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Graphic Truth: Motherhood can wait
Women in wealthy countries are increasingly waiting to have children. What gives? Well, a complex array of factors are fueling this trend, but financial concerns appear to be a central cause.
A recent poll in Canada, for example, found that 55% of Canadians between the ages of 18 to 34 pointed to the housing crisis as affecting their decision and timing about when to start a family.
In the US, child care costs are a growing concern across the country. Meanwhile, the US remains on a short list of countries that do not guarantee paid parental leave. Have economic conditions made it more difficult to have children? We’d love to hear your thoughts. Write to us here.
Graphic Truth: Hospital bed decline
They made their bed – and were forced to lie in it.
At the start of the pandemic, G7 countries were plagued by a huge uptick in hospital admissions – and the shocking reality that hospital beds had been on a 50-year decline. Four years later, these countries have still not reversed the downward spiral.
In the US, over the last five decades, care has shifted away from inpatient hospital settings and to outpatient services to cut costs. The decrease has also been intentional. In 1974, the government began an initiative to directly cut the number of hospital beds, believing in a rule calledRoemer's Law, which said that “a hospital bed built would be a hospital bed filled,” thus driving up costs.
However, the US’s free-market healthcare system still provides more hospital beds per capita than the government-dominated system in Canada. According to the Canadian Institute for Health Information, Ontario has just one intensive-care bed for every 800 residents, giving it no surge capacity. Michael Decter, the former chair of the Health Council of Canada told theCBC that because Canada’s system is public, “we tend to ration everything.”
Across the G7, governments have reduced hospital capacity to cut costs and because advances in medical care have decreased the amount of time patients spend in hospitals. However, older people – who are more likely to spend time in hospital – are also taking up an increasing share of G7 populations. The result is higher wait times, lower surge capacity, and worsening patient care.
History has its eyes on US
In the run-up to the 2020 election, Europe was preoccupied with the future of the transatlantic relationship. In London, almost every conversation among think tanks, civil society, and diplomatic circles eventually came around to the so-called special relationship between the United States and the United Kingdom, just then wrestling with its Brexit bet.
There was plenty of hand-wringing about whether Donald Trump would be reelected in 2020. The frequently heard view across the pond was that Europeans could forgive Americans for electing Trump for the first time in 2016 – for they knew not what they did. But to return him to office, without the guise of plausible deniability, would mean something else entirely.
Europe would have been put on notice that US voters had accepted the “America First” embrace. The US was going home, and Europe might need to go it alone.
As we find ourselves in the (re)run-up to another Trump-Biden election season, all eyes are again on US voters and the choice they have set before themselves in November. Tariffs and trade policy are up for grabs, the energy and regulatory environment face “sliding doors,” and diplomatic and multilateral engagement find themselves on differential courses – on display last week at the annual G7 Summit where Biden sought in his final pre-election summit to keep the wartime band together with new US measures to intensify pressure on Russia and a transatlantic pledge to leverage Russia’s immobilized assets for Ukraine funding.
It is all too clear that geopolitics is at stake this fall.
What if the 2020 election vantage point from abroad got it wrong?
What if, despite the US rethinking its global role, we are still in the age of US primacy after all? Over the past four years, the US may have unwittingly made this case.
During the pandemic, US pharmaceutical firms – in concert with global researchers – delivered groundbreaking vaccines to save lives. Across the security sphere, the US has led its European partners on a renaissance of NATO, charting the course on both the sanctions to constrain Russia and the military expenditures to bolster Ukraine. Earlier this spring, when further US funding came into doubt, Ukraine and Europe faced a protracted scare. Elsewhere in the Middle East, the US has demonstrated that without any boots on the ground and with untiring diplomatic efforts bearing only partial fruit, it remains a pivotal player in any room. Iran’s attack on Israel on April 13, which saw nearly all of its 300-plus missiles shot down by a US-led coalition supporting Israel, is prime evidence.
And despite years of hard- versus soft-landing debates, the United States remains the world’s largest economy. In recent years, the Biden administration has been busy trying a new industrial policy on for size, a model now being replicated elsewhere. Meanwhile, the US Federal Reserve has set the global template and pace on fiscal policy.
