Edward Alden
Bernard L. Schwartz Senior Fellow, Council of Foreign Relations
Edward Alden is the Bernard L. Schwartz senior fellow at the Council on Foreign Relations (CFR), specializing in U.S. economic competitiveness. He is the author of the new book Failure to Adjust: How Americans Got Left Behind in the Global Economy, which focuses on the federal government’s failure to respond effectively to competitive challenges on issues such as trade, currency, worker retraining programs, education, infrastructure, and support for innovation. In addition, Alden is the director of the CFR Renewing America publication series and coauthor of a recent CFR Discussion Paper “A Winning Trade Policy for the United States.”
Alden’s previous book, The Closing of the American Border: Terrorism, Immigration, and Security Since 9/11, was a finalist for the Lukas Book Prize, for narrative nonfiction, in 2009. The jury called Alden’s book “a masterful job of comprehensive reporting, fair-minded analysis, and structurally sound argumentation.”
Alden was the project codirector of the 2011 CFR-sponsored Independent Task Force on U.S. Trade and Investment Policy, which was co-chaired by former White House chief of staff Andrew Card and former Senate majority leader Thomas Daschle. Alden was the project director of the 2009 CFR-sponsored Independent Task Force on U.S. Immigration Policy.
Alden was previously the Washington bureau chief for the Financial Times and prior to that was the newspaper’s Canada bureau chief, based in Toronto. He worked as a reporter at the Vancouver Sun and was the managing editor of the newsletter Inside U.S. Trade, widely recognized as a leading source of reporting on U.S. trade policies. Alden has won several national and international awards for his reporting. He has done numerous TV and radio appearances as an analyst on political and economic issues, including on PBS NewsHour, NPR, BBC, CNN, Fox News and MSNBC. His work has been published in the New York Times, Washington Post, Wall Street Journal, Los Angeles Times, Foreign Policy, Foreign Affairs, Fortune, and Toronto Globe and Mail.
Alden earned a master’s degree in international relations from the University of California, Berkeley, and pursued doctoral studies before returning to a journalism career. He has a bachelor’s degree in political science from the University of British Columbia. Alden was the winner of numerous academic awards, including a Mellon fellowship in the humanities and a MacArthur Foundation graduate fellowship.
