About Alan Alexandroff

Alan is the Director of the Global Summitry Project and teaches at the Munk School of Global Affairs & Public Policy at the University of Toronto. Alan focuses much of his attention on difficult global order issues including the appearance and consequences of the multilateral environment and the many global summits, especially the Informals such as the G7 and G20.

The Impact of Trump 2.0

Posted on November 15, 2024 by Alan Alexandroff

They were obvious moves by Trump, I suspect. Nevertheless, some of the choices by Trump for his senior appointments were startling – and what one might otherwise describe as ‘dismaying’. For many of us not a particular surprise. So we have House of Representative Matt Gaetz nominated as Attorney General. As The Guardian declared:

Donald Trump’s decision to nominate the far-right Republican congressman Matt Gaetz as attorney general has sent shockwaves through Washington, including the president-elect’s own party.

Trump on Wednesday announced Gaetz as his pick to be the nation’s chief law enforcement officer in the justice department, a role that directs the government’s legal positions on critical issues, including abortion, civil rights, and first amendment cases.

Michelle Goldberg, writing for the NYT had some choice words for this Trump nomination:

Of all the people Trump was considering for A.G., Gaetz is unique mainly for how much he is hated by other Republicans, and not just moderate ones. In the final months of the last Trump administration, the Justice Department opened an investigation into whether Gaetz had a relationship with an underage girl that violated federal sex trafficking laws.

It should go without saying that Gaetz is not, by any normal standards, even a tiny bit qualified to be attorney general. He practiced law for only about two years before running for office, handling small-time civil matters, like suing an old woman for money she owed his father’s caregiving company.

Then, there was the equally startling nomination of Robert F Kennedy Jr., a vaccine skeptic and more that Trump has nominated for the head of Health and Human Services. And then there is Pete Hegseth nominated for Secretary of Defence and Tulsi Gabbard nominated for Director of Intelligence. Each in their own career and experience raising questions over their appointment. And then, finally, there is the appointment of Elon Musk Trump’s now seemingly close buddy to a Commission to bring efficiency to the US federal government. As Ed Luce at the FT commented:

What you might feel less comfortable in admitting is that Trump is giving utterance to America’s soul. The US is driven by the spirit of limitless resources and surmountable frontiers. Its mission is “To explore strange new worlds . . . to boldly go where no man has gone before”, as James T Kirk put it. On Tuesday Trump promoted Elon Musk, his own Captain Kirk, to Starfleet Admiral. Musk’s USS Enterprise is the department of government efficiency (Doge).

Notwithstanding the name the Musk initiative is unlikely to be a government department as noted by Luce:

It is unclear whether Doge will have any statutory authority, which would require an act of Congress, or simply be a super-advisory body to the Trump administration. Either way, Musk’s goal is to close down regulatory agencies in Washington or drastically pare them back. He recently said he would also cut almost a third from the federal government’s $6.7tn budget.

Government authority or not, Musk will be disruptive, as are likely to be all these recent appointments, and that is the point. Disruption, chaos and controversy – the Trump modus operandi. As noted again by Luce on the choice of Musk:

But Musk will probably get a lot of his way on deregulation. If you work for the Securities and Exchange Commission, the Department of Justice, the US Federal Reserve, the Bureau of Labor, the Environmental Protection Agency, the US Department of Agriculture or the departments of energy and education, be afraid; be very afraid.

For those poor souls who suggested that Trump wouldn’t follow through on some of his crazier actions, often after plaintively admitting that they had voted for him, these appointments seem to put ‘stop’ to that benign view of Trump governing.

And raising the spectre of serious policy steps likely leading to disruption, chaos and controversy, Trump 2.0 will have a significant impact on US foreign policy efforts. Here, it is worth examining the recent comments by my colleague, Susan Thornton. Susan is currently a Senior Fellow at the Paul Tsai China Center at the Yale Law School. She also participates in many of the China-West Dialogue (CWD) discussions that we have held over the last few years. Susan retired as a senior diplomat after almost three decades of experience with the U.S. State Department in Eurasia and East Asia. She retired, in fact, as Acting Assistant Secretary for East Asian and Pacific Affairs at the Department of State.

Susan does not underestimate the prospect for a dramatic impact by Trump on American foreign policy driven, as Susan sees it, by an American public that is no longer willing to bear the burden of a leading US role in the global order. As she wrote recently at the East Asian Forum, the US public, from Susan’s view, is determined to stand down the United States:

Americans are no longer confident in the promise and effectiveness of their institutional system, they reject the obligation of answering the world’s fire alarms, they are weary of bearing the cost of global security and they see clearly that other states are free-riding on US largesse. The US electorate has been consistently ahead of its politicians in its rejection of the role of ‘world policeman’.

In Susan’s view the election of Trump satisfies, it seems, a desire among many in public to wind down US entanglements in the global arena:

Trump, and certainly his national security team, does not appreciate that he was put in power to dismantle US global hegemony. But Trump’s bullying transactionalism, his aversion to commitment, his penchant for tariffs and complete indifference to the potential impact that the United States has on other countries can have no other outcome.

It is obvious that permanent damage will be done to the United Nations, international economic institutions, multilateral organisations in which the United States is a member and any international effort to combat transnational challenges. The dissolution began during his first term and will be irreversible after the coming four years. The Americans who elected Trump as their standard bearer will cheer their demise.

And, the Trump actions, according to Susan, will only raise the temperature in the key global relationship, the US and China. As Susan suggests:

There will be a further sharp disconnect of the US and Chinese economies. Trump and the Republican Congress are likely to invoke more tariffs, export controls and sanctions leading to global fragmentation, rising costs and slower growth. Businesses will face an ever more complicated picture and are already strategising how to adjust. Many countries in Asia are devising economic hedging strategies and will try to walk a middle line amid deteriorating US–China relations. Whether and how a Trump administration might impose costs for such an approach remains an open question.

Susan further suggests that, in fact, Trump is the instrument of many in the US electorate that are tired with the burden resulting from the US leading role in the global order:

We have already entered the transition to a post-Pax Americana world — Trump is an accelerant. This does not mean that the United States will disappear. It will remain the most powerful and wealthy country in the world. But it does leave a vacuum in the international arena and US partners will hopefully step in to provide leadership and public goods.

My colleague Dan Drezner agrees with Susan at least with the impact of a second Trump administration. Dan is the Distinguished Professor of International Politics and Associate Dean of Research at the Fletcher School of Law and Diplomacy, and among other things, the author of the Substack, Drezner’s World. In a FA piece entitled, “The End of American Exceptionalism: Trump’s Reelection Will Redefine U.S. Power”, Dan declares:

Trump will navigate world politics with greater confidence this time around. Whether he will have any better luck bending the world to his “America first” brand is another question entirely. What is certain, however, is that the era of American exceptionalism has ended. Under Trump, U.S. foreign policy will cease promoting long-standing American ideals. That, combined with an expected surge of corrupt foreign policy practices, will leave the United States looking like a garden-variety great power.”

He [Trump] believes that the U.S.-created liberal international order has, over time, stacked the deck against the United States. To change that imbalance, Trump wants to restrict inward economic flows such as imports and immigrants (although he likes inward foreign direct investment). He wants allies to shoulder more of the burden for their own defense. And he believes that he can cut deals with autocrats, such as Russia’s Vladimir Putin or North Korea’s Kim Jong Un, that will reduce tensions in global trouble spots and allow the United States to focus Inward.

For Susan the change in foreign policy is driven by the American public; for Dan the direction comes from Trump and his acolytes but the outcome appears to be the same. The end of American leadership as we’ve understood it for seven decades and more.

So how, or what will provide the leadership that can manage the global order? Who can help shape and critically, who can presumably stabilize the increasingly fractious international environment? Positively, who can promote international development, energize the efforts to meet the climate crisis, and reform international financial reform and meet the growing debt crises for many? Who will energize the multilateral institutions that can promote peace and security and advance global governance? Where is the leadership?

Here Susan gives us a bit of a hint. As she suggests:

In this more fragmented, disordered world, US partners in Asia should also pursue more networked security cooperation and regional integration to safeguard peace and mitigate the negative effects of deglobalisation for their economies. Such measures are useful on their own merits, no matter who is in the White House, as the world is set to become a more difficult and dangerous place.

We have, at recent gatherings of the China-West Dialogue, been exploring the role of Middle Powers. I hope to turn back to the potential key roles that Middle Powers may bring to the growing threats to the global order. I think that may be a hopeful direction. I will return to this subject.

Image Credit: ABC News

This Post first appeared as a Substack Post at Alan’s Newsletter. Feel free to comment and subscribe to Alan’s Newsletter.

https://globalsummitryproject.substack.com/p/the-impact-of-trump-20

In a Trump World, ‘Widening the Who’ in the Global Order

Posted on November 7, 2024 by Alan Alexandroff

Now we are out a bit early. But that’s not surprising because of the US national elections on Tuesday night. So a few thoughts on that and then a redirection to the, “what do we do about the global order in the light of Trump’s return, including many of his former advisers, to the White House”

The electoral equation in the end proved to be rather simple if also somber. Harris lost too many non-college and latino men and she won women – but not by nearly enough. With the Latinos, Trump won 32 percent in 2020; in 2024 Trump won about 45 percent. Harris, on women, won 54 percent but Biden in 2020 won 57 percent. The Harris statistic on women is dismaying.

Now I am not one to focus and comment on US elections – other than as a ‘somewhat informed’ but non-expert – but it does seem to me that the Harris campaign did not strategically break through with a host of electoral groups with her message. And she needed to to secure the Presidency. As Michael Hirsh described in FP:

Despite overpowering Trump in their only debate on Sept. 10 and raising more than $1 billion in donations in just three months—a new record—Harris often floundered when challenged to deliver a convincing summary of her agenda on critical issues such as the economy and immigration. She also fumbled badly in explaining her flip-flops on issues such as fracking (which she once opposed and later supported, but without pointing out the simple fact that improved technology had made it environmentally safer). That led Wall Street Journal commentator Peggy Noonan to label Harris an “artless dodger.”

