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.

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Other Writing:

Essay

Half Poulantzas, Half Kindleberger

Once upon a time, international political economy (as it is studied by American international relations professors) and international political economy (as it is studied by Marxists and marxisants) knew each other well. The realist Robert Gilpin, whose book on international political economy is still assigned in PhD seminars, disagreed with Marxism, but took it for ...
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Chapter in an Edited Volume

“Weaponized Interdependence and Networked Coercion: A Research Agenda,” in The Uses and Abuses of Weaponized Interdependence – with Abraham Newman – eds. Daniel Drezner, Henry Farrell and Abraham Newman

When we initially wrote our article on weaponized interdependence, we hoped that it would help people think more clearly about how economic coercion was changing. We did not anticipate either the reception that the argument has gotten or how dramatically the changes that we wanted to understand would accelerate, thanks to factors including the deterioration ...
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