Global Economic Strategy

The debate between hard, soft and smart power is meaningless unless the United States employs a sophistcated, global economic strategy--rooted in prosperity at home. This has been a fundamental tenet of American strategy since 1933.

In a dangerous shift, the United States' macroeconomic strategy now focuses on preservation instead of innovation. As a nation, we have chosen to defend an economic engine that is starved of modern infrastructure, hamstrung by policies that send manufacturing overseas, distorted by government subsidies and lacking any pathway to sustainability. Where once our economy was doing the strategic heavy lifting, today it is becoming a strategic liability.

And while the United States is distracted with economic defense, the global economy is decoupling from the American consumer machine. China's growth is dependent on the expansion of its cities, not trade with the United States. Global finance, driven by vast new pools of sovereign wealth, is moving away from the old capitals of New York and London. Stung by hundreds of billions of poisoned financial exports, global investors are more cautious about entering American markets.

The initiatives of the Global Economic Strategy cluster seek to identify, understand, and transform these trends. Our work asks how the United States can once again harness the global price signals and investment flows that are some of the most pervasive forces in international affairs. Ultimately, we believe, security and prosperity at home will be the product of an dynamic American economy that promotes security and prosperity abroad.

For more on our work, please click on the individual initiatives below:

• Global Strategic Finance Initiative
  
  
• Law and Globalization Initiative
  
  
• Global Middle Class Initiative

The Global Economic Strategy initiatives are guided in partnership with the Economic Growth Program at the New America Foundation.

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