Worse, possibly, was the view expressed by Opinion Writer Peter Baker who suggests that Trump represents a significant current of American thinking. As he wrote in the NYT:

The assumption that Mr. Trump represented an anomaly who would at last be consigned to the ash heap of history was washed away on Tuesday night by a red current that swept through battleground states — and swept away the understanding of America long nurtured by its ruling elite of both parties. … With his comeback victory to reclaim the presidency, Mr. Trump has now established himself as a transformational force reshaping the United States in his own image.

No longer can the political establishment write off Mr. Trump as a temporary break from the long march of progress, a fluke who somehow sneaked into the White House in a quirky, one-off Electoral College win eight years ago. With his comeback victory to reclaim the presidency, Mr. Trump has now established himself as a transformational force reshaping the United States in his own image.

Populist disenchantment with the nation’s direction and resentment against elites proved to be deeper and more profound than many in both parties had recognized. Mr. Trump’s testosterone-driven campaign capitalized on resistance to electing the first woman president.

In fact, according to Baker, Trump was appreciated for all his effrontery and racism:

Rather than be turned off by Mr. Trump’s flagrant, anger-based appeals along lines of race, gender, religion, national origin and especially transgender identity, many Americans found them bracing. Rather than be offended by his brazen lies and wild conspiracy theories, many found him authentic.

So with Trump in the White House and his people in the Administration where do we go? On the immediate geopolitical front we are very likely to see rising tensions with China – though I believe there is a path to less tension. We are very likely to see pressure on Ukraine to halt the conflict with Putin even at the cost of transferring Ukrainian lands to Russia – a real cost and speaking of costs we are likely to see a blizzard of tariffs on Chinese goods and possibly beyond. But it is a bit early to fill in the contours of Trump 2.0 foreign policy.

But, instead, let me look at the outline of the direction we saw coming from Democrat and Democrat-leaning experts and operatives. In particular let me look briefly at the design described by Anne-Marie Slaughter in a recent Foreign Affairs piece titled: “How America Can Succeed in a Multialigned World: The Importance of Building Truly Global Partnerships”. Anne-Marie is currently CEO of the think tank New America. From 2002 to 2009, she was Bert G. Kerstetter ‘66 University Professor of Politics and International Affairs and Dean of the School of Public and International Affairs at Princeton University. In 2009 Secretary of State Hillary Clinton appointed her as the first woman Director of Policy Planning in the U.S. State Department. She has been a ‘close in’ Democratic voice and it is why I refer to this article to give an inside possible glimpse at where the Harris administration might have moved had she been elected and indeed the possibility of Anne-Marie’s very real likely participation.

Anne-Marie is quite aware that there are two challenges this Biden administration faced and would be front and center for a Harris administration – the rising geopolitical tensions with Russia, and with China and with Iran, but also the existential global governance threats, climate, finance and weakened multilateralism and the institutions that no longer served global order purposes. Anne-Marie moved back to gaze at the Biden administration and its effort to build not just an alliance system but beyond that to a ‘multipartner world’. As Anne-Marie declared:

It [the Biden administration] has reanimated and expanded traditional alliances such as NATO and strengthened and created a host of new diplomatic and security partnerships. Secretary of State Antony Blinken described in Foreign Affairs a network of “partners in peace,” the result of an intense diplomatic strategy to safeguard U.S. interests abroad while rebuilding competitiveness at home.

Yet as she described the effort:

These partnerships are important and valuable. Still, the Biden strategy overall has tilted too far in the direction of geopolitical competition over global cooperation, even as it tries to do both at once. To strike the right balance, the next administration must partner with a wider variety of global actors, focus those partnerships more on existential global threats, and accept a more decentralized, messier world that welcomes leadership from many different quarters.

The concept of “multistakeholder governance” holds that all actors who have a stake in the outcome of a specific decision, whether a state, an international institution, a corporation, or a municipality, find a place at the table at some point in the decision-making process.

So the future of multipartnering was just not just constructed on state, regional and international organizations but extending to non-state and substate actors. As Anne-Marie argues:

The concept of “multistakeholder governance” holds that all actors who have a stake in the outcome of a specific decision, whether a state, an international institution, a corporation, or a municipality, find a place at the table at some point in the decision-making process.

Her conclusion for this multipartner approach is as follows:

A national security strategy dedicated to building a multipartner world will still leave plenty of room for the United States to lead on the global stage. Moreover, embracing multisector partnerships gives open societies such as that of the United States a leg up in in geopolitical competition, given the autonomy and energy of American civic, corporate, philanthropic, technological, scientific, and educational institutions.

This wide multipartner approach, as described in part by Anne-Marie Slaughter, is unlikely to be captured and furthered by the incoming Trump administration. But it is worth keeping in mind and may well be an approach that will be valuable for many national, regional and international actors in the near future, even if not for a Trump America.

Meanwhile, another piece in a multipartner world is a possibility. And we at the China-West Dialogue (CWD) are keenly examining the role today of Middle Powers in furthering efforts to meet the challenge of global threats and to diminish the ratcheting up of geopolitical tensions. We are currently examining with colleagues across the globe the potential for Middle Power Diplomacy (MPD) to tackle global threats and stabilize the global governance environment. As the lead co-chair of the CWD, Colin Bradford has written:

Global pluralism, developed in 2020-2023, posits the existence already of “autonomous” strategies and independence in foreign policies as a “global political dynamic” in global relations. Pluralism is a core concept for CWD, in that it leads to the “pluralization” of relations with China as an “alternative framework” to address the toxic tension in the bilateral China-US relationship in recent years. This has been the goal of CWD from its foundation.

In the last year of CWD exchanges, the importance of Middle Powers and Middle Power Diplomacy has arisen as the domestic driver of pluralism. This new CWD series seeks to elucidate the factors enabling countries to be Middle Powers and the features of their international behaviors which are effective in addressing global systemic challenges.

A better understanding of these factors and features could facilitate proactive national efforts to deliberately contribute to global pluralism by “punching above their weight” and to influence global governance outcomes that include China and the US but which “globalize” those outcomes, rather than narrow them by allowing great power dominance to prevail.

We have examined with colleagues globally, and always with our colleagues from China in the CWD process, Middle Power actions from Japan and Latin America, especially Brazil, and Korea shortly with Turkey, Indonesia and the ASEAN to come and also with examinations of Europe and the US and China and MPD.

Trump America with its hypernationalist focus and its likely transactional initiatives fails to promote any kind of global order optimism; but there are other pathways. We need to explore these further and promote those that appear promising.

This was first posted as a Substack POst at Alan’s Newsletter. All comments and free subscriptions are welcome

https://open.substack.com/pub/globalsummitryproject/p/in-a-trump-world-widening-the-who?r=bj&utm_campaign=post&utm_medium=web&showWelcomeOnShare=true

Image Credit: ABC News

The ‘Global Order’: ‘Who is on First’

Posted on November 1, 2024 by Alan Alexandroff

I was trying very hard to ignore the impending vote for US president upcoming next week. We will have plenty of time to contemplate the action and consequences of the presidential choice on US foreign policy and global leadership.

But then again I was not fully able to ignore the consequences for the international order of this event. I was caught by a very recent Special Report from CIGI on: “Scenarios of Evolving Global Order”. Now CIGI is located in Waterloo Ontario and CIGI stands for the Centre for International Governance Innovation. I have a small soft spot for the think tank as I and a number of close colleagues spent some good years there when it launched as a global affairs outfit and, I think produced some good early work on global governance, among other things.

Anyway, the Report is interesting as it attempts to:

… fill a gap between the analysis of current trends and mapping of potential futures by outlining five possible scenarios for an evolving global order. These five scenarios represent a spectrum from the most modest plausible change (reform of the current system) to the most radical (transformation of the whole system due to a global shock).

There clearly is much current discussion over the evolving global order in the context of significant geopolitical tensions between the two leading powers and the numerous conflicts burdening international relations. So the Report describes 5 different scenarios built on these assumptions:

• The current international system is not working; international institutions, including the United Nations and Bretton Woods institutions, are unable to address most contemporary challenges.

• Responses to contemporary global challenges are siloed, nationally and institutionally.

• The United States’ global leadership is waning due to reduced capacity and internal focus.

• The relative economic power of liberal democracies is diminishing.

• Emerging powers — including, but not limited to, China and India — are increasingly asserting their influence and driving change.

• Finding new pathways of international cooperation on security issues may be more elusive, meaning attention may focus on cooperation on economic issues.

• Deglobalization, and regional integration as an alternative to multilateralism, continues to accelerate by many, but not all, measures.

• Momentum for nationalist and isolationist policies continues to build in many countries.

The result five different scenarios as filled out by the author team:

Scenario 1: Reform of the Existing Global System

Scenario 2: Replacement of the Existing Global System

Scenario 3: The Emergence of a Bloc-Based Global System

Scenario 4: A Case of Disorder

Scenario 5: Transformed Global Order

Each scenario is interesting and for every scenario there are two pathways described by the authors leading to an identified outcome:

The authors’ view is that these five scenarios broadly represent core directions that global order may evolve toward in the coming months and years. They acknowledge that there are numerous potential pathways that the five scenarios could take — by choosing only two for each, many possibilities remain for further exploration.

Now each scenario is worth assessing – and I will try and examine some perghaps at a later date, but I was struck by the perspective the authors identified for the structure and the dynamics for all five scenarios. As the Report suggested:

All of the scenarios explored assume the current and evolving global dynamics are multipolar (rather than other forms such as bipolar, hegemonic or concerted). It is, of course, possible that global order does not continue to evolve in a multipolar way — for example, that one group of states forms a security and economic coalition in a way that dominates all the rest or that the world devolves into a bipolar world utterly dominated by American and Chinese spheres of control. The world is currently operating with multipolar dynamics on most issues, and this is likely to continue into the future.

