During the 2016 election, both candidates promised to bring manufacturing back – Donald Trump made the recovery of jobs lost to China and Mexico a cornerstone of his campaign. Hillary Clinton’s website states: “While too many politicians and experts in Washington gave up on American manufacturing, Hillary never did.”

For many people, Pittsburgh is defined by the confluence of the Alleghany and Monongahela Rivers, out of which is formed the Ohio River. Three Rivers. But, Pittsburgh was transformed from a disease-infested frontier town into a great city by a different kind of confluence: the combination of coal from West Virginia and iron from Minnesota and the upper peninsula of Michigan.

According to the new United Nations World Population Prospects: The 2015 Revision, the population of the world is projected to rise from 7.3 billion in 2015 to 11.2 billion in 2100. This represents a 53 percent increase. However, over the period, population growth will moderate substantially. This is indicated by the annual growth rate the first year (2015 to 2016), at 1.1 percent, compared to the last year (2099 to 2100) at 0.1 percent. Annual population growth is projected to decline 90 percent from the beginning of the period to the end (Figure 1).

The wheels of reform move slowly, but on July 15, the first international investors put their toes in the shallow water of Mexico’s oil prize—which could be “as big as the proven reserves of Kuwait.” The Financial Times (FT) calls Mexico’s potential 107.5 billion barrels of oil: “quite a feast.” FT adds: “The country is viewed as one of the dwindling number of opportunities to add substantial reserves to portfolios after several years when the oil majors have struggled to make big discoveries.”

We recently discussed a bipartisan group of Senators and House members who correctly identified a global trade problem and its negative domestic ramifications. 57 Senators and 152 House members…sign(ed) letters to Barack Obama Administration Secretary of Commerce Penny Pritzker. In which they expressed concern about inexpensive Korean steel being in mass quantities imported here….

Debt is an issue that affects countries all over the world. Almost all countries are in debt as their governments take loans to cover for variations in their tax receipts. Yet while many developed countries such as Greece and Ireland are increasingly facing debt crises of their own, the effect of such debt is not nearly as crippling as it is for developing nations.

A debate on immigration policy was held recently in Chicago between a conservative and a libertarian. It was an exercise between light regulation and lighter regulation. Both regimes would enlarge the programs for highly skilled foreigners and temporary workers and tighten the border with Mexico.

There is an increasing recognition – at least outside the academy, planning organization and urban core developer groups – that the spatial expansion of cities or suburbanization represents the evolving urban form of not only the United States and virtually all of the high income world but also across the developing world, whether middle income or third world.

In recent years, Mexico has made substantial economic progress. Per capita income (purchasing power parity) in Mexico exceeds that of all the “BRIC” nations (Brazil, Russia, India, and China) except resource-rich Russia.

Government action distorts and then warps the private sector.

By the middle of October, if everything stays on schedule, Mexico’s legislators may well prove that they haven’t learned a thing from policies that have been tried and failed, from Denmark to New York City.

The White House today invoked executive privilege, refusing to give the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee documents to assist in the investigation of the “Fast and Furious” gun-walking operation.…

I was a panelist last week at the Conservative Political Action Conference (CPAC) in Chicago on Fast and Furious. The panel answered the question raised in an article by my…