# Geoeconomics: The Return of Economic Statecraft

**Podcast:** bto – der Ökonomie-Podcast von Dr. Daniel Stelter
**Published:** 2026-01-28

## Transcript

BTO Beyond the Obvious, the Economy Podcast with Dr.
Daniel Stelter.
Featured by Handelsblatt.
Hello and the next ausgabe.
Of the scenario of the American yet reagieren, and what we European and Ansatz to kennen was here to.
In 1978, the Czech dissident Vaslav Havel, later President wrote an essay called The Power of the Powerless.
And in it he asked a simple question how did the communist system sustain itself?
And his answer began with the green grocer.
Every morning the shopkeeper places a sign in his window.
Workers of the world unite.
No one does.
But he places the sign anyway to avoid trouble, to signal compliance, to get along.
And because every shopkeeper on every street does the same, the system persists.
That's the thing.
And any of theses that I discutiered, we have this in the world.
And what concrete gets in the hundreds of Großmächte Forms, so we have quasi to see.
Hirschmann self was in Berlin geboren as kid of a secular family and had a study of the Studium der Wirtschaftswissenschaften in Berlin, in Frankreich and in London in Spanish Burger Krieg gave the faschismus gekämpft, which he then in the USA gelandet ist und dort verschiedene Positionen innehattet in Yale, Columbia, Harvard, and the Institute for Advanced Studies in Princeton.
In seinem Buch National Power as a Structure of Foreign Trade erklärt Hirschmann, wie aus Handelsbeziehungen abhängigkeit, Einfluss and sogar Herrschaftsverhältnisse entstehen.
Er betont die Möglichkeit, die es gibt, Handels- oder Finanzbeziehungen mit anderen Ländern zu unterbrechen, and er sieht darin einen entscheidenden Faktor für die Machtbasis eines Landes.
Daraus folgt that ein Land, welches seine strategische Position im Hinblick auf seiner eigenen Handel optimal nutzen möchte, versuchen wird, Bedingungen zu schaffen, die Handelsunterbrechungen für seine Handelspartner zu einem weitaus größeren Problem machen als für sich selbst.
Machen wir es einfach.
Ein Land, welches eine strategische Autonomie behalten möchte, wird keine Energieg.
Ein solches Land, die dazu führt, dass sie sich aber auch nicht übermäßig von einem Lieferanten abhängig macht, wie wir, beispielsweise we von russischem Gas als Hauptertragsquelle für unsere Schlüsselindustrie Automobil.
Dies nur, um zwei Fehler der Deutschen Wirtschaftspolitik der letzten Jahrzehnte kurz zu nennen.
Doch kommen wir zurück zu Albert Hirschmann.
In den letzten Jahrzehnten wurde seine Arbeit weitgehend ignoriert.
Auch das darf nicht verwundern.
Haben wir doch vordergründig freie Märkte und Globalisierung erlebt.
Und seine Ideen zur Messung von wirtschaftlichem Zwang und zur Ausübung hegemonialer Macht, also der akademische Begriff for Mobbing, waren bei den Ökonomen nicht sonderlich populär.
Handelsökonomen ignorierten seine Ideen völlig, einfach deshalb, weil sie sowohl den kensianischen als auch den neoliberalen Ideen der Ökonomie widersprachen.
Nun erleben seine Thesen die große Renaissance.
Pünktlich zum Handelsstreit haben Christopher Clayton, Matteo Maggiori und Jesse Schrager, neue Forschungen zum Thema vorgelegt.
In Putting Economics Back in the Geoeconomics, zeigen sie nicht nur anhand einer Fülle historischer und aktueller Beispiele auf, wie Staaten ihre Handelsposition zur Durchsetzung ihrer Interessen nutzen können, sondern auch, was andere Staaten tun können oder sollten, um sich weniger angreifbar und erpressbar zu machen.
In den Paper analysiert die drei Autoren, welche Rolle wirtschaftliche Maßnahmen im Rahmen der Economic Statecraft spielen können und wie sie wirken.
Das Paper ist wie immer natürlich in den Show Notes verlinkt.
Beginnen wir mit der Definition.
Geoökonomie ist ein Wirtschafts- und Politikwissenschaftliches Studiengebiet, das sich mit der Frage beschäftigt, wie Regierungen ihre Wirtschaftskraft nutzen, um Einfluss auf ausländische Akteure auszuüben.
Oder vielleicht sollten wir sagen, es handelt sich um ein Wirtschaftsgebiet, das sich ausschließlich diesen Themen widmet.
Seit dem zweiten Weltkrieg haben Ökonomen diesen Bereich so wenig Aufmerksamkeit geschenkt, dass er bis vor kurzem kaum existiert hat.
Großmächte nutzen die Verflechtungen ihrer Handels- und Finanzaktivitäten mit dem Rest der Welt, um Einfluss auszuüben und geopolitische oder wirtschaftliche Ziele zu erreichen.
Die Anhäufung und Ausübung dieser internationalen Macht hat Regierungen im Laufe der Geschichte beschäftigt.
Die jüngsten Spannungen zwischen den USA and China als rivalisierenden Mächten sind nur die jüngste Ausprägung dieses großen Spiels.
Also, hochaktuell kann man da nur sagen.
Im Kern geht es um Macht.
Macht entsteht dadurch, dass das betroffene Unternehmen bereit ist, diese privat kostspielige Handlung zu unternehmen, um entweder einer Strafe zu entgehen oder eine Belohnung zu erhalten.
Wäre das Unternehmen durch die Handlung schlechter gestellt, würde es sie nicht ausführen.
Diese Partizipationsbeschränkung ist der Schlüssel zur geoökonomischen Machtprojektion.
Macht wurzelt daher in der Fähigkeit, die Anreize des Ziels zu gestalten.
Jede Regierung, nicht nur die globale Hegemonialmacht oder eine der Großmächte, hat die Möglichkeit, ihre nationalen Einheiten, Verbraucher oder Unternehmen durch Steuern und Regulierung zu beeinflussen.
Hegemoniale Länder versuchen jedoch oft ausländische Einheiten zu beeinflussen, über die sie keine direkte Kontrolle haben.
Sie tun dies entweder, indem sie negative Konsequenzen androhen, falls das Ziel die gewünschten Handlungen nicht durchführt, wodurch die externe Option der Partizipationsbeschränkung verringert wird, oder indem sie positive Vorteile versprechen, falls das Ziel die gewünschten Handlungen durchführt, wodurch die interne Option der Partizipationsbeschränkung erhöht wird.
In diesen Tagen hat sich die US-Regierung auf eine besonders aggressive Ausübung von Macht mittels Zöllen festgelegt, wie wir wissen.
Was auch mit der bedrohten Rolle als Hegemon zu tun hat.
