Please join the Belfer Center and Center for Business and Government’s Economic Diplomacy Initiative for a conversation with Wendy Cutler and Kelly Ann Shaw on the future of U.S. trade policy. The next U.S. administration will encounter many challenges in international trade: rising unilateralism and protectionism, the threat of tit-for-tat tariffs, and weakened bilateral trade relationships and multilateral institutions. In this timely discussion, senior officials from the Obama and Trump administrations will debate what is next for the U.S.-China trade war, the future of the WTO, and ultimately how the U.S. can continue its global leadership of trade policy after the 2020 presidential election. The conversation will be introduced by Aditi Kumar, Executive Director of the Belfer Center, and moderated by Professor Robert Lawrence.

Please click here to register and receive the Zoom meeting link. 

Join the Belfer Center's Economic Diplomacy Initiative (EDI) for a conversation with Yan Xuetong, Distinguished Professor and Dean of the Institute of International Relations at Tsinghua University, on the evolution of U.S.-China digital and technological competition. The event will be moderated by Aditi Kumar, Executive Director of the Belfer Center, and Chris Li, Research Fellow with EDI.

Click here to register to receive the event's Zoom link. 

The World Bank expects over 90% of countries to be in recession in 2020 due to the COVID-19 pandemic. Advanced economies will shrink by 7%, and developing economies by 2.5%. An additional 100 million people around the globe will fall into extreme poverty because of the virus. Some developing markets will face sovereign debt crises as they struggle to contain the economic fallout.

As the global economic outlook deteriorates, the World Bank, other multinationals, and central banks around the world continue to debate the most effective policy responses to combat the global health and economic crises.

Join World Bank Chief Economist Dr. Carmen Reinhart in conversation with Lawrence H. Summers and Nicholas Burns on economic diplomacy in the time of COVID-19.

Will digital money disrupt the ways that countries, institutions, and people interact? A global tension is bubbling to the surface - China is moving ahead with its own digital yuan, the Libra Association is creating a supra-national currency, and the Federal Reserve is battling to maintain the primacy of the U.S. dollar. On top of all this, COVID-19 has prompted contactless payments, global downturns have spurred governments to issue checks directly to citizens, and private companies have pushed into minting their own currencies.

The COVID-19 pandemic has ravaged the United States and other countries around the world. With over 100,000 deaths nationwide by late May and nearly 1 in 4 American unemployed, where does the U.S. go from here? Dr. Jeffrey Frankel will discuss his top five bullet points on how policymakers can help safely re-open the U.S. economy, how the global economy will bounce back, and what the international ramifications of COVID-19 will be on developed and developing economies alike. 

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The Belfer Center for Science and International Affairs will host a lunch with Clete Willems, former White House Deputy Assistant to the President for International Economics on "US-China Trade Policy: Views from a Former White House Negotiator" in the Belfer Library (L369).

Belfer Policy Chats (BPC)  is a new Belfer event series held on every third Thursday of the month. The series features our fellows to chat about issues on the forefront of global policy. The aim is to provide a forum to engage on an informal level on policy topics at the Center around topics such as national security, science and technology, cyber security, innovation, and competitiveness.  Join us for beer, wine, and a lively discussion!