Now that assumption of a multipolar system struck me. The reason is I came across an interesting Substack Post from Clarence Gu and Chenghao Sun, ChinAffairs+ describing in the Post titled “Yan Xuetong & John Mearsheimer Conversation: Who Shapes Global Order, and Who Will Win the Competition?”an interesting encounter, the third in fact, between these two experts. Now Yan Xuetong is the Dean of the Institute of International Relations at Tsinghua University, a highly prestigious university in China and John Mearsheimer is, as he describes himself, “the R. Wendell Harrison Distinguished Service Professor in the Political Science Department at the University of Chicago, where he has taught since 1982 and an international relations theorist. More specifically, I am a realist.”

Now I have known John for many years as we were graduate students together at Cornell University with the same adviser, the recently passed Richard N Rosecrance, renowned international relations expert. But we were seldom on the same side of the fence when describing the underlying dynamics of the international system. But that is neither here nor there.

Both Yan Xuetong and John are known for their focus in international relations on ‘realism’, and in fact John’s writings identify what is known as ‘offensive realism’. And while the two differ to a degree in this encounter at Tsinghua in Beijing they both strongly endorse the notion that the system is driven by the need by states to maintain dominance in a current bipolar not multipolar world (You will note by the way that the quotes that follow have been slightly edited due at times to imperfect transcription). As John describes the international system:

How do you survive the international system? The system is where there is no higher authority. The answer is very simple. You want to be very powerful. You want to maximize your power, you cannot be certain of the intentions of those other states. It pays to be really powerful, to pay to be a hegemon.

If you think more specifically, the argument is that you can only be a regional hegemon, number one. Number two, you want to make sure that no other state is a regional hegemon. The ideal situation is to be the only regional hegemony in the international system.

All of this is to say we are involved today, in an intense security competition. It shows no signs going away. And if anything will get worse with the passage of time. This is a tragic situation. It has nothing to do with Chinese culture or American culture. And many people in China blame the United States for this trouble. … So my argument is, it’s the system that has caused this intense security competition.

Yan Xuetong is even more direct. He states:

The new trend of global order is Counter-Globalization. Then certainly today, I think because today’s title is Global Order and US-China relationship, we have to talk about how the relationship between China and US impact the current global order, my understanding is that the China-US relationship just like John argued that it will be intensified in terms of conflicts.You cannot expect China and US suddenly find a way to set down those disputes become the partners. If that happens, it means our theories are wrong. And actually, why the China-US conflicts are increasing and intensifying. It’s because now we’re in a bipolar configuration. The power structure is not multipolar.

The power structure is not multipolar. The current power structure is bipolar. And in the IR community, we all agree the situation after the World War One was multipolar, and after World War Two is bipolar.

What I mean is that the historic experience tells us, today we still have to understand what the international configuration is. It is not multipolar, not unipolar, it is bipolar, because except China no other major powers have capability or national power that account for 1/3 of the United States. None of them, except China. I don’t know how exactly we can do the measurement, but at least China’s capability is larger than 1/3 of the United States, possibly I would say 2/3 of the US.

Well, I won’t go into the five scenarios at this point though they are worth reviewing. The point here is to raise concern over analyses that are largely driven by structure rather than dynamics generated by policy – security, economic and political. These are the drivers that shape international outcomes. It is difficult at this moment to determine whether the structure is slightly less hegemonic, or is already bipolar, or in fact has become multipolar. The real analytic need, however, is to focus on the leading states and their foreign policy determinations. Structure is there, of course, but it does not drive foreign policy action or outcomes.

This Post first appeared at my Substack, Alan’s Newsletter. All comments and free subscriptions are welcome

Image Credit: Clarence Gu

Is it Trade Policy or is it Security Policy?

Posted on October 25, 2024 by Alan Alexandroff

It is more than passingly odd that a lead spokesperson apparently for Biden, if not Harris’s, global economic policies comes from Jake Sullivan, the National Security Adviser. Now don’t get me wrong. Jake is a very bright fellow who I have known for a number of years. Still, his repeated statements for the current economic policy seem, well, somewhat weird.

In any case Jake just recently returned to the Brookings Institution – in fact just the other day to provide an update on his original talk titled: “Renewing American Economic Leadership”. This original talk was delivered by Jake on April 27, 2023. Now, again in the realm of strange, it seems to me odd to have Jake providing an update when we are less than two weeks out from a Presidential vote. And while the Democrat may win the presidency, it will not be Joe Biden. Yes, the Vice President was part of the preceding administration, but still. And it may be, of course, that Jake might well assume a prominent role in a new Harris administration, if she were to win. Still, I am sure that the next administration will seek to design and announce its own global trade and investment strategy. And that says nothing if the other guy wins.

In any case it was good to listen to Jake review his original proposals. When he spoke in 2023 Jake pointedly framed the changed global landscape. As he said:

After the Second World War, the United States led a fragmented world to build a new international economic order. It lifted hundreds of millions of people out of poverty. It sustained thrilling technological revolutions. And it helped the United States and many other nations around the world achieve new levels of prosperity.

But the last few decades revealed cracks in those foundations. A shifting global economy left many working Americans and their communities behind. A financial crisis shook the middle class. A pandemic exposed the fragility of our supply chains. A changing climate threatened lives and livelihoods. Russia’s invasion of Ukraine underscored the risks of overdependence.

“So this moment demands that we forge a new consensus.” In broad strokes then, Jake proceeded to describe the changed landscape:

That’s why the United States, under President Biden, is pursuing a modern industrial and innovation strategy—both at home and with partners around the world. One that invests in the sources of our own economic and technological strength, that promotes diversified and resilient global supply chains, that sets high standards for everything from labor and the environment to trusted technology and good governance, and that deploys capital to deliver on public goods like climate and health.”

And what were the challenges that the early years of the Biden administration faced:

First, America’s industrial base had been hollowed out. …

The second challenge we faced was adapting to a new environment defined by geopolitical and security competition, with important economic impacts. …

The third challenge we faced was an accelerating climate crisis and the urgent need for a just and efficient energy transition. …

Finally, we faced the challenge of inequality and its damage to democracy.

According to Jake the administration knew what it had to do. As he declared:

When President Biden came to office, he knew the solution to each of these challenges was to restore an economic mentality that champions building. And that is the core of our economic approach. To build. To build capacity, to build resilience, to build inclusiveness, at home and with partners abroad. The capacity to produce and innovate, and to deliver public goods like strong physical and digital infrastructure and clean energy at scale. The resilience to withstand natural disasters and geopolitical shocks. And the inclusiveness to ensure a strong, vibrant American middle class and greater opportunity for working people around the world.

And you’ll not be surprised to hear that in his recently stated update the Biden administration has taken on these challenges and the policy initiatives are achieving results.

Now, I may well come back at a later moment to look at more of the Biden policy initiatives but I did want to examine at this time at least one of the challenges, the concerted effort to move away from freer trade – reducing tariffs, and instead focusing on targeted actions against a China that in Jake’s words:

The project of the 2020s and the 2030s is different from the project of the 1990s.

We know the problems we need to solve today: Creating diversified and resilient supply chains. Mobilizing public and private investment for a just clean energy transition and sustainable economic growth. Creating good jobs along the way, family-supporting jobs. Ensuring trust, safety, and openness in our digital infrastructure. Stopping a race-to-the-bottom in corporate taxation. Enhancing protections for labor and the environment.

So Jake in the update reflects on the Biden administration efforts and their result:

Advancing fairness, creating high quality jobs and revitalizing American communities can’t be an afterthought. Which is why we’ve made them central to our approach. In fact, as a result of the incentives in the IRA to build in traditional energy communities, investment in those communities has doubled under President Joe Biden.

The determination to build out the middle class underlies Biden economic policy. But how has it worked? Well, here, there seems to be some serious doubt notwithstanding the upbeat portrayal by Jake. Why do I say this? Let me turn to Robert Z Lawrence, a nonresident senior fellow at the Peterson Institute for International Economics (PIIE) and the Albert L. Williams Professor of Trade and Investment at the John F. Kennedy School of Government at Harvard. Lawrence recently reviewed Biden administration trade policy in a Report for PIIE: “Is the United States undergoing a manufacturing renaissance that will boost the middle class?”

Lawrence points out the continuing struggle to bring back manufacturing jobs to the United States:

The historic trend of the declining share of jobs in manufacturing in the United States has bedeviled politicians and policymakers over many years. Elected in 2020 in the wake of an economic downturn aggravated by the COVID-19 pandemic, President Joseph R. Biden Jr. made the goal of his economic policies to “build back better” and restore the middle class by reviving industrial jobs, especially in the Midwest, which he labeled “growing the economy from the bottom up and the middle out.

The emphasis on manufacturing was reinforced by an economic nationalist goal of returning jobs supposedly sent overseas back to US shores—“making and building it in America,” as the administration proclaimed.

Now Lawrence goes into some detail on Biden administration efforts that are probably worth reviewing:

This emphasis is reflected in the special incentives for US manufacturing in President Biden’s programs. He raised the threshold local content requirement for procurement by the US government. The Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act (also referred to as the Bipartisan Infrastructure Law) requires that all iron, steel, manufactured products, and construction materials used in its projects be made in America. The CHIPS and Science Act appropriates $24 billion in tax credits for manufacturing semiconductors in the United States and another $39 billion to provide incentives for investment in chip facilities and equipment in the United States. The Inflation Reduction Act (IRA) provides tax credits for clean energy investments and production and the purchase of electric vehicles (EVs) that are assembled in North America and have batteries that use minerals that are mined and refined in the United States or a country with which the United States has a free trade agreement.

Lawrence’s conclusion is stark and suggests an administration optimism that fails to match the desired growth hoped for:

The administration’s policies have expanded the base of manufacturing employment on the margins in recent years. But despite their appeal, these policies are unlikely to be the key to achieving middle class growth, because manufacturing no longer plays the role it played in the past in providing opportunities for workers without college degrees to join the middle class. Manufacturing can still help achieve other goals, such as providing hardware for the digital revolution; weapons for national security; and the EVs, wind turbines, and solar panels that are vital for decarbonization. But the sector is now too small to play a major role in reviving America’s depressed regions and providing significant opportunities for American workers.

