U.S. Foreign Policy for the Middle Class

Carnegie has convened a high-level bipartisan task force to oversee the effort and make concrete recommendations in mid-2020. Those recommendations will aim to help national security professionals, policy planners, congressional staff, and presidential campaign teams test their assumptions about how Americans perceive and experience the economic effects of U.S. foreign policy.

The task force’s recommendations will draw on data recently gathered by its research team and university partners in Ohio, Colorado, and Nebraska, on perceived and measurable economic effects of U.S. foreign policy at the state and local levels. The findings from Ohio were published in December 2018, and the findings from Colorado were published in November 2019. Those from Nebraska will be published in early 2020. The task force is now in the process of taking stock of the data and beginning to reflect on the implications, including on ongoing debates related to international trade and investment policy, economic competition with China, defense spending, foreign aid, and global cooperation to combat climate change