Casey Michel is the author of Foreign Agents: How American Lobbyists and Lawmakers Threaten Democracy Around the World, out 29 August (Icon Books).
America is known for its lobbying industry, from PR shops and law firms to former federal officials acting as agents for tyrants. K Street is not just a Washington DC address, it is a metonym for the business of influence. London too has plenty of consultancies and PR agencies gleefully signing up autocratic clients. There
The city of Cleveland, Ohio, is hardly considered the most cosmopolitan or globalised city in the U.S. If anything, the Rust Belt city – whose population is less than half of what it was a century ago – is a symbol of industrial decline across America’s heartland, for a region whose best days are clearly
