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Manhattan Institute Issues Commentary to Wall Street Journal: Trump Struggles to Sell MAGA on H-1Bs
NEW YORK, Nov. 27 -- The Manhattan Institute issued the following excerpts of a commentary on Nov. 25, 2025, to the Wall Street Journal:
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Trump Struggles to Sell MAGA on H-1Bs
By Jason L. Riley
White House messaging is a mess, and the upside of immigration is getting lost in all the noise.
It has become unfashionable on the political right to say nice things about foreign nationals, even the ones who are here lawfully. Just ask Donald Trump, who has struggled to convince the MAGA base that legal immigration is a net benefit to America. Welcome to my world, Mr. President.
Part of the
... Show Full Article
NEW YORK, Nov. 27 -- The Manhattan Institute issued the following excerpts of a commentary on Nov. 25, 2025, to the Wall Street Journal:
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Trump Struggles to Sell MAGA on H-1Bs
By Jason L. Riley
White House messaging is a mess, and the upside of immigration is getting lost in all the noise.
It has become unfashionable on the political right to say nice things about foreign nationals, even the ones who are here lawfully. Just ask Donald Trump, who has struggled to convince the MAGA base that legal immigration is a net benefit to America. Welcome to my world, Mr. President.
Part of theproblem has been White House inconsistency on the issue. Mr. Trump's position on illegal immigration isn't in doubt, but he can seem indecisive, even self-contradictory, when discussing migration policies for those who play by the rules. Last year, for example, he sided with Elon Musk, a staunch proponent of the H-1B work visa program typically used by foreign professionals in fields such as engineering, technology and medicine.
Continue reading the entire piece here at the Wall Street Journal (https://www.wsj.com/opinion/trump-struggles-to-sell-maga-on-h-1bs-3788449a?mod=author_content_page_1_pos_1)
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Jason L. Riley is a senior fellow at the Manhattan Institute, a columnist at The Wall Street Journal, and a Fox News commentator. Follow him on Twitter here.
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Original text here: https://manhattan.institute/article/trump-struggles-to-sell-maga-on-h-1bs
[Category: ThinkTank]
Center of the American Experiment Issues Commentary: Minnesota's High Employment Level Slows Its Per Capita GDP Growth Rate
GOLDEN VALLEY, Minnesota, Nov. 26 -- The Center of the American Experiment, a civic and educational organization that says it creates and advocates policies, issued the following commentary:
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Minnesota's high employment level slows its per capita GDP growth rate
By John Phelan
Yesterday, I looked at why Gross Domestic Product (GDP) per capita growth in Minnesota has ranked 38th out of 50 states since 2014. Using the framework and data from our recent report "Accounting for Growth: Measuring the sources of per capita economic growth at the state level," which "broke down the growth rate
... Show Full Article
GOLDEN VALLEY, Minnesota, Nov. 26 -- The Center of the American Experiment, a civic and educational organization that says it creates and advocates policies, issued the following commentary:
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Minnesota's high employment level slows its per capita GDP growth rate
By John Phelan
Yesterday, I looked at why Gross Domestic Product (GDP) per capita growth in Minnesota has ranked 38th out of 50 states since 2014. Using the framework and data from our recent report "Accounting for Growth: Measuring the sources of per capita economic growth at the state level," which "broke down the growth rateof per capita GDP into its components; the per capita growth rate in human capital, physical capital, and Total Factor Productivity," I found that:
Minnesota's average annual rate of per capita human capital growth between 2014 and 2023 ranked 42nd out of 50 states. This was driven by low rankings for the growth of the employment/population ratio (43rd out of 50 states), and the per worker skills arising from education (42nd) and experience (45th).
Employment
In October, I summarized how we assemble our estimates of human capital per capita at the state level.
Human capital has both quantitative and qualitative components.
The quantitative components are the number of people employed (E) and the average number of hours each of these workers works annually (hours). Taken together, these give you a measure of what might be called "raw labor."
The qualitative components are the skills which augment each hour of raw labor. We call this "knowledge capital," and it arises from either the education (hEduc) or the experience (hExp) of the average worker.
Multiplying all these together gives you the total stock of human capital in each state in each year (H) and dividing that by the population (N) gives you the per capita stock of human capital (h), as shown in this equation:
[View formula in the link at bottom]
It follows, if you remember your high school math, that we can break down the growth rate in human capital per capita (gh) into the growth rates of its components using this equation:
[View formula in the link at bottom]
This will allow us to calculate how much human capital growth comes from the growth of raw labor and how much comes from the growth of knowledge capital.
Updating my estimates for 2024, for its share of the population employed (E/N) "Minnesota ranked fifth out of 50 states with a rate of 52.4%, an impressive score." But, in 2014, it ranked fourth. This is not to ring an alarm bell -- we've dropped one spot and are still fifth -- but it is to say that the scope for our state to grow its economy by increasing the share of the population employed is probably bumping up against some limit and it already was in 2014. The slow growth of this element of human capital in the period since 2014 should not be a surprise.
Immigration
While increasing the share of given population working can be expected to increase GDP per capita, the same is not necessarily true for increasing the number of people working via immigration.
