Welcome to our weekly roundup of AEI's most important and thought-provoking work. This week, the pressing issues our scholars tackled included inflation, China, and critical race theory. 

Writing in The New York Times, Michael Strain warns that with inflation at its highest level in over a decade, Americans should be wary of the White House's newest $4 trillion economic plan. Unlike the bipartisan infrastructure plan deal, which would strengthen long-term productivity, Strain argues that the Joe Biden spending plan would increase consumer demand without expanding supply. The result would be higher prices, hurting lower-income Americans and threatening the economic recovery.

Abroad, Dan Blumenthal provides a revealing overview of China's strategy to shape a new world order. While President Xi Jinping has established a sophisticated strategy to match or overtake the United States, Xi nevertheless faces serious obstacles. America has the capacity to prevent Beijing from re-creating Asia in its own image, Blumenthal writes, but to do so we must work with the growing number of Asian countries that share our concerns about a Sino-centric world order.

Elsewhere on our Foreign and Defense Policy Studies team, Kori Schake considers the significance of a recent testimony delivered by Gen. Mark Milley, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff. Writing in The Atlantic, Schake suggests that by offering his judgment about the motives of those who attacked the Capitol on January 6, Gen. Milley took the latest step in the continued erosion of relations between America's armed forces and civilian leadership.

The general's comments were indicative of America's ongoing debate about critical race theory. Pushing back against its precepts, and particularly the 1619 Project, is 1776 Unites, a coalition of Black scholars and activists including AEI's Ian Rowe. Writing in Deseret News, Rowe explains the initiative's purpose: "The grievance-obsessed voices some hear in media and in schools today do not speak for multitudes of Black Americans, and 1776 Unites exists to give a platform to those who reject victimhood and instead seek to focus on solutions to our most pressing societal problems."