The evidence supports the idea that government spending on R&D, worker training, infrastructure, and expedited regulation of innovations is positive. Once politicians start handing out money to individual companies for specifically located production, though, and they start favouring those companies over potential rivals – they have a public investment to protect, after all – it becomes a bad dynamic.

The core problem is that there is nothing for a company like having the state as your de facto guarantor. A host of bad things happen to society as a result. On the international front it leads to retaliation, shutting out of poor countries, reduced adoption of new technologies, and corruption. But the domestic effect on any country that goes down this path is worse. 

The society ends up with entrenched incumbent companies becoming a political sacred cow, as we have seen with state owned enterprises and banks in China.  You cannot reduce the employment, or shift the location, or let competition come in from either the outside or the inside. You have accumulating unfairness from incumbent companies’ political weight being thrown around. You crush new entrants and dynamism.

So, trying to replicate entire supply chains is enormously inefficient. You must pay some insurance premium to create more resilient supply chains, but this takes it much too far. Trying to achieve self-sufficiency in any major industry that is not a simple extractive one, like a mine, is self-defeating.

The reason is the value of diversification. Yes, attenuated supply chains, dependent upon potentially hostile hosts, are a vulnerability.  But so is having all or most of one’s production at home, subject to natural disasters, climate shifts, unstable politics, domestic terrorism, and undependable or deficient production due to the corruption of too big to fail local producers.  Russia and North Korea have worked very hard to be self-sufficient, with limited supply chains, and it has not worked out well for them.

The real damage from decoupling and conflict between increasingly entrenched US, China and EU economic blocks is not so much trade barriers, bad as they are, but reduced productivity growth. We would see a bottling up of savings in economic blocs that do not move around and so get lower more volatile returns. There will be less diversification both financially and in inputs, including of ideas and business practices, along with less competition, which directly diminish productivity. We would also see further restrictions of migration, foreign direct investment, flows of information and technology, once the economic nationalism is state policy. 

So, if we continue down this path, we are looking at a meaningfully bleaker outlook for average growth in the world with even more of what growth there is being bottled up in the high-income economies including China. It is going to be harder and harder for the developing world to break through, except by pledging political fealty to China, EU, or US, which they cannot depend on lasting. There will be the occasional country that has a temporarily critical mineral supply or whatever, which will try to play off the three blocks in a bidding war, but that never lasts as an advantage and everyone else will be out of luck.

The lasting large magnitude decline in average global productivity growth which results will increase global inequality, hamper our response to climate change, and reduce the capacity of even high-income economies, including the U.S., to meet its obligations to their citizens. This will shrink fiscal space when public spending needs to increase over the next 10 years for defence, climate adaptation, and for dealing with ageing populations.

If we are in a subsidies war between EU, US, and China, and foolishly UK and India and some others try to play as well, then the fiscal crunch becomes even worse.  It is far more constructive for our societies to spend public monies on these priorities rather than chasing manufacturing white elephants. The supposed national security gains against China from this aggressive de-risking are not worth the clear costs.

Adam S. Posen has been president of the Peterson Institute for International Economics since January 2013. Posen has been widely cited and published commentary in leading news and policy publications, including the Financial Times, Foreign Affairs, New York Times, Wall Street Journal, Washington Post, Nihon Keizai Shimbun, Asahi Shimbun, Handelsblatt, Die Welt, Harvard Business Review, and The International Economy. He appears frequently on Bloomberg television and radio, among other media programming.

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The G7 statement didn’t define those terms. It didn’t even mention that the foremost object of both decoupling and de-risking is China. That’s diplomacy for you.

The leaders of the seven countries (the United States, the United Kingdom, Canada, Japan, Germany, France and Italy) simply said they were coordinating their approaches to economic resilience and economic security “based on diversifying partnerships and de-risking, not decoupling.”

As often happens in diplomacy, the vagueness was intentional. It conveniently papered over differences between the U.S. and some of its allies. “Economic resiliency” and “economic security” are diplo-speak for avoiding overreliance on China (and to some extent Russia) for key products and avoiding supplying those countries with strategically sensitive technologies.

On the surface, decoupling (the trendy word until recently) implies taking separation from China further than de-risking (the European Commission president’s word). De-risking suggests diversifying, ending exclusive reliance on China, rather than withdrawal.

In practice, though, much of the decoupling to date has also been diversification. For communique purposes, the difference between decoupling and de-risking is semantics. That’s why the U.S. could agree to the communique even though there are real differences between the U.S. and its allies in their concerns about reliance on China.

Those differences reflect their differing geopolitical situations, especially with regard to Taiwan. A Chinese military attack on the island seems increasingly possible — possible enough that U.S. officials have to plan for it even as they pray it never happens.

Washington’s allies don’t. In the event of an attack, Japan could end up supporting the U.S., at least logistically. It’s a prisoner of its history and geography. The European allies would be far less inclined to see an attack on Taiwan as their problem. They might be cajoled into joining a coalition of the willing, but that is far from guaranteed.

The U.S., then, has greater reason to worry about providing China with technologies that strengthen it militarily. It has more serious fears of being cut off by China from critical products during hostilities.