Denn die USA sind nicht der erste Hegemon in der Weltgeschichte, der um sein Status kämpft.
Und, das zeigen die Autoren auf, Geoeconomics bietet viele Hebel.
Es gibt die Zölle, es gibt auch Quoten, es gibt die Regulierung, es gibt einen Zugang zu Infrastruktur, die man behindern kann.
Es gibt Subventionen, es gibt langfristige Lieferverträge, es gibt sogar auch die Idee, dass Sovereign Wealth Funds entsprechend agieren können.
Und es gibt finanzielle Restriktionen, zum Beispiel die Beschlagnahmung von Vermögenswerten.
Die Liste ist nicht vollständig.
Ich denke, wir sollten es anhand einiger Beispiele einmal durchgehen.
Beginnen wir mit dem ersten Hebel, nämlich mit der Drohung, etwas nicht zu verkaufen.
Eine virtuelle Drohung kann zum Beispiel sein, dass man Exportbeschränkungen oder Exportzölle für bestimmte Warengruppen erlässt.
Nach dem Motto Wenn du nie die Forderung dich erfüllst, dann werde ich dir diese ander nicht mehr liefern.
And that is interessant, setzt natürlich voraus, dass der Käufer, dass der Kunde diese Waren nicht woanders kaufen kann.
And das sehen wir an einem konkreten Beispiel.
Drohungen nicht zu verkaufen haben eine lange Geschichte und sind häufig eingesetzt worden.
Beispielsweise wurden sie von der US-Regierung während des kalten Krieges häufig als Mittel zur wirtschaftlichen Eindämmung der U DSSR eingesetzt.
Der Koordinierungsausschuss für multilaterale Exportkontrollen Cookom führte Listen exportkontrollpflichtiger Güter, darunter eine Nuklearliste, eine internationale Munitionsliste und eine Industrieliste.
Deren Durchsetzung erforderte oft Druck auf ausländische Unternehmen oder Regierungen.
Kürzlich hat die beiden-Administration den Rahmen für die Verbreitung fortschrittlicher KI-Technologien geschaffen, der den Export von KI-Technologie auf Grundlage einer dreistufigen Kategorisierung der Nähe ausländischer Länder zu den nationalen Interessen der USA beschränkt.
Der Rahmen zielt darauf ab, US-KI-Exporte als Druckmittel zu nutzen, um geopolitische und technologische Zugeständnisse zu erzwingen.
Dann haben wir natürlich die Drohungen nicht zu kaufen, beziehungsweise hohe Importzölle zu erheben.
Das heißt, man versucht hier quasi die Lieferanten entweder am Liefern zu hindern oder aber ihnen die Preise richtig zu vermiesen.
Auch dafür gibt es historische Beispiele.
Diese Beschränkungen waren typisch für die Merkantilistische Ära des Welthandels und hatten das erklärte Ziel, Handelsüberschüsse zu erzielen, um Gold und andere harte Münzen in einem festen globalen Angebot anzuhäufen.
Napoleon verhängte von 1806 bis 1813 die Kontinentalsperre für Einfuhren britischer Waren vom europäischen Kontinent, mit dem Ziel, Großbritannien zu schwächen, indem seinen Industrien wichtige Exportmärkte entzogen wurden.
In den letzten zehn Jahren hat China als Reaktion auf politische Spannungen häufig damit gedroht, seinen Verbrauchern den Zugang zu diesen Produkten oder Dienstleistungen zu verweigern oder zu beschränken.
Dies betraf beispielsweise 2011 Norwegischen Lachs, 2019.
Franchise-Rechte für die US-Amerikanische NBA und 2020 australische Weine.
Im Jahr 2022 führten die USA eine Koalition von Ländern an, die Sanktionen gegen Öl- und Gasimporte aus Russland verhängten, um der russischen Regierung Einnahmen zur Finanzierung ihrer Invasion in der Ukraine zu entziehen.
Einen günstigen Strom- oder Gasanbieter zu finden, ist gar nicht so leicht.
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Und jetzt haben wir Donald Trump, der bereits vor dem Zollhammer in der letzten Woche die Handelspolitik als Insolitarium zur Durchsetzung anderer politischer Interessen genutzt hat.
So drohte die Trump-Regierung, beispielsweise mit 25% Zöllen auf US-Importen aus Kolumbien, falls die kolumbianische Regierung sich weiterhin weigert, US-Pilitärflugzeugen mit abgeschobenen Migranten die Landung zu genehmigen.
Doch es geht nicht nur um Strafe.
Es geht auch um Belohnung.
Beispiel Entwicklungshilfe.
Die Entwicklungshilfe wird dich selten an ein bestimmtes Verhalten geknüpft.
Das heißt, ich gebe Entwicklungshilfe und dafür kommst du mir bei den und den entscheidenden Dingen entgegen.
Oder aber du stimmst in der UNO so ab, wie ich das gerne hätte.
Auch das heute bei der Vergangenheit verschiedentlich beobachten.
Es gibt zahlreiche prominente Beispiele für Entwicklungshilfe mit geopolitischen Auflagen.
Der Marshallplan der US-Regierung für den Wiederaufbau Europas nach dem zweiten Weltkrieg hatte das Ziel, den sowjetischen Einfluss in Europa einzudämmen.
Während des Kalten Krieges veranlasste die US-Drohung und der tatsächliche Entzugdamm der Mittel für den Bau des Aswan-Staudamms an Ägypten, den ägyptischen Präsidenten Nassau zu einer engeren Annäherung an die Sowjetunion.
Dann gibt es natürlich auch noch Bedrohungen oder Druckpotenziale, die sich aus Kombination verschiedener Hebel ergeben.
Da geht es meistens darum, dass verschiedene Wirtschaftssektoren koordiniert werden.
Oder aber ein außenpolitisches Ziel und ein kommerzielles Ziel verbunden werden.
Das zum Beispiel hat China in den letzten Jahren sehr interessant vorexerziert.
Beispielsweise verknüpft Chinas Belt and Road Initiative, sozusagen die neue Seidenstraße, staatliche Kreditbeziehungen mit Infrastrukturdienstleistungen und Produktionsbeziehungen.
Diese Bündelung wirtschaftlicher Beziehungen trägt dazu bei, die Kreditaufnahmekapazität chinesischer Geschäftspartner zu erhöhen, indem sie mit der Beendigung von Dienstleistungen und Produktionsbeziehungen droht, falls das Land seine Kredite nicht bedient.
Dadurch wird die Verpflichtung der Regierung nicht im Verzug zu geraten gestärkt.
Tatsächlich geht die Kreditaufnahme im Rahmen der Belt and Road Initiative oft mit der Erwartung politischer Zugeständnisse einher, wie etwa einer UN-Stimme oder der Nicht-Anerkennung Taiwans.
