Trade & Globalization

Speaking this past week at the Ex-Im Bank, President Obama laid out his strategy for doubling American exports within five years, a goal he announced in his State of the Union Address. Naming it the National Export Initiative, he described the strategy as “an ambitious effort to marshal the full resources of the United States government behind American businesses that sell their goods and services abroad.” The Initiative calls for the creation of an Export Promotion Cabinet, made up of the Secretaries of State, Treasury, Agriculture, Commerce, and Labor along with the United State

The quest to secure Middle Eastern oil and the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan consume much of the foreign policy establishment in Washington today. But in the next decade, more of the U.S.'s attention will shift to the new Middle East: China.

Welcome to the The Solarium, the new blog of the Smart Strategy Initiative here at the New America Foundation. We're proudly a part of the great team here in the American Strategy Program, the foreign policy department of the New America Foundation. That said, the core proposition behind our work is that it is time to transcend the sometimes hard, sometimes blurry lines that still separate economic policy from foreign policy, and think big about the next generation of American grand strategy.

Please join the New America Foundation for a conversation with Steven Hill about his new book, Europe's Promise: Why the European Way is the Best Hope in an Insecure Age. And find out why California would be better off seceding from the U.S. and joining the European Union!

In President Obama’s meeting with Senate Democrats today, Senator Sherrod Brown (OH) pressed the president on why the United States does not have a manufacturing policy.   Senator Brown was right to raise the question.

First, manufacturing is critical to the economy.

Largest multiplier. Manufacturing has the largest multiplier of all sectors of the economy. Every dollar in final sales in manufacturing products supports $1.37 in other sectors of the economy. By contrast, the financial services sector generates only

From the day I took office, I've been told that addressing our larger challenges is too ambitious; such an effort would be too contentious.  I've been told that our political system is too gridlocked, and that we should just put things on hold for a while. 

Jamie Zimmerman, Director of the Global Assets Project at the New America Foundation and an expert on development and foreign policy, joined me after the hearing highlights to talk about what Dr. Shah will have to work with if he's confirmed. ... Original Article

The best books on globalization this year offer insights into three directional trends that are changing the topology of global trade and influence: the deepening of regional ties across emerging markets; the continuing rise of powerful new global players; and, finally, the intractability of risk factors inherent in emerging markets and regional networks, and how best to analyze them. Indeed, as the United States loses its hegemony as the primary engine of global growth, the new drivers of growth deserve intense examination.

The American economy is in trouble. Battered and bruised by the collapsing housing and credit bubbles, and by high oil and food prices, it is having trouble finding its footing. The stimulus medicine the Federal Reserve and Congress administered earlier this year is already wearing off, while home prices are still falling and unemployment continues to creep upward. By the time a new president is sworn in, there is a good chance the economy will have stalled again, and the hope for a relatively quick rebound will have given way to the fear of a protracted slowdown.