Philippe Legrain

Beware enemies hiding in plain sight. The Audi in the driveway and that BMW creeping around the corner are threats to national security. These days, it’s not the reds under the bed Americans need to worry about—it’s the Mercs on the lurk. Read my latest column for Foreign Policy on Trump’s threatened trade war against […]

A big reason why Western politics is in such disarray is voters’ pessimism about the future. 60% of Westerners believe today’s children will be “worse off financially than their parents”. Europeans are particularly gloomy. To paraphrase Hobbes, they expect youngsters’ lives to be solitary, poor, nasty, brutish – and long. When people doubt that progress […]

Donald Trump thinks that because the US buys more from China than it sells in return, it would easily “win” a trade war. But China’s position is actually much stronger, both economically and politically, than that crude calculus suggests. My latest for Foreign Policy

Refugees are a tiny proportion of the U.S. population — some 3.3 million have been admitted since 1975 — but they have had an outsized impact. Google co-founder Sergey Brin was a child refugee from the Soviet Union; Google’s parent company, Alphabet, is now America’s second-most valuable firm, with a market capitalization of $553 billion. […]

My column for Project Syndicate on why the EU onslaught on US tech companies is motivated not by concern for the welfare of Europeans, but the protectionist agenda of Germany’s digital flops and their corporatist champions in government

Svenska Dagbladet, 1 September 2013.

CNN México, 19 February 2013. Desde un punto de vista económico y moral, lo mejor sería que todos pudiéramos movernos libremente, como sucedía en el siglo XIX, cuando Estados Unidos tenía fronteras más o menos accesibles. Eso puede parecer una fantasía peligrosa; sin embargo, la reciente experiencia en Europa indica lo contrario.

CNN, 12 February 2013. From an economic – and a moral – point of view, it would be best if everybody could move freely, as they could in the 19th century, when the United States had more or less open borders. That may seem like a dangerous fantasy, yet recent experience in Europe suggests otherwise.

Read my latest article for Fareed Zakaria’s GPS on CNN.com Lee el artículo en español

VoxEU, 2 November 2010. While the debate over global imbalances often focuses on China, this column argues that the biggest threat to the world economy comes from the other side of the seesaw – the US.

Check out my new article on VoxEU.org.

Great piece by Edward Luce in the FT on Obama’s efforts to revive immigration reform. On grounds of enlightened self-interest, Mr Obama should therefore be commended. The opposite could be said of an increasingly nativist Republican party. Having applauded their colleagues in Arizona, who in April enacted the most draconian anti-immigrant state law in a […]

Forbes, 28 June 2010. Opening America’s borders is morally right, economically beneficial–and would even make America safer.

The case for open borders, the cover article in the new Forbes magazine.

Great piece of photo journalism by Dulce Pinzón on ForeignPolicy.com

Fascinating piece in the New York Times

Calls to boycott Arizona over its outrageous new immigration are mounting, the New York Times reports. The Guardian reports that: Among those calling for a sweeping boycott was the San Francisco city attorney, Dennis Herrera, who urged city departments to look at contracts with Arizona that could be terminated. Herrera said: “Arizona has charted an […]

Paul Krugman claims that liberals are divided on migration because: Democrats are torn individually (a state I share). On one side, they favor helping those in need, which inclines them to look sympathetically on immigrants; plus they’re relatively open to a multicultural, multiracial society. I know that when I look at today’s Mexicans and Central Americans, […]

Goldman’s use of intelligence drawn from its unrivalled pool of market sources to trade on its own and its clients’ behalf – a strategy championed by Mr Blankfein – has been a competitive advantage. Bank executives speak of its ability to manage – even “embrace” – conflicts of interest that arise from its position at […]

The law, which proponents and critics alike said was the broadest and strictest immigration measure in generations, would make the failure to carry immigration documents a crime and give the police broad power to detain anyone suspected of being in the country illegally. Opponents have called it an open invitation for harassment and discrimination against […]