Des Weiteren haben wir natürlich die Möglichkeiten, über finanzielle Bedrohungen zu agieren.
Das Einfrieren von Vermögenswerten, das Blockieren von Zahlungssystemen, die Beschränkung von Auslandsinvestitionen.
All das haben wir in den letzten Wochen, Monaten und Jahren erlebt, vor allem zwischen den USA und China.
Beispielsweise haben die USA, Europa and andere Devisenreserven Russlands nach dessen Inversion in der Ukraine eingefroren and haben europäischen Banken mit dem Verlust des Zugangs zu US-Finanzierungen und Zahlungen im Zusammenhang mit dem Iran gedroht.
Während der SUS-Krise 1957 drohten die USA der britischen Regierung beispielsweise mit dem Verkauf von Fonds Sterling, um die Devisenreserven der Bank of England zu erschöpfen und der Verhinderung der Notfallbereitstellung von Fremdwährungskrediten durch die US-Regierung oder den IWF zur Auffüllung dieser Reserven.
Diese finanziellen Drohungen zielten darauf ab, die britische Regierung zum Abzug ihrer Truppen aus dem neu besetzten Suez-Kanal zu zwingen.
Was haben wir noch?
Ja, technologische Bedrohungen.
Wir können einfach sagen, wir beschränken bestimmte Technologietransfers oder verweigern die Lizenzierung von Technologien.
Jüngste Beispiele sind die Beschränkung des chinesischen Zugangs zu fortschrittlicher Halbleitertechnologie durch die USA oder die nationalen Sicherheitsbedenken im Zusammenhang mit KI-Fähigkeiten.
Diese Beschränkungen sind wir, wenn sie drei Schlüsseleigenschaften erfüllen.
Die USA kontrollieren einen großen Teil der Technologie weltweit.
Andere Chip-Typen sind relativ minderwertige Substitute und Chips haben einen großen Einfluss auf die Gesamtproduktivität der Betroffenen.
Das Ganze hängt auch mit einem Nutzen zusammen, den der Hegemona bringt or entziehen kann.
Beispiel Finanzstabilität.
We stellen uns vor, dass der Hegemonen als Vollstrecker der politischen Koordinierung fungiert.
Eine kleine offene Volkswirtschaft hat die Möglichkeit, einem Club von Ländern beizutreten, deren Kapitalmärkte weniger unter Notverkäufen leiden.
Im Gegenzug erfordert dies aber die Umsetzung einer makroprudentiellen Politik, die in und ausländische Investoren stärker symmetrisch behandelt.
Akzeptiert die Regierung die Bedingungen der Hegemonialregierung nicht, blockiert diese die Liquidierung der in den Club-Ländern gehaltenen Kapitalgüter.
In dieser Konstellation sorgt die Hegemonialregierung für ein öffentliches Gut in Form von Finanzstabilität, worauf sich auch ihre Macht ergibt, indem sie einen eingeschränkten Zugang zu diesem stabilen Finanzsystem androht.
Die USA haben genau so einen Hebel, nämlich den Zugang zu den Liquiditäts-Swap-Linien mit der US-Notenbank FED.
Um was geht es hier konkret?
Ein Währungswap ist eine Vereinbarung zwischen zwei Zentralbanken zum Währungsaustausch.
Dadurch kann eine Zentralbank Fremdwährungsdiquidität von der emittierenden Zentralbank erhalten, in der Regel, um diese an inländische Geschäftsbanken weiterzugeben.
Beispiel die Banken in Europa brauchen US-Dollar.
Dann ruft die EZB in New York an und sagt zur Fed, ich brauche US-Dollar, kannst du mir die für eine Zeit leihen.
Das ist dann diese Swap-Linie.
Und diese Swap-Linie gehört eigentlich zum festen Instrumentarium der Notenbanken, bereits seit mehreren Jahren und war auch durchaus von großer Relevanz bei Corona, aber auch in der Finanzkrise.
Das ist deshalb besonders wichtig, weil es den Verfall von Vermögenspreisen stoppt, weil die Banken nicht um jeden Preis Assets verkaufen müssen, um sich Dollar zu besorgen, sondern sich eben diese Dollar bei der Notenbank geordnet beschaffen können.
Die US-Notenbank FED spielt hier naturgemäß, aufgrund der Tatsache, dass the US-Dollar die Weltwährung ist, eine, dem Hegemon angemessene Rolle.
And jetzt wird es interessant.
In the Financial Times erschien in the vergangene Woche an Artikel with dem Titel Will the Fed Continue to Assume its Global Responsibilities.
And dort konnte man unter anderem lesen.
In vergangenen Monat erklärten einige anonyme Vertreter Europäische Zentralbanken und Aufsichtsbehörden gegenüber Reuters.
Es besteht die Sorge, dass die Fed politischem Druck ausgesetzt sein könnte, die sogenannten Swaplinien auszusetzen, die ausländischen Zentralbanken in solchen Moment Dollar Liquidität zur Verfügung stellen.
Es ist also nicht sicher, dass die Federal Reserve in Zweifelsfall wirklich handelt.
Erstens hängt die Handlungsfähigkeit der Fed von der Bereitschaft ihrer Mitarbeiter ab entsprechend zu handeln, angesichts von Trumps langjährigen Misstrauen gegenüber dem Multilateralismus and America an die erste Stelle zu setzen, sollte man nicht länger davon ausgehen, dass diese Zusicherung besteht.
The derivative five bestehenden swap linien der FED mit Zentralbanken in Europa, Japan and Canada sind nicht so dauerhaft wie viele glauben.
In seinem Book The Welt in der Depression, 1929 bis 19939 beschreibt er die verheerenden Folgen des damals fehlenden Hegemonds.
Denn London war nicht mehr das Zentrum der Welt und New York noch nicht.
Und genau das ist das Fatale, wir brauchen einen solchen Hegemonen definitiv im Finanzsystem, um dieses immer stabil zu halten bzw.
im Zweifelsfall stabilisieren zu können.
Die Notwendigkeit dieses Stabilisators namens US-Notenbank habe ich bereits angesprochen, es war höchst sichtbar in der Finanzkrise und während Corona.
Die Weltwirtschaft ist so abhängig davon, dass es funktioniert, dass es sich verwundert, wenn immer mehr europäische Politiker und auch Banker ihre Sorgen offen aussprechen.
Die Financial Times dazu.
Wenn das Vertrauen in die Bereitschaft und Fähigkeit der FED schwindet, all jenen Liquidität bereitzustellen, die den Dollar außerhalb der USA nutzen, also praktisch der ganzen Welt, sind die Folgen weltweit spürbar.
