Modern vice presidents can trace much of their political influence to the broad reforms that Jimmy Carter and Walter Mondale made to the second-highest elected office in the late 1970s.

The United States and other Western countries are reevaluating their foreign investment regulations amid an uptick in Chinese interest in strategic sectors.

The Strategic Petroleum Reserve, the world’s largest stockpile of emergency crude oil, has helped shield the United States from energy supply crunches, but debate persists over its management.

Western leaders have long criticized OPEC’s power to raise oil prices, and the bloc continues to influence the global market even as U.S. oil production has soared and alternative energies have come …