The final conclusion is sobering:

Although it will spur rapid manufacturing employment growth in nontraditional locations, the Biden programs have not created a broad renaissance in US manufacturing, and they are unlikely to do so in the future. The effects of the programs on the Rust Belt states that experienced large manufacturing employment losses since 2000 are likely to be modest, and the impact will not significantly change the sectoral composition of the US labor market.

Manufacturing still has an important role to play in providing the goods necessary to rebuild US infrastructure, promote the digital revolution, and ease the transition to a decarbonized US economy. But because of its relatively small overall employment share—and the growing bias toward hiring more educated workers—the sector no longer provides non college workers with the opportunities it used to.

Although the Biden programs may achieve important social objectives, they are therefore unlikely to improve the opportunities for most workers without college degrees or help most of the country’s disadvantaged places.

To achieve a broad renaissance, obviously desired by the current administration, other tools are required. Greater targeted financial support and a concerted focus on training workers that in the past have proven difficult to develop in the US political and administrative context are required. It is a steep ask and difficult to achieve.

This Post originally appeared at my Substack Alan’s Newsletter – https://substack.com/home/post/p-150726560

Image Credit: Brookings Institution

Leadership – or Not

Posted on October 20, 2024 by Alan Alexandroff

The killing of Yahya Sinwar in Gaza, as many observers have suggested, may impact on the continuation, or a possible cessation of the conflict in Gaza. Some like Tom Friedman of the NewYork Times, and other commentators have even suggested that it could have possibilities beyond just the Gaza conflict. But all this rightly raises again the influence – and dare I say the leadership – of the United States. This question of US leadership brings attention not just to Israel and the region but beyond and raises real questions of US leadership with the global order.

On the Middle East front the US has expressed strongly its belief that it is time to end the war. As David Sanger of the NYTimes suggested in his analysis of the current state of relations:

Within hours of the death of the Hamas leader Yahya Sinwar on Thursday, President Biden and his aides scrambled to design one last push for a broad de-escalation of violence in the Middle East: a cease-fire and hostage deal in Gaza, a pullback from Israeli attacks on Hezbollah in Lebanon, a confident declaration of victory by Israel that might allow it to forgo a major retaliation against Iran.

It is time for this war to end,” Mr. Biden said as he emerged from Air Force One when it landed outside Berlin late Thursday. He added that he had called Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu of Israel and urged him to “move on” from the war and focus on building a new political landscape for the region.

Tom Friedman elaborated on what was required beyond just a ceasefire, if the cessation is to have a real impact on international stability:

The broad idea is for the Palestinian Authority president, Mahmoud Abbas, to agree to appoint the economist and former P.A. prime minister Salam Fayyad — or someone of his sterling reputation for incorruptibility — as the new Palestinian prime minister to lead a new technocratic cabinet and reform the Palestinian Authority, root out corruption and upgrade its governance and security forces.

Such a reformed Palestinian Authority would then formally ask for — and participate in — an international peacekeeping force that would include troops from the U.A.E., Egypt, possibly other Arab states and maybe even European nations. This force would be phased in to replace the Israeli military in Gaza. The Palestinian Authority would then be responsible for rebuilding Gaza with relief funds provided by Saudi Arabia, the U.A.E. and other Arab Gulf states, Europeans and most likely the U.S.

A reformed Palestinian Authority, with massive Arab and international funds, would attempt to restore its credibility in Gaza, and the credibility of its core Fatah organization in Palestinian politics — and sideline the remnants of Hamas.

The problem, at least immediately, however, is as David Sanger points out is that there is no interest by Prime Minister Netanyahu, it seems at this moment, to accept even a ceasefire let alone steps beyond:

Nothing in his face-offs with Mr. Netanyahu suggests that the Israeli prime minister will take his advice or seize the chance to turn the military victories into a lasting political accomplishment. One of Mr. Biden’s senior aides said the administration’s concern was that the killing of Mr. Sinwar, and before him the killing of the Hezbollah leader Hassan Nasrallah, ratifies in Mr. Netanyahu’s mind his certainty that he was right to deflect American calls for de-escalation over the past few months.

These observations seem to target the immediate difficulties that such a US plan envisages. But it is beyond that. The underlying question that is there, and ultimately more impactful, is the influence of the US in this situation but beyond it in other international arenas such as the Ukraine, the South China Sea and Taiwan. What is the capacity and policy chops of the US to influence and indeed to pressure allies and foes alike to accept outcomes that the US identifies as improving the state of relations and hopefully terminating conflict and stabilizing, or even possibly improving relations among the countries and more broadly the system?

As Ross Douthat of the NYT recently wrote in an article titled, “America needs a President”:

In neither case, though, does the world’s most powerful country seem to have a real handle on the situation, a plan that it’s executing or a clear means of setting and accomplishing its goals.

He further argues:

Scenarios where great powers end up led around by their allies and clients are not historically unusual. But it’s hard to escape the impression that America’s current difficulties are linked to a very specific problem: the vacuum at the heart of this presidency, the slow fade of Joe Biden from the normal execution of his duties, the general uncertainty about who is actually making decisions in U.S. foreign policy.

But it seems to me that a focus on the twilight of the Biden years as an explanation for US inability to shape conflict outcomes is a bit of a cop out. Rather as I see it, it seems to me that the US has come to a point where it is unwilling to fashion credible threats on friends and more importantly on foes. The key action mechanics of leadership – credible threats and equally credible assurances – are increasingly missing. As noted by Douthat:

Today’s restoration of deterrence could become tomorrow’s overreach or quagmire. For another, America has global responsibilities, not just regional ones, and a widening war in the Middle East could be bad for the American position in Asia and Eastern Europe no matter its outcome for the immediate participants. If the United States can’t exert real leverage over countries that it arms and supports, a weakening Pax Americana will end up hostage to too many interests not our own.

And that is the concern and the nub of the global order issue. And while there is a reflection, as noted above, that it is this President who has lost influence recently as he comes to the end of his Presidency, the weakness of America’s efforts extend beyond this, it appears to me.

The dilemma in my mind lies more with the rise of nationalist, even populist politics. We need not go to the most extreme versions of this populist view, as expressed by Donald Trump.The fact is it has spread to Democratic politics with Biden but it would appear with his advisers and to Democratic Presidential candidate, Vice President Harris as well. It can be seen most prominently with US trade policy. You need go no further than this administration’s determined effort to neuter the international trade dispute mechanism, the WTO. In addition, it extends to the growing willingness of US administrations, starting with Trump but infecting the Biden administration also to use tariffs, and increasingly so, as a trade policy. Michael Froman, currently President of the Council on Foreign Relations, and who served as the U.S. Trade Representative from 2013 to 2017 during the Obama Administration has examined current US trade policy:

For much of the last century, in response to the disastrous 1930 Smoot-Hawley tariffs, the United States’ international economic policy was focused on liberalization and integration. Competitiveness, efficiency, and growth were the metrics of success. This framework achieved many of its objectives, contributing to the biggest reduction in poverty in human history, opening vast new markets to U.S. exports, and greatly strengthening the comparative advantage of U.S. firms. At the same time, attention it paid to particularly vulnerable groups of workers and their communities. The advent of China as a strategic competitor further highlighted the limitations of that approach. The rules-based system was not designed to accommodate an economy that is so large and so integrated and yet is determined to follow a fundamentally different set of rules.

The result is the enlargement of protectionism signaled by National Security Adviser, Jake Sullivan:

April 2023, U.S. National Security Adviser Jake Sullivan delivered a critique of the neoliberal consensus that had served as the foundation for international economic policy for nearly a century. In a prominent speech, Sullivan suggested that the United States was moving on from an agenda of global integration and trade liberalization.

To protect Americans and to take on China, Sullivan contended, Washington would no longer shy away from raising tariffs, imposing restrictions on exports and foreign investment, and engaging in domestic industrial policy. It was an important speech for a number of reasons, not the least of which was that it was delivered by the national security adviser, not the treasury secretary, commerce secretary, or U.S. trade representative. …

Consistent with Sullivan’s framework, the Biden administration has embraced a range of economic tools: export controls, restrictions on inward and outbound foreign investment, tariffs, industrial policy, and antitrust enforcement. Many of these tools enjoy broad bipartisan support.

If they are to form the basis of a new, enduring Washington consensus, however, the next president—whether Trump or Kamala Harris—will need to develop a more systematic approach to using them. That means understanding their limitations, developing principles to guide their use, and grappling fully with the tradeoffs they involve.

But I am not heartened by this approach on trade, and the wider implications of a nationalist approach to policy well beyond trade policy. The direction of US leadership is troubling. We are only too aware of where it could go with Trump but the signals are not positive for a Harris administration either.

Image Credit: US Institute for Peace

The Changing Shape and Influence of the Informals

Posted on October 13, 2024 by Alan Alexandroff

The UN General Assembly’s High Level Week has come and gone. And so has the unique UN gathering – The ‘Summit of the Future’ with the passage of the long anticipated, ‘Pact for the Future’. So, it’s not surprising that those of us concerned with global governance, global order and global summitry have turned our attention to the – Informals and most evidently the upcoming two Summits – the G20 Summit hosted this year by Brazil and the BRICS+ Summit hosted by none other than Russia. As it turns out, the third key Informal, the G7 has already been held by Italy in Apulia on June 13-15th.

The Informals emerged in 1975 with the creation of the G6 then the G7 a year later. While the G7 enlarged to the G7/8 in 1998, with the inclusion of Russia, it returned to being the G7 in 2017 when Russia that had been suspended with its annexation of Crimea in 2014, abandoned the Informal for the G20. The G20 began in 1999 with finance ministers and central bankers. It evolved into a leaders summit with the global financial crisis in 2008. The G20 members in attendance at the first Leaders’ Summit called by George W. Bush were: Argentina, Australia, Brazil, Canada, China, France, Germany, India, Indonesia, Italy, Japan, Republic of Korea, Mexico, Russia, Saudi Arabia, South Africa, Türkiye, the United Kingdom, and the United States. The BRICs called their first leaders gathering in Yekaterinburg Russia in 2009. It emerged as the BRICS with the addition of South Africa at the Sanya China meeting in 2011. These three, the G7, the G20 and the BRICS have remained the key informal annual leaders’ summits. The question remains, however, how effective have these 3 Summits been? Have they been able to shape the global order and advance collective global governance leadership? In other words, have they been effective?

Let me first focus on the BRICS+. This year’s gathering is the first convening of the BRICS+, an enlarged BRICS group. This year’s Summit is significant for the current member enlargement but also for its hosting by Russia. Yes, this year the BRICS+ is hosted by Russia – a pariah for the West due to the Ukraine War. My colleague, Stewart Patrick, a senior fellow and director of the Global Order and Institutions Program at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace (CEIP) published a BRICS+ piece on September 9, titled, “BRICS Expansion, the G20, and the Future of World Order”. On the first point, enlargement, Stewart suggests:

Putin has also invited more than two dozen other countries that have applied for or are considering membership in the expanding club. The gathering is meant to send an unmistakable signal: Despite the West’s best efforts to isolate it, Russia has many friends around the world.

This meeting in Russia will take place in Kazan the capital of Tatarstan. In addition to the original members – Brazil, Russia, India, China and South Africa, besides all the many invited guest there are the new members: Egypt, Ethiopia, Iran, Saudi Arabia, and the United Arab Emirates (UAE), though it should be noted that Saudi Arabia has technically not accepted membership but will attend in any case. Now Stewart’s explanation for this expansion:

No doubt, BRICS expansion evinces a growing global dissatisfaction with and a determination to challenge the structural advantages that advanced market democracies continue to enjoy in a global order that was in many respects made by the West, for the West. Reducing those exorbitant privileges, including by creating alternative, parallel institutions, is the fundamental purpose of BRICS+.

And the prospects of further expansion is highly possible. According to Putin, as described by Stewart:

According to Putin, thirty-four countries have expressed an interest to join the club, “in one form or another.” Some two dozen countries have reportedly applied for membership, among them Algeria, Azerbaijan, Bahrain, Bangladesh, Belarus, Bolivia, Cuba, Kazakhstan, Myanmar, Nigeria, Pakistan, Senegal, Thailand, Venezuela, and Vietnam. More may be waiting in the wings, like Indonesia, which applied and then withdrew its application a decade ago. The most recent applicant is Türkiye, a member of NATO—albeit one that seeks to keep its options open. The group, in other words, seems destined to expand.

So what are the goals and how effective has the current BRICS+ been. As noted above, the BRICS+ members loudly proclaim the need to add the Global South to the major multilateral institutions whether the UN, and especially the UN Security Council, or the major financial institutions, the World Bank and the IMF.

At the extreme, according to my colleague Oliver Stuenkel and his co-author Alexander Gabuev in a recent article in Foreign Affairs, titled, “The Battle for the BRICS: Why the Future of the Bloc Will Shape Global Order”:

Putin summarized the agenda of Russia’s BRICS presidency in remarks in July as part of a “painful process” to overthrow the “classic colonialism” of the U.S.-led order, calling for an end to Washington’s “monopoly” on setting the rules of the road.

But the makeup today, and likely in the near future, has its limitations as described by Oliver and his co-author:

But despite its allure, the club must grapple with an internal fissure. Some of its members, chief among them China and Russia, want to position the grouping against the West and the global order crafted by the United States. The addition of Iran, an inveterate adversary of the United States, only deepens the sense that the group is now lining up on one side of a larger geopolitical battle. Other members, notably Brazil and India, do not share this ambition. Instead, they want to use BRICS to democratize and encourage the reform of the existing order, helping guide the world from the fading unipolarity of the post–Cold War era to a more genuine multipolarity in which countries can steer between U.S.-led and Chinese-led blocs.

There clearly are differences in the view of its members as to what this Informal is designed to accomplish. And evidently not all members are equal. In particular China exerts strong influence on the original members and it, along with Russia, have pushed for expansion notwithstanding Brazil and India’s reticence:

Brazil and India are therefore wary of the BRICS’ hardening orientation. Both were initially opposed to China’s push to expand the group, which Beijing first proposed in 2017 under the rubric of “BRICS Plus.” Brazil and India were keen to retain the club’s exclusivity, worried that adding more members to the bloc would dilute their own influence within it. In 2023, China stepped up its diplomatic campaign and pressured Brazil and India to support expansion, mostly by casting their resistance as tantamount to preventing the rise of other developing countries. Keen to preserve its own standing in the global South, India dropped its opposition, leaving Brazil no choice but to go along with expansion. Brazil did lobby against adding any overtly anti-Western countries—an endeavor that failed spectacularly when Iran was announced as one of the new members that year.

It appears that the BRICS+ has taken on what appears to be a growing anti-western tilt and in the extreme case an anti-US position. In particular Russia, given its experience of US and European sanctions since the outbreak of war between Russia and Ukraine has urged the toppling of the US dollar dominance according to Alexander and Oliver:

In this fight against the Western “monopoly,” Putin identified the most important campaign as the quest to weaken the dominion of the dollar over international financial transactions. This focus is a direct result of Russia’s experience with Western sanctions. Russia hopes that it can build a truly sanctions-proof payments system and financial infrastructure through BRICS, involving all member countries.

But what has the BRICS accomplished beyond expressing distaste for the current global order leadership.

Stewart targets what he sees as the goals of the BRICS+ on the differences within:

On its face, BRICS+ is a formidable economic bloc,comprising half of the world’s population, 40 percent of its trade, and 40 percent of crude oil production and exports. The coalition can use this leverage not only to demand a more equitable international order but also to act on those ambitions, for instance by establishing a parallel energy trading system, deepening commercial links among members,creating an alternative system of development finance, reducing dollar dependence in foreign exchange transactions, and deepening technology cooperation in fields from AI to outer space. Expect BRICS+ to seek opportunities in each area.

Stewart also applauds various group actions:

Like the G7 and G20, the BRICS group has launched an expanding array of initiatives and partnerships across multiple issue areas, from energy to health to sustainable development. The result is an impressive and increasingly dense transnational latticework of networked minilateralism, with a heavy focus on South-South cooperation.

Yet the major collective BRICS efforts have been limited. In fact, we have two only: the New Development Bank (NDB) and a currency swap arrangement, the Contingent Reserve Arrangement (CRA) which has remained unused notwithstanding all the discussions of an alternative to the US dollar. As to the NDB it has not had a major financing impact with many criticizing it for relying too much on private financing. For an insightful discussion of the BRICS please listen to the podcast I undertook with York University’s Gregory Chin, “Summit Dialogue, S2, Ep 7, An Interview with Gregory Chin on the BRICS+ and the New Development Bank”

Frankly the collective efforts have been at best works in progress with far more rhetorical expression than practical implementation. As Stewart remarks:

To date, BRICS has been more effective at signaling what it is against—namely,continued Western domination of the architecture of global governance—than what it stands for.

And Alexander and Oliver further note:

In this fight against the Western “monopoly,” Putin identified the most important campaign as the quest to weaken the dominion of the dollar over international financial transactions. This focus is a direct result of Russia’s experience with Western sanctions. Russia hopes that it can build a truly sanctions-proof payments system and financial infrastructure through BRICS, involving all member countries.

The talk of de-dollarization is rife but the dethroning of the dollar is nowhere to be seen at the moment. So that is a first look at the expanded BRICS.

What then is the current status of the G20? First it should be noted the G20 has enlarged as well with the addition of the African Union in 2023. A key strength of the G20, unlike the G7, is that the G20 includes advanced economic and Global South members. In principle this wider membership corrects for the skewed membership of the G7 where no significant Global South members are present. This evident avantage has however fallen to the tensions generated in a far more geopolitical tense international system. Stewart reflects on the impact of the rising geopolitical tensions:

Of particular concern is the future of the Group of 20 (G20). Even before BRICS expansion, it had become a microcosm of growing global rifts. A further hardening of these divisions would undercut the G20’s fundamental raison d’être: namely, to help bridge gulfs between—and leverage the capabilities of—important countries that are not inherently or necessarily like-minded.

Among the biggest uncertainties is what impact the BRICS+ will have on the role and functioning of the G20, which will hold its own summit in Rio de Janeiro on November 18–19 under this year’s chair, Brazil.Since the G20’s elevation to the leader level in 2008, one of its ostensible comparative advantages has been that it provide a setting for flexible coalitions of consensus to emerge that transcend rigid blocs.

The expansion of BRICS certainly has the potential to exacerbate these dynamics, by splitting the G20 into opposed G7 and BRICS+ factions.

Though much anticipation was paid to the G20 broad membership, the geopolitical and now the ant-Western tensions reflected in the BRICS+ may hobble the very needed collective global governance efforts ascribed to the G20.

We will come back to the G20 as we approach the G20 Summit scheduled for November 18th and 19th, in Rio de Janeiro as we look to take the measure of G20 effectiveness.

Image Credit: LinkedIn

This Post was originally posted at my Substack, Alan’s Newsletter: https://open.substack.com/pub/globalsummitryproject/p/the-changing-shape-and-influence?r=bj&utm_campaign=post&utm_medium=web&showWelcomeOnShare=true

Reshaping the US Global Order Role

Posted on October 5, 2024 by Alan Alexandroff

It is not a surprise with a month to go till the US election that ‘folks’ are assessing where the US global order role is, where it should be, or needs or can be, as we look towards a new administration. I have no crystal ball to tell me who is about to win the election and I am not about to contemplate the return of Trump. But I will look, however, at a possible Harris administration and it appears evident that observers and experts are with a month to go reflecting on what’s next for US global leadership.