Wie ernst dieses Risiko ist, lässt sich schwer abschätzen.
Doch schon die Tatsache, dass es überhaupt zur Sprache kommt, ist Grund zur Sorge.
Ich finde das ganze Thema Geoeconomics, Geoökonomie hochspannend.
Und deshalb habe ich mich mit einem der Autoren des Papers, mit Jesse Schreeger, verabredet, um mit ihm über seine Forschung zu sprechen.
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Before we to my gespread with Professor Jesse Schwieger from forgotten April common, not dieser Hinweis.
So halten Sie dann for 4970 pro week all the facts, including Hintergründe and Starke Mining des Handelsblatt.com 2026.
Jesse Schrager is außerordentlicher Professor in the Abteilung for Wirtschaftswissenschaften der Columbia Business School.
And he is Mitherausgeber des Journal of International Economics.
So when we think of geoeconomics, we think of how governments around the world use their economic and financial systems.
So where you could really see the geoeconomic pressure was the first time.
To be honest, right now the Trump Regier spricht von wechselseitigen Zöllen.
Maybe because the US and China are of comparable size, comparable power, such a threat.
Dennoch könnte es versuche geben, einzelne Unternehmen oder andere Länder weltweit zu solchen Maßnahmen zu drängen.
The calculation we do is essentially.
Daher könnte die Drohung Finanzdienstleistungen zu sperren sehr mächtig sein.
But eine Sache, die wir auch aufzeigen, die USA alleine reichen nicht aus, um mit der Drohung international zu sperren eine wirklich dominante Wirkung zu erzielen.
All these sanctionen und drohungen sind nur dann wirksam when Europa, Japan, Südkorea and other traditionelle Verbündete zusammenarbeiten.
Why?
When you are threatened with the potential of the world, when the verlust des Zugangs an gut, or even in this fall a finanzdienstleist drove, muss ich das bedrohte Land fragen.
We're not the monopolist in very many things, including finance.
And so the ability to say the US has threatened you, but you can turn to Europe dramatically weakens American geoeconomic power.
Handelt es sich also bei Geoökonomie bzw.
um etwas ganz normales?
I don't think it is.
I would call the Marshall Plan a good instance of geoeconomics.
And that's gonna be Möglichkeit to saga when you diese Maßnahme nicht ergreifen wollt, drohte euch eine Finanzkrise.
The USA have nach dem 11.
But hat die Geoökonomie eine Antwort darauf, wie wir aus dem Schlamassel wieder herauskommen, in dem wir uns der Zoom befinden.
We have genau this.
China and the USA erhöhen wechselseitig die Zölle.
If what the US wanted was to be richer, I can give you a good answer for how the US could make itself richer and deescalate here.
Stimmte dash?
It wasn't.
That's at least what I'm I'm hoping for.
These could underneath that to bewegen your production in the US to verlag.
Then when a name is Risiko by the best or not, then it is under um ständen besser the production by a European firm that was coming.
And I think that that's the case where it's not just that you have a limited effect.
It's that if the responsive investment to the United States, if you had a system of tariffs that were permanent and certain, yes, I could see there in the long run why you'd have to invest in the world.
Are so centered on the administration of President Trump.
I am sympathetic to the idea that declining powers may take risky actions that you know may try to combat the rise of the rising power in ways that may jeopardize uh the world economy.
Um den Aufstieg der aufstrebenden Macht auf eine Weise zu bekämpfen, die die Weltwirtschaft gefährden könnte.
In diesem Fall jedoch scheint es sich um eine Reihe von Maßnahmen zu handeln, die den Niedergang der Hegemonialmacht USA beschleunigen sollen.
The Welt des Westliche Bündnis was während der Amtszeit von President Biden relativ geeint.
There is a sense in which the broader, you know, American led order was looking relatively healthy up to relatively recently.
And so my hope is that there is some way to come back from the ledge.
That to me is the big question right now.
Is there going to be an off-ramp for everything we've seen over these past couple of months?
So my highlights from the spray with Professor Jesse Schweger.
And the Hinweise of the Commonwealth, where it's we won't in a fresh from Beyoncé Obvious.
It's a great pleasure welcoming you in my podcast.
Thank you so much.
It's such a pleasure to be here.
Jesse, you have written a very timely paper with your colleagues about you know putting economics back into geoeconomics.
And before we dive into how relevant is these days, could you just probably summarize why it is such an important topic and what we're actually talking about in geoeconomics?
Absolutely.
So when we think of geoeconomics, we think of how governments around the world use their economic and financial strength to achieve geopolitical aims.
And as an economist, this is something we saw happening all around the world.
You can think of the US introducing, um, US and Allies introducing uh sanctions on countries to compel their action, export controls on semiconductors to China, elements of the ongoing tariff battle.
And so this was a case where, in reality, this was something that countries were doing all around the world, and it was taking an increasingly prominent role in the world economy.
And what our research has really been doing over the past you know several years now is trying to create a framework so that these issues can be studied and understood using the kind of the tools of modern economics.
So you already hinted to it, you know, because we speak in times of highly relevant geoeconomics.
In principle, imposing tariffs is a tool which is used for centuries in geoeconomics, basically trying to achieve political goals with economic means.
Is this a right understanding?
I would say so.
I mean, so actually, let me separate what's happening right now with the ongoing tariff battle and even what's happening at the start of the second Trump administration.
So, what we'd think of as textbook geoeconomics, or where you could really see the geoeconomic pressure, was when the United States actually pressured Colombia, I believe, in the first week of the Trump administration, um, when the Colombian government would not accept deportation flights from the United States.
The Trump administration came out and said: if you do not accept these deportation flights, the United States will hit you with tariffs or financial sanctions.
And so there we would really think of that as fitting into geoeconomics.
Why the kind of key idea that we emphasize in our work, you know, in economics, we call the participation constraint.
It's the idea that what a government does is it says, you know, say the United States says, take these given actions, or you're going to face a negative consequence.
You can also be done on the positive side.
If you take these given actions, we will give you something that you would like, but it's a voluntary action.
And so what the Trump administration did at the beginning there was basically saying to the Colombian government, they did not want to accept deportation flights from the United States.
And what the United States did is essentially threaten them with tariffs, saying, take these actions or you'll be hit with these tariffs.
The Colombian government eventually conceded, and the tariffs were not imposed.
To be honest, right now, the what the Trump administration calls reciprocal tariffs.
I don't really personally believe they're reciprocal.
Yes, there may be, you know, you could say a geoeconomic aim.
The ambition of the Trump administration appears to be to close bilateral trade deficits.
What's different here, to me, what is unclear, is if these tariffs are a threat to achieve some other aim of the United States, or President Trump wants these tariffs actually imposed because he wants the tariffs themselves.
