• Global Solidarity

Competition between the BRI and B3W infrastructure investment initiatives will be waged through the corporations and financial institutions of the world’s most powerful nations, and those are the interests who will most directly benefit from that competition. Those who lose out, on the other hand, are likely to be the workers, adjacent communities, and landscapes who will be the first to be squeezed when the competition gets tough. If we take the G7 at their word that the B3W aims to close the infrastructure funding gap while improving the quality and social and environmental impacts of projects, then continuing to portray it in terms of competition with China will undermine its stated goals. Working by example and in parallel, instead of working against China is a more promising way forward.

• Transatlantic Left Voices

In the next month, a bitterly divided US Congress is poised to determine not only the fate of the core of the Biden Administration’s domestic agenda, but whether the US will finally begin to move away from the era of market fundamentalism and into a new period of reconstruction. The outcome is also likely to have significant effect on whether Democrats consolidate or lose their hold on the Congress in the upcoming 2022 midterm elections. The legislative scramble centers around two major pieces of legislation: a bipartisan infrastructure bill and what the administration dubs the “Build Back Better” budget reconciliation package. Both are slated to be voted on before the end of the fiscal year on September 30.