When governments are planning for war, national security ranks higher in their concerns than economic efficiency. This can be a hard swallow for those who believe, as many in exporting sectors like agriculture do, that financial markets allocate capital more efficiently than governments and free trade produces the best economic outcomes.

But it explains why some Republican believers in free markets have voted for Biden administration industrial-policy initiatives. And why Republicans are solidly behind the Biden administration’s stepped-up efforts to block exports of the most advanced semiconductor technologies to China, despite warnings from U.S. high-tech companies that restrictions will have long-term economic consequences.

European countries share some of the same concerns about China as the U.S., but they’re nowhere near as worried about national security. Referring to Taiwan, French President Emmanuel Macron has warned Europe not to get “caught up in crises that are not ours.”

Europeans are displeased with the Biden administration’s high-tech subsidies and buy-American rules, which they see as drawing investment away from them as much as from China. Some Europeans are also leery of U.S. efforts to block exports of high-tech products to China. The Dutch government, however, eventually went along with the U.S. and restricted Dutch companies’ exports of the most advanced semiconductor manufacturing equipment to China.

Europe, in sum, prefers “de-risking” because it doesn’t want as much economic separation from China as the U.S. The Biden administration accepted “de-risking” because it’s sufficiently vague to let allies march to different drummers.

Actually, so is decoupling. For all the talk of it over the last few years, for all the government’s industrial-policy moves, for all its export restrictions, for all the announcements by companies of plans to move manufacturing back to the U.S. or to Asian countries other than China, U.S.-China trade in goods set a record in 2022, as did U.S. exports to China.

U.S. ag exports to China also set a record in fiscal 2022 at $36.4 billion.

Though the U.S. and China are rivals, American companies’ supply chains are deeply imbedded in China. China is the largest trading partner of the U.S. and of about 120 countries, including American allies like Japan, South Korea and Germany.

China has dominant world market share in some product lines, like drones and solar panels, and is a critical supplier of countless thousands of others. In a war, China would unquestionably cut off exports to the U.S., which makes it logical to decrease reliance on China.

But short of war, how far disentangling today’s supply chains can or will go is unclear, regardless of which diplomatic euphemism is used to describe it.

Urban C. Lehner joined DTN as editor-in-chief in July 2003. He became vice president of the editorial operations of DTN and the Progressive Farmer in July 2010. He is a past president of the North American Agricultural Journalists and in August 2009 was named “Writer of the Year” by the American Agricultural Editors’ Association.

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The Biden administration has not clearly decided bodog online casino how extensive it wants the U.S.-China economic relationship to be. Its June 2021 study on supply chains identified risks from overdependence on China, but did not lay out a clear solution. During her recent speech at CSIS, U.S. Trade Representative Katherine Tai said that she opposed “decoupling” from China and instead preferred a “recoupling” of the economies that was fairer and more in line with U.S. interests. Commerce Secretary Gina Raimondo has also pushed back against calls for decoupling, yet said that an important goal should be to slow Chinese innovation, which implies less connectivity, particularly in advanced technology sectors. Their comments highlight a critical question the United States and its allies must answer: How can they smartly chart a middle path between outright decoupling and unconditional engagement?

For an initial answer to this question, the autonomous vehicle (AV) sector might offer some guidance. It is an excellent critical case to consider the larger issues because of its multifaceted significance. The AV sector portends a revolution in transportation and lifestyles; it is composed of an array of technologies that draw on extensive research and development (R&D) and require advanced manufacturing abilities; the collection, analysis, and storage of its data present challenges to privacy and national security; and it utilizes some dual-use technologies that could aid U.S. adversaries if they fell into the wrong hands.

Beyond the general risks are recent warnings from successes in other parts of China’s automobile industry. China has far and away the world’s largest electric vehicle (EV) market. In the first eight months of 2021, it sold 1.7 million EVs, accounting for almost 11 percent of all auto sales. By contrast, even with a recent surge in EV sales in the United States, the total market in 2020 was slightly under 300,000 vehicles, accounting for 8.7 percent of total sales. China’s CATL is now the world’s largest EV battery producer, and the country’s auto firms are starting to export to Europe and Asia and invest abroad as well. As documented in a 2020 CSIS report, Chinese state support for the EV sector is mammoth, meaning that China’s state-fueled EV industry could distort every corner of the global industry, threatening competitors in the United States and elsewhere.

It is no huge leap to think that some of the same dynamics could play out in AV, and if so, it might make sense for the United States and others to take preemptive action and start mitigating risks now by severing the Chinese and U.S connections in the sector. If there is any industry where the United States should consider decoupling from China, AV would be a top candidate.

But that would be a huge mistake, as it actually would make the United States worse off—not just its economy, but potentially its national security as well. Instead, an approach of careful connectivity—that extends China’s dependence on the West while mitigating the worst risks for the United States—is the best way to move forward.

The Chinese Challenge

China’s AV sector has been advancing rapidly and doing so in a way that is certainly discriminatory, as it is shaped by China’s desire to favor domestic producers and reduce its dependence on foreign technology. Although the large majority of Chinese industry participants are private firms, the heavy hand of the state is everywhere.

