This is an audio transcript of The Economics Show podcast episode: ‘The US-China decoupling fantasy, with Jessica Chen Weiss’
Soumaya Keynes
China seems to be in a strong position right now. If anyone else tries to boss it around, it’s got the ultimate move. It can restrict supplies of rare earths. The US wants to apply tariffs or export controls. Nice little car industry you’ve got there, shame if anything were to happen to it. The EU wants to force its manufacturers to diversify away from China. Such a shame they can’t get the inputs they need. Given the high stakes, it is crucial to try to understand each other, and it’s become harder and harder in the west to argue that this isn’t a zero-sum adversarial situation. So, how should we understand China’s economic diplomacy?