And whether or not these are being used as a threat or not really determines kind of their geoeconomic nature.
But now we come into this uh which I find highly fascinating piece because let's start with US and Colombia.
It's very simple.
There is the world superpower and there's a small country in America.
So it's easy.
Conceptually, it's very easy.
You can say, okay, you can bully anybody who's smaller and weaker, you can bully them into doing whatever you like.
But now what's now going on concerning Trump's idea of closing deficits or achieving revenues?
We don't know what he wants to achieve for both goals.
We have a different situation because, you know, with China, just start with China before we come to China is challenging the US.
Trump was already putting it on the agenda in his first term.
Biden continues the policy concerning China.
And I think we would all agree that the US wants to prevent China from being a true challenger and you know, to maintain its second position.
So now let's look first at China versus US, because as we speak, we speak this Wednesday morning, your time and say afternoon, my time, which means you know, uh China just announced 84%, US is already at 104% tariffs.
So is this an example of where geoeconomics fails just because of the fact that the US is not in much stronger positions than China?
Is this an example of why it's not working or is it a wrong assumption?
It's hard for me to assess whether this is working or not, because I do feel the need to say that that you know the objective of the US government of closing these bilateral deficits is just a bizarre policy objective in and of itself.
The way I would think of you know, kind of stepping back in terms of the you know, the US and you know allied countries' competition um with China for geoeconomics before turning to the tariffs, I I think one of the ways in which you could see so yes, you could see limits of American power for actually coercing China, the ability to say, you know, take this action or you know, you face this threat.
Maybe because the US and China are of comparable size, comparable power, such a threat may be less powerful than on Colombia.
But that does not mean that the United States was not trying to practice geoeconomics on China.
So to me, one of the clear examples of geoeconomics has been under, you know, the that starting in the first Trump administration or the Biden administration of how exactly the United States tried to slow down China's rise as you know an AI or semiconductor power.
So the US wanted China to not be able to access or produce cutting edge semiconductor technologies.
So the first you know thought of the United States was well, we'll stop exporting cutting edge semiconductors to China and we'll stop exporting the machines you need to make the cutting edge semiconductors to China.
And then the US shortly realized wait a second, we actually don't produce those things.
So if the United States wants to cut off those types of exports, what they have to do is actually convince other countries and other firms to do so.
And so the major way in which the United States actually did this was you can say pressure, coerce, ask its friends.
So uh, you know, kind of a famous example during the first Trump administration is you know, uh Secretary of State Michael Mopeyo, you know, went to the Netherlands to essentially help pressure the, you know, the Dutch company ASML to stop exporting you know photolithography equipment to China.
And so that would be a case where, yes, there may be so much symmetry between the US and China that the direct threat may not be powerful, but you could still see this attempt to pressure individual firms or other countries around the world to you know take these actions.
Yeah, but this also means then normally, you know, if you come back to the what's going on right these days, it would have been much smarter by the Trump administration to say we we try to have the Europeans on board if you are challenging China, because you can criticize China for some aspects.
They're not as as open as we are, they're always forced to have JVs and so on and so on.
They are not as good in protecting intellectual properties.
So they are things that you could come up and say, but so but going on and basically challenging everybody at the same time, the relative position of the US is not strong enough to win such a situation.
Absolutely.
And so one of the things that comes out of our research, and so this is something we looked at in our paper, a theory of Economic coercion and fragmentation.
What we tried to do is actually to quantify the sources of American and Chinese geoeconomic power.
And so here, um, rather than you know, I'm happy to talk about ways in which you know I think the I so I think a more effective way to conduct the economics is to try to pull countries closer to you to make them better off if they deal with you, so that you know you can both achieve your aims and actually leave the countries you're dealing with better off.
Leaving that aside from now, you know, one way in which great powers can conduct this is essentially by threatening to make rivals worse off.
And so the calculation we do is essentially how much economic damage can the United States and China do if they threaten to cut off exports of their goods to other countries around the world.
And one of the things that comes out very clearly is that as a manufacturing power, the United States is not the dominant player, and China unilaterally threatening to cut off exports would have significantly more power than the United States doing so.
However, there's one area in which the United States is much closer to you know the dominant monopolist, and that's actually in international finance.
And so the threat to cut off financial services could be very, very powerful.
But one of the things we show is exactly what you said.
The United States alone is not sufficient to threatening to cut off even international finance to have a dominant effect.
All of these sanctions and threats are only powerful when Europe, Japan, South Korea, and other traditional allies work together.
Why?
When you are threatened with the potential loss of access to a good or financial service, what the threatened country has to ask themselves is how close of a substitute can I find, you know, outside of the countries cutting me off.
Am I able to find a second best option?
Now, if only the United States is threatening to cut you off, we're not the monopolist in very many things, including finance.
And so the ability to say the US has threatened you, but you can turn to Europe dramatically weakens, you know, American, you know, geoeconomic power.
With Europe, there are a number of forms of finance where you know the alliance together is quite powerful.
And as I see the Trump administration pursuing these unilateral policies, one of the things that jumps out immediately is this essentially misassessment of the sources of American geoeconomic power.
The overwhelming share of American geoeconomic power comes from allied countries working with the United States together, because if traditional American allies provide an alternate way around these threats, the threat to say, I won't sell, I won't provide these services is just not that powerful.
So if you go through the through the different geoeconomic strategies, because you've got tariffs, but you've got you've got sanctions on financial systems or whatever, you can even have, you know, you can freeze assets and whatsoever.
And with your view around historic examples, what is normally most used and what's normally the most successful tool in geoeconomics?
You were asked by Trump last November and said, you know, nope, I'm now in power and I want to slow down China's progress and whatsoever, and I want to use geoeconomics.
What would you have proposed as being the most powerful tool for the US?
So it's interesting how I'll answer this now, and it's amazing how naive my answer is going to sound now, given just how much alliances have fragmented.
If I wanted to combat China's rise, the ask that I would have had for American allies was, you know, if the Trump administration was going to increase, say its geoeconomic battle in China, say with tariffs, financial exclusion.
The ask is some version of I want you to do that with the United States.
And how would I get the allies to come with the United States?
I would offer inducements.
I would offer to lower my tariffs on Canada, Mexico, Europe, Japan, South Korea.
I'm sure I'm missing traditional allies in that list.
But the idea would be if you want to build a coalition, the ask is together, we are able to form a much larger market.
China is very dependent with a trillion dollar trade surplus now.
China's economic growth is very, very dependent on access to export markets.
The US unilaterally putting tariffs on, what you know, I'm sure this is going to be a large concern in Europe immediately.
The immediate attempt now of China will be to search for other export markets, the same kind of forces of oversupply that the US is worried about is going to be heightened everywhere else.
