the Venezuelan armed forces in September 2025 reportedly recovered eight printers used for manufacturing drones. In Colombia, the seizure of a remotely piloted semisubmersible "narcosub" in July 2025 also points to criminal innovation in the design of uncrewed surface vessels (USVs). USVs offer a number of advantages for drug traffickers, including reduced heat signatures, the ability to loiter off the coast for extended periods, and reduced overhead personnel costs for traffickers. To date, no groups in the region have sought to employ weaponized USVs; however, the lessons from Ukraine's campaign against the Russian Black Sea Fleet illustrate the threat such platforms pose for Latin American navies and coast guards.
Incomplete Countermeasures
Governments throughout the Western Hemisphere have been slow to react to the drone threat, but not stagnant. Under former president Gustavo Petro, Colombia announced a $1.68 billion "drone shield" program aimed at procuring additional sensors and countermeasures to defeat UAS threats. While the program continues to advance, Colombian security forces have targeted drone operators in recent operations in a bid to sever the pipeline funneling drone expertise to nonstate armed groups. Colombia's National Directorate of Taxes and Customs has also implemented new guidance for screening imports of drones and drone parts through the Bogota airport and port of Cartagena in an effort to clamp down on the criminal UAS supply chain. Nevertheless, Colombian armed groups have seemingly accelerated their deployment of weaponized UASs in response to President Abelardo de la Espriella's intensified security campaign. The drone threat in Colombia will likely continue to worsen before it has a chance to get better.
The United States itself has not been spared from such challenges. Cartel drone incursions along the U.S.-Mexico land border illustrate one vector for future adversaries to strike the U.S. homeland. Unauthorized drone incursions at military bases, particularly in the wake of the start of hostilities in Iran, reveal that even static defense of strategic bases represents a challenge. Despite these challenges, the United States continues to make strides in the counter-UAS domain. JIATF-401 has played an especially important role integrating perspectives across the government as well as testing and scaling cUAS options. JIATF-401 also operates a digital cUAS marketplace, where law enforcement, military, and partner-nation actors can interface directly with vendors to quickly procure new sensors and countermeasures.
The United States has also had success recently along the southwest land border following a series of embarrassing false positives and interagency coordination failures earlier this year. The Federal Aviation Administration and the Pentagon inked a safety agreement in April for the use of directed-energy cUAS platforms along the border. In August, Joint Task Force-Southern Border announced it had successfully interdicted three drones using a high-energy laser, the first publicly acknowledged use of such a system in a real-world counter-drone context. Since then, drone activity along the Rio Grande Valley has reportedly fallen by 75 percent. U.S.-Mexico cooperation has also been moving in a positive direction on the counter-drone front, with the two countries recently signing a letter of intent to grant Mexico access to the United States' digital marketplace for drone and counter-drone equipment. In September, the two countries launched the joint Operation Aguila Alta (High Eagle) near the Tijuana-San Diego border to monitor and interdict illicit drone activity.
Although these recent moves are welcome developments, the threat profile of drones along the border differs substantially from that found elsewhere in Mexico, let alone the rest of the Americas. Drones are primarily used by nonstate actors to monitor the movements of border patrols to identify new smuggling routes, or, in some cases, to move contraband via air into the United States. By contrast, in Mexican states such as Michoacan and Jalisco, drones are used to directly attack rival cartels, state forces, and civilians, at times in conjunction with ground offensives and assaults by improvised armored fighting vehicles (often referred to as "narco tanks"). These areas represent the true front line of illicit drone innovation, and a more pressing threat from the Mexican government's perspective. Combating such a threat requires a layered approach that includes sensing, hard- and soft-kill countermeasures, and regulatory alignment across military and civilian institutions.
Forging Lend-Lease for Counter-UAS
By helping its partners in Latin America defeat their own drone threats, the United States can gain valuable insights into how it can better protect its own homeland from future attacks. To do so, the United States must confront two interlocking challenges: the pace of criminal UAS innovation and the constraints partner governments face in defense procurement and adoption. Even in the face of growing drone threats, Latin American militaries face significant budget constraints that could make them reluctant to expend resources on technologies that may not have a significant operational track record and could even be rendered obsolete by the latest nonstate innovation. On top of this, simply pushing capabilities into the hands of regional armed forces will do little to curb the drone threat if they are not accompanied by new tactics, techniques, and procedures to make the most of these systems.
To rectify this, the United States should consider lending cUAS equipment to partner governments in the Americas free of charge for a trial period. In return, these governments would allow U.S. personnel to embed with their forces and access operational data that could be fed back into planning for homeland counter-drone force design. At the conclusion of the trial, governments could have the option of buying the equipment directly, potentially at a discounted rate to reflect asset depreciation during the testing period, or returning it in the event that it did not meet expectations or operational realities. This model would not only allow Latin American governments to start reclaiming the initiative in the innovation battle by rapidly unrolling a range of new cUAS capabilities for relatively low cost, but would also grant the United States access to a wealth of real-world intelligence on the performance of different drone countermeasures.