In our 2021 report "The State of Minnesota's Economy: 2020: A focus on economic growth," I noted that:
Whether a policy which increases the population, such as expanding immigration, leads to higher per capita incomes depends on two things.
The first is whether the new arrivals have an employment ratio at least as high as that of the population already here. If they do not, they actually will lower the employment ratio, exacerbating the very problem the policy is intended to solve...
The second is whether the new arrivals are at least as productive as the workers already resident. Considering GDP per capita, immigrant workers add to the denominator (population) as well as the numerator (GDP). If these workers increase the population by a greater percentage than they increase GDP, they will actually lower GDP per capita.
What matters is the [relative] skill level of the workers...
In any discussion of immigration as a tool to increase the growth rate of per capita GDP, these questions need to be borne in mind.
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John Phelan is an Economist at the Center of the American Experiment.
john.phelan@americanexperiment.org
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Original text here: https://www.americanexperiment.org/minnesotas-high-employment-level-slows-its-per-capita-gdp-growth-rate/
[Category: ThinkTank]
Center of the American Experiment Issues Commentary: Jury Nullification
GOLDEN VALLEY, Minnesota, Nov. 26 -- The Center of the American Experiment, a civic and educational organization that says it creates and advocates policies, posted the following commentary:
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Jury nullification
From KARE-11,
Hennepin County Judge tosses out jury's guilty verdict in $7.2 million home healthcare fraud case.
Jurors tell KARE 11 News their decision wasn't difficult after seeing evidence of "obvious fraud" committed by Abdifatah Yusuf.
The way jury nullification usually works is that a jury will ignore the law and acquit a guilty defendant with whom they sympathize, an act
... Show Full Article
GOLDEN VALLEY, Minnesota, Nov. 26 -- The Center of the American Experiment, a civic and educational organization that says it creates and advocates policies, posted the following commentary:
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Jury nullification
From KARE-11,
Hennepin County Judge tosses out jury's guilty verdict in $7.2 million home healthcare fraud case.
Jurors tell KARE 11 News their decision wasn't difficult after seeing evidence of "obvious fraud" committed by Abdifatah Yusuf.
The way jury nullification usually works is that a jury will ignore the law and acquit a guilty defendant with whom they sympathize, an actin defiance of authority. Here we have something closer to the opposite. KARE-11 quotes the jury foreman,
"It was not a difficult decision whatsoever. The deliberation took probably four hours at most. Based off of the state's evidence that was presented, it was beyond a reasonable doubt," jury foreperson Ben Walfoort told KARE 11 News.
The judge, Sarah West, substituted her opinion in place of the unanimous jury who convicted the defendant.
I did not attend the trial, but having attended similar federal trials, I am of an inclination to trust the jury in such matters.
Judge West is a Democrat appointee. Her webpage has been blocked from public viewing.
On my ScandalTrackerTM this one is No. 8 on the list. According to state court records, Yusuf's trial took place back in August and he was convicted on six counts. It was one of the rare examples in Minnesota of state-level prosecution of Medicaid fraud.
Yusuf appealed the August jury verdicts and late last week the judge threw out the jury results and acquitted Yusuf on all counts. in a 55-page decision. On Monday, the state Attorney General appealed the lower court's decision to the state Court of Appeals.
During the trial, the defense blamed the millions in fraud losses on Yusuf's brother, Mohamed Yusuf. I have not been able to determine what happened to Mohamed.
It's the old "sins of the brother" defense. Mr. Yusuf operated a home health care business with his brother under the name Promise Health Services. The judge thinks that the jury should have put all the blame on Mohamed, who wasn't on trial in that docket.
It seems clear from court records that a massive fraud occurred with taxpayer losses likely exceeding $10 million. It is not clear that any individual has been held to account, or any money recovered. The final paragraph of Judge West's order begins,
While the Court is troubled by the manner in which fraud was able to be perpetuated at Promise, the State's evidence did not exclude other reasonable, rational inferences that are inconsistent with Mr. Yusuf's guilt.
But not troubled enough to do anything about it. That job must belong to someone else.
Lesson to fraudsters, just blame it all on the brother, and you will skate.
[Note: an earlier version of this post appeared at Power Line.]
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Bill Glahn is a Policy Fellow with Center of the American Experiment.
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Original text here: https://www.americanexperiment.org/jury-nullification/
[Category: ThinkTank]
Center of the American Experiment Issues Commentary: Governor Walz's Failed Oversight: Disabled Minnesotans Evicted Amid Medicaid Fraud Crisis
GOLDEN VALLEY, Minnesota, Nov. 26 -- The Center of the American Experiment, a civic and educational organization that says it creates and advocates policies, issued the following commentary:
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Governor Walz's failed oversight: Disabled Minnesotans evicted amid Medicaid fraud crisis
By Matt Dean
Governor Tim Walz has presented himself as a champion for those who got tough breaks along the way, but Minnesotans who live with addiction and disabilities are getting caught in the crossfire of the fraud crisis. These are folks who need help and it is the responsibility of the state, churches,
... Show Full Article
GOLDEN VALLEY, Minnesota, Nov. 26 -- The Center of the American Experiment, a civic and educational organization that says it creates and advocates policies, issued the following commentary:
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Governor Walz's failed oversight: Disabled Minnesotans evicted amid Medicaid fraud crisis
By Matt Dean
Governor Tim Walz has presented himself as a champion for those who got tough breaks along the way, but Minnesotans who live with addiction and disabilities are getting caught in the crossfire of the fraud crisis. These are folks who need help and it is the responsibility of the state, churches,and families to provide the support that they need to survive. Yet, in 2025, adults with profound disabilities -- many nonverbal and under guardianship -- received eviction notices from the places the administration helped fund through the Integrated Community Supports (ICS) program.
