Edward Fishman is the author of Chokepoints: American Power in the Age of Economic Warfare. Fishman teaches at Columbia University’s School of International and Public Affairs and has worked at the Pentagon and State Department.
In this podcast, Motley Fool host Mary Long caught up with Fishman to discuss:
- How the U.S. dollar became the most powerful currency.
- Playing defense in a trade war.
- The economic effects from an embargo on Chinese goods.
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This video was recorded on May 03, 2025
Edward Fishman: The reason that I think U.S. officials, really on both sides of the aisle, have been concerned about China is that there is no reciprocity in our relationship. Even just look at big tech companies. TikTok, last time I checked, is still one of the most, if not the most, used apