A decade or so ago, pairing Everlane kick-crop jeans with the brand's almond-toe Modern Loafer and a crewneck sweater was a quintessential Millennial city-girl uniform: minimalist, boring, and, most important, vaguely ethical. The San Francisco'based fashion start-up was founded in the early 2010s on the premise of 'radical transparency.' It told consumers about the factory where their shirt was made and the cost to produce it, down to the labor and markup, which it said was a fraction of the markup of other retailers. It was a brand built on the belief that globalization could work for everyone, and that anybody could shop with their values. But now Everlane is in bad shape. It's $90 million in debt, behind on rent, and facing eviction at its headquarters. This week, Puck reported that the company has found a buyer that seems antithetical to the values it once said it held: Shein, the online fast-fashion behemoth synonymous with overconsumption and workplace abuses such as child labor. Shein, in response to allegations of poor conditions over the years, has made efforts to address critics, such as investing in carbon-reducing initiatives and ending orders at factories that have known problems. Still, the era of sustainable fashion that Everlane represents seems to be fading'as does the concept that ethical consumerism alone can eliminate the clothing industry's worst practices. (Everlane declined to comment on reports of the sale, and Shein did not immediately respond to an interview request.)...

Global geopolitical turbulence signals not the end of globalization but its structural reconfiguration. Businesses are confronting the weaponization of supply chains, the segmentation of digital ecosystems, and an increase in industrial policy competition. The next phase of global competition will favor companies that rethink organization, supply chains, and governance architectures to remain globally connected yet geopolitically separable to retain market access across competing blocks. The international order is undergoing structural transformation. War in the Middle East, the prolonged conflict in Ukraine, and major shifts in U.S. trade and foreign policy that have altered the country's traditional alliances are manifestations of a broader reconfiguration of power. Tariffs, export controls, sanctions, and the vulnerability of strategic choke points as diverse as maritime straits and semiconductor ecosystems are exposing the fragility of globally optimized supply chains and production networks....

The economist Adam Posen on the effect of the war in Iran on the world's economy and the darkening economic outlook for the United States. Plus: A shifting partisan balance of power and Ask Not: The Kennedys and the Women They Destroyed, by Maureen Callahan. In this episode of The David Frum Show, The Atlantic's David Frum opens with a discussion of the likelihood that the partisan balance of power will shift from Republicans to Democrats at state-government level. Then, David is joined by the president of the Peterson Institute for International Economics, Adam Posen, for a conversation about the state of the world's economy. Frum and Posen discuss the economic effect of the war in Iran, the United States' reputational hit caused by Trump's tariffs, and the chance of global recession. Finally, David ends the episode with a discussion of Ask Not: The Kennedys and the Women They Destroyed, by Maureen Callahan, and reflects on why reactions to the abuse of women by men in power seem to have become a partisan issue....

In a world leaning away from globalization, governments face a tough choice: Should they block dominant foreign companies to protect local businesses, or welcome them in hopes of fast-tracking economic growth and modernization' In his recently published book, 'Traders, Speculators, and Captains of Industry: How Capitalist Legitimacy Shaped Foreign Investment Policy in India' (Harvard University Press, November 2025), Jason Jackson, associate professor in political economy and urban planning in the MIT Department of Urban Studies and Planning, explains that these policy decisions aren't just math, but long-standing and often heated moral debates over how businesses should conduct themselves, and who they serve. Jackson argues that morality has a long history in economics and deserves more attention because, while ever-present in economic policy discourse, moral beliefs are often under-recognized or underappreciated. 'India is an exemplary case of ways in which moral beliefs shape economic policy decisions,' says Jackson. 'But at the same time, I think it's representative of a general feature of capitalism. It's the perfect case.'...