Command of Commerce: America’s Enduring Economic Power Advantage Over China

This lecture will provide a reevaluation of the balance of economic power between the U.S. and China. The conventional wisdom is that China’s economic power is very close to America’s and that Washington cannot undertake a broad economic cutoff of China without hurting itself as much or more. Drawing on the research from his forthcoming book, Stephen G. Brooks will show the conventional wisdom is wrong on both fronts. In peacetime, America’s lead in economic power over China is more dramatic than commonly appreciated because the vast majority of firms that drive global commerce, particularly in high-technology sectors, are based in the U.S. and its allies. America’s advantage in economic power over China would be even more marked in wartime. The analysis from the forthcoming book indicates Washington could impose massive, disproportionate harm on Beijing if it were to impose a broad economic cutoff of China in cooperation with its allies or via a distant naval blockade. Across six scenarios, China’s short-term economic losses from a broad cutoff range from being 5 to 11 times higher than America’s. And in the long run, America and almost all its allies would return to previous economic growth levels; in contrast, China’s growth would be permanently degraded.

Speaker: Stephen G. Brooks (Dartmouth College) 

Stephen G. Brooks is a Professor of Government at Dartmouth, and has previously held fellowships at Harvard and Princeton.  His research examines two topics: U.S. grand strategy and how economic factors influence security affairs.  He is the author of five books: Producing Security: Multinational Corporations, Globalization, and the Changing Calculus of Conflict (Princeton, 2005); World out of Balance: International Relations and the Challenge of American Primacy (Princeton, 2008), with William Wohlforth; America Abroad: The United States’ Global Role in the 21st Century (Oxford, 2016), with William Wohlforth; Command of Commerce: America’s Enduring Economic Power Advantage Over China (Oxford, 2025), with Ben Vagle; and Political Economy of Security (Princeton, forthcoming).  He has published numerous articles in scholarly journals such as International Security, International Organization, Journal of Conflict Resolution, Journal of Politics, Perspectives on Politics, and Security Studies. He has also published seven general interest articles on America’s role in the world in Foreign Affairs. He received his Ph.D. in Political Science with Distinction from Yale University, where his dissertation received the American Political Science Association's Helen Dwight Reid Award for the best doctoral dissertation in international relations, law, and politics.