Traditionally, these folks would live in group homes, but ICS allowed them to get their own place and receive services to foster more independent living through alternative services agreements. ICS bills Medicaid for housing and supportive services that are traditionally provided in a group home.
DHS cut payments to providers in September of 2025 after ICS allegedly approved Medicaid payments for vendors who did no work on the tenant's behalf. When this happened, many providers cut off leases and left many people with disabilities facing eviction and homelessness or relying on family who were assured the ICS program was going to help their loved one.
In a Nov 13 statement, DHS said it contacted 'five Integrated Community Supports providers (ICS) that they are subject to payment withholds based on a determination by our inspector general that there is a credible allegation of fraud."
These struggling Minnesotans did nothing to deserve eviction. They are guilty of no more than getting a tough break and living with a disability that prevents the from working to support themselves, yet they are paying the price for the crooks who stole money from Medicaid. Many of the fraudsters who stole millions of taxpayer dollars can pay for expensive lawyers and will get a slap on the wrist, while the victims get evicted from their apartments.
For years, the administration has allowed fraud to become a massive problem and a national spectacle. Rather than prevent the fraud from happening in the first place, or assisting federal partners in booting the foreign nationals who rip us off, the administration kicks people with disabilities out of their apartments. The message should not be that if this administration is forced to look for fraud, the most vulnerable will end up being punished for it.
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Matt Dean is a Policy Fellow at Center of the American Experiment.
matt.dean@americanexperiment.org
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Original text here: https://www.americanexperiment.org/governor-walzs-failed-oversight-disabled-minnesotans-evicted-amid-medicaid-fraud-crisis/
[Category: ThinkTank]
Center of the American Experiment Issues Commentary: From Cradle to Content - Children Under 2 are Watching More YouTube Than They Ever Have
GOLDEN VALLEY, Minnesota, Nov. 26 -- The Center of the American Experiment, a civic and educational organization that says it creates and advocates policies, issued the following commentary:
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From cradle to content: Children under 2 are watching more YouTube than they ever have
Parents have always reached for easy tools to soothe young children. However, the advent of digital media and relatively cheap tablets have given parents a new choice. Will little Timmy be placated by stuffed animals, or by the many apps that can populate his personal tablet?
YouTube, filled with a kaleidoscope
... Show Full Article
GOLDEN VALLEY, Minnesota, Nov. 26 -- The Center of the American Experiment, a civic and educational organization that says it creates and advocates policies, issued the following commentary:
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From cradle to content: Children under 2 are watching more YouTube than they ever have
Parents have always reached for easy tools to soothe young children. However, the advent of digital media and relatively cheap tablets have given parents a new choice. Will little Timmy be placated by stuffed animals, or by the many apps that can populate his personal tablet?
YouTube, filled with a kaleidoscopeof videos that carousel endlessly from colorful stimulus to colorful stimulus, is a popular app for parents to turn to. And a new report suggests that they're doing so in increasing numbers.
A 2025 Pew Report found that YouTube use by children under two jumped from 45 percent in 2020 to 62 percent in just six years. As a reminder, children usually learn to walk from 9 to 18 months old, and speak from 18 to 24 months. This YouTube usage represents children in a very early, deeply critical stage of development.
Of these tiny toddlers, 35 percent were reported as watching YouTube daily. For children aged 2-4 years old, 51 percent watched YouTube daily. Among the 5-12 age group, 54 percent of children watched YouTube daily.
This time isn't spent neutrally. The digital viewing available today is not equivalent to the television programs of yesterday. Short-form videos, AI-generated content, and accelerated content pace all serve to create addictive dopamine hits in the mind of the viewer.
YouTube and other online streaming services have long been accused of acting as poor guardians for their users. Streaming services do not have to adhere to broadcast rules like the Children's Television Act of 1990, which required broadcast television to air a certain amount of educational programming and reduce ads. Ads may not be age-appropriate, and can hijack "educational" children's content in favor of marketing. Depending on how tech-savvy parents are, it's very possible that children could accidentally be exposed to graphic violence or pornography while they use services like YouTube that enable autoplay or search. Experts warn that online video content should be consumed sparingly, and a parent should sit beside young children.
As scholars like Johnathan Haidt have warned, cellphone and social media access can be incredibly damaging to children. Their brains become accustomed to the numbing effect that doomscrolling provides, making children more prone to depression, anxiety, and dysregulated behavior. It also can strongly inhibit their ability to concentrate, to think creatively, and choose their behavior well.
