On November 3, 2021, SAGE hosted an online lecture by Professor Dani Rodrik on “Managing U.S.-China Economic Conflict.” The webinar was the third event in SAGE's “Lectures in Government and Economics Series,” in which renowned friends and members of SAGE share their work in the field of government and economics. For this lecture, we were delighted to hear from Professor Dani Rodrik, the Ford Foundation Professor of International Political Economy at the Harvard Kennedy School and President of the International Economic Association.

        In his lecture, Professor Rodrik proposed a potential strategy for managing U.S.-China economic conflict built on three major concepts detailed in his previous works. First, that a healthy global economy can still thrive under a light amount of global governance, leaving more room for diversity in economic policies among countries than is usually assumed (Rodrik 2020). Second, that peaceful economic co-existence between the U.S. and China is possible (US-China Trade Policy Working Group 2019), and third, that a stable and peaceful global political order is also feasible (Rodrik and Walt 2020). To facilitate such a global order, Professor Rodrik suggests a “meta-regime” as a device to structure conversation on relevant issues between major powers while leaving room for disagreement when necessary.

      Those curious to hear more about Professor Rodrik's ideas should stay tuned for his forthcoming paper on this topic, which will be published in the Journal of Government and Economics, the official journal of SAGE. The video playback of this event can be viewed here.