The US dollar remains dominant, even as Russia and others that face a widening web of US-led sanctions and tools of economic security have continued to study currency alternatives. According to the Fed’s latest available data (2022), the US dollar represents 58% of global official foreign exchange reserves compared with the next best Euro at 21%. The dollar was involved in roughly 88% of global foreign exchange transactions in April 2022, a figure that has been stable for 20 years.
According to polling conducted across Europe, Canada, and the United States in 2023 by the German Marshall Fund in its Transatlantic Trends series, 64% of respondents viewed the US as the most influential actor in global affairs (including 62% of Europeans). Lest we overlook it, the same polling found that only 14% viewed China as the most influential global actor.
Looking across the ocean, the view from Europe looks significantly less lonesome than it did on the cusp of 2020. This might be because Trump did not win in 2020, or it might be that the US is more structurally entrenched in the global system than domestic partisan politics suggests. Will a Biden 2.0 mean the status quo on transatlantic support for Ukraine? Would a Trump 2.0 see the administration drive Russia and Ukraine to the negotiating table and pursue a deal that leaves Europe out in the cold? Will Trump’s transactional foreign policy present a sharp test for Europe with more bilateral relationships than multilateral engagement?
Either way, November’s election and its aftermath will begin to answer these questions.
Lindsay Newman is the practice head of Global Macro, Geopolitics for Eurasia Group and is based in London. She writes the Views on America column for GZERO.
Italian Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni, Japanese Prime Minister Fumio Kishida, Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau, U.S. President Joe Biden, European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen and World Bank President Ajay Banga attend a Partnership for Global Infrastructure and Investment (PGII) event, on the first day of the G7 summit, in Savelletri, Italy, June 13, 2024.
G7 strikes compromise on Ukraine funding
Both Justin Trudeau and Joe Biden flew to Italy this week for G7 meetings, where they pledged to strengthen the coalition supporting Ukraine in its fight against Russian invaders.
The G7 countries are expected to agree to lend Ukraine about $50 billion for reconstruction, backing the loan by using the interest accruing on $300 billion worth of Russian assets that were frozen by Western financial institutions after the invasion.
The move is a grand compromise between countries, like Canada, which have called for outright seizure of those assets in order to give them directly to Ukraine, and countries in Europe, where many of the assets are located, which have pushed back, citing issues of rule of law and precedent for other investors.
Putting the deal in practice will still require some complicated financial and legal chicanery, say experts, but the sense of urgency comes in part from concerns about the US Presidential election this fall.
Polls continue to show Biden, a strong supporter of Ukraine, trailing Donald Trump, who has shown little interest in helping Kyiv.
The asset-interest scheme is seen as a way to lock in a stream of Western financing for Ukraine that exists independently of any changing political winds in Washington.
Sailboat statue La Vela, on the shoreline at Stresa, Lake Maggiore, Italian Lakes, Piedmont, Italy
Top question for G7: How to Trump-proof Ukraine aid
Ahead of this week’s G7 Finance Ministers’ Meeting in Stresa, Italy, leaders might be feeling a little stress-a’d themselves. With the US election still anyone’s game, the world’s great democracies are increasingly concerned a victory for Donald Trump could severely impact, or even cut off, aid to Ukraine.
With that in mind, they’ll be discussing plans to pass along the interest earned on some $350 billion in frozen Russian assets to fund Kyiv’s war effort — basically making Russia pay to fight itself. If all goes well this week, US officials say some $50 billion could be ready to disburse as soon as this summer. As the assets earn more interest, Ukraine gets more money, and no fiddling with Congress is needed. The European Union is already using a similar set up to fund weapons purchases for Ukraine.
If the details can be hammered out before the G7 Leaders’ Summit next month and implemented before the US election, Trump winning wouldn’t change the payouts to Ukraine. But there’s work to be done: The US, UK, and Canada are reportedly more gung-ho, while Japan, Germany, France, and Italy are still concerned about the long-term precedents their actions could set, possibly driving money from places like China and the Persian Gulf away.
Prime Minister Fumio Kishida (R) takes part in a class on generative artificial intelligence at the University of Tokyo in Japan's capital on Aug. 14, 2023.
Japan confronts the “dark side” of AI
Japan detailed a global framework for international cooperation on artificial intelligence on May 1, building off the Hiroshima Process announced at last year’s G7 summit. The framework focuses on stemming the risks that generative AI poses for global disinformation — but details are a bit lacking.
