Curriculum International Affairs & Global Economics

International Affairs & Global Economics

How trade, currencies and international institutions connect the world's economies - and what happens when they don't get along.

Trade and Globalization How the world's economies became so interconnected, and what that interconnection actually delivers. 📄 Read-aloud
Exchange Rates Explained What determines how much one country's currency is worth in another's, and why it matters more than it seems. 📄 Read-aloud
Tariffs and Trade Wars How a tariff dispute escalates into a trade war, and who actually pays for it. 📄 Read-aloud
International Affairs: Checkpoint 1 Covers trade and globalization, exchange rates, and tariffs and trade wars. 5 questions
The IMF and the World Bank What these two institutions actually do, and why they get mentioned in nearly every international economic crisis. 📄 Read-aloud
BRICS and the G20 Two major international groupings, what they were built to do, and how they differ. 📄 Read-aloud
Global Supply Chains How a single product often depends on dozens of countries, and what happens when that chain breaks. 📄 Read-aloud
International Affairs: Checkpoint 2 Covers the IMF and World Bank, BRICS and the G20, and global supply chains. 5 questions
Economic Sanctions How economic sanctions are used as a foreign policy tool, and how effective they actually tend to be. 📄 Read-aloud
Global Inequality How economic inequality between and within countries is measured, and why the two aren't the same story. 📄 Read-aloud
Currency Wars and Competitive Devaluation Why countries sometimes deliberately weaken their own currency, and how that can spiral into a broader global conflict over exchange rates. 📄 Read-aloud
Foreign Direct Investment Explained How money flows across borders to build real businesses and infrastructure, and why countries actively compete for it. 📄 Read-aloud
Sovereign Debt and Developing-Country Debt Crises How countries borrow money across borders, and what happens when they can no longer make the payments. 📄 Read-aloud
Reserve Currencies and Why the Dollar Dominates Why so much of the world's trade and savings runs through the US dollar, even for transactions that have nothing to do with the United States. 📄 Read-aloud
Regional Trade Blocs and Free Trade Agreements How groups of countries agree to trade more freely with each other, and the tradeoffs that come with joining one. 📄 Read-aloud
Foreign Aid: Does It Work? The genuine, long-running debate among economists over whether foreign aid helps developing countries grow, and why the evidence is mixed. 📄 Read-aloud
The World Trade Organization and Trade Disputes How the WTO sets global trade rules and resolves disputes between countries, and why its authority has come under strain in recent years. 📄 Read-aloud
Currency Pegs and Dollarization Why some countries tie their currency's value to another country's, or abandon their own currency entirely, and the tradeoffs involved. 📄 Read-aloud
The Resource Curse: When Natural Wealth Hurts Growth Why countries rich in natural resources like oil or minerals sometimes grow more slowly and develop weaker institutions than resource-poor countries. 📄 Read-aloud
The Economics of the European Union How the European Union created a single market and a shared currency, the benefits and strains of integration, and the effects of Brexit. 📄 Read-aloud
The Global Minimum Corporate Tax How countries agreed to set a minimum 15 percent tax rate on large multinational companies, why it was needed, and how it works. 📄 Read-aloud
The Tariff Wars of 2025 How the United States sharply raised tariffs on many trading partners in 2025, how other countries responded, and what economists expected the effects to be. 📄 Read-aloud
The Carbon Border Adjustment Mechanism How the European Union's carbon border tax charges importers for emissions embedded in goods like steel and aluminium, and why India and other exporters object. 📄 Read-aloud