event

Dollars and Diplomacy: Biden’s International Economic Strategy

Wed. March 20th, 2024
Live Online

Recent years have changed how America is approaching the global economy. Waves of dissatisfaction with globalization, technological change, and financial imbalances have crested, transforming policy and public opinion in the United States. That dissatisfaction is also driving international calls to reform the policies and institutions governing global economic relations. In response, the Biden administration is pursuing an ambitious agenda. To reduce dependence on foreign competitors and strengthen supply chains, it is steering industrial policies in sectors from semiconductors to clean energy. It has declined to pursue major trade deals that involve market access while stepping up antitrust activity at home, framing both actions as efforts to strengthen America’s middle class. And in response to Russia’s war in Ukraine and China’s technological rise, the United States is deploying an array of coercive economic measures, including financial sanctions and export controls.

These policies indicate a shift in America’s approach to the global economy, its relationship with foreign trade, and its willingness to deploy economic leverage to achieve political and strategic ends. What impact is this shift having on the United States, countries around the world, and key international institutions? Is this approach a welcome new direction for foreign economic policy? How does it affect the global trend of countries bringing security considerations to their economic relationships? 

Join Ashley J. Tellis in conversation with Jason Furman, Mariano-Florentino (Tino) Cuéllar, and Mary Lovely for a discussion of how America’s foreign economic policy is changing, its global impact, and its implications for the near future. 

Carnegie does not take institutional positions on public policy issues; the views represented herein are those of the author(s) and do not necessarily reflect the views of Carnegie, its staff, or its trustees.
event speakers

Mary E. Lovely

Mary E. Lovely is the Anthony M. Solomon senior fellow at the Peterson Institute. She served as the 2022 Carnegie Chair in U.S.-China Relations with the John W. Kluge Center at the Library of Congress. Lovely is professor emeritus of economics at Syracuse University's Maxwell School of Citizenship and Public Affairs, where she was Melvin A. Eggers economics faculty scholar from 2010 to 2022. She was coeditor of the China Economic Review from 2011 to 2015. Her current research projects investigate the effect of China's foreign direct investment policies on trade flows and entry mode, strategic reform of U.S. tariffs on China, and recent movements in global supply chains.

Jason Furman

Jason Furman is the Aetna professor of the practice of economic policy jointly at Harvard Kennedy School and the Department of Economics at Harvard University. Furman engages in public policy through research, writing, and teaching in a wide range of areas including U.S. and international macroeconomics, fiscal policy, labor markets and competition policy. Previously Furman served eight years as a top economic adviser to president Barack Obama, including serving as the twenty-eight chairman of the Council of Economic Advisers from August 2013 to January 2017, acting as both president Obama’s chief economist and a member of the cabinet. In addition to articles in scholarly journals and periodicals, Furman is a regular contributor to the Wall Street Journal and Project Syndicate and the editor of two books on economic policy. Furman holds a Ph.D. in economics from Harvard University.

Mariano-Florentino (Tino) Cuéllar

President, Carnegie Endowment for International Peace

Mariano-Florentino (Tino) Cuéllar is the tenth president of the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace. A former justice of the Supreme Court of California, he has served three U.S. presidential administrations at the White House and in federal agencies, and was the Stanley Morrison Professor at Stanford University, where he held appointments in law, political science, and international affairs and led the university’s Freeman Spogli Institute for International Studies.

Ashley J. Tellis

Tata Chair for Strategic Affairs

Ashley J. Tellis is the Tata Chair for Strategic Affairs and a senior fellow at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, specializing in international security and U.S. foreign and defense policy with a special focus on Asia and the Indian subcontinent.