Writing in Foreign Affairs, Kori Schake criticizes President Joe Biden’s foreign policy and identifies what she says is “a troubling disconnect between the administration’s stated priorities and its conduct.” According to Schake, American leaders have failed to coordinate economic policy, defense spending, and diplomacy in support of their ambitious yet somewhat contradictory strategy for countering China.

On February 15, AEI Press published Preserving Links in the Pandemic: Policies to Maintain Worker-Firm Attachment in the OECD, a new volume coedited by Michael R. Strain and Stan Veuger. Strain and Veuger compile 10 chapters from an international assembly of leading economists who offer lessons from Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development countries’ labor market responses to the COVID-19 pandemic.

Nat Malkus unveils AEI’s new Student Loan Forgiveness Tracker, which shows the scale of forgone student loan revenues since repayment was paused in March 2020. Keeping track of federal student loan revenues since before the COVID-19 pandemic, Malkus finds that the ongoing pause in federal student loan repayment has already cost the government at least $200 billion.
 
As the US Department of Agriculture plans nutritional restrictions to make its free school lunch program healthier, Angela Rachidi asks why it hasn’t considered doing the same to the Supplemental Nutritional Assistance Program (SNAP). Rachidi points out that SNAP is a much larger program, yet it has no nutritional restrictions, even though it is subsidizing unhealthy food choices and damaging children’s health.
 
Never afraid to take bold positions, Frederick M. Hess argues against selective admissions to most American undergraduate institutions. Challenging the conventional wisdom in favor of selective admissions, Hess says the costs, including “the psychic and financial toll on teens and parents,” far outweigh the benefits and don’t deliver the results that proponents claim. “Faculty and staff at selective institutions are mostly encouraged not to demand rigor,” writes Hess.