The intense drop the nation has seen in NAEP scores and that Minnesota has seen in state testing scores is partially attributable to poor curricula choices and inefficient administrative strategies. Yet there's a very real piece that is outside of administrators' control. When children arrive to class hooked on digital media, attuned to a lifestyle that values cheap thought and quick dopamine hits, it is a Sisyphean task for an educator to ask them to write a well-researched essay.
A culture that values literacy proves it by taking digital distractions away from children and emphasizing reading as a lifestyle choice. Pew's research is an invitation for us to reflect and re-examine our choices.
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Josiah Padley is a Policy Fellow at Center of the American Experiment.
josiah.padley@americanexperiment.org
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Original text here: https://www.americanexperiment.org/from-cradle-to-content-children-under-2-are-watching-more-youtube-than-they-ever-have/
[Category: ThinkTank]
CSIS Issues Commentary: Global Alignment Index - Tracking Support for U.S., Chinese, and Russian Leadership
WASHINGTON, Nov. 26 -- The Center for Strategic and International Studies issued the following commentary on Nov. 25, 2025:
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The Global Alignment Index: Tracking Support for U.S., Chinese, and Russian Leadership
By Gregory B. Poling and Andreyka Natalegawa
The United States and like-minded democracies are engaged in a systemic competition for global leadership. They are pitted against an increasingly coordinated authoritarian club that includes Iran, North Korea, and especially China and Russia. The military, economic, and technological aspects of that competition garner intense interest
... Show Full Article
WASHINGTON, Nov. 26 -- The Center for Strategic and International Studies issued the following commentary on Nov. 25, 2025:
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The Global Alignment Index: Tracking Support for U.S., Chinese, and Russian Leadership
By Gregory B. Poling and Andreyka Natalegawa
The United States and like-minded democracies are engaged in a systemic competition for global leadership. They are pitted against an increasingly coordinated authoritarian club that includes Iran, North Korea, and especially China and Russia. The military, economic, and technological aspects of that competition garner intense interestfrom policymakers and the wider public. But at its heart, this is a normative struggle over the international system--whether the rules-based order crafted by the United States and democratic partners will adapt and endure or be replaced, at least in part, by norms more amenable to the ambitions of China and Russia.
The struggle over the way the system works cannot be won just in Washington, Brussels, or Tokyo, where allies have traditionally been in agreement. It will be determined among those states belonging neither to the U.S. alliance network nor the revisionist constellation of China, Russia, North Korea, and Iran. Those states, often lumped together as the "Global South" or "Nonaligned World," represent roughly five billion of the world's eight billion citizens. But few of them are actually "nonaligned." They have normative preferences and act on them, supporting those rules and institutions that are most attractive to their public and elites. In an increasingly multipolar world, the support of the global majority will be necessary for the success of most rules and institutions.
With deft policy and a willingness to give "nonaligned" partners the space to disagree when they need to, the United States can ensure it wins more arguments than it loses. But to succeed, Washington will need to advance norms that the global majority can get behind and be more discerning in the use of national power, investing in programs that can most efficiently persuade the fence sitters. The United States will not be able to do everything everywhere. Instead, it will have to compete with China and Russia amid relative resource scarcity, without the tools of U.S. soft power dismantled by the Trump administration. U.S. policymakers, therefore, need a more rigorous way to measure the scale and drivers of changes in global alignment over time.
To that end, the authors have developed a Global Alignment Index that scores individual countries on their relative alignment with the United States and China, and with the United States and Russia, in each year from 2008 to 2024. These scores are constructed using UN voting behavior and Gallup public opinion surveys of support for U.S., Chinese, and Russian global leadership. This inaugural version of the index includes the countries of Southeast Asia and the BRICS (excluding China, Iran, and Russia)--15 in total--for which sufficient data is available. More detail is provided in the methodology section below. The authors compare changes in alignment to other data, such as trade flows and major global developments. The findings offer some initial insights into what has or has not affected support for U.S., Chinese, and Russian norms over the last decade and a half.
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Finding 1: The United States and Its Adversaries Were Neck-and-Neck
Figure 1A: U.S.-China Alignment Score
Figure 1B: U.S.-Russia Alignment Score
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The index reveals that, contrary to claims of declining U.S. influence relative to China in Southeast Asia and the BRICS, both had, on average, become more aligned with the United States over the last 16 years. In 2008, the average U.S.-China Alignment Score was -2.17 across Southeast Asia and -1.65 for the BRICS members, firmly in China's corner. Since then, that score has trended modestly upward, particularly in Southeast Asia. In nearly half of the subsequent 16 years, the U.S.-China Alignment Score for Southeast Asia has fallen between -0.5 and 0.5--effectively a dead heat. The story is even better for the United States when compared to Russia, where both Southeast Asia and the BRICS have, in most years, fallen into this competitive range or modestly aligned with the United States. This is not a prediction for future alignment, especially given the policy changes introduced by the Trump administration. But it does indicate that Southeast Asia and the BRICS countries have recently been more aligned with U.S. preferences than is often acknowledged.