That's a very different world than if the aim was to essentially say, let's deepen the coalition and go at this together, in the sense that in a way that you really saw originally with the response of Western allies with Russia's invasion of Ukraine, where those financial sanctions were effectively joined.
But still not very effective.
No, and I think that this is one of the areas where I think that the power of geoeconomics and sanctions tends to be underestimated.
And this is something our work emphasizes the difference between what we call off-path threats and on-path sanctions.
A lot of the power of geoeconomics is when countries accede and you don't necessarily see it.
If you take this action that the United States doesn't like, you will be hit with sanctions.
For some countries, that's a remarkably powerful threat, knowing that if they take that action, that they will be cut off from access to the US markets, we don't see them taking those actions.
We don't see those sanctions put in place.
When Russia invaded Ukraine, it knew it was going to be hit with sanctions.
We can argue about whether it thought, you know, I bet you that Russia was surprised that Switzerland went along with the sanctions.
Maybe there they were surprised at the degree.
Also, freezing the assets, I think this was a big surprise.
Exactly.
I think that you could say there was a surprise at the degree of unity, but I don't think it was a surprise that they were hit with sanctions.
When contemplating invading Ukraine, there was knowledge of sanctions are coming.
They would like to do this anyway.
And they took massive steps ahead of time to insulate themselves.
One of the challenges that, you know, when it comes to say establishing the global role of the dollar, something that I think the entire world is looking at today with the recent moves in bond markets.
We always first want to look at, you know, the role of the dollar in central bank reserves.
We want to see what share of central bank reserves are being held in US dollars.
And everybody relies on this data from the IMF called COFER, where you can, you know, this is what the financial press will update, you know, every quarter when this data comes out.
And the challenge is it's all aggregated.
All you can see is every single country, you know, tells the IMF this is how many dollars I have, but you can never go country by country.
The exception was Russia, because in the wake of the sanctions imposed on it following the first invasion of Crimea, Russia went out and said they wanted to tell the world we have gotten out of US dollars in our reserves and we own Chinese Rednun B.
And so there's a sense in which they did take actions aiming to insulate their economy such that if they invaded, they would be able to handle the sanctions.
And so I think that there is a sense in which when sanctions are imposed, there are certain, you know, of course there's going to be, you know, times when countries make a mistake.
Ah, we didn't think we'd be hit with sanctions.
But why would one reason why it looks like in the real world that imposed sanctions don't change behavior?
Because often the countries that end up getting sanctioned know that this behavior is going to have them sanctioned, and so they don't do it ex ante.
We don't actually see a lot of these threats put on allies, close countries.
And that's what makes this current moment so different.
You know, the imposed 25% tariffs on Canada, it's just a massively larger shock than any amount of American sanctions on Russia.
And so I think that in some sense the power of geoeconomics is changing behavior before it occurs.
It's very hard to prove.
It's what it's one of the things actually I'm spending most of my academic time working on now, but I do believe that's kind of the power of these tools.
But now preparing, you know, I one of my questions on my list was, you know, where are we naive?
Um, because the starting point of the work is a book of Alfred Hirschmann from 1945.
So he was the one bringing it to life.
Then in your paper, you lay out that basically economists didn't care, and political sciences and others say cared more.
But you know, we had this huge wave of globalization and the new world order, the end of the conflict or whatever, the paradise on Earth after 1989 when the war came down and so on.
Is geoeconomics, is economics as a lever for political conflicts?
Is it just returning after 40 years of hibernation?
I don't think it is.
I think there's a meaningful sense in which I would call the Marshall Plan a good instance of geoeconomics.
The United States investment in Europe in the wake of the Second World War that came with massive strings attached.
You had to disassociate from the Soviet bloc.
You had to institute certain reforms.
But that's a case where the offer was take these political actions and you can get these investments, these transfers from the United States.
That's a very powerful geoeconomic tool.
The Suez crisis in 1956, the United States, um, you know, when the UK, France, and Israel seized the Suez Canal, the United States essentially threatened to trigger a financial crisis in the United Kingdom if those behaviors were not changed.
That was a you know a core policy that the United States realized that as the center of the Bretton Woods system, the UK could not maintain its economy in the wake of the US turning against it.
And that gave the United States the ability to say, take this action that you do not want to take, or you face a financial crisis.
Now, we certainly saw, you know, as particularly over the past few decades, a movement to the rules-based international order.
And I think to me, the big question that my co-authors and I really wrestle with is how much is that post-war order, the absence of geoeconomics, or one particular incarnation of it?
The post-war system was very much set up and led by the United States.
And I think if there's one thing that is really shining through with what's happening with the Trump administration right now, it's that if the United States is not a benevolent power, okay, we can debate how much it was, how much it was self-interested.
Even if the United States is purely self-interested and always was, it could make itself a lot better off by leaving plenty of the rents to other countries.
I would argue that over the past several decades, the world knew that linking itself up to the dollar left itself vulnerable to sanctions or US controls.
You know, the US has pressured Europe to intervene with Swift uh post-9-11 a number of times.
However, if the US left enough of the surplus, enough of the benefit to the rest of the world, the rest of the world would be happy to say, we know that you might be taking a little bit more of this tie than we are, but we're left better off.
We can do it.
When I think in terms of the theory we have written down and we have been working with, one of the things that you see is suppose that, you know, the most powerful country, the United States decides that I want to actually take all the surplus from the relationship.
Well, then what's the only rational reaction of countries around the world to insulate themselves from the threat?
And so actually returning to the Columbia example.
Yes, the Trump administration may have gotten what they wanted in the short run.
However, I'm not willing to call that a policy success.
Every country around the world saw that in order to accept a very narrow policy of the administration, they were willing to threaten a country very close to the United States with financial Armageddon.
They were willing to say that we will cut you off in the dollar-based financial system and try to cripple your real economy unless you accept these flights.
They may have given in in the short term, but the only rational reaction of every country around the world is to say, what can I do to insulate myself from that type of pressure in the future?
And to me, that's the big difference.
If you view the world as kind of a one-shot game, we're going to play it once, then threatening to make somebody worse off today, and then you know, extracting the difference.
You're giving them a threat and say, take this action or give me this money.
Yes, you can extract it.
But if they know that you're going to make that threat year after year after year, they're going to take action so that they're less dependent on the dollar, less reliant on US imports, so that you can get less and less going forward.
That's very different than a world where what the United States is providing is global public goods.
You stay with the United States, you have access to the lender of last resort facility of the US, you have a myriad other security guarantees.
And yes, maybe there are some um you know strings attached.
Uh, you know, the US frequently imposes by American on uh you know and its aid when the US gave foreign aid.
But that's the sense in which if you're encouraging countries to take actions that they wouldn't take independently by offering to make them better off if they do take those actions, going forward, they have no desire or need to try to insulate their economy from your future pressure.