China issued broad plans for intelligent and connected vehicles in 2017 and 2018. Since then it has provided substantial state support via subsidies and government guidance funds for companies to carry out R&D, testing, and manufacturing and provide related services, such as robo-taxis. Although there have been severe restrictions on road testing due to safety concerns, regulations in early 2021 expanded approval for such activity. According to the Ministry of Industry and Information Technology (MIIT), testing is permitted in 27 provinces, including 16 test demonstration zones, covering over 3,500 kilometers of road. So far over 700 entities have received licenses for testing, and they have collectively driven over seven million kilometers. Also in early 2021 China issued a blueprint for technology standards for the sector, setting a goal of having major standards in place by 2025 and a complete set of standards by 2035. And most recently, in August, the Cyber Administration of China issued new data security draft rules.

Having received the positive signals that AV is a high-priority sector, in addition to pure AV firms (such as Pony.ai), others have also jumped in: traditional automakers (SAIC), new upstarts (NIO and Byton), internet firms (Baidu, Alibaba, and Tencent), driving services companies (Didi), telecom hardware makers (Huawei), and even smartphone makers (Xiaomi). The Baidu-led Apollo coalition originally dominated, but a slew of other consortia and individual firms are investing in every layer of the industry, including advanced components (such as semiconductors and LiDAR), entire vehicles, infrastructure, and services.

There is far from a level playing field in China. Foreign companies face a phalanx of restrictions with regard to conducting R&D; testing, collecting and using mapping data; and offering value-added services. They also have to worry about having their intellectual property (IP) stolen and their employees poached by local competitors. Meanwhile, Chinese companies who can obtain licenses are able to test their autonomous vehicles on U.S. roads, where they scoop up data on every mile they cover. Chinese AV companies have attracted substantial U.S. venture capital. Pony.ai and AV trucking firm TuSimple are two of a number of Chinese companies refining their technology in collaboration with U.S. tech firms and investors.

The Risks Are Too Great . . . to Decouple

Given China’s ambitious state-led push, its clear effort to build a free-standing AV sector, and the potential risks from Chinese AVs collecting data in the United States, the decoupling option would seem to make a lot of sense. The United States could outright order U.S. companies, as well as those from elsewhere who use U.S. equipment in their own production, to stop selling their components and AV-enabled cars in China, force Chinese companies off U.S. roads, and require U.S. investors to divest from Chinese firms. One day this option may make sense, but based on where things stand now and the likely trajectory of the industry, doing so would likely have a host of negative consequences for the U.S. auto industry, including the various players in AV, and potentially spur China’s technological independence down the road.

Instead, the United States and its allies should use their place in the AV ecosystem to maintain their dominance over Chinese competitors, while simultaneously reducing the risks that come from being interconnected. Why? Because the United States is far ahead of China because of, not in spite of being connected.

Chinese AV companies have improved gradually over the past five years, but they are no match for their Western counterparts. The best place to compare them head-to-head is how their cars operate on the road. No one has successfully rolled out genuine autonomy where occupants can take their hands off the wheel and doze off into space (what is known as Level 4 automation) or where there is no steering wheel at all (Level 5). But on account of their more advanced algorithms, greater testing and data collection, and other technological progress, U.S. firms—among them Waymo, Cruise, and Tesla—have created far more advanced drive-assistance systems than their Chinese counterparts.

California publishes highly detailed data from AV companies who test on their roads. In 2020 Baidu had 4 vehicles on the road compared to 228 for Cruise and 148 for Waymo. U.S.-based AVs travel many more miles than their typical Chinese competitors without any need for human intervention. In 2020 Waymo testing vehicles required interventions once every 29,900 miles and Cruise every 28,500 miles. They were far ahead of Chinese rivals Pony.ai (10,700 miles) and WeRide (6,500 miles). The Chinese have improved over past years but are still far behind. Chinese AV companies occasionally publish videos of their testing in China, which provide a visual take of their abilities. Arcfox, which has developed an AV system in cooperation with Huawei, recently shared a video in which the driver had to intervene multiple times within a few minutes, in part because Chinese roads are so unpredictable. In China, “edge” cases—unusual circumstances that should occur infrequently—are all too common.

But the rubber really meets the road in the underlying technology, where the United States and its allies are even further ahead. Perhaps the most important component of AV systems is highly advanced artificial intelligence chips that collect and process data about the vehicle’s surrounding environment. U.S. chip firm Nvidia dominates the market for graphic processing unit (GPU) chips that perform these functions. Nvidia is a supplier to just about every AV maker in the world, including in China. There are a few Chinese upstarts in this space, such as Iluvatar CoreX and Biren Technology, but they are still significantly behind Nvidia in terms of basic technology and the breadth of the ecosystem they can support. And more importantly, their chips are built on the foundation of Nvidia’s CUDA architecture, meaning that it would be extremely difficult for them to elevate themselves to the top of the technology hierarchy. CUDA has a similar dominant status as Qualcomm’s CDMA (code division multiple access) technology for mobile telephony, Microsoft’s Windows in desktop computing, and Google’s Android in smartphones.

Technological decoupling would temporarily set back China’s AV dreams, but it would also set the nation on a course to eventually build an alternative architecture, one it could not only sell at home but disseminate among friendly countries elsewhere around the world. While the United States is ahead and China operates in a state of dependence, it makes little sense to push the Chinese to pursue a totally different, independent path.

