Recommended Weekend Reads
The Geopolitics of Trump’s War on Drugs, America Loves Cocaine Again, What is Stablecoin?, How Many Manufacturing Jobs Will Tariffs Create, and The Growing Link Between Marriage, Fertility, and Partisanship
September 26 - 28, 2025
Each week, we gather up the best research and reports we have read in the past week and pass them on to you. Below is this week’s curated collection. We hope you find them interesting and informative, and that you have a great weekend.
The Geopolitics of Trump‘s War on Drug Cartels
The Wrong Way to Fight the Cartels Ryan Berg/Foreign Affairs
Since returning to the White House, U.S. President Donald Trump has pledged to defeat the Western Hemisphere’s violent drug traffickers by any means necessary. In a March address to Congress, Trump declared, “The cartels are waging war in America, and it’s time for America to wage war on the cartels.” Washington has left behind its traditional conception of the fight against transnational criminal organizations as a matter of law enforcement with its threats of “war” and consideration of military action against the cartels. A militarized approach may be a politically attractive way for Trump to project strength. And indeed, the United States can, and should, draw on many valuable lessons from the last two decades of counterterrorism missions during the “war on terror” in its campaign against the cartels. But there is a more productive path forward than drastically shifting the rules of engagement with transnational criminal groups.
The Geopolitics of Trump’s War on Drugs Americas Quarterly
Half a century after former U.S. President Richard Nixon launched the war on drugs, global cocaine output and consumption are at record highs. According to the UN’s latest drug report, cocaine production jumped roughly a third in 2023 to over 3,700 tons, with usage rising to an estimated 25 million people. Over the past decade, narcotics supply chains have diversified, and demand has hardly blinked. President Donald Trump’s second term has repackaged the drug war with sharper geopolitical edges. While fentanyl from Chinese sources seemed to be the president’s main focus during his campaign, the more traditional target of cocaine has lately become more prominent. Washington has pledged to “disrupt the supply chain from tooth to tail” and to “partner with – or otherwise hold accountable” source countries, language mirrored in the U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA) National Drug Threat Assessment 2024.
America Loves Cocaine Again—Mexico’s New Drug King Cashes In The Wall Street Journal
Cocaine sold in the U.S. is cheaper and as pure as ever for retail buyers. Consumption in the western U.S. has increased 154% since 2019 and is up 19% during the same period in the eastern part of the country, according to the drug-testing company Millennium Health. In contrast, fentanyl use in the U.S. began to drop in mid-2023 and has been declining since, according to data from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. For new users, cocaine doesn’t carry the stigma of fentanyl addiction. Middle-class addicts and the tragic spectacle of homeless crack-cocaine users in the 1990s helped put a lid on America’s last cocaine epidemic.
Geoeconomics
‘Capital absorption’ is big in economic development. But what is it? Federal Reserve Bank of Boston
The term “capital absorption” is not well-known or easily understood. But it’s critical in the local economic development world, and I recently heard an analogy I think can help people understand it. Picture an irrigation system designed to direct the flow of money to the projects that need it most. Such a system frees communities from merely hoping that the unpredictable “rainfall” of funding falls in the right place. Instead, the system guarantees it gets there. That’s what capital absorption is. It’s coordination that helps local places absorb capital investments in the kinds of projects that can literally change what these places look like – things like child care centers, or housing, or downtown building renovations. Reliable systems are established and run by prepared partners to accept the funding when it appears and move it exactly where it’s needed, so the work can get done in ways that strengthen local economies.
How Many Manufacturing Jobs Will Trump’s Tariffs Create? And at What Cost? AEI Center for Technology, Science, Industry, and the State Project
Secular decline in the share of manufacturing jobs in the labor force largely reflects the shift of consumer expenditures from goods to services. High tariffs cannot restore manufacturing jobs to the 27 percent share of the labor force experienced 60 years ago. Achieving Trump’s objective for eliminating the trade deficit in manufactures would require tariffs at least twice as high as those imposed through September 2025. The annual cost to American consumers of shifting each job from service employment to manufacturing employment through high tariffs exceeds $200,000.
What is a Stablecoin? McKinsey & Company
In the rapidly evolving world of digital assets, one innovation stands out for its potential to bring stability and reliability to the historically volatile blockchain-based currency market: the stablecoin. As the name suggests, a stablecoin is a type of digital currency designed to maintain a stable value. These digital currencies are pegged to a traditional fiat currency like the US dollar. Stablecoin use has increased significantly in recent years: In the past 18 months, the total market capitalization of stablecoins has more than doubled to $250 billion, from $120 billion, and industry forecasts expect it to reach up to $2 trillion by 2028. With major players like JPMorgan Chase experimenting with tokenized deposits and PayPal launching its own stablecoin, digital money is a major story in digital finance. For individuals and organizations looking to capitalize on the benefits of blockchain-based transactions, what exactly is Stablecoin?
US Political & Social Trends
The Growing Link Between Marriage, Fertility, And Partisanship The Institute for Family Studies
Conservative women born between 1975 and 1979—women who are finished having children—have a completed family size of 2.1, right at replacement. Moderate women in the same age group have 1.8 children, and liberal women just 1.5. Narrower gaps exist between conservatives born between 1985 and 1989, who have a completed fertility rate of 2.1, while moderates are at 1.9 and liberals 1.7. Conservative women born between 1995 and 1999 have, so far, only had 0.7 children, the same as moderates. Liberals in the same cohort average 0.4 so far. Differences between conservative and liberal women should not be overstated. Birthrates are lower for all groups when compared to the state of fertility before 1975. Marriage rates for all groups are lower, too. Yet the differences are large enough that the parties ultimately appeal to manifestly different constituencies.
It's Not Just You: Americans Are Still Not Hanging Out Generation Tech
The average American spent 38 minutes a day socializing in 2019 and 35 minutes in 2024. In 2024, for the first time, adults 50 and older spent (very slightly) more time socializing in person than teens and young adults. Young people’s social time is at an all-time low in the 21-year history of the survey. Fifteen- to 25-year-olds spend 26 fewer minutes a day socializing in person than they did in 2003. That’s three hours a week, 13 hours a month, and 158 hours a year less getting together with friends, having a face-to-face conversation, meeting for dinner, or chatting before seeing a movie together. No wonder so many more teens now describe themselves as lonely.
Why do only humans weep? The evolutionary puzzle of crying BigThink
In an excerpt from Steven Pinker’s new book, When Everyone Knows That Everyone Knows…, Pinker explains that crying is not just an expression of sadness but an evolved signal of surrender, helplessness, and a plea for comfort. However, tears can also mark moments of joy, compassion, and awe, reflecting the emotional opposites of the things that make us laugh. The unique human capacity to weep may have evolved to strengthen social bonds and generate common knowledge regarding our inner states.
If I Work Harder, Will You Love Me? Arthur Brooks/The Atlantic
Between teaching Harvard MBA students and speaking to a lot of business audiences, I’m often interacting with successful people who work extremely long hours. It’s common for me to hear about 13-hour workdays and seven-day workweeks, with few or no vacations. What I see among many of those I encounter is workaholism, a pathology characterized by continuing to work during discretionary time, thinking about work all the time, and pursuing job tasks well beyond what’s required to meet any need. Workaholics feel a compulsion to work even when they are already earning plenty of money and despite getting minimal enjoyment from doing so.