Henry Farrell

The Folly of Decoupling From China – with Abraham Newman

On May 14, U.S. President Donald Trump threatened to break the United States’ economic relationship with China. “There are many things we could do,” he told Fox Business host Maria Bartiromo. “We could cut off the whole relationship. Now if you did, what would happen? You’d save $500 billion.” It was Trump’s most extreme anti-China rhetoric to date, but it wasn’t out of step with the mood in Washington. Both Republicans and Democrats agree that China has transformed from a competitor into an adversary, and perhaps even an enemy.

As tensions have mounted as a result of the

Henry Farrell and Abraham Newman, “The Folly of Decoupling From China,” Foreign Affairs (online), June 3, 2020.

Access the full article here.

Other Writing:

EssayPublic Writing

The Weaponized World Economy: Cover story for Foreign Affairs

August 22, 2025 Foreign Affairs pin with Abraham Newman
When Washington announced a “framework deal” with China in June, it marked a silent shifting of gears in the global political economy. This was not the beginning of U.S. President Donald Trump’s imagined epoch of “liberation” under unilateral American greatness or a return to the Biden administration’s dream of managed great-power rivalry. Instead, it was ...
Read Article
Academic Article

Stability of Democracies: A Complex Systems Perspective – with Karoline Wiesner, Alvin Birdi, Tina Eliassi-Rad, David Garcia, Stephan Lewandowsky, Patricia Palacios, Don Ross, Didier Sornet and Karim Thebault

November 27, 2018 European Journal of Physics 40
Karoline Wiesner, Alvin Birdi, Tina Eliassi-Rad, Henry Farrell, David Garcia, Stephan Lewandowsky, Patricia Palacios, Don Ross, Didier Sornet and Karim Thebault (2019), “Stability of Democracies: A Complex Systems Perspective,” European Journal of Physics 40, 1:014002. The idea that democracy is under threat, after being largely dormant for at least 40 years, is looming increasingly large ...
Read Article
Browse the Archives