Discontinuing those commercial relationships would also quickly mean a reduction in sales for Nvidia and other Western AV producers that have a massive customer base in China. It could also result in car makers such as GM, Ford, and Tesla facing greater restrictions on the full range of their business in China, far and away the world’s largest auto market. Reduced sales means less profits and funds for R&D as well as likely cutbacks in employees across their production facilities, including in the United States.

In short, outright decoupling would be a path to a smaller, less dominant U.S. AV sector, the exact opposite outcome U.S. policymakers ought to be pursuing.

A Smarter Approach

A better strategy would combine three elements: promotion, protection, and standard building.

Federal agencies and state governments need to facilitate the continued development of the AV sector, providing support for R&D, manufacturing, infrastructure, and expanding consumer demand (with rebates and other incentives). Making progress on rolling out fifth-generation (5G) cellular technology will also support the AV industry and ancillary services. Much work needs to be done so that 5G networks are ubiquitous, stable, and secure. Although the frequency of accidents is low, it needs to be even lower to ensure the safety of passengers and pedestrians, and the insurance industry and regulators need to build systems that appropriately allocate responsibility and protect consumers. Finally, regulations to ensure protection of the data collected about the cars, their passengers, Bodog Poker and their surroundings need to be instituted. The sector will only grow if consumers believe their interests are first and foremost in the minds of companies and regulators.

At the same time, the United States needs to mitigate risks from being part of a global industry in which Chinese firms are advancing and the Chinese government is expanding its control over companies at home and acting aggressively abroad. The United States needs to have a fuller grasp of U.S. industry’s cooperation with Chinese counterparts in China. The best way to do that is through more regular consultations between U.S. industry and government about their overseas investments and supply chain challenges; that would be a better route than extending the mandate of the Committee on Foreign Investment in the United States (CFIUS) to include outward U.S. investment, which would likely end up being overly expansive and eliminate valuable commercial activities that pose little risk to the United States.

The main way to restrict potentially worrisome technology flows is through more vigorous use of export controls. The Commerce Department may need to add certain kinds of advanced semiconductor technology to its Commerce Control List and place more Chinese entities on its Entity List. Doing so may result in restrictions on sharing certain technologies, but an equally important utility would be to approve sales but then have a means to better monitor their sales and the behavior of licensed end users. There is a low likelihood that Chinese-related AV companies are collecting sensitive data during normal testing while on U.S. roads, but that risk should be more fully evaluated, followed by the adoption of rules regarding data collection, storage, and transfer. A substantial portion of Nvidia’s AV-related chips are fabricated by TSMC in Taiwan; it may make sense to prioritize the diversification of their manufacturing given the downward trajectory of PRC-Taiwan relations and the growing possibility of a conflict that could result in major shortages and loss of technological leadership. And lastly, long before China starts selling AVs in the United States, regulators need to consider the effects on U.S. producers and those from other market economies as well as the potential risks to personal data.

The final element in a smart strategy involves expanded efforts by the United States and its allies to set international standards for AV. In addition to the process to promote sustainable mobility for AVs occurring through the United Nations Economic Commission for Europe (UNECE), top priority should be placed on international venues such as the International Organization for Standardization (ISO), the International Telecommunication Union (ITU), 3GPP, SAE International, and the Autonomous Vehicle Computing Consortium. Moreover, Washington should consult with its allies in Europe (through the U.S.-EU Trade and Technology Council) and Asia on the whole range of AV issues, including on standards. Finally, the United States and others should continue to jointly press China for access and fair treatment in China’s domestic standards bodies. Very simply, standards leadership is central to industry leadership.

If the United States adopts this group of policies, its AV sector will stay on the right road and maintain its position ahead of China. And if the United States can successfully pursue this approach in AV, then it arguably can do so in a wide range of other sectors where it seeks to maintain its advantage against growing Chinese competition.

Scott Kennedy is senior adviser and Trustee Chair in Chinese Business and Economics at the Center for Strategic and International Studies. He is finishing a report, Beyond Decoupling: Maintaining America’s High-Tech Advantages over China.

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As for the overall thrust of her remarks, judging from the Twitterverse, most listeners were left confused. She seemed to be saying simultaneously that the United States is going to continue to press China on its non-market policies that hurt U.S. companies and workers but that she doesn’t have great hopes for success in persuading the Chinese to change policies. That leads to the obvious question, which she also did not answer: Why are we embarking on a path that we do not expect to lead anywhere?

The question of how the United States will craft its approach toward China was also left vague. The plan does not appear to include a “phase two,” as former president Trump had promised (or threatened), and she did not announce opening a new Section 301 investigation that had been rumored, although she also did not say she was not going to do it. That was a bit surprising, since imposing new tariffs would probably require a new legal basis for doing so, which would mean Section 301 or possibly Section 232, the national security provision.

As a result, my conclusion was that the administration’s policy, at least in the short term, will be enforcement of Trump’s phase one deal. This is ironic, since the question I am asked the most about the administration’s China policy is how it is different from Trump’s. The answer now appears to be not by much.

Ambassador Tai alluded to a number of areas where China had not met its phase one commitments, although she declined to name any particular ones. Several days earlier, Agriculture Secretary Vilsack went a bit further and said that China had met 50 of its 57 agriculture commitments, suggesting that there were seven left to work on, which he did not specify. My friends in the business community tell me that the two biggest specific commitments that remain unmet are disputes over polysilicon and U.S. credit card companies operating in China. And, of course, Chinese purchases of U.S. products clearly lag behind their commitments. Since they have until the end of the year to meet their obligations, it is a bit soon to announce their failure, although in some sectors, like energy, it appears impossible for them to catch up. In others, particularly agriculture, they will come closer.

So, there is plenty to talk about with Liu He, but the important issues like subsidies, forced technology transfer, intellectual property theft, and favorable treatment for state-owned enterprises remain hanging out there unaddressed. Ambassador Tai’s answer to that remains the best one—the administration is engaged in making the United States “run faster” to better compete with China, not so much there but in third markets around the world where the playing field is more level. At the same time, the United States has an important role to play in defending the rules-based trading system. China, having signed up for the rules in joining the World Trade Organization, is fair game when it cheats. The administration is also under pressure from both parties in Congress to take a hard line on China. Eventually it will have to come up with more than it has so far on the so-called “phase two” issues.

In that regard, Ambassador Tai came up with two phrases we no doubt are going to hear frequently—“durable coexistence” and “recoupling.” I have no idea what the first one means. It’s probably better than the Cold War chestnut “peaceful coexistence,” but it may end up meaning the same thing. “Recoupling” is a way of denying that the administration is pursuing decoupling, and for that reason it might provide some rhetorical reassurance to the business community, but actions like threatened reviews of outbound investment, rejections of most Chinese inbound investment, more tariffs, and efforts to promote reshoring in the name of national security will have a much bigger impact on business than statements about recoupling.

So, do we have a policy? In outline, yes, but there is a lot more detail to be filled in before we will really know where the administration is going.

William Reinsch holds the Scholl Chair in International Business at the Center for Strategic and International Studies in Washington, D.C.

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True, there were other aspects of globalization that bore little relation to market capitalism. The globalization of science and information broadened access to knowledge in unprecedented ways. Through increasingly international civic action, climate campaigners and human-rights defenders coordinated their initiatives as never before. Meanwhile, governance advocates argued early on that only the globalization of policies could balance the forward march of markets.

But these other sides of globalization never measured up to the economic dimension. The globalization of policies was especially disappointing, with the 2008 financial crisis epitomizing how governance had failed.

This phase of globalization is now ending, for two reasons. The first is the sheer magnitude of the challenges that the international community must tackle, of which global public health and the climate crisis are only the most prominent. The case for joint responsibility for the global commons is indisputable. Achievements here have been meager so far, but global governance has won the battle of ideas.

The second reason is political. Country after country has witnessed a rebellion of the left-behind, from Brexit to the election of Donald Trump as US president to the French “yellow vest” protests. Each community has expressed unhappiness in its own way, but the common threads are unmistakable. As Raghuram Rajan has put it, the world has become a “nirvana for the upper middle class” (and of course the wealthy), “where only the children of the successful succeed.” Those left out increasingly end up in the nativist camp, which offers a sense of belonging. This calls into question the political sustainability of globalization.

The tension between the unprecedented need for global collective action and a growing aspiration to rebuild political communities behind national borders is a defining challenge for today’s policymakers. And it is currently unclear whether they can resolve this contradiction.

In a wide-ranging recent paper, Pascal Canfin, chair of the European Parliament’s Committee bodog online casino on the Environment, Public Health, and Food Safety, makes the case for what he calls “the progressive age of globalization.” Canfin argues that the fiscal and monetary activism endorsed by nearly all advanced economies in response to the pandemic, the growing alignment of their climate action plans, and the recent G7 agreement on taxing multinational firms all indicate that the globalization of governance is becoming a reality. Similarly, the greening of global finance is a step toward “responsible capitalism.”

One may question the scale of the victories that Canfin lists, but he is right that advocates of global governance have recently seized the initiative and made enough progress to regain credibility. Progressive globalization is not a pipe dream anymore; it is becoming a political project.

But although the globalization of governance may appease the left, it will hardly alleviate the woes of those who have lost good jobs and whose skills are being devalued. Workers who feel threatened and find protectionist solutions attractive expect more concrete responses.

In a recent book, Martin Sandbu of the Financial Times outlines an agenda for restoring economic belonging while keeping borders open. His idea, in a nutshell, is that each country should be free to regulate its domestic market according to its own preferences, provided it does not discriminate against foreigners. The European Union, for example, may ban chlorine-washed chicken (which it does), not because the chicken is produced in the United States but because the EU does not trust the product.

Similarly, any country should be able to ban timber resulting from deforestation, or credits provided by undercapitalized banks, provided the same rules apply to domestic and foreign firms. Transactions would remain free, but national standards would apply across the board.

This is a sound principle. But while application to products is straightforward and is actually in place, doing the same for processes is notoriously difficult. A given good or service ultimately incorporates all the standards in force along its value chain. True, multinationals nowadays are compelled to trace and end reliance on any child labor among their direct or indirect suppliers. But it would be challenging to proceed in the same way with regard to working conditions, union rights, local environmental damage, or access to subsidized credit.