Let’s start with one who has had responsibility in the near past for US foreign policy. Secretary of State Antony Blinken recently penned an assessment of ‘his’ foreign policy in FA, titled, “America’s Strategy of Renewal: Rebuilding Leadership for a New World”. Now you’ll not be surprised that the piece is a narrative and strong expression of policy gone right:

President Biden and Vice President Harris pursued a strategy of renewal, pairing historic investments in competitiveness at home with an intensive diplomatic campaign to revitalize partnerships abroad.

This twin-pillared strategy, they believed, was the best way to disabuse competitors of their assumptions that the United States was declining and diffident.

Blinken acknowledges that US leadership and action was required to meet the challenge of these revisionist powers that appeared to be determined to reshape leadership and the principles of the current global order:

A fierce competition is underway to define a new age in international affairs. A small number of countries—principally Russia, with the partnership of Iran and North Korea, as well as China—are determined to alter the foundational principles of the international system. While their forms of governance, ideologies, interests, and capabilities differ, these revisionist powers all want to entrench autocratic rule at home and assert spheres of influence abroad.

They all wish to resolve territorial disputes by coercion or force and weaponize other countries’ economic and energy dependence. And they all seek to erode the foundations of the United States’ strength: its military and technological superiority, its dominant currency, and its unmatched network of alliances and partnerships. While these countries are not an axis, and the administration has been clear that it does not seek bloc confrontation, choices these revisionist powers are making mean we need to act decisively to prevent that outcome.

Implicitly and explicitly Blinken describes what he believes to be a very successful competitive policy with these revisionist actors and most particularly China. As Blinken describes Biden administration policy efforts:

The Biden administration’s commitment to compete vigorously yet responsibly along these lines took away the revisionists’ pretext that the United States was the obstacle to maintaining international peace and stability. It also earned the United States greater trust from its friends—and, along with it, stronger partnerships.

Second, we infused U.S. alliances and partnerships with new purpose.We elevated the Quad—the partnership with Australia, India, and Japan—and took concrete steps to realize a shared vision for a free and open Indo-Pacific, from enhancing maritime security to manufacturing safe, effective vaccines. We launched the U.S.-EU Trade and Technology Council, marshaling the world’s biggest economic partnership to shape global standards for emerging technologies and protect the United States’ and Europe’s most sensitive innovations.

To Blinken the alliances and partnerships that the US renewed or built were the keys to Biden administration success in a highly competitive world:

From day one, President Biden and Vice President Harris made a foundational choice that in a more competitive and combustible world, the United States cannot go it alone. If America wants to protect its security and create opportunities for its people, it must stand with those who have a stake in a free, open, secure, and prosperous world and stand up to those who threaten that world.

Notwithstanding then the revisionist power efforts to alter the global order, the US and its partners have been able to maintain the free and open global order and limit revisionist efforts to undermine the opportunities for the US and its partners:

The choices the United States makes in the second half of this decisive decade will determine whether this moment of testing remains a time of renewal or returns to a time of regression—whether Washington and its allies can continue to outcompete the forces of revisionism or allow their vision to define the twenty-first century.

Clearly Blinken is referencing the possibility of a return to Trump. Otherwise Blinken seems to show some content with the actions of the Biden administration. That satisfaction is not shared by all. From the outside today but with experience of serving in the Biden administration another distinct point of you is expressed by a colleague, Jessica Chen Weiss. Jessica was from 2021 to 2022 a senior advisor to the policy planning staff at the U.S. Department of State on a Council on Foreign Relations International Affairs Fellowship for Tenured IR Scholars (IAF-TIRS). Jessica just recently took up a new academic appointment as the David M. Lampton Professor of China Studies at Johns Hopkins School of Advanced International Studies in Washington, D.C. and a nonresident senior fellow at the Asia Society Policy Institute Center for China Analysis. Once again in FA, Jessica examines Biden administration foreign policy in a piece titled, “The Case Against the China Consensus”. Jessica does not fall in line with Blinken’s description and actions of recent US foreign policy – its successful competition with the revisionist powers, most notably China. As Jessica describes recent Biden administration actions:

Washington faces growing criticism for pursuing open-ended competition with China without defining what success would look like. Even as China’s coercive capabilities and threatening behavior have rightly focused U.S. attention on the risks to American interests, the absence of clear metrics for success leaves the door open for partisan aspersions of the Biden administration’s approach.

With that Jessica strikes out toward an improved US-China relationship. As she describes it:

Yet beneath this charged atmosphere, ample space for debate and discernment remains. The apparent hardening of a U.S. consensus on China is shallower and wobblier than it appears. In this fluid environment, there is an opportunity for the next presidential administration to develop a more affirmative, less reactive approach, one that dials down the heat and focuses on reducing the risks while preserving the benefits of the vast web of ties that connect the United States and China.

Now it is clear from Jessica’s analysis the current administration has taken steps to at least maintain a balance with China:

The Biden administration, by contrast, has rightly invoked a sense of shared purpose, underlining the urgency of defending an international order in which might does not make right and working with governments of different persuasions to tackle problems that respect no borders or walls.

Still the emphasis from the current administration to compete successfully with China is dominant and leads to significant persistent competition with China that can, unfortunately lead to conflict:

But in the broader U.S. public and policy conversation, the impulse to thwart China often overwhelms efforts to work toward common objectives and advance U.S. interests. Rhetoric about winning the twenty first century reinforces the idea that competition is zero-sum, accelerating a rush on both sides of the Pacific to prepare for conflict and making it all too easy for critics in both societies to deride ordinary forms of diplomatic, commercial, and scientific interaction as naive at best and appeasement at worst. This emphasis on preparing for worst-case scenarios prevails in both countries.

For Jessica, then, the current policy posture is inadequate and maintains a dangerous locked in competition:

To halt this spiral, Beijing and Washington will need to identify the outcomes they wish to see, avoiding measures of success that are defined by slowing down or one-upping the other. Pursuing resilience and deterrence, not primacy or hegemony, would set them on a more stable course. Post–Cold War U.S. unipolarity in global politics was the exception, not the rule. Today, neither China nor the United States can aspire to dominance across every sector and every technology.

Resilience and deterrence, then is the goal. And here is some of what the US and presumably China must do:

It is therefore imperative that China and the United States maintain a degree of integration in order to detect and learn from new advances. If the technological leaders in a given sector are Chinese, Washington should want U.S. firms to have access to the latest innovation. Right now, Chinese manufacturers are far in front in solar, battery, and electric vehicle production. Licensing Chinese technology to construct an electric vehicle factory in the United States, for example, would build domestic expertise and help U.S. automakers transition more quickly with top-of-the-line technology.

Yet it is not clear that within the current US-China competition, and the efforts by this administration to stabilize the relationship – high level discussions including military-to-military discussions – that the US is not seeking to maintain the economic integration that Jessica suggests is vital. There seems to be in her analysis a hint at least that what is required is the end of competition:

Diversification is healthy, but the United States needs to establish limits on decoupling and “derisking.” …

Right now, much of the U.S. public and policy conversation is consumed by how to counter China and defend American workers, infrastructure, technology, and intellectual property against foreign threats. This focus downplays the domestic harms that measures ostensibly aimed at strengthening U.S. national security can have on the health and vibrancy of the United States’ democracy, society, and innovation ecosystem. Getting China right is critical to the United States’ success, both under the next president and for years beyond.

Now positively Jessica does prompt a close look at the state of US-China competition. A closer look at the state of global economic competition is needed and worth engaging but for the moment it would not seem likely that a Harris administration, if she were to win the presidency, would abandon, or at least dramatically diminish political and economic competition between the US and China. And without greater understanding of the goals each seeks, the US and China that is, there is not a strong logic to acting unilaterally.

A close examination, and strong dialogue might provide insight in constructing an altered foreign policy that is in part driven by competition but with much greater bilateral and multilateral actions better able to contain the US-China competition and engage in policies that stabilize the relationship. Deterrence for sure but stronger two-way assurances that lowers the heat on several fronts including: Taiwan, the Indo-Pacific, the South China Sea, nuclear policies and more. We all would benefit from that.

This blog first appeared on my Substack at Alan’s Newsletter

https://open.substack.com/pub/globalsummitryproject/p/reshaping-the-us-global-order-role?r=bj&utm_campaign=post&utm_medium=web&showWelcomeOnShare=true

Image Credit: The Standard

‘Once in a Generation’ – Well Maybe Not; But ‘Small Ball’ At Least

Posted on September 27, 2024 by Alan Alexandroff

Well, the UN ‘Summit of the Future’ (SoTF) has come – and gone. What does the appearance and passing of the SoTF, and the continuation of the UN General Assembly’s High-level Week tell us about the state of the UN and the condition of global multilateralism? If I may be so bold it is – “not good!” But there may be a thread or two that might lead to more effective multilateralism. Still I suspect after the most recent Posts this immediate conclusion can hardly be a surprise. Reflecting on the UN proceeding, Bloomberg reported:

The United Nations General Assembly’s annual meeting in New York is often mocked as a farce for the endless speeches and the traffic snarling the city. This year’s gathering feels more like tragedy.

The violence and chaos engulfing the globe put questions around the UN mandate — “save succeeding generations from the scourge of war” — in stark relief.

Antonio Guterres is the first to admit that the secretary-general of the UN has no power, just a voice (emphasis added). It’s one he uses time and time again like a modern-day Cassandra to lament that the world is currently experiencing the most conflicts since the organization was founded in 1945. The past three years were the most violent in three decades, according to one think tank.

So the international context is not good. But looking specifically at the SoTF, let’s look at the result. On the positive side the UN passed, ultimately unanimously the ‘Pact for the Future’. Why I say ultimately is because the document’s final passage suffered from great power intrigue before the Pact of the Future was agreed to and passage concluded. As pointed out by IISD, the International Institute for Sustainable Development:

The Summit of the Future opened with some drama when the Russian Federation tabled its objection to several paragraphs in the outcome documents: the Pact for the Future, the Global Digital Compact, and Declaration on Future Generations

Russia’s Deputy Foreign Minister Sergey Vershinin tabled Russian objections and, according to AlJazeera:

Vershinin also stressed that the pact could not be viewed as creating “new mandates and obligations” for states as it is “simply a declaration, and a very vague one.