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Finding 2: Public Versus Regime Alignment
Figure 2A: U.S.-China Net Approval and Vote Coincidence in BRICS and Southeast Asia
Figure 2B: U.S.-Russia Net Approval and Vote Coincidence in BRICS and Southeast Asia
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The Global Alignment Index is created by combining measures of public and regime alignment. When the Alignment Scores are broken out into their constituent parts, as they are here for the average scores across Southeast Asia and the BRICS, a few lessons are evident. First, public and regime alignment tend to move in the same direction over time, though public opinion is slower to change year-over-year. More importantly, Southeast Asian and BRICS publics are, on average, considerably more aligned with the United States than are their governments. This strongly suggests that the United States would do better by continuing to support open societies in which public opinion can have a greater effect on state behavior. Abandoning support for civil society and good governance may be convenient in the short term, but it is likely to decrease rather than increase a given country's alignment with the United States over time.
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Finding 3: Country-Level Variation
Figure 3A: U.S.-China Alignment Score Heatmap, 2008-2024
Figure 3B: U.S.-Russia Alignment Score Heatmap, 2008-2024
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These averages are useful, but they paper over variability across both Southeast Asia and the BRICS. In Southeast Asia, the Philippines and Vietnam are strongly aligned with the United States compared to China, as is Myanmar (though this represents just one side of the Burmese civil war; since the 2021 coup, its UN voting behavior has been determined by the resistance-aligned representative who occupies the country's seat in the United Nations). Vietnam, however, has grown more aligned with Russia since 2022. Every other country in the region is more aligned with Washington than they were a decade and a half ago but are not consistently in the U.S. camp. Malaysia, Indonesia, and most worryingly, Singapore have moved into greater alignment with China since 2022. Russian global leadership appears much less attractive to most states than does China's, but the two tend to move in the same direction year-over-year.
Among the BRICS, the direction of movement has mostly been toward the United States, closing the gap with China and Russia. But the BRICS show more variation than their Southeast Asian counterparts in their alignments with China versus Russia. India, for instance, has been modestly more aligned with the United States than China since 2020 but remains marginally favorable toward Russia. The opposite is true of Brazil, which recently has marginally favored China over the United States but is still slightly more aligned with the United States than with Russia.
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Finding 4: Trade Does Not Increase Alignment
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One of the most surprising findings of the index is that trade volumes have little impact on--and may even negatively affect--alignment. Over the period examined, both Southeast Asia and the BRICS have grown far more dependent on bilateral trade with China than with the United States. But those countries have, on average, grown less aligned with China over that time. This means that increasing reliance on trade with China has neither improved most publics' views of Chinese global leadership nor led their governments to align with Chinese preferences at the United Nations.
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Finding 5: The Impact of Events Is Hard to Measure
Figure 5A: U.S.-China Alignment Score
Figure 5B: U.S.-Russia Alignment Score
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Foreign policy narratives often focus on major events and their perceived impacts; this includes the South China Sea island building and arbitration, the Covid-19 pandemic, and the invasion of Ukraine. These obviously matter and may have reinforced longer-term trends in how countries and publics viewed Chinese and Russian revisionism or U.S. global leadership. But in most cases among the countries examined, it is hard to tell how much each development drove shifts in alignment. Russia's 2014 annexation of Crimea occurred during a period of upswing in both Southeast Asian and BRICS alignment with the United States over Russia. It may have helped keep that swing going, but it was already evident by 2013. Southeast Asian alignment with Washington over Beijing surged in the same period, 2013 to 2016, which coincided with the period of Chinese island-building and high-profile incidents in the South China Sea. That the surge happened in Southeast Asia but is not evident among the BRICS suggests that it was region-specific, and the South China Sea provides the best explanation. But that momentum dissipated in 2017, indicating that political shifts in Washington and perhaps Manila under Donald Trump and Rodrigo Duterte had a larger effect than ongoing maritime tensions.
During the Covid-19 pandemic in 2020, alignment with Washington over Beijing improved marginally across both Southeast Asia and the BRICS (there was no similar movement in the U.S.-Russia Score), which suggests that China's behavior during the early pandemic harmed its standing. Alignment with Washington over both Beijing and Moscow continued to improve in 2021, contrary to narratives that the United States suffered for its slow provision of vaccines abroad and China's comparative advantage in providing personal protective equipment and other support. The United States likely benefited from a change in leadership, which had far more effect than either country's Covid-19 diplomacy.
The impact of Russia's 2022 invasion of Ukraine is more evident. It coincided with a substantial increase in alignment with the United States over Russia, and to a lesser degree over China. In fact, 2022 was the high-water mark for Southeast Asian and BRICS alignment with the United States over the period studied. But that dissipated quickly, with both Southeast Asian and BRICS averages swinging back toward favoring China and Russia as the war dragged on. The effect of Hamas's October 2023 attack on Israel and the subsequent Israeli invasion of Gaza is murkier. It would have had little impact on the 2023 Alignment Scores, coming too late in the year to be reflected in either Gallup polling or most UN votes. But the 2024 scores suggest that the war did not have as much, if any, impact on average U.S. standing across Southeast Asia and the BRICS. Individual country scores suggest that perceived U.S. support for Israel extended the downturn in alignment with the United States in Muslim-majority countries like Indonesia and Malaysia, and to a lesser degree, Egypt, but not elsewhere.
