Edward Alden
Edward Alden is senior fellow at the Council on Foreign Relations (CFR), specializing in U.S. economic competitiveness, trade, and immigration policy. His latest book is When the World Closed Its Doors: The Covid-19 Tragedy and the Future of Borders, co-authored with Laurie Trautman. The book explores how the COVID-19 pandemic led to unprecedented border closures worldwide, and details the serious human consequences that followed. It argues that even as states are increasingly resorting to border restrictions, they are inadequate for addressing pandemics, drugs, migration and other external challenges.
Alden recently served as the project director of a CFR-sponsored Independent Task Force, co-chaired by former Michigan Governor John Engler and former U.S. Secretary of Commerce Penny Pritzker, which produced the report The Work Ahead: Machines, Skills, and U.S. Leadership in the Twenty-First Century. In 2011, he was the project codirector of the Independent Task Force that produced U.S. Trade and Investment Policy. In 2009, he was the project director of the Independent Task Force that produced U.S. Immigration Policy.