Moreover, attempting to do this would stir up fierce opposition among developing countries, whose leaders argue that subjecting them to advanced-economy standards is the surest way to make them uncompetitive. Previous attempts to include social clauses in international trade deals failed in the early 2000s.

A major test will come in July, when the EU is set to announce its plans for a mechanism that will require importers of carbon-intensive products to buy corresponding credits in the EU’s market for emissions permits. As long as decarbonization does not proceed everywhere at the same pace, the economic case for such a border-adjustment system is impeccable: the EU wants to prevent producers from evading its emissions limits by moving elsewhere. But it is bound to be controversial. The US has already indicated its concerns about the idea, China is wary, and developing countries are sharpening their arguments against it.

The upcoming negotiations on the issue will be hugely important. At stake is not just whether and how the EU can move ahead with its decarbonization plans. The more fundamental question is whether the world can find a way out of the tension between scattered national and regional preferences and the increasingly urgent need for collective action. Climate has become the testing ground for it.

The outcome will eventually indicate whether the dual agendas of rebuilding economic belonging and managing the global commons can be reconciled. It will take time to learn the answer. The old globalization is dying, but the new one has yet to be born.

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The supply chain for joint operations serves a joint force. However, military services, geographic combatant commanders, the Defense Logistics Agency (DLA), and other combat support agencies make independent decisions about the purchase and positioning of spares and ordnance. All these organizations have different responsibilities and incentives. These incentives drive behavior that makes individual sense for the organizations, but might not result in overall effectiveness in supporting the needs of operating forces.

Due largely to the unprecedented level of dominance and freedom of action the United States possessed after the Cold War, logistics planners moved away from a focus on effectiveness to a focus on efficiency, in the sense that little is left idle for significant periods and that commodities are delivered at minimum cost. This is not to say that efficiency is not a worthy goal, just that it relies very heavily on measurements of current activity. This has meant that such factors as planning for attrition or dispersion or consideration of resupply points became matters of cost, with a bias toward “just in time” delivery that is simply not executable in the world as it has evolved.

If evaluated solely against meeting steady-state demand, the military operational supply chain works as it should. The problem is not performance relative to incentives. Rather, the problem is that the existing guidance does not lead the system to conduct analyses and make decisions needed to support the highly demanding combat operations likely in a conflict with a major power. As a result, the ability of this system to properly support the joint force in the event of major conflict is at best untested and could be highly problematic.

Distribution is not, however, the area of greatest concern when we discuss defense-related supply chains. The Department of Defense has begun assessing the physical vulnerability of supply chains and is taking effort to mitigate the problems. However, the larger problem is that the nation’s industrial base has shifted in ways that make resupply of some key components highly questionable during periods of crisis and heightened operational tempo, with war being the most radical of these conditions.

Typically, the focus here is on weapon systems and ordnance, and these indeed are items of concern. No other customer exists for these except the U.S. Department of Defense and keeping an adequate industrial base for surge requires what amounts to an outright subsidy. But, industrial base shortfalls and likely shortages in the event of heightened operational tempo extend beyond the specialized world of munitions. Spare parts are another area of concern. Multiple organizations play roles in production, stocking, and ultimate distribution of spare parts.

DLA is the wholesale supplier for most consumable spare parts. Each of the services funds DLA via a working capital fund mechanism to purchase and maintain these stocks. DLA is directed to meet broad steady-state Materiel Availability targets at minimal cost. It has automated inventory algorithms that are set up to make decisions for individual parts based on optimizing against the overall metrics. Thus, DLA has an incentive to invest little in expensive parts that have infrequent demands, even when they are key readiness drivers.

Services can choose to invest in “readiness spares” that are critical even if not in heavy demand, but they must choose to prioritize these over every other demand on their resources. They have as a result a considerable incentive to simply defer purchases in the belief that the shortages can be addressed in wartime. The result is that parts inventory is oriented toward a peace-time steady state rather than the higher operational tempo likely in war time or periods of crisis. There is, however, no particular reason to believe that suppliers will be able to rapidly ramp up production to meet wartime demand. Indeed, the dimensions of demand are not fully understood nor are the capacities of the industrial base.

We, fortunately, do not have multiple examples of the system failing to meet demand, but this is largely because the occasion under which such failure is likely to happen—large-scale conflict against a peer competitor—has not occurred in recent decades. If it were to occur, the system is very likely to encounter significant difficulty in meeting wartime demands, creating risks of successful execution of combat operations.

Bradley Martin is the director of the RAND National Security Supply Chain Institute, and a senior policy researcher at the RAND Corporation. Martin retired from the Navy as a surface warfare Captain after 30 years service, including four command tours.

In addition to his operational tours, he served on the staff of U.S. Forces Japan, the OPNAV staff as an operations analyst, and most recently as the Navy coordinator for participation in Joint Staff and OSD requirements and resources forums. His subspecialties included operations research, operational logistics, and strategic planning. Prior to joining the Navy, he achieved a doctorate in political science from the University of Michigan, while working as a research assistant for the Correlates of War Project.

