Eduardo Porter - The Washington Post

Eduardo Porter

New York City and Mexico City

Columnist and editorial board member

Education: Universidad Nacional Autónoma de México, BA in physics; Imperial College of Science Technology and Medicine, MS in quantum fields and fundamental forces

Eduardo Porter was born in Phoenix and grew up in the United States, Mexico and Belgium. He came to The Washington Post following a year as a columnist at Bloomberg Opinion and nearly two decades at the New York Times, where he was a member of the editorial board and wrote the Economic Scene column from 2012 to 2018. Eduardo began his career in journalism in 1991 as a financial reporter for Notimex, a Mexican news agency, in Mexico City. He spent four years as Notimex's correspondent in Tokyo and London and, in 1996, moved to São Paulo, Brazil, as editor of América Economía, a business magazi
Latest from Eduardo Porter

How America tried and failed to stay White

100 years ago the U.S. tried to limit immigration to White Europeans. Instead, diversity triumphed.

May 15, 2024

How rich countries are testing extreme measures to keep out asylum seekers

We have to reform policies — but also change the way we think about migration as a whole.

May 9, 2024
A tent belonging to an asylum seeker is seen outside the International Protection Office, an immigration processing facility in Dublin, on April 30. (Clodagh Kilcoyne/Reuters)

Why today’s inflation rate might be worth keeping

Inflation is higher than the Federal Reserve wants. What should it do?

May 3, 2024
(Getty Images/iStock)

Why can’t the left deal with crime?

The right’s brutal solutions are no solutions at all.

April 2, 2024
El Salvador's president, Nayib Bukele, in San Juan Opico on Nov. 23, 2022. (Marvin Recinos/AFP/Getty Images)

Will Mexico’s president change the course of U.S. elections?

If López Obrador is playing with immigration to pressure Biden, Mexico is likely to suffer.

March 21, 2024
Migrants who entered the United States from Mexico are lined up for processing by U.S. Customs and Border Protection in 2023 in Eagle Pass, Texas. (Eric Gay/AP photo)

AI could help ending the dominance of the credentialed classes

The idea that technology inevitably transforms society for the worse stems from a misunderstanding about how technologies become embedded in an economy.

March 19, 2024
An advertisement alongside the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland, on Jan. 18. (Markus Schreiber/AP)

Why working-class voters still don’t trust Democrats

It will take more than one administration to change Democrats’ well-established image as the party of out-of-touch, college-educated cosmopolitans.

March 11, 2024
President Biden speaks to striking autoworkers on a picket line in Van Buren Township, Mich., in September. (Evan Vucci/AP)

Brazil sidelined Bolsonaro. What can America do about Trump?

Brazil’s unique institutions helped it weather an authoritarian challenge to its democracy. But the U.S. has other resources to bolster its resilience.

February 19, 2024
Former Brazilian president Jair Bolsonaro speaks at the gathering of the Conservative Political Action Conference in Fort Washington last March. (Jabin Botsford/The Washington Post)

Here’s which states could benefit most from migrant labor

The shipping of migrants to blue municipalities is a cheap political stunt. But if these migrants were given work permits, they could supercharge the economy.

February 14, 2024

The problem with social media is that it exists at all

Economists measured what people would pay for these platforms not to exist. It turns out, people would pay a lot.

February 8, 2024
(Getty Images/iStockphoto)