From a defense-industrial standpoint, the value of real-world testing cannot be overstated in helping planners make better decisions on what kinds of equipment to procure for the future U.S. force. So far, Ukraine has proved the gold standard for such tests, but Latin America can reveal important new insights such as the performance of systems in jungle, riverine, and irregular warfare conditions. This model could also be rolled out using existing cooperation mechanisms, potentially through JIATF-401's cUAS marketplace, which Argentina, Mexico, and Panama have reportedly either expressed interest in or joined. The United States can also leverage the Americas Counter Cartel Coalition and ongoing security cooperation with Colombia and Ecuador as another channel.
To be sure, this approach is only one of a range of actions the United States should take to harden regional capabilities against the illicit drone threat. Washington should always seek to ensure new equipment is accompanied by robust technical assistance. To this end, JIATF-401 and U.S. Southern Command should explore options for deepening cooperation with regional militaries on counter-drone best practices. Beyond strengthening military-to-military ties, the United States should also encourage exchanges between law enforcement and private-sector actors to help build out whole-of-government and whole-of-society strategies for combating the drone threat. The United States should also take care to learn the right lessons from its Latin American partners: The tactics and equipment that may work along the southwest land border may not be suitable for base defense, just as the squad-level tactics used to fend off cartel UAS attacks may not necessarily be indicative of how a peer competitor would employ uncrewed systems in a future high-intensity conflict. Nevertheless, by joining its southern neighbors in their fight against illicit drones, the United States can reap a wealth of vital information for protecting its own homeland, infrastructure, and people.
* * *
Henry Ziemer is a fellow with the Americas Program at the Center for Strategic and International Studies in Washington, D.C.
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Original text here: https://www.csis.org/analysis/what-latin-america-can-teach-united-states-about-drone-defense
[Category: ThinkTank]
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What Latin America Can Teach the United States about Drone Defense
Commentary by Henry Ziemer
October 29, 2026
Threats to the U.S. homeland continue to proliferate at a concerning rate. The protection once afforded by oceans and friendly neighbors is eroding as new weapons systems increase the ability of adversaries to hold at risk critical civilian and military infrastructure. In particular, the threat of small uncrewed aerial systems (UASs), often referred to as drones, has attracted ... Show Full Article WASHINGTON, Oct. 31 -- The Center for Strategic and International Studies issued the following commentary: * * * What Latin America Can Teach the United States about Drone Defense Commentary by Henry Ziemer October 29, 2026 Threats to the U.S. homeland continue to proliferate at a concerning rate. The protection once afforded by oceans and friendly neighbors is eroding as new weapons systems increase the ability of adversaries to hold at risk critical civilian and military infrastructure. In particular, the threat of small uncrewed aerial systems (UASs), often referred to as drones, has attractedsignificant attention from homeland defense planners. Indeed, the 2026 U.S. National Defense Strategy highlights the need to "develop and deploy capabilities and systems to counter unmanned aerial systems" in its first line of effort.
However, the drone threats the United States is seeking to prepare for have already arrived in Latin America. According to recent data from the Armed Conflict Location and Event Data Project, approximately 480 weaponized drone attacks took place in the region between January 2025 and August 2026. These attacks have been highly concentrated in Mexico and Colombia, but the threat is metastasizing throughout the region. In Brazil, the Comando Vermelho gang, recently designated as a foreign terrorist organization, uses drones to strike at police forces as well as provide overhead surveillance in dense urban confines. In Ecuador, drones are used to smuggle weapons, explosives, and other contraband into the country's prisons, fueling deadly massacres. Still, Colombia stands out as a particularly dire warning of how cheap commercial drones can be leveraged by malign actors to gain an asymmetric advantage against state forces.
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Figure 1: Targets of Drone Incidents in Colombia, 2023-2026
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Colombia's armed forces remain some of the best-trained in the region, and they are key security partners for the United States. However, the rapid adoption of UASs has thus far outpaced the Colombian government's ability to respond, especially in rural areas where state presence was already weak. Drones allow nonstate armed groups to strike without exposing their fighters to direct retaliation, gather intelligence on military and police movements, and even threaten Colombia's ability to move forces by air.
The United States cannot stand by as its allies suffer the depredations of a criminal air force. Not only do nonstate drone attacks undermine the security and stability of partner governments in the Americas, but they also reveal similar vulnerabilities that adversaries could use to strike the U.S. homeland in the near future. Confronting the drone threat is accordingly a hemispheric challenge, and an area where the United States can play a leading role. More specifically, the United States should look to fortify cooperation between Joint Interagency Task Force-401 (JIATF-401), the Pentagon's dedicated counter-drone organization, and U.S. Southern Command's newly established Joint Task Force Western Hemisphere. In addition, the United States could consider piloting a "lend-lease" program in which it provides partner governments in the Americas with counter-UAS (cUAS) technology and training in exchange for data and operational insights that will allow it to further refine its own drone defenses.