If instead the way you're pursuing geoeconomics is by making these blunt threats, do what I want or else, in the long run, everybody's gonna know that the US is gonna take all of the surplus, which is gonna mean that there's gonna be no surplus left to take.
And I think that that is one of the big shifts I've seen in US policy that is most concerning for the entire world and also for the United States.
Actually, a good example also after the sanctions against Russia are the freezing of assets.
Uh, many countries have started to buy gold, which is one of the explanations for the rising gold price, even if it's high interest rates, because governments diversified out of the US dollar into gold.
Exactly.
That's a perfect example of now that you've seen that threat, the forward-looking, you don't know if you'll be the target.
You work to insulate yourself more.
And to harp on the Colombia example, you know, previously, how had the US really weaponized the dollar and weaponized reserves most recently?
Okay, when the Taliban took over Afghanistan, the United States seized reserves, even then, that was you know seen as a sense in which you could think of that as a partial default.
The Afghan government owned US assets, promises repay, the US said we're not paying.
There's a sense in which the same thing happened to Russia, but in both of those cases, it was kind of seen as understandable.
Of course, the Taliban taking over Afghanistan.
That's you know, that's not something that governments around the world are going to see that they're going to be targeted under that.
Similarly, you know, an invasion of another country, okay, we're not going to be subject to that.
But once you see that the dollar and trade is going to be weaponized for the very specific policy goals of the Trump administration, like repatriation of migrants, well, then which country around the world isn't going to think, well, they could be next.
I need to insulate myself.
And you said, okay, you know, it's clear, you know, we as a higher moon as a provider of global public goods, you have to accept certain deficits and whatsoever.
But one of the criticisms has been always around defense spending of the Europeans.
And so defense is also public goods.
So, for example, if you are shooting down the Houthis, you basically does this for European trade, you don't do it for US trade because it doesn't matter for the US trade.
And we told them for 15 years and that didn't change.
And now we put pressure on them.
So what would have been a smart geoeconomical strategy in order to get the Europeans to increase the defense spending?
Because it doesn't mean giving up the role of providing a public global public good, but it would have reduced, you know, a bit of burden of the US, and still the US would have provided public good.
That I agree with you completely.
And I'm afraid I don't have a great answer.
That one, I am quite sympathetic to the idea of a classic free riding problem of the United States is paying.
I'm far more concerned about the fragmentation of the NATO alliance than the free riding problem, though.
And so, yes, I agree that there is a challenge that, you know, I think the US could be rightly concerned that NATO allies were not hitting the defense spending cap.
What the Trump administration had, you know, in some sense, raising defense spending in Europe because you don't believe the United States will be there if Europe needs them, is a very different way, and I think the wrong way to encourage raising defense spending conditional on keeping the United States there.
But in this case, I agree.
It's a particularly tricky one because I mean the power of the NATO alliance is that it was certain it would be there.
Any introduction of do this or it's not an ironclad commitment opens the door.
So I'm afraid there I don't have a clear example of where geoeconomics might have uh might have solved it.
Does geoeconomics have an answer about how to get out of the mess we are currently in?
Now we have, you know, this, you know, uh China rises, uh US rises.
I don't know if Mr.
Trump is going to increase the tariffs, even more for China.
We don't know what's happening, and it might well be that on Sunday when our conversation comes up, you know, some many things have happened already.
But what would be a geoeconomics answer of getting out of this conflict?
Because normally you talk about how to put pressure, but now we have to get out in a face-saving way.
Yes.
So my fundamental concern, the one thing that is the hardest to change is just preferences.
So the way in which we think of, you know, as economists, the thing that we take as primitives is what a government wants.
Now, if what the US wanted was to be richer, I could give you a good answer for how the US could make itself richer and de-escalate here.
If the policy objective of the United States is to close every bilateral trade deficit, the way out of it is to somehow convince the administration that that is not a policy objective that is going to make the world better off.
There is no reason to be closing every bilateral trade deficit, nor will the enacted tariffs close every bilateral trade deficit.
You know, in some sense, if there was a different objective of the American government, it's, I think it's very straightforward.
There's some kind of face saving retreat in the exact same way that the initial, you know, Canada and Mexico tariffs were delayed, where the Trump administration declared that there was some improvement in fentanyl coming across the border.
Was that true?
I have no idea.
But there was some way to say, ah, we've done it.
If the objective, if the public objective is, and they're actually sticking to sinking these trade deficits, it's very hard that you're not going to achieve that without massive policy interventions.
And so my real hope is that somehow that objective is dropped and there is some sort of face-saving ability to declare victory, even though I think it'll be very transparent to the world that you know it wasn't.
That's at least what I'm I'm hoping for.
I hope that it's not, you know, a worsening of this ongoing crisis that compels the policy change.
Little changes, by the way, should be sufficient to affect these formulas.
So again, I and so the famous formula of um that now came out of what the tariffs are.
So that was basically a calculation.
The underlying idea of that calculation was how much do you have, what size tariff do you have to put on imports from every single country, taking American exports as given and the activity is the rest of the world is given.
And so the calculation, you know, it had a couple parameters.
One was how much does a consumer change their spending behavior in response to a price increase?
And then how much does the price of a good increase in response to tariffs?
And so, first, that formula when applied to every single country will not work.
That is a calculation that should work if you apply it to a very, very small country individually, so that the rest of the world economy does not change at all.
Even then, however, we have fantastic estimates of how much the price of a good changes in response to tariffs.
It's so-called pass-through.
And in fact, the paper that the Trump administration uh cites is by um Alberto Cavallo, Gida Gopinoff, uh Brent Nyman, and Jenny Tang, they estimate that at I believe 98%.
So you raise a tariff 1%, the price of a good goes up by you know 0.98%.
So nearly complete.
You can basically think of it as you raise the tariff by 1%, the price of the good goes up 1%.
For some reason, the Trump administration cited that study and said that the price of the good will only go up 0.25%.
So just taking that as given, the tariffs are four times too high.
Okay.
Immediately.
The tariffs are four times too high immediate.
So something as simple as, you know, we're using our own formula correctly to divide all of these by four.
But the fact that the administration, I mean at this point, they must know that the calculation is wrong and it hasn't been changed.
They're now going into this trade war with tariffs on every country around the world based on a formula that they came up with that shouldn't work, that they plugged in the wrong numbers for.
And so at some point, there has to be some acknowledgement that just putting in these tariffs, taking all of the assumptions that they made, such as no other behavior around the world will change, which cannot happen if you impose tariffs on every single country simultaneously, even then the tariffs are too high.
But fundamentally, that's what I'm hoping for.
The other way out, by the way, is you know, and and this is where you see the administration with massly mixed messaging.