In the face of these objections, interestingly, the Republic of Congo – representing Africa’s 54 nations – and Mexico, rejected the Russian amendments and preventing them from going through. With the loud opposition from members of the Global South to Russia’s objections, the IISD reported:

… after months of negotiations, the Pact was adopted. UN General Assembly (UNGA) President Philémon Yang thanked the Co-Facilitators for steering a complex negotiating process and described the just-adopted Pact as a reflection of “our pledge” to lay the foundation for a sustainable, inclusive, and peaceful global order.

On the positive side, the final Pact appears to retain the Security Council reform initiative. Though the Action numbers have changed, it appears that the reform provision has been retained:

Action 40. We will strengthen our efforts in the framework of the intergovernmental negotiations on Security Council reform as a matter of priority and without delay …

Encourage the submission of further models and the revision of already presented models by States and Groups of States for the structured dialogues with a view to developing a consolidated model in the future based on convergences on the five clusters, and the models presented by Member States.

It is there but we wait to see results. There appears to many at the UN to be a greater ‘majority’ to reform the Security Council, and how it works. Such reform seems to include a growing consensus to permanently add members to the Security Council. For some time now the US has lead the charge to include India, Germany , Brazil and Japan, though without a veto, and Ambassador Thomas-Greeleaf announced a US position urging two permanent seats for developing country members and a spot for a SIDS (Small Island Developing States) seat. Yet final agreement appears to be out of the reach for the members.

Now, interestingly there were a variety of insights provided by Richard Gown, currently the UN Director for the International Crisis Group, who was interviewed on the 25th by Ravi Agrawal, editor in chief of Foreign Policy. In this FP: Live session titled: “Can the United Nations Still be Effective?”, Gowan, who has long been involved with the UN, suggested that what was most interesting in the Pact was not Security Council reform but the effort to focus on digital governance and the initiation of negotiations on AI in the Digital Compact, Annex I: Global Digital Compact:

“Objective 5. Enhance international governance of artificial intelligence for the benefit of humanity”

56. We therefore commit to:

(a) Establish, within the United Nations, a multidisciplinary Independent International Scientific Panel on AI with balanced geographic representation to promote scientific understanding through evidence-based impact, risk and opportunity assessments, drawing on existing national, regional and international initiatives and research networks (SDG 17);

(b) Initiate, within the United Nations, a Global Dialogue on AI Governance involving Governments and all relevant stakeholders which will take place in the margins of existing relevant United Nations conferences and meetings (SDG 17).

Gowan suggested in the interview that the effort here with AI might well bear fruit in years to come with rules on digital governance and AI. It will in his view be looked at retrospectively as the Pact for the Future provided the framework for critical digital governance success.

Gowan was also clear-eyed when it came to the UN and its capacity to constrain and resolve conflict. He was blunt that what he called ‘first order’ crises – Ukraine and Gaza currently, due to great power rivalries and political actions are currently out of the reach of the UN to achieve any level of success and ultimately political resolution. On the other hand, what he described as ‘second order’ conflicts – an example Sudan, where most great power rivalries are not at play, can be subject to UN collective peace efforts.

So it is evident that many of the conflict crises are outside effective UN efforts. Still, Gowan reminded us that ‘everyday multilateralism’ is at the heart of today’s UN efforts. While the UN today cannot end wars, it is critical in providing significant action and progress in mitigating the consequences of violence, pandemics, and natural and climate disasters. UN agencies may be the only major players in these circumstances.

Finally, Gowan pointed out where attention needed to be paid to these recent UN summit efforts. The declarations and pacts could be largely ignored; the statements and speeches by Heads of Government and State could equally be set aside and forgotten but the actual gathering of leaders could enable numerous bilateral and minilateral meetings at the margin of the formal meetings. These highly informal discussions could be settings where positions could be staked out and possible positive steps could be agreed by leaders that later translated into real progress. It might be ‘small ball’ but it could ultimately lead to progress. The informality is evident and such in-person gatherings could easily be missed but quietly and ‘below the radar’ such quiet conversations could provide real opportunity to resolve the all too difficult and seemingly intractable moments of violence. This is informal, very informal ‘multilateralism’. But progress may be possible.

Image Credit: IFPRI (International Food Policy Research Institute)

This Post first appeared at my Substack Alan’s Newsletter

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The UN ‘Summit of the Future’ (SoTF) and the Enduring Weakness of Multilateralism

Posted on September 20, 2024 by Alan Alexandroff

In last week’s Post, with part of the same title as this week’s Post at Alan’s Newsletter, I began an examination into the weakening of multilateralism in the current global order. It is a particularly appropriate time to look at the state of multilateralism, and particularly a focus on the classic ‘Formal’ institution, the United Nations. This is a key week in the life of the UN.

The UN General Assembly is gathering, as pointed to by Nudhara Yusuf from Stimson described to:

So, UNGA79 really stands for the 79th session of the UN General Assembly, which begins on September 10th, 2024 … UNGA79 this time of year though, we’re referring to the wonderfully energized chaos that is about to descend onto 1st, 2nd, and 3rd Ave New York during UNGA High-Level week [emphasis added] when the general debate is opened. This will be on the 24th of September and run through the end of the week. Of course, the key thing on all our minds are the days right before that, with the Summit of the Future Action Days from 20-21 September and the Summit of the Future itself from 22-23 September.

The gathering of heads of government and state at the special UN session is to complete and agree on the following:

Its agreed outcomes of the Pact for the Future and annexed Declaration on Future Generations and Global Digital Compacts should be priority areas for Heads of States in their statements.

Colum Lynch at Devex, examined recent UN developments including the SDG Summit in 2023 and now, at the doorstep, the Summit for the Future in 2024:

The roots of the future summit date back to 2020, when world leaders marked the 75th anniversary of the U.N.’s founding, issuing a declaration asking [Secretary General Antonio] Guterres to outline his vision for a modern multilateralism to better “respond to current and future challenges.” The following year, Guterres issued Our Common Agenda, which maps out a course for the U.N. over the next 25 years.

Many of Guterres’ original proposals — for instance, the creation of a Futures Lab to measure the impact of policies over the long haul and the reform of the trusteeship council established to manage decolonization to advocate on behalf of future generations — were scaled back or scrapped altogether. And there remains persistent skepticism that a decades-long push for the expansion of the U.N. Security Council — to include emerging powers from Asia, Africa, and Latin America that have emerged since World War II — will succeed this time around.

Clearly reform of the UN Security Council (UNSC) is at the absolute heart of urgent reform of the multilateral system. This was made clear with the very recent announcement by the US Ambassador to the UN, Linda Thomas-Greenleaf that added additional US proposed reforms:

Create 2 permanent seats for Africa in the Council;
A new elected seat for Small Island Developing States (SIDS); and
Engaging in tech space negotiations in Council reform

The Pact for the Future, the key outcome document of the SoTF has now gone through 4 deeply negotiated revisions, with the 4th revision released just a few days ago (September 13th). In the first 3 revisions there was no agreed reform text and yet finally in this 4th revision we see at least the articulation of proposed ‘features of reform’ fo this key UN institution:

Action 41. We will reform the UN Security Council, recognizing the urgent need to make it more representative, inclusive, transparent, efficient, effective, democratic and accountable.

69. In response to the growing urgency to increase the effectiveness of the United Nations’ abilities to maintain international peace and security as set out in the UN Charter, we agree on the following guiding principles identified in the Intergovernmental Negotiations on the question of equitable representation on and increase in the membership of the Security Council and other matters related to the Council (IGN) in accordance with decision 62/557 of the General Assembly as parameters for reform:

(a) Redress the historical injustice against Africa as a priority and, while treating Africa as a special case, improve the representation of the underrepresented and unrepresented regions and groups, such as AsiaPacific and Latin America and the Caribbean.

(b) Enlarge the Security Council in order to be more representative of the current UN membership and reflective of the realities of the contemporary world and, taking into account our commitments of Sustainable Development Goal 16.8, increase representation of developing countries and small- and medium-sized states.

(c) Continue discussions on the issue of representation of cross-regional groups, taking into account that Small Island Developing States, Arab States, and others, such as the OIC, have been mentioned in the discussions of the IGN.

(d) Intensify efforts to find an agreement on the question of the categories of membership taking into account the discussions held in the IGN process.

(e) The total number of members of an enlarged Council should ensure a balance between its representativeness and effectiveness.

(f) The working methods should ensure the inclusive, transparent, efficient, effective, democratic and accountable functioning of an enlarged Council. (g) The question of the veto is a key element of Security Council reform. We will intensify efforts to reach an agreement on the future of the veto, including discussions on limiting its scope and use.

(h) As part of a comprehensive reform, the inclusion of a review clause should be considered to ensure that the Security Council continues over time to deliver on its mandate and remains fit for purpose.

As is evident this Action item, 41, does not describe actual agreed changes. For that one needs to turn to Action 42:

Action 42. We will strengthen our efforts in the framework of the Intergovernmental Negotiations on Security Council Reform as a matter of priority and without delay.

70. We support the Member States driven nature of the reform of the Security Council, and will intensify efforts for the reform through the IGN in accordance with General Assembly Decision 62/557 and other relevant resolutions and decisions of the General Assembly, such as resolution 53/30. Building on the recent progress achieved in the IGN, including through more transparency and inclusivity and by enhancing its institutional memory, we decide to:

(a) Encourage the submission of further models and the revision of already presented models by States and Groups of States for the structured dialogues with a view to developing a consolidated model in the future based on convergences on the five clusters, and the models presented by Member States.