“Generative AI has the potential to be a vital tool to further enrich the world,” Prime Minister Fumio Kishida said in an address to the OECD in Paris. “[But] we must also confront the dark side of AI, such as the risk of disinformation.” Kishida said 49 countries and regions have signed on to the agreement, which includes guiding principles and a code of conduct for generative AI developers. It aims to improve transparency, risk mitigation, safety, and authentication.
Eurasia Group analyst David Boling says that the Hiroshima process is a rather incremental attempt at global regulation. “[It] shows that Japan wants to influence how countries regulate AI,” Boling said. “But its approach will be to nudge countries, not judge countries.”
It will be hard for the Hiroshima Process, he said, to “produce anything but statements of high-level principles with limited value.”
Graphic Truth: Are Canada and the US narrowing the gender pay gap?
Despite lofty rhetoric about equality from politicians in Washington and Ottawa, the US and Canada are trailing behind several of their G7 counterparts (though both far ahead of Japan) when it comes to progress made in narrowing the gender pay gap over the past two decades or so, OECD data shows.
Women working full-time in the US make 84 cents for every dollar men make, according to the Census Bureau. Canadian women make 88 cents for every dollar men make, per the Canadian Chamber of Commerce.
Since 2002, the gender wage gap — defined as the difference between median earnings of men and women relative to median earnings of men — has declined in the US from 22.1% to 17%. During the same period in Canada, it declined from 24% to 17.1%.
Are the US and Canada doing enough to narrow the gender pay gap?
President Joe Biden signs an executive order about artificial intelligence as Vice President Kamala Harris looks on at the White House on Oct. 30, 2023.
Everybody wants to regulate AI
US President Joe Biden on Monday signed an expansive executive order about artificial intelligence, ordering a bevy of government agencies to set new rules and standards for developers with regard to safety, privacy, and fraud. Under the Defense Production Act, the administration will require AI developers to share safety and testing data for the models they’re training — under the guise of protecting national and economic security. The government will also develop guidelines for watermarking AI-generated content and fresh standards to protect against “chemical, biological, radiological, nuclear, and cybersecurity risks.”
The US order comes the same day that G7 countries agreed to a “code of conduct” for AI companies, an 11-point plan called the “Hiroshima AI Process.” It also came mere days before government officials and tech-industry leaders meet in the UK at a forum hosted by British Prime Minister Rishi Sunak. The event will run tomorrow and Thursday, Nov. 1-2, at Bletchley Park. While several world leaders have passed on attending Sunak’s summit, including Biden and Emmanuel Macron, US Vice President Kamala Harris and European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen plan to participate.
When it comes to AI regulation, the UK is trying to differentiate itself from other global powers. Just last week, Sunak said that “the UK’s answer is not to rush to regulate” artificial intelligence while also announcing the formation of a UK AI Safety Institute to study “all the risks, from social harms like bias and misinformation through to the most extreme risks of all.”
The two-day summit will focus on the risks of AI and its use of large language models trained by huge amounts of text and data.
Unlike von der Leyen’s EU, with its strict AI regulation, the UK seems more interested in attracting AI firms than immediately reining them in. In March, Sunak’s government unveiled its plan for a “pro-innovation” approach to AI regulation. In announcing the summit, the government’s Department for Science, Innovation, and Technology boasted the country’s “strong credentials” in AI: employing 50,000 people, bringing £3.7 billion to the domestic economy, and housing key firms like DeepMind (now owned by Google), while also investing £100 million in AI safety research.
Despite the UK’s light-touch approach so far, the Council on Foreign Relations described the summit as an opportunity for the US and UK, in particular, to align on policy priorities and “move beyond the techno-libertarianism that characterized the early days of AI policymaking in both countries.”- UK AI Safety Summit brings government leaders and AI experts together - GZERO Media ›
- AI agents are here, but is society ready for them? - GZERO Media ›
- Yuval Noah Harari: AI is a “social weapon of mass destruction” to humanity - GZERO Media ›
- Should we regulate generative AI with open or closed models? - GZERO Media ›
- Podcast: Talking AI: Sociologist Zeynep Tufekci explains what's missing in the conversation - GZERO Media ›
- OpenAI is risk-testing Voice Engine, but the risks are clear - GZERO Media ›