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Economic Statecraft

10 posts

What happens to all the frameworks, deals, and agreements negotiated by USTR since April 2, 2025?

With the Supreme Court ruling (6-3) that the President lacks inherent peacetime authority to impose tariffs under IEEPA, the question is what happens to the trade/security deals (informal and formal agreements) negotiated in the shadow of the IEEPA tariffs? This post explains how the US has sought to separate

Collective Economic Security

Collective Economic Security By Mona Paulsen (LSE Law) and Dan Ciuriak (C.D. Howe (Senior Fellow)) With a flurry of pomp and circumstance, the second Trump administration has reset United States trade with its trading partners. Based on U.S. laws that afford wide Executive discretion towards trade actions owing

Security Exceptions Redux

In April 2017, the US Secretary of Commerce initiated an investigation under Section 232 of the Trade Expansion Act of 1962 to evaluate the effect of imported steel and aluminium on national security. In 2018, the United States imposed Section 232 tariffs on foreign steel and aluminium products from several

Designing an Economic Security Safeguards Mechanism to Reform the WTO Security Exception

During the WTO Public Forum, the TradeExperettes published a report entitled, Ten Quick Wins for: Re-globalization and Resilience in Trade. The report captures a collection of terrific trade analysts (who happen to be women) short, policy briefs that capture ideas and potential solutions for urgent issues for the multilateral trading

If I were an Appellate Body. Post 1.

At the close of December, 2 WTO panel reports were circulated. First, United States – Certain Measures on Steel and Aluminium Products (DS544/552/556/564) on 9 December 2022. Second, United States-Origin Marking (DS597) on 21 December 2022. This post is in multiple parts. The first, If I were an

Sanctions and Boycotts as "Engines for Worldmaking"

In a paper called "The Possible Worlds of Economic Sanctions" that takes a brief look at the history of economic sanctions and speculates about their future, law prof Ben Heath writes the following: Any attempt to understand the future of economic statecraft is a bit like gazing into

Friend-shoring

Friend-shoring. Secretary Yellen’s remarks of April 13, 2022 spoke of “friend-shoring” – a commitment to work with countries that “have strong adherence to a set of norms and values about how to operate in the global economy and about how to run the global economic system.” Friend-shoring is not new.

More on Economic Statecraft from the Left

A few months ago, I complained about some calls on the left for "economic statecraft." Now I see an argument from two Georgetown political science professors to the effect that progressives should leverage U.S. economic power to force other countries to adopt specific policies: ... A progressive administration

Industrial Policy as a Tool of U.S. Foreign Policy

This is from Jennifer Harris and Todd Tucker in Politico: President Donald Trump’s threat to levy tariffs on Mexico has triggered a political war in Washington, and not the usual partisan kind. Some Republicans are girding to fight their own president, rightly finding it absurd that he would take

"Economic Statecraft" and Trade Rules

Edward Alden of CFR has a blog post telling us that new Secretary of State John Kerry will continue Hillary Clinton’s signature “economic statecraft” initiative, which worked like this: … Clinton began to use State Department assets to strengthen the U.S. economy. That meant deploying embassy staff to promote