To read the full commentary from the Research and Development Corporation (RAND), please click here. 

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Trade policy in the United States has reached a turning point as a rising China seeks absolute advantage across a broad range of vital industries. If the United States rejects both free trade and protectionism, and going forward adopts power trade as a strategy, what needs to be done to implement that strategy? This is the third of three articles which examine power trade as practiced by Germany before World War II, and by China today.

The practice of U.S. power trade from 1945 to 2016, focused as it was on ensuring global market integration (outside of the Soviet Union and then Russia)—even at the expense of U.S. industrial competitiveness—has run its course. America’s adversary today is not a sclerotic but militarily powerful foe that could inflict little or no economic damage outside of its bloc. China today is a dynamic, militarily and technologically powerful foe that can and does inflict considerable economic damage around the world, including to the U.S. economy.

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We do need more domestic production and more of the high-paying jobs that go along with it—but we won’t get there by going it alone. That’s because pivoting supply chains back home is not always realistic; we rely on components and materials from many parts of the world. There is a better way forward, and it starts by selectively leaning into our trade and co-production relationships with friends and allies we trust—what we call “ally-shoring.”

In announcing its strategy for supply chain resilience, the Biden White House recently embraced ally-shoring as the most realistic and effective path to ensuring U.S. supply chains are never as vulnerable as was exposed by COVID-19. It also is the best way to rebuild our economy and that of our friends, which strengthens the health of all our democracies. Additionally, working together to rewire supply chains and co-produce high-tech products in emerging sectors will serve to rebuild bruised alliances and U.S. global economic and political leadership, as well as check China’s bid to extend their own authoritarian economic and political model across the globe.

One reason ally-shoring makes so much sense is that in automotive and other industries, we don’t so much engage in “trade” as we make things together with other countries. This is especially true in our auto and mobility sector. Nearly 50% of Midwest states’ so-called “trade” is with Canada, and 30% is with Mexico. Over half of this North American trade and 37% of our trade with allies in the EU is in intermediate goods—meaning component parts of a finished product. This “co-production” reality will be true for electric vehicles as well as other emerging mobility products, like the AI-controlled delivery robot vehicle now being “trained” on the streets of Ann Arbor, Mich.

With the disruptions of COVID-19, it is understandable that many of our leaders are proposing the “onshoring” of critical supplies. But as attractive as onshoring sounds, it is not an effective way to win the strategic competition with China. An onshoring push would not only irk our allies, but would also be problematic for U.S. companies (including our automakers) who want to keep doing business in foreign markets and using foreign-made component parts in products. It would also be impractical and impossibly costly. With sophisticated, IT-laced products like cars and phones integrating dozens of components from around the globe at the lowest cost possible, no one could afford to buy a solely domestically made one. Even attempting to onshore many supplies would reduce our influence on the world stage. Alliances have benefits too, particularly when in the middle of a global strategic tug of war for primacy between autocratic and democratic political systems.

Ally-shoring is a much better choice. It involves deliberately sourcing essential materials, goods, and services with countries who share our democratic values and commitment to an open, transparent, rules-based international economic and trade regime. Many countries would prefer to work with the U.S. than China and its dependency-building and corrupting development approach, including lower-cost producers such as Mexico, Vietnam, India, and other developing world economies that are essential in keeping supply chains cost-efficient and where we can work together to reinforce strong institutions, a level playing field for manufacturers, and transparent supply chains.

Ally-shoring increases the reliability of critical supply chains while reducing dependence on China and other state actors who will seek to continue to use that dependence to undermine the U.S. Reworking relationships to promote partnership with countries that share our values and interests would reduce our vulnerabilities while maintaining access to a wide variety of goods and markets for U.S. businesses and consumers alike.

The Biden administration’s just released critical supply chain reviewencouraged working in partnership with allies who share our values. The Senate could help the country lean into ally-shoring as well, by passing the Innovation and Competition Act of 2021. This sprawling legislation includes multiple supply chain resilience and competitiveness provisions, including a “Strategic Competition Act” that talks of “prioritizing” alliances and partnerships. In addition, ongoing legislative efforts by the Helsinki Commission—a bipartisan group of U.S. lawmakers committed to countering foreign corruption, kleptocracy, and authoritarianism—further reinforce democratic principles and good governance norms around the world, strengthening the foundations for long-term economic security.

If the U.S. takes steps toward ally-shoring, it would be a strong lever to put democracy at the heart of our foreign policy (as many call for) given the aggressiveness of China and Russia in trying to make authoritarianism dominant. Aside from countering rogue actors, we can shift the focus to strategies that reinforce strong democratic governance. Purposefully re-centering trade relations, production, distribution, and sourcing networks with nations that agree to standards of openness, rule of law, and democratic governance will help reverse the tide of anti-democratic rulers, norms, and practices.

Perhaps most important at a moment of rebuilding the pandemic-ravaged domestic economy, ally-shoring would also help bring new economic opportunities and create more good jobs here at home—including where they are needed most, like the industrial Midwest. To understand how ally-shoring can contribute bodog poker review to an increase in production and grow new jobs in the U.S., look no further than when supply chains were initially cut. As the country worked frantically to find or make ventilators, masks, and medical equipment, it turned to domestic manufacturers with global supply chains and production capabilities—many headquartered right here. Companies such as General Motors converted sophisticated facilities and extensive networks in the Midwest and Mexico to answer the call. The Ford Motor Company quickly followed suit.

