Ep. 10: Rethinking U.S.-China trade

Who are the winners and losers in U.S.-China trade over recent decades, and what's a better way forward? Laying out a compelling argument in this episode is Peter Goodman, a former correspondent in China, current global economics correspondent at The New York Times, and author of How the World Ran Out of Everything: Inside the Global Supply Chain. He takes the supply chain snarls at the peak of the COVID pandemic as a jumping-off point to explore how China became the world's top exporter and top trading partner of most countries, why "just in time" outsourcing to China long made irresistible sense to U.S. companies and investors but came with steep hidden costs to workers and a dangerously widening wealth gap, and how the answer is not a wholesale U.S. 'decoupling' from China's efficient supply chains, but making better choices at home to build resilience and restore faith among disillusioned Americans in the U.S. economy and democracy.

Peter Goodman, the global economics correspondent atThe New York Times, has also been the Times'  London-based Europe economics correspondent, and U.S. national economics correspondent. He was earlier the Washington Post's China-based Asia economics correspondent (2001-06), and its telecommunications reporter. His other books are Davos Man: How the Billionaires Devoured the World (2022) and Past Due: The End of Easy money and the Renewal of the American Economy (2009). 

The China Books Podcast is a companion of China Books Review, a project of Asia Society’s Center on U.S.-China Relations and The Wire China. For any queries or comments, please write to [email protected].