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Finding 6: U.S. Elections Matter, A Lot
Figure 6A: U.S.-China Average Alignment Score By Administration
Figure 6B: U.S.-Russia Average Alignment Score By Administration
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The effect of changes in U.S. administrations is much clearer than that of individual events. Vladimir Putin has been in control of Russia for the entire period analyzed here, and Xi Jinping has been leading China since late 2012. The global aims of the Chinese and Russian governments have been consistent over time, while those of the United States have shifted between administrations. Averaging the scores for each administration is revealing. The data includes only the last year of the Bush administration, but the scores in that year are consistent with the widespread belief that U.S. standing abroad had reached a nadir by that point. Barack Obama's first administration oversaw a modest improvement, which continued into his second administration. Alignment with the United States decreased considerably during the first Trump administration before recovering nearly to the levels of Obama 2.0 during Joe Biden's presidency.
The tools of U.S. influence did not change markedly from administration to administration, suggesting that the Bush and Trump administrations were using those tools to advance norms that Southeast Asia and the BRICS, on balance, found less attractive than those favored by Obama and Biden. This suggests that the 2025 U.S.-China and U.S.-Russia Alignment Scores are likely to decrease.
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Finding 7: BRICS Membership Does Not Change Alignment
Figure 7A: U.S.-China Alignment Score By BRICS Entry Year
Figure 7B: U.S.-Russia Alignment Score By BRICS Entry Year
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Egypt, Ethiopia, the United Arab Emirates, and Indonesia joined the BRICS in 2023 and 2024, and the grouping's membership will likely continue to grow. This trend has policymakers in Washington worried, but that concern seems premature. The Alignment Scores of three original BRICS members--Brazil, India, and South Africa--show a mixed record since joining the organization. India has grown modestly more aligned with the United States compared to China over the last decade and a half, while South Africa has trended modestly toward China, and Brazil has ended up roughly where it started, despite swinging considerably from administration to administration. On the U.S.-Russia Score, all three original BRICS members were little changed between their dates of accession and 2024, though Brazil and South Africa have swung considerably more than India over that time. BRICS membership has not moved the members into greater alignment with China or Russia. That could change with the new members, but there is no evidence to support that yet.
Methodology
The U.S.-China Alignment Scores and U.S.-Russia Alignment Scores for each country are created from an average of two indicators: net approval ratings sourced from Gallup's annual world poll and UN voting coincidence scores on key votes as identified by the U.S. Department of State in its annual Voting Practices in the United Nations report. These two indicators serve as proxies for public and elite, or regime, alignment, respectively.
Net approval ratings are derived from three questions in Gallup's annual world poll:
1. Do you approve or disapprove of the job performance of the leadership of the United States?
2. Do you approve or disapprove of the job performance of the leadership of China?
3. Do you approve or disapprove of the job performance of the leadership of Russia?
Results from Gallup's surveys are based on nationally representative, probability-based samples among the adult population aged 15 and older in each country. This report focuses on findings between 2008 and 2024. The authors first determined net approval for the United States, China, and Russia in each country by subtracting the percentage of respondents reporting disapproval from those reporting approval. By subtracting the China and Russia net approval scores from the U.S. net approval score, these provide a relative U.S.-China and U.S.-Russia indicator for each country. In years where these relative approval scores are positive, respondents are more supportive of U.S. global leadership than that of China or Russia. In years where the scores are negative, the inverse is true.
For UN voting coincidence statistics, this analysis focuses on contested General Assembly votes identified by the Department of State as "important" in the annual Voting Practices in the United Nations report. This analysis applies the methodology the State Department used from 2017 to 2021 to calculate voting coincidence across all years: It tallies one point for votes that are the same as those of the United States (or China or Russia), zero for those that are opposite, and half a point when one country, but not both, abstained on a resolution. The total number of points is then divided by the total number of votes excluding absences. Each country's voting coincidence with China and Russia is subtracted from its voting coincidence with the United States to generate another relative U.S.-China and U.S.-Russia indicator.
These two indicators--of relative public approval and relative UN voting coincidence--are averaged to generate the U.S.-China and U.S.-Russia Alignment Scores used in the index. Those scores are presented on a scale of -5 to 5, with positive numbers signifying greater alignment with the United States and negative numbers signifying greater alignment with China or Russia. Any missing scores indicate that Gallup did not conduct surveys in the country that year.
For trade statistics, this analysis relies on the UN Comtrade database, using figures reported by the countries of analysis (i.e., Southeast Asian and BRICS countries). The trade percentage included in the chart above reflects the difference in how much a country traded with the United States and how much it traded with either China or Russia, expressed as a percentage of the country's overall trade volume. In years where this trade percentage is positive, the country conducted more trade with the United States than with China or Russia, with the value of the percentage reflecting the size of the difference in this trade as a share of the country's overall trade volume. In years where this percentage is negative, the inverse is true.
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Gregory B. Poling is a senior fellow and director for the Southeast Asia Program and the Asia Maritime Transparency Initiative at the Center for Strategic and International Studies (CSIS) in Washington, D.C. Andreyka Natalegawa is an associate fellow for the CSIS Southeast Asia Program.
