Maxwell School News and Commentary

"Opioids are far more deadly than any drugs that are entering through the U.S.-Mexico border,” says Shannon Monnat, associate professor of sociology and Lerner Chair for Public Health Promotion.

"If enacted, this directive will add an organizational overhead expense for this separation and will create countless bureaucratic fist fights over what goes into which part of this new Department of the Air Force enterprise," writes Sean O'Keefe, University Professor and Howard G. and S. Louise Phanstiel Chair in Strategic Management and Leadership.

Denuclearization will likely be at the center of the meeting later this month between President Donald Trump and North Korea leader Kim Jong Un, says Robert Murrett, professor of practice of public administration and international affairs. “Trade is going to be a part of [their talks],” Murrett says, adding Kim has expressed interest in “bringing their economy into the 21st century.”

Professor Emeritus William C. Banks says the precedent concern is legitimate and "one of the biproducts of this episode might be to impose on Congress the determination to revise the underlying law and make it more difficult for any president in the future to use the mechanism. One of the biggest open areas in the law is that there are no criteria to decide what constitutes an emergency."

Len Burman, Paul Volcker Chair in Behavioral Economics, suggests eliminating a provision of current law in which assets that increase in value can go essentially untaxed across generations as a way to reduce inequality.

According to Professor of Economics Mary Lovely, "this is not a negotiating tactic. Trump is a true believer...He wrongly believes tariffs will help the U.S. auto industry."

"This is a real institutional threat to the separation of powers to use emergency powers to enable the president to bypass Congress to build a wall on his own initiative that our elected representatives have chosen not to fund," says William C. Banks, professor of public administration and international affairs. 

Shannon Monnat, Lerner Chair for Public Health Promotion, argues that in both rural and urban communities, two key factors—economic distress and supply of opioids—predict the rate of opioid deaths. "I really do want to push back against this cliché that addiction does not discriminate," Monnat says. "The physiological processes that underlie addiction themselves may not discriminate, but the factors that put people in communities at higher risk are are not spatially random."

"The economy has changed a lot since 1888 and in particular, when we think about who bears the burden of tariffs, we have to recognize the development of very complex supply chains for American companies," says Professor of Economics Mary Lovely.