Weekly Writers Round-Up: Free Trade in Africa, a New Threat to Homesharing, and Counterproductive Iran Sanctions

Each week, we’ll be featuring opinion pieces from the alumni and current participants of AF’s Writing Fellows Program. A few highlights from the past week are below. For more information on how the program can help launch your career in writing, see here.

Africa Just Created a Major Free Trade Bloc by Alexander Hammond (Spring 2019) in The National Interest
Africa has just secured its free-trading future. After the west African nation, The Gambia ratified the African Continental Free Trade Area (AfCFTA) in April, the twenty-two-nation threshold needed for the trade pact to come into effect has now been reached. This is great news for Africa, because not only will a continent-wide free-trade area boost the region’s economy, but the AfCFTA represents an important ideological shift away from the socialist tendencies that have haunted much of the continent since its independence…

A Recent Supreme Court Decision Has Opened A Front For Hotels’ War on Homesharing by Andrew Wilford (Spring 2017) in Townhall
Last June, the Supreme Court overturned a rule requiring businesses to have some form of physical presence in a state in order to be subject to sales tax collection liability within that state. Hoteliers think that’s as good a reason as any to hit at upstart competitors who threaten their privileged incumbent status…

Trump’s Iran Policy Is Counterproductive by John Dale Grover (Spring 2019) in Defense One
Iran is not an existential threat to the United States, but treating it as such could turn it into one. The Trump administration’s concerns about Iran are understandable, but its latest policy is unnecessary, counterproductive, and harmful to American interests.

On April 22, Secretary of State Mike Pompeo announced that the United States will soon start sanctioning anyone—even vital allies—who imports Iranian oil. With pressing challenges from North Korea and China, it makes no sense to harshly punish important allies such as Japan and South Korea—or important future allies like India—just because they import oil from Iran. Nor should the United States be encouraging Tehran to conclude that it needs nuclear weapons after all…

It’s Time for Charlottesville To Remove Its Confederate Monuments by Billy Binion (Spring 2018) in Reason
Charlottesville’s Confederate monuments are here to stay, a Virginia judge ruled this week, reigniting debate over whether statues of Gens. Robert E. Lee and Stonewall Jackson deserve a place in the public square.

“While some people obviously see Lee and Jackson as symbols of white supremacy, others see them as brilliant military tacticians or complex leaders in a difficult time,” Judge Richard E. Moore of the Charlottesville Circuit Court says in a letter detailing his decision. “In either event, the statues to them under the undisputed facts of this case still are monuments and memorials to them, as veterans of the Civil War.”…