The Evolving Drone Threat
More concerning than the mere rate of drone attacks is the sophistication of nonstate drone tactics in the Americas. For example, in February, Colombian authorities confirmed the first instance of an attack using a fiber-optic cable connected to a drone to render it immune to radio-frequency jamming. In October 2026, Mexico seized a cache of drones that included at least 15 fiber-optic spools. The adoption at scale of fiber-optic drones could leave regional governments further behind in the innovation battle. Indeed, at least in the case of Mexico, it seems likely that interest in fiber-optic technology is being driven by advances in rival cartels' cUAS capabilities, while the Mexican state's drone defenses are of even lesser concern.
Increasingly, criminal groups are recruiting from the ranks of foreign fighters serving in Ukrainian drone units. Mexico's Jalisco New Generation Cartel has reportedly been one of the most active in this regard, sending members to the front to learn drone tactics firsthand. Recent reporting from the Financial Times documented the emergence of an organized recruiting effort seeking to funnel Latin American foreign fighters from Ukraine into Colombian and Mexican criminal outfits. These individuals tend to be sought after for their knowledge of how to modify drones to make them more resilient to jamming, or their tactical expertise as pilots. In Colombia, for instance, recent attacks have employed "swarm" tactics, whereby multiple drones strike at the same targets near-simultaneously to overwhelm defenses. Such operations require close coordination among multiple pilots, expertise that can be difficult to acquire without the kind of instruction that service in Ukraine provides. However, this pipeline is hardly the only means for diffusing drone expertise and tactics, and as UASs are adopted by criminal and nonstate groups in the Americas, it seems likely that more regionally tailored expertise will emerge.
There is every reason to expect that the scale, sophistication, and geographic coverage of nonstate drone tactics in the Americas will continue to increase. Regional governments face steep learning curves, resource constraints, and bureaucratic hurdles that complicate the rollout of drone countermeasures at scale. All the while, criminals and insurgents are innovating at a rapid pace. Two especially concerning developments to watch for include the design and manufacturing of original drone models by criminal groups, as well as the diversification of drones away from UASs to ground and maritime platforms. There are already troubling signs that nonstate groups have begun experimentation in both areas.
While most criminal groups purchase commercial drones that are then modified to incorporate weapons, advances in 3D-printed firearms show that these groups could begin to manufacture their own custom platforms in the future. Many groups already make use of rudimentary 3D printing for certain components such as winglets for drone-dropped munitions, while a raid by the Venezuelan armed forces in September 2025 reportedly recovered eight printers used for manufacturing drones. In Colombia, the seizure of a remotely piloted semisubmersible "narcosub" in July 2025 also points to criminal innovation in the design of uncrewed surface vessels (USVs). USVs offer a number of advantages for drug traffickers, including reduced heat signatures, the ability to loiter off the coast for extended periods, and reduced overhead personnel costs for traffickers. To date, no groups in the region have sought to employ weaponized USVs; however, the lessons from Ukraine's campaign against the Russian Black Sea Fleet illustrate the threat such platforms pose for Latin American navies and coast guards.
Incomplete Countermeasures
Governments throughout the Western Hemisphere have been slow to react to the drone threat, but not stagnant. Under former president Gustavo Petro, Colombia announced a $1.68 billion "drone shield" program aimed at procuring additional sensors and countermeasures to defeat UAS threats. While the program continues to advance, Colombian security forces have targeted drone operators in recent operations in a bid to sever the pipeline funneling drone expertise to nonstate armed groups. Colombia's National Directorate of Taxes and Customs has also implemented new guidance for screening imports of drones and drone parts through the Bogota airport and port of Cartagena in an effort to clamp down on the criminal UAS supply chain. Nevertheless, Colombian armed groups have seemingly accelerated their deployment of weaponized UASs in response to President Abelardo de la Espriella's intensified security campaign. The drone threat in Colombia will likely continue to worsen before it has a chance to get better.
The United States itself has not been spared from such challenges. Cartel drone incursions along the U.S.-Mexico land border illustrate one vector for future adversaries to strike the U.S. homeland. Unauthorized drone incursions at military bases, particularly in the wake of the start of hostilities in Iran, reveal that even static defense of strategic bases represents a challenge. Despite these challenges, the United States continues to make strides in the counter-UAS domain. JIATF-401 has played an especially important role integrating perspectives across the government as well as testing and scaling cUAS options. JIATF-401 also operates a digital cUAS marketplace, where law enforcement, military, and partner-nation actors can interface directly with vendors to quickly procure new sensors and countermeasures.