Ally-shoring is one significant tool to speed our economic recovery and help realize the president’s pledge of a “foreign policy for the middle class.”Rethinking our domestic industrial and jobs “base” is at the heart of delivering more opportunity to Americans and rebuilding a strong and prosperous middle class. Reworking our supply chains can also be a powerful contributor to restoring U.S. global leadership and strategic alliances, protecting and enhancing democracy, and checking China’s (and other authoritarians’) bad behavior—all in one fell swoop.

Elaine Dezenski is Senior Advisor at the Center on Economic and Financial Power and Chief Growth Officer at Blank Slate Technologies

John C. Austin is the former President of the Michigan State Board of Education. Austin directs the Michigan Economic Center, a center for ideas and network-building to advance Michigan’s economic transformation. Austin also serves as a nonresident senior fellow with the Brookings Metropolitan Policy Program, the Chicago Council on Global Affairs, and the Upjohn Institute, where he leads these organizations efforts to support economic transformation in the American Midwest. Austin also Lectures on the Economy at the University of Michigan.

To read the full commentary from the Brookings Institute, please click here.

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The COVID-19 pandemic has further pushed this desire for decoupling, both in terms of rhetoric, and through legislation introduced in Congress mandating the internalisation of ‘critical’ supply chains. Outside the United States, other countries have announced incentives to attract multi-national corporations (MNCs), which are drafting plans to diversify their supply chains in the aftermath of the coronavirus pandemic.

In order to double down on its earlier strategy of decoupling from China, the Trump administration has recently announced the Economic Prosperity Network and Clean Network programs. These initiatives aim to establish an alliance of trusted partners – which excludes China – by complementing action taken by individual countries to reduce supply chain dependence on China.

However, a total decoupling from China is probably not going to happen for decades to come, for several reasons.

Firstly, China is no longer a simple assembly site for electronic goods, as it was 15 years ago, and has become a manufacturer of key components in its own right. China has also become specialised in more technologically sophisticated manufacturing, making its value to importers very hard to replicate and relocate.

Moreover, it is almost impossible to attain the level of supply chain integration found in China anywhere else, and investors in China usually maintain strong relationships with dealers and suppliers that have been built over decades and guarantee a high degree of quality assurance to consumers.

Secondly, in the past goods produced in the region were destined for western markets, but in recent years the East Asian region has driven its own demand, enabled by the demand growth inside China. The huge size of the Chinese domestic market also means that MNCs will be unenthusiastic about moving out of China.

Third, the United States’ withdrawal from the original Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP) agreement has played out in favour of China. This is because with the United States inside the TPP, trade diversion away from China would have been much higher, especially with the United States still serving as a major market for merchandise exports.

Trump’s exit from the original TPP clears the path for China to exert a much greater influence on the economies of Southeast Asia and to devise trade rules for the entire Asia-Pacific region.

Fourthly, low-end electronics manufacturing has already begun to move away from China to countries in South and Southeast Asia as wages in China has grown in the last decade.

Still, any final decision on relocation is made only after reconciling the downsides in destination countries, in terms of regulatory uncertainties and poor infrastructure, with their advantages in offering low labour and operation costs.

Finally, various Chinese provincial governments have begun to take measures to retain businesses and to attract new ones. For instance, in 2018, the Guangdong provincial government released a policy measure to open up the province further to foreign investments.

The policy allows for the setting up of wholly-owned foreign enterprises in various high-tech sectors, where previously only joint ventures were permitted. Besides the relaxation in foreign investment rules, the provincial government has also begun to offer various incentives, cash rewards, tax breaks, research and development support, and intellectual property protection to foreign investors.

For the United States, there are a number of factors that could make a move of supply chains outside China attractive. These include rising wages, mounting compliance costs, strict environmental regulations, and social insurance obligations. Still, this move may be slower to come than American policymakers are hoping.

While the web of free trade agreements signed between the countries in the Asia-Pacific region could facilitate a shift in supply chains, China still has strong advantages when it comes to manufacturing.

The huge domestic market of China is one reason for MNCs to maintain a strong presence there even in the difficult conditions imposed by the trade war.

Though many countries in the region offer potential alternatives to China, MNCs are reluctant to shift their production bases to these countries, as the costs of relocation still outweigh the benefits, and will remain so for some time to come.

The trade war and the incentives offered by countries in the wake of the coronavirus pandemic could cause some companies to reconsider their decisions, but at the end of the day it is not easy for MNCs to brush aside the advantages offered by China as a manufacturing base.

Ultimately, this means that despite its potential benefits for the United States, a full-scale relocation of supply chains outside China is unlikely to happen any time soon.

Ragul Palanisami is a PhD candidate at the United States Studies Programme at Jawaharlal Nehru University (JNU)’s School of International Studies in New Delhi and a Senior Research Fellow at the University Grants Commission of India.

To read the original blog post, please click here.

© Copyright 2020 Asia & the Pacific Policy Society

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