China's latest push to internationalize the renminbi is driven less by ambitions to challenge the U.S. dollar's global dominance than by efforts to build a more resilient financial system that reduces dependence on Western-led financial infrastructure and strengthens China's strategic autonomy amid growing geopolitical competition.

The current USMCA review is expected to introduce new China-related restrictive provisions across four key areas: labor enforcement, rules of origin, economic security coordination and external tariff alignment. Taken together, these measures would substantially narrow market access for Chinese capital, goods and technology in North America.

The 2026 oil crisis revealed a transformed China: no longer just the world's largest oil importer and refiner, but a state actor deploying stockpiles, export controls, and strategic opacity to shape global energy markets on its own terms.

In the long sweep of history, China’s economic performance over the past 50 years will obviously stand out for the sheer scale and pace of quality-of-life improvements within that country. But China’s impact on the rest of the world has still been underappreciated.

China’s well-documented rise in prominence in the global supply chain has created an economic engine that now rivals the United States, but now facing stagnating growth, can China innovate into the 21st Century and drive into new territory?

China’s membership is not a threat. Rather, it is a sustainable framework for the United States to prosper. Both sides could well complement each other and grow together, benefiting our people and the world over.

As the United States marks 250 years since the signing of the Declaration of Independence this summer, there is no better time to reckon with one of the great myths of American economic life: that the country’s prosperity was built on laissez-faire capitalism. From its very founding, the US has had a hybrid model in which the state directs, subsidizes, and occasionally bails out private enterprise in the service of national priorities. While the prevailing narrative has often extolled free markets, policymaking itself has been more pragmatic.

Future China-EU economic relations are likely to be defined by cooperation amid ongoing competition. Europe will need to choose when to emphasize industrial competitiveness and when to protect open markets. China should respond more proactively to European concerns over industrial development, employment and economic security.

Attempting to use “rebalancing” as an excuse for applying pressure on another country or for excluding a particular country from established rules can only exacerbate the rise of global protectionism and economic fragmentation.

Although small-scale rivalry and periodic tactical bargaining are likely to persist, a new equilibrium characterized by institutionalized cooperation—and occasional issue-specific divergence—may gradually emerge as the new normal in China-U.S. economic and trade relations.