The United States has also had success recently along the southwest land border following a series of embarrassing false positives and interagency coordination failures earlier this year. The Federal Aviation Administration and the Pentagon inked a safety agreement in April for the use of directed-energy cUAS platforms along the border. In August, Joint Task Force-Southern Border announced it had successfully interdicted three drones using a high-energy laser, the first publicly acknowledged use of such a system in a real-world counter-drone context. Since then, drone activity along the Rio Grande Valley has reportedly fallen by 75 percent. U.S.-Mexico cooperation has also been moving in a positive direction on the counter-drone front, with the two countries recently signing a letter of intent to grant Mexico access to the United States' digital marketplace for drone and counter-drone equipment. In September, the two countries launched the joint Operation Aguila Alta (High Eagle) near the Tijuana-San Diego border to monitor and interdict illicit drone activity.
Although these recent moves are welcome developments, the threat profile of drones along the border differs substantially from that found elsewhere in Mexico, let alone the rest of the Americas. Drones are primarily used by nonstate actors to monitor the movements of border patrols to identify new smuggling routes, or, in some cases, to move contraband via air into the United States. By contrast, in Mexican states such as Michoacan and Jalisco, drones are used to directly attack rival cartels, state forces, and civilians, at times in conjunction with ground offensives and assaults by improvised armored fighting vehicles (often referred to as "narco tanks"). These areas represent the true front line of illicit drone innovation, and a more pressing threat from the Mexican government's perspective. Combating such a threat requires a layered approach that includes sensing, hard- and soft-kill countermeasures, and regulatory alignment across military and civilian institutions.
Forging Lend-Lease for Counter-UAS
By helping its partners in Latin America defeat their own drone threats, the United States can gain valuable insights into how it can better protect its own homeland from future attacks. To do so, the United States must confront two interlocking challenges: the pace of criminal UAS innovation and the constraints partner governments face in defense procurement and adoption. Even in the face of growing drone threats, Latin American militaries face significant budget constraints that could make them reluctant to expend resources on technologies that may not have a significant operational track record and could even be rendered obsolete by the latest nonstate innovation. On top of this, simply pushing capabilities into the hands of regional armed forces will do little to curb the drone threat if they are not accompanied by new tactics, techniques, and procedures to make the most of these systems.
To rectify this, the United States should consider lending cUAS equipment to partner governments in the Americas free of charge for a trial period. In return, these governments would allow U.S. personnel to embed with their forces and access operational data that could be fed back into planning for homeland counter-drone force design. At the conclusion of the trial, governments could have the option of buying the equipment directly, potentially at a discounted rate to reflect asset depreciation during the testing period, or returning it in the event that it did not meet expectations or operational realities. This model would not only allow Latin American governments to start reclaiming the initiative in the innovation battle by rapidly unrolling a range of new cUAS capabilities for relatively low cost, but would also grant the United States access to a wealth of real-world intelligence on the performance of different drone countermeasures.
From a defense-industrial standpoint, the value of real-world testing cannot be overstated in helping planners make better decisions on what kinds of equipment to procure for the future U.S. force. So far, Ukraine has proved the gold standard for such tests, but Latin America can reveal important new insights such as the performance of systems in jungle, riverine, and irregular warfare conditions. This model could also be rolled out using existing cooperation mechanisms, potentially through JIATF-401's cUAS marketplace, which Argentina, Mexico, and Panama have reportedly either expressed interest in or joined. The United States can also leverage the Americas Counter Cartel Coalition and ongoing security cooperation with Colombia and Ecuador as another channel.
To be sure, this approach is only one of a range of actions the United States should take to harden regional capabilities against the illicit drone threat. Washington should always seek to ensure new equipment is accompanied by robust technical assistance. To this end, JIATF-401 and U.S. Southern Command should explore options for deepening cooperation with regional militaries on counter-drone best practices. Beyond strengthening military-to-military ties, the United States should also encourage exchanges between law enforcement and private-sector actors to help build out whole-of-government and whole-of-society strategies for combating the drone threat. The United States should also take care to learn the right lessons from its Latin American partners: The tactics and equipment that may work along the southwest land border may not be suitable for base defense, just as the squad-level tactics used to fend off cartel UAS attacks may not necessarily be indicative of how a peer competitor would employ uncrewed systems in a future high-intensity conflict. Nevertheless, by joining its southern neighbors in their fight against illicit drones, the United States can reap a wealth of vital information for protecting its own homeland, infrastructure, and people.
* * *
Henry Ziemer is a fellow with the Americas Program at the Center for Strategic and International Studies in Washington, D.C.
* * *
Original text here: https://www.csis.org/analysis/what-latin-america-can-teach-united-states-about-drone-defense
[Category: ThinkTank]