An unheralded revolution has taken place in America’s approach to international economics. As the new thinking emerges, it is reshaping the global economy and the western alliance.
The approach was set out most clearly in a speech by Jake Sullivan on April 27. The fact that Sullivan is President Joe Biden’s national security adviser is a clue. Strategic rivalry with China is central to the new thinking.
But Sullivan’s speech ranged well beyond geopolitics. It was a highly ambitious effort to pull together the domestic and international goals of the Biden administration — and turn them into a coherent whole. The US intends to use a new strategic industrial policy to simultaneously revitalise the American middle-class and US democracy, while combating climate change and establishing a lasting technological lead over China.