Interviews

What Future for the Global South?

Lula’s Chief Advisor discusses the assault on Iran, the concept of multipolarity, and how Brazil can defend its sovereignty in an age of imperial conflict.

Empire Suicide Watch

What kind of empire is American empire? Does Trump's belligerent protectionism mark a break in American hegemony, or the reconstitution of a prior era of domination? 

The Bolivarian Hypothesis

Venezuela's ruling party is seeking to implement its "Seven Transformations" program amid intense pressure from the United States and an unfavorable regional balance of power.

Superdependence

The Canadian auto industry is in a state of existential crisis, facing new US tariffs and pressures. What does this mean for organized labor?

Oil Wars

Analyzing Venezuela's energy resources as a site of political struggle, from the nationalizations under Chávez to the ouster of Maduro.

The Belt and Road 2.0

Chinese firms are going out. As the US withdraws from green tech industries and pressures its allies to follow suit, Chinese companies are stepping in to power the developing world’s green transition—at a staggering scale.

Sacrifice Zones

Since Donald Trump announced in July that the US would impose 50 percent tariffs on Brazilian imports, there has been much speculation about the future of Brazil’s foreign trade, both with China and the US. One particular area of focus is the US interest in the exploitation of Brazil’s strategic minerals, as Gabriel Escobar, interim US ambassador to Brazil, made clear at a recent meeting with representatives of the mining industry. In the context of the domestic effort to develop a national policy on Critical Minerals, Finance Minister Fernando Haddad has indicated that critical minerals could be one possible area of trade with the US.

Voting for Justice

In an interview, José María Soberanes Díez analyzes the context and characteristics of the recent election of the judiciary in Mexico, clarifying some of the main dilemmas, possible consequences, and the recent constitutional reform to the country’s judiciary.

Experiments in American Unions

What is the future of labor organizing under Trump? Despite the apparent upsurge in labor militancy in recent years, the share of the US workforce represented by labor unions declined during the Biden administration. Now, many of the big fights are taking place outside the NLRB process, in labor-led legislative struggles, among worker centers in alliance with unions, or in state-level public sectors.

Common Characteristics

As Sino-African economic cooperation reached global attention at the beginning of the twenty-first century, Xiaoyang Tang was among the first to do field work in the region. In an interview with PW's Maria Sikorski, he talks about China's approach to international development and finance and emerging complementarities among regions with histories of decolonization in common.

Energy and the One Big Beautiful Bill

“The budget,” Austrian sociologist Rudolf Goldscheid wrote in 1917, “is the skeleton of the state stripped of all misleading ideologies.” Currently, Trump's coalition is fracturing over contradictory fiscal policy incentives in the One Big Beautiful Bill, where a hard commitment to preserving the 2017 changes to tax rates will inevitably balloon the deficit. In the short term, the House bill represents about $500 billion in annual borrowing between 2026 and 2028. This is more than double the $150 billion in near-term annual borrowing proposed in 2021 under the Build Back Better Act, and six times the total increase to the national debt the CBO projected for that bill over ten years—reflecting the asymmetrical politics of US deficit debates. This budget will fund lower taxes, increased military expenditures, and increased immigration policing, while eliminating access to medical care for millions.

Closing the Extractive Frontier

With more than half of Colombia’s export revenues coming from coal and fossil fuels, Colombian President Gustavo Petro’s plan to end domestic fossil fuel production is profoundly ambitious. Former Minister of Mines and Energy, Andrés Camacho, reflects on the challenges ahead.

Jungles in Dispute

Reducing deforestation in the Colombian Amazon is a arduous task, involving negotiations with guerrillas, economic incentives for farmers and cattle ranchers, and extensive international coordination and aid. For Susana Muhamad, Colombia‘s former Minister of the Environment, the strategy for tackling deforestation points a pathway forward for a just green transition.

Who Will the Green Transition Save?

The Camaçari Industrial Complex in Bahia attracted worldwide attention following BYD’s announcement in 2023 that it would be home to the electric vehicle company’s largest factory outside China. What will the wave of Chinese investment mean for Brazil’s workers?

The Runaway Shop

In the early years of NAFTA, the maquiladora system undermined national manufacturing and unions in Mexico across industrial sectors, drawing workers around the country into poorer working conditions along the US-Mexico border. Since then, alongside modern production and cross-border trade, the growth of manufacturing in Mexico has produced some of the most militant and aggressive labor organizing on the continent.

Never Again?

With the attempted coup of 2022, and the consolidation of the nation's right behind Bolsonarism, memories of Brazil's horrific military dictatorship are more prominent than they've been in decades. To explore the meaning of these experiences in light of current events, Phenomenal World editor Hugo Fanton spoke to Frei Betto, an organizer whose social and political work helped facilitate the resistance to the Brazilian military dictatorship, and caused him to be twice imprisoned by that regime.

Inflation in the World-System

Across the world, parties governing amid the post-pandemic rise in prices have found themselves punished at the ballot box. While typified solutions revolve around fiscal discipline, many critics are returning to dependency theory to argue that inflation must be understood in the context of an imbalanced system of global trade.

Party Bus

While the world’s attention was focused on the United States presidential election that would deliver Donald Trump a decisive victory and a second Presidency, Brazil’s municipal elections in October were signalling the political balance for the coming years within the second largest country in the hemisphere. Elections for city council and mayoralties take place all on the same date, and—much like the Congressional midterms in the US context—are often read as an indication of the health of the ruling government’s support, and weigh heavily on intraparty disputes over strategy for incumbents and opposition alike. In São Paulo, Latin America’s largest city and Brazil’s largest single electorate, some trends asserted themselves: namely,  the concerted success of centrist forces to defeat the favored candidate of the left, and the surprising rise of a non-Bolsonarista far-right candidate in Pablo Marçal.

Recycled Liberalism

Since 1999, the European Union (EU) and Mercosur have been negotiating a bi-regional partnership agreement comprising three pillars: trade, cooperation, and political dialogue. A quarter century later, in December 2024, the parties announced the conclusion of negotiations during the Mercosur Summit in Montevideo, attended by European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen. Before implementation, the agreement will undergo legal scrubbing for national ratification processes. The European Union has opted for a split approval: the trade dimension of the agreement requires only European Parliament approval, while political and cooperation aspects must be submitted to national parliaments. Within Mercosur, though each country’s parliament must ratify the text, the agreement can take effect bilaterally between the EU and individually approving Mercosur nations.