The authors would like to thank Lauren Mai, Japhet Quitzon, Gemma King, Sophia Datta, Hpone Thit Htoo, and Rocio Gatdula for their research support.
This commentary is made possible through the support of CSIS and the Japan External Trade Organization.
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Original text here: https://www.csis.org/analysis/global-alignment-index-tracking-support-us-chinese-and-russian-leadership
[Category: ThinkTank]
American Action Forum Issues Commentary: GAIN AI Act in Context - Export Controls and U.S. AI Competitiveness
WASHINGTON, Nov. 26 -- The American Action Forum issued the following commentary on Nov. 25, 2025:
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The GAIN AI Act in Context: Export Controls and U.S. AI Competitiveness
By Angela Luna
Executive Summary
* The Guaranteeing Access and Innovation for National Artificial Intelligence (GAIN AI) Act seeks to address domestic supply constraints and inequality of access by mandating U.S. domestic consumers have priority access to advanced semiconductors before international sales can be fulfilled.
* This policy, however, risks unintentionally harming U.S. technological innovation and advantaging
... Show Full Article
WASHINGTON, Nov. 26 -- The American Action Forum issued the following commentary on Nov. 25, 2025:
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The GAIN AI Act in Context: Export Controls and U.S. AI Competitiveness
By Angela Luna
Executive Summary
* The Guaranteeing Access and Innovation for National Artificial Intelligence (GAIN AI) Act seeks to address domestic supply constraints and inequality of access by mandating U.S. domestic consumers have priority access to advanced semiconductors before international sales can be fulfilled.
* This policy, however, risks unintentionally harming U.S. technological innovation and advantagingforeign competition by broadly limiting access of leading U.S. chip producers to profitable global markets.
* To sustain long-term U.S. AI competitiveness, policymakers must abandon broad restrictions in favor of a strategy focused on establishing narrow, evidence-based export controls limited strictly to clear security threats and accelerating domestic production and infrastructure development.
Introduction
The global AI leadership race is now a race for the most advanced chips. High-performance chips, such as GPUs and other AI accelerators, are the pillar of training and running advanced AI models. Today, U.S. companies - including NVIDIA and AMD - lead in the design and production of these chips. This edge in semiconductor technology is a major part of the United States' strength in AI and a key piece of its broader geopolitical strategy.
To sustain this competitive edge, the federal government has increasingly deployed export controls as a strategic tool to restrict access to advanced AI chips. The bipartisan Guaranteeing Access and Innovation for National Artificial Intelligence (GAIN AI) Act seeks to address domestic supply constraints and inequality of access by mandating U.S. domestic consumers have priority access to advanced semiconductors before international sales can be fulfilled. It risks unintentionally harming U.S. technological innovation, however, and advantaging foreign competition by broadly limiting access of leading U.S. chipmakers to profitable global markets.
The debate around the GAIN AI Act mirrors past challenges in managing the global spread of advanced AI chips, especially as the government decides how to handle a technology used in both civilian and military contexts. Yet to sustain long-term U.S. AI competitiveness, policymakers must abandon broad restrictions in favor of a strategy focused on establishing narrow, evidence-based export controls limited strictly to clear security threats and accelerating domestic production and infrastructure development.
The GAIN AI Act and the Redefinition of AI Chip Exports
To protect the U.S. technological edge and competitive advantage in artificial intelligence (AI), the federal government has imposed export controls that restrict access to advanced AI chips, particularly to China. Over the past years, successive administrations have introduced restrictions on chip exports. Notably, the first Trump Administration imposed export restrictions on advanced chips to China, including NVIDIA's A100 and H100, which are designed for high-performance AI. Subsequently, the Biden Administration put in place the Framework for Artificial Intelligence Diffusion, a model that proposed a three-tiered system to control the global trade of U.S. AI chips. (This framework was rescinded by the incoming Trump Administration, citing concerns that such restrictions could ultimately hinder U.S. innovation and leadership in the AI sector.)
The recently introduced bipartisan GAIN AI Act represents a continuation of these export control initiatives and frames the availability of AI chips as a matter of national security and economic stability. The Act would require any U.S. chipmaker to meet a domestic quota before exporting chips. Specifically, it requires a presumption of denial of export licenses for "advanced integrated circuits", and any products that use them, if a company cannot certify that no U.S. entity is seeking those chips and that exporting them will not disrupt domestic supply. This mechanism is designed to ensure that U.S.-produced technologies meet the domestic demand of U.S.-based customers, including small businesses and academic institutions, before chipmakers satisfy international demand.
The GAIN AI Act brings the same tradeoffs as past proposals to manage the global diffusion of advanced AI chips, however. It highlights the problem of how the government should best intervene - given the dual-use nature of AI technology, with both civilian and military uses - without undermining long-term U.S. AI leadership and competitiveness in international markets. Consequently, policymakers must navigate this challenging environment in a way that avoids regulatory overreach that could undermine the very innovation it seeks to protect.