Are they going to do a series of bilateral negotiations?
And look, this is where I'm most optimistic that we partially get out of this.
You saw Vietnam come out and say we're gonna have zero tariffs on the US.
That said, though, even getting out there that if there's a series of bilateral negotiations that get these tariffs back down where they were, I don't think that actually gets us out of this.
I think that it's now clear that at a moment's notice, the United States is willing to rewrite the tariff rules.
And to me, the deeper question is let's say we get these tariffs back to where we were, which I'm not that optimistic on, what would it take for countries to believe that they would stay there permanently?
That's a much higher ask.
And there I really don't know, given everything that's going on, what is, you know, what's happening.
But this could, of course, induce corporations over time to shift production to the US.
This could probably lead to the fact that Mr.
Trump's goal is partially achieved because when I know that's a risk and I probably escaped it now, I might still might move production in two or three years' time.
So the thing is, if I don't have any confidence that these tariffs will stay in place in their current form, because they're so divorced from the policy of the United States.
And so if you're contemplating building a factory that's going to come online in five years, and it only is profitable if these tariffs stay in place, how could you know that you're going to make this investment here?
And so here would be another example of how they could revise these formulas.
Okay.
I guess the reason that the Trump administration is so concerned about bilateral trade deficits is if you're buying more than you're selling to a country, there's a sense in which they are lending to you, they are investing in me.
Okay.
Now, there is the way they actually calculated this tariffs is on goods trade entirely.
Okay.
So physical goods.
Now, the United States' primary export is services.
So they did not even calculate the relevant bilateral deficit for what the asset trade would be.
Okay.
Suppose that I was a European firm that was contemplating, I've now been hit with these, you know, large tariffs because the US has a bilateral goods trade deficit with Europe.
Okay.
If all that happens is the Trump administration does the right thing and includes services trade in the calculation of the tariffs with Europe, well, then all of a sudden the tariffs are lowered tremendously.
Because these were calculated in such an ad hoc manner, and we've kind of seen the you know, with China, the fact that we're now at 104%, it's hard to see how if you are running a business, the optimal response to should I invest in the United States is not wait and see.
And I think that that's the case where it's not just that you have a limited effect, it's that if the responsive investment to the United States, if you had a system of tariffs that were permanent and certain, yes, I could see there in the long run why you'd have to invest in uh certain products in the United States.
It's not that the United States will simply not have consumer electronics.
Eventually, the market in the US is so big that we should be building consumer electronics there.
But if you're not certain whether those tariffs will be in effect, it's such a risk that I can't see it sparking investment in the short run at all.
I'm most inclined to think it's gonna go the opposite direction.
Another question.
And this concerns the role of the Federal Reserve.
Because you know, you correctly lay out that you know, public good, public good is also financial stability, public quote is it's just quite just quote, a lend off last resort.
And we know in all times of crisis, the Federal Reserve Bank of the US has offered swap lines to their partners.
So the Europeans, for example, is the currency swaps.
So they provided basically dollar liquidity to the ECB, which gave the ECB gave the money then to the European banks in order to cover their dollar shortages.
My understanding is, and please correct me here, that this is not a written act by law that they have to do it, but it's an act which has to be allowed by the finance ministry of the US.
Do we run the risk that, for example, if this turbulent the markets continue and a bank or whatever gets into trouble, that the US Fed is not going to provide the liquidity because the finance ministry will say no, we don't do this.
The Treasury vote will say we don't do this because Donald Trump doesn't want to do it because he wants to use it as additional pressure to put pressure on other countries.
Well, I believe you are correct.
I do not know the legal basis of the swap lines enough to speculate right now, on what the current administration would be thinking there.
Let's assume I'm correct.
What would be the implication?
I view the swap lines as the ability of allies to access US dollar liquidity view swaps as one of the underpinnings of how the dollar is used as an international currency.
That fundamentally the ability to have access to a lender of last resort, it's essentially serving the role of you know the way that deposit insurance works in the domestic economy.
That it's one of the greatest added values, that it's not that deposit insurance is costly for a government to provide.
If everybody knows that deposit insurance will be there, then in the event that you're worried about your bank, you don't have to get in line and queue for your money.
The fact that everybody knows they don't have to queue for their money means that the banks don't fail in the first place.
That's tremendously, you know, that kind of deposit insurance is incredibly valuable for the banking system.
And I view swap lines as playing that role for the international economy.
I do believe there's crises that we simply don't see.
There may be foreign currency mismatch in operations in countries around the world where investors would be more concerned about the access of firms, access to dollar liquidity if they thought that in those crisis states of the world, the you know, the governments of the borrowing firms and banks would not be able to access swap lines.
You know, how we measure those runs that don't occur is a, you know, is something that's hard to quantify.
You know, the countries that have access to swap lines view them as incredibly valuable.
And I hope that that does not get used as a kind of tool for compelling behavior around the world.
Given the disruption in treasury markets, that would seem like uh a very risky strategy for the United States to take, just even ignoring the welfare of countries all around the world.
At this moment, anything that brings the role of the dollar into question is incredibly risky.
Unfortunately, we both know that well, even if it's still risky, we cannot rule it out, unfortunately.
Which leads me to my last question.
What we are seeing here currently is it typical for a hegemon being under pressure, being probably in decline, losing its hegemonic status.
The reason I'm not willing to go that far the policy beliefs that are driving our current crisis are so centered on the administration of President Trump.
I am sympathetic to the idea that declining powers may take risky actions that you know may try to combat the rise of the rising power in ways that may jeopardize uh the world economy.
This is a case where it seems as if it's a set of actions that are designed to accelerate the decline of the hedge fund, the United States.
The great power of the United States in today's world was working in a broad alliance where countries around the world wanted to cooperate with the United States.
The hope of the United States for maintaining its relative role vis-a-vis China and maintaining the stability of the world order was to continue having a set of friendly democratic countries working together.
Because even though you've seen, you know, you know, the size of the US economy as a share of the world economy decline, the size of I'll say the American-led coalition, or some what I would call that, you know, last year, the American-led coalition was massive.
It is not that there were many countries in the Chinese coalition.
You look at the pattern of voting around Russian sanctions, and there were not many countries, you know, going with China, going with Russia.
The Western Alliance was fairly unified under the, you know, when when President Biden was in office.
And so while I think it's tempting to say this is the, you know, the lashing out of a declining power, there was a sense in which the broader, you know, American-led order was looking relatively healthy up to relatively recently.
And so my hope is that there is some way to come back from the ledge.
That to me is the big question right now.
Is there going to be an off-ramp for everything we've seen over these past couple of months?
Again in this was a good last word because I share your hope.
Would be a great pleasure.
Thank you very much for your insights.
And I hope you can stay in.com.
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