Today’s most critical challenges are impacting every American. These include the direction of globalization and Chinese relations, shifting demographics and labor shortages, and rising inequality and threats to American capitalism. Understanding these challenges, the risks they pose, and how to adapt will be necessary to survive and thrive in the years ahead.
Relations between the U.S. and China took a precipitous dive during the Trump administration and that trajectory unexpectedly continued after President Joe Biden took over. Biden and President Xi Jinping finally talked—virtually, which may become the new norm in the post‐COVID world. Hopefully their online meeting halted the relationship’s rapid descent, but what next?
Relations between the world’s two most important nations have descended to frigid coexistence if not outright cold war. There are increasing possibilities of a military as well as political clash, with potentially catastrophic consequences.
With broad, bipartisan support from Congress, the Biden administration is expected to commence an all‐of-government effort to confront the profound and rapidly multiplying challenges presented by China’s rise. Exactly what the program will entail remains unclear, but neutralizing Beijing’s web of predatory technology policies should be a priority.
There has been much loose talk of a new Cold War between the U.S. and China. Such a conflict would be potentially disastrous for both countries. Nor is it easy to imagine, given the extensive ties between both peoples. Even with both governments at sharp odds, the nations remain connected, much more so than the U.S. and Soviet Union.
In the New York Times on Tuesday, May 5, Senator Josh Hawley (R-MO) proposed abolishing the World Trade Organization. On the next day came a flood of fact corrections from trade experts exposing the senator’s idea as the spawn of fallacies. Then, on that Thursday, conceding only that the United States can’t “abolish” the WTO, Hawley submitted a joint resolution to Congress calling for a formal withdrawal.
Protectionists have been emboldened by the Trump administration’s approach to trade policy, and some are now using COVID-19 as an argument to support their cause. In most cases, it’s not worth responding, but I don’t think of economics columnist Noah Smith as an economic nationalist, so if he is saying things along these lines, I feel like it merits a response. Here’s what he said in his recent column:
The Covid 19 outbreak set the field, but the direct cause of oil’s crash last week reads from an old playbook. WTI has been on a freefall losing over $16 in two days, prompting a wider stock market sell off that created another Black Monday as the Dow dove 7% in a single day. The day saw trading halted for a 15 minute period in an effort to stop the bleeding, but once it resumed, so did the panic. All indicators suggest it will get worse.
When I crossed through Checkpoint Charlie from West Berlin to East Berlin nearly 30 years ago, the failures of former East Germany were immediately obvious. The grey unkempt landscape and dilapidated buildings looked as though that country hadn't been repaired since American and Soviet tanks faced off yards apart decades earlier in one of the most tense nuclear showdowns.
This past week was an eventful one for trade policy, and not in a good way. In the trade world these days, no news is good news, and any tweets are probably bad news. President Trump’s trade policy has been stridently protectionist, abusive of the constitutional separation of powers, destructive to U.S. alliances, and fundamentally flawed as a strategy to achieve its stated goals.
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