It is evident that this Action Item 42 is in UN-speak. I have had to rely on close colleagues much more schooled in the UN than I am. Indeed you can listen to valuable webinar on the subject: of “The UN Summit of the Future: What to Expect”, with several colleagues including Anne-Marie Slaughter CEO of New America and led by close Carnegie Endowment of International Peace (CEIP) colleague, Stewart Patrick. There I learned there will be an Intergovernmental Negotiation that would lead to a consolidated model of reform to ultimately be voted on. My colleagues believed that this was a significant step forward on reform. Looking at it I remain somewhat skeptical but will rely on my knowledgeable friends that something – that reform proposals – will advance at the UN and that reforms are in fact coming.

Finally, I couldn’t end without referencing my Substack colleague’s examination of the impact of the Summit of the Future. So Peter Singer at Global Health Insights recently posted a piece titled: “Will the Summit of the Future lead to a more results-based United Nations?” Peter examines all 60 action items and concludes:

On full display at the Summit is what’s wrong with the UN: a failure to execute on what’s already agreed. In September, the only acronym the UN needs is GSD — Get Sh*t Done. (If you’re a diplomat, feel free to substitute “Stuff.”)

Peter is particularly frustrated over the failure of the Organization and its member states to advance the 2015 agreed Sustainable Development goals (SDGs), what the UN calls Agenda 2030:

The UN suffers from planning disease. Any successful real-world entity does 10% planning and 90% execution (and the planning is built on the results of execution). In the UN, it’s the reverse.

Peter argues that the UN must first develop “better ways to translate data into results.” Then it must: “support countries to scale innovations that are already reaching millions to reach tens or even hundreds of millions of people.” And finally he urges:

It could look at countries that are performing well and those that are not and how the latter could be more like the former. It could examine what the agency is doing to support countries to get on track, and how it could do it better, and how well it is working with other agencies to support countries.

I think the latter point is particularly critical because in the end in this case it is not so much the UN, and the UN agencies that are responsible for achieving the SDGs but the Member countries that will make the SDGs happen – or not. And, unfortunately, it is the Member States that are only too evidently unwilling, or politically and administratively unable to make SDG progress. A too obvious example – the United States. This is a Member State where the SDGs never pass the lips of its leaders and their officials.

The questions surrounding the outcomes and implementation of the SoTF lie as much, or more, ‘at the feet’ of the national governments. It is not a heartwarming view. So, yes, we need to address the inadequacies of the international organizations. Reform and updating is required and little has occurred over the decades. But the heart of the system is states and their capacity and, or willingness to work together to achieve progress. As Sophie Eisentraut declared in her FP article, “Can the West Revive Multilateralism?”:

As world leaders descend on New York for the United Nations Summit of the Future this week, rules-based multilateralism is in a dismal state. Amid the international community’s failure to conclude a global pandemic treaty and the U.N. Security Council’s paralysis in the face of both Russia’s war in Ukraine and the Israel-Hamas conflict, it’s hard to recall the last success of multilateral cooperation.

Among governments, accusations of double standards and broken promises, from delivering COVID-19 vaccines to providing meaningful debt relief, are mounting. Against this backdrop, the summit looks like a desperate attempt to rebuild confidence—particularly among countries in the global south as they navigate a multilateral system that even the U.N. secretary-general describes as caught in “colossal global dysfunction.”

The ‘enduring weakness’ is ultimately laid at the feet of national governments. And from today’s perspective – and on the eve of the Summit of the Future – it is not a very pretty sight.

This Post originally appeared at my Substack Alan’s Newsletter. Comments are welcome as are free subscriptions

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The Enduring Weakness of Multilateralism: An Aspect

Posted on September 13, 2024 by Alan Alexandroff

Though it was heartening to see the Presidential debate this past week with a strong performance by Vice President Kamala Harris, it was disheartening to see that Donald Trump remains a major force in US politics and still a strong contender notwithstanding some of his wild statements and his conspiracy theory assertions. While the event highlighted the ‘weirdness’ of Donald J Trump, the candidate, the game is not yet won. We may yet see him reoccupy the White House. Such an outcome would threaten the alliance(s) system, global trade and continuing US presence in the current multilateral system driven by Trump’s transactional model of US foreign policy behavior.

Trump’s return would likely drive current US foreign policy ‘over the cliff’. But changes have been underway for some time and many of them are weakening the multilateral system built over many decades. Many foreign policy analysts have focused on the structural elements – notably the decline in the international measures of power of the United States and its impact as a result on the global order. I was struck by a letter titled, “Muster Global Majorities” prepared by Mark Malloch-Brown. This is just one of nine requested by FP to greet a new US president. Now, Malloch-Brown was the former deputy secretary-general of the UN well aware of the multilateral system and he targeted the decline of the US:

But whoever prevails on Nov. 5—and congratulations, by the way—this will not change the much deeper shifts underway in the distribution of global power and values alignment that are now surfacing at the U.N. and its Bretton Woods cousins, the World Bank and the International Monetary Fund (IMF). They have seen an approximate quadrupling of membership since their post-World War II founding; a more than tripling of global population; and a global GDP that is more than 10 times bigger.

But you must see there is a global shift underway, and the United States, more than ever, is not an unchallenged No. 1 but rather a precarious first among equals in a multilateral system and which in responding to wider intellectual and political change in the world resents any claim to monopoly leadership. As Shakespeare observed in his great play on succession and power, Henry IV, Part 2: “Uneasy lies the head that wears a crown.”

Malloch-Brown in his letter, in fact, is pointing to two evident declines: the decline in power of the US in the context of the global system, the structural elements with the rise of China and with the emergence of a number of the Large Emerging Powers, the likes of India, Brazil, Indonesia and more. But the decline is also evident from a diminishment in US leadership in the global order, the behavioral aspect of any analysis.

While there is a relative decline in the power dimensions for the United States, it is the decline in policy leadership that is in some ways most evident. Take trade. As Alan Beattie has written just recently in the FT article entitled, “Can Globalization Survive the US-China Rift”:

Multilateralism is weak. The US is undermining the WTO by citing a national security loophole to break rules at will. The EU won a case against Indonesia over its nickel export ban, but the WTO’s dysfunctional dispute settlement system has delayed compliance.

But this does not mean regional or geopolitical trading blocs will start setting the rules of trade instead. The US talks a good game about building alliances, but the political toxicity of trade deals in Washington stops it offering market access to incentivise countries to join. The Indo-Pacific Economic Framework, the US’s main initiative in the Asia-Pacific, is widely regarded as all stick and no carrot.

Rather than a continued reliance on the multilateral rules and the WTO, the multilateral trade institution – of which the US is one of the primary creators – responsible for managing trade and trade friction, the United States has chosen to neuter the global trade rules by collapsing the trade dispute mechanism of the WTO. The US has turned away as well from promoting freer trade and free trade agreements and has come to rely more and more on protectionism. As pointed out by Bob Davis in his FT piece, “How Washington Learned to Stop Worrying and Embrace Protectionism”, he described the US turn to protectionism:

… the president [Biden] made a decision that upended decades of Democratic White House rule. He ordered heavy new tariffs on Chinese imports of high-tech items and continued the massive tariffs he inherited from his Republican predecessor.

The significance of the moves—and the challenge that it presents to Biden’s successor—was obscured by the roller-coaster news cycle. But it bears noting: The Biden administration is the first since at least President John F. Kennedy’s time to fail to negotiate a major free trade deal, instead embracing tariffs. Even Trump, the self-proclaimed “Tariff Man,” concluded a significant free trade pact when he replaced the North American Free Trade Agreement with a U.S.-Mexico-Canada deal (USMCA), which toughened rules on auto imports but established liberal rules on digital trade. He also negotiated a smaller digital agreement with Japan.

The turnabout is emblematic of a broader change in the U.S. economic and political thinking that is unlikely to be reversed under either a President Trump or Harris. The era of hyperglobalization, which began around 1990 and saw global trade jump by 60 percent in 20 years as supply chains spread across the earth like spiderwebs, has come to an end. We are now in an era of growing protectionism, and as trade growth has stalled, the United States and many other advanced economies have hiked tariffs and begun subsidizing industries that they view as critical to their well-being.

The turnabout with an increasing reliance on tariffs and a more full throated rise of US protectionism in fact ties the US, that is US economic policy to its political-security policy and actions. Davis makes the pointed linkage today between the two for US policy action:

Peter Harrell, the White House’s former senior director for international economics, said the change marks a fundamental rethinking of U.S. trade policy. “We are in an era of geopolitical competition with China,” he said. “That means we aren’t going to accord China the same trading privileges and rights” accorded to allies—despite World Trade Organization requirements to treat members equally.

It boils down to the fact that the economic juice [from cutting tariffs] was not worth the political squeeze,” said Evan Medeiros, a Georgetown University China expert who had been an official on Obama’s National Security Council.

In the second part of its decision, the administration ramped up some tariffs to block Chinese imports in areas where the United States was spending billions of dollars on subsidies to create or strengthen a domestic industry.

Tariffs were quadrupled to 100 percent on Chinese electric vehicles this year, as [Lael] Brainard had advocated, doubled to 50 percent on Chinese semiconductors and solar cells, either this year or next, and tripled to 25 percent on EV batteries this year. Even low-tech Chinese syringes, which had previously been shipped duty-free, now face 50 percent tariffs as a spur to boost domestic production.

The primary reason for the U.S. turn to protectionism is the growing economic and military challenge from China. But it also reflects a profound change in ideology: The gains from trade—lower prices, overall improvements in living standards, greater competition—are no longer seen by many political leaders as worth the downsides in the loss of manufacturing jobs, dependence on imports from adversaries such as China and Russia, and political polarization. The Trump administration, packed with anti-free traders, gave a big push to this neo-protectionism; the Biden administration has confirmed and deepened the shift.

The bottom line is that geopolitical tensions, particularly the deep US-China competition, has undermined US commitment to a multilateral system that the US was a principal architect in creating and maintaining over many decades. This outcome to date is deeply troubling.

Image Credit: CNBC

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