AEI's weekly digest of top commentary and scholarship on the issues that matter most
AEI This Week
AEI's weekly digest of top commentary and scholarship on the issues that matter most
ANOTHER POLITICAL SHORTCUT
Health Care Subsidies Are Not a Solution
October 4, 2025
On Wednesday, the federal government shut down as Democrats demanded a permanent extension of enhanced subsidies for health insurance purchased on the Affordable Care Act marketplace. AEI health care expert James C. Capretta explains ([link removed] ) how in this debate over subsidies Democrats and Republicans are ignoring the true sources of increased health care costs.
Obamacare_Affordable-Care-Act ([link removed] )
Republicans’ support for a continuing resolution—which maintains Biden-era spending levels—in the shutdown fight is the latest evidence that despite bold rhetoric, neither the president nor Congress are serious about reining in spending. Writing in National Review, Yuval Levin comprehensively assesses ([link removed] ) how little the growth of government spending has been slowed in 2025.
Pentagon and congressional leaders typically treat continuing resolutions as a crisis for the military—severely compromising readiness and investment in the future. However, AEI scholar and retired major general John G. Ferrari highlights ([link removed] ) an underappreciated upside that the military should embrace: budgetary flexibility.
While Congress negotiates over the shutdown, the president is continuing to wield his unilateral authority over tariffs; he has threatened 100 percent tariffs on pharmaceuticals as he negotiates with the industry. In a new AEI Economic Perspectives report, Alex Brill and coauthors estimate ([link removed] ) how such tariffs would increase drug prices and insurance premiums while harming US competitiveness.
Amid the broader decline of the humanities in higher education, English departments have faced especially severe declines in enrollment and funding as the discipline has struggled to articulate a coherent identity. On Tuesday, Joshua T. Katz and Christopher J. Scalia hosted ([link removed] ) three leading scholars for a wide-ranging discussion of what English should be, where it went wrong, and what academics and universities can do to revitalize it.
The Old Logic Behind China’s New Economic Weapons
China’s response to increased US tariffs, including export controls on critical raw materials and sanctions on US entities, have brought renewed attention to China’s use of economic coercion. In a new article for The Washington Quarterly, Audrye Wong and coauthors trace ([link removed] ) patterns in China’s use of informal and formal economic restrictions through a dataset of more than 200 individual sanctions imposed between 2010 and 2025. These data reveal that though China increasingly uses formal legal sanctions, these have not replaced the more informal and opaque methods China has historically used, and in all cases Beijing continues to prioritize extensive state discretion in contrast to more predictable rule-of-law frameworks. The 2025 trade war reflects this new combination of tools and the growing challenge Western governments face in responding.
More from AEI
RESEARCH AND COMMENTARY
Global Democracy Is Failing. Will the US Save It or Kill It? ([link removed] )
Hal Brands | Bloomberg Opinion
Legislators in Tudor America ([link removed] )
Philip Wallach | Miller Center
Walmart’s AI Bet Could Again Help Drive a US Productivity Acceleration ([link removed] )
James Pethokoukis | AEIdeas
The Surprising New Consensus on Asylum Reform ([link removed] )
Charles Lane | AEIdeas
In the Global AI Boom, Russia Is Conspicuously Absent ([link removed] )
Chris Miller | Financial Times
PODCASTS AND VIDEOS
Solving the US Housing Shortage ([link removed] )
James Pethokoukis and Tobias Peter | Political Economy
Trump at the UN: Brett Schaefer Explains ([link removed] )
Danielle Pletka et al. | What the Hell Is Going On?
Parenting in the Modern Age ([link removed] )
Jonah Goldberg and Emily Oster | The Remnant with Jonah Goldberg
What Robert F. Kennedy’s Liberal Patriotism Could Teach Political Leaders Today ([link removed] )
Robert Doar and Ruy Teixeira | AEI event
Winning and Losing the Peace ([link removed] )
Danielle Pletka and Gary J. Schmitt | AEI video
QUOTE OF THE WEEK
What transpired was the commander in chief darkly asserting that ‘we’re under invasion from within.’ [The president] extolled his executive order ‘to provide training for a quick reaction force that can help quell civil disturbances. This is gonna be a big thing for the people in this room, because it’s the enemy from within, and we have to handle it before it gets out of control.’ He said he had instructed the secretary of defense to ‘use some of these dangerous cities as training grounds for our military.’ The president claimed Washington, D.C., was more violent than anything our military experienced in Afghanistan.
—Kori Schake ([link removed] )
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