Chip Market Structure and Access
Global Dominance
The semiconductor industry is expected to grow into a trillion-dollar market by the end of the decade. This growth relies on chips that are critical across global industries, powering everything from computers and smartphones to advanced AI systems. The United States currently holds a leading global position in the architecture and design of advanced semiconductors essential for AI workloads. U.S. firms such as NVIDIA and AMD have successfully diversified their global sales, though the United States remains their most critical market. In 2024, neither company derived more than 50 percent of its revenue from a single country: NVIDIA's U.S. revenue share stood at 47 percent, while AMD's was 34 percent. Notably, while China represents AMD's second-largest market at 24 percent of revenue, it accounts for only 13 percent for NVIDIA, placing it behind Singapore and Taiwan. This global structure underscores U.S. technological leadership while highlighting the delicate balance between domestic control and international market reliance.
The Structural Vulnerability to Chip Shortage
Adding to the challenge of this global access distribution is the structural fragility of the semiconductor industry. The sector is fundamentally susceptible to production cycles due to the requirement for extremely long lead times, billions in upfront capital, and volatile, innovation-driven demand. The existing global chip shortage has significantly impacted markets, and a future crisis is highly probable. An analysis by Bain and Company projects that the surge in AI-driven demand could increase the need for certain components by an additional 30 percent by 2026. Coupled with the anticipated acceleration of smartphone and PC replacement cycles by AI-enabled devices, the ongoing geopolitical tensions could generate the next semiconductor shortage.
Domestic Concentration and Access Crisis
In the United States, it's becoming easier for people to access AI tools and models, but the chips and computing power that makes these systems run is far from accessible. Many depend on a small group of cloud hyperscalers - large cloud service providers that operate massive-scale data centers that provide infrastructure for AI and other workloads. These hyperscalers can afford to build and maintain a massive infrastructure containing thousands of AI chips; they then rent AI capacity to smaller companies, such as startups and universities. Most of the advanced chips produced by U.S. manufacturers end up in the hands of these giants. As a result, computational power is concentrated in just a few firms that have the scale and capital to support it. Thus, for U.S. startups and medium companies, the problem is not fully about chip shortages; it's that they can't realistically own it. High costs, opaque pricing, and long waits for hardware mean that these companies are effectively incapable of buying the chips.
The current market structure is complex. The United States is a global leader in advanced semiconductor technology, yet the market is exposed to major supply risks. These realities provide the essential context for evaluating policy interventions, such as the GAIN AI Act, which aims to prioritize domestic users but could also disrupt the global markets that sustain U.S. chipmakers.
The Unintended Consequences of the GAIN AI Act
While the GAIN AI Act aims to address domestic supply constraints for startups and universities, data show that the issue for these companies is not that the chips do not exist but that they can't acquire them. Yet the legislation risks harming long-term U.S. competitiveness and innovation capacity of chips and AI developments. By mandating the satisfaction of domestic quotas before fulfilling international sales, both domestic and international customers face extra licensing paperwork and compliance costs in a market that has already long waiting times. Further, these controls risk the redistribution of market share to foreign competitors operating without similar restrictions. If U.S. firms retreat from international markets, other firms will fill the gap; estimates show that South Korean firms could gain $21 billion in sales, European Union firms $15 billion, and Taiwanese firms $14 billion of U.S. firms' losses.
In fact, the legislation may effectively deny U.S. chipmakers the opportunity to maximize sales in global markets, even when they have successfully competed and established customer relationships. The legislation may threaten U.S. innovation since the highly specialized semiconductor industry relies on maximizing global revenue to cover the billions required for the next generation of chip research and development.
Critics also argue that the GAIN AI Act goes further than past controls, noting that the legislation would apply even to older AI chips which were specifically developed to comply with prior export controls, such as Nvidia's HGX G20. The scope of technologies subject to this bill is also not limited to those posing national security concerns, potentially expanding controls to chips not currently requiring a license, such as those used in gaming consoles. In sum, the legislation would unintentionally raise compliance costs for U.S. companies and add regulatory uncertainty to an already volatile semiconductor market.
Conclusion
Evaluating proposals to address AI chip export controls, including the GAIN AI Act, ultimately requires policymakers to define the fundamental objective of U.S. dual-use technology policy. Given the United States' leadership in advanced chip creation, the path forward presents two distinct approaches. Policymakers will either adopt a narrow, clearly targeted export policy rooted in concrete security concerns - keeping U.S. technology competitive at home and abroad - or impose broad restrictions on global sales that could unintentionally weaken the country's market position.
The structure of the chip market and its supply chain suggests that the most effective strategy for protecting U.S. advantage in AI is accelerated domestic capacity and innovation. That means the federal government should move away from limiting the market to empowering U.S. companies to lead and shape global standards. This calls for a more focused approach that keeps export restrictions narrow and grounded in real security risks, while reducing barriers to speed up domestic production of both chip manufacturing and AI infrastructure.
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Angela Luna is the Technology & Innovation Policy Analyst at the American Action Forum.
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Original text here: https://www.americanactionforum.org/insight/the-gain-ai-act-in-context-export-controls-and-u-s-ai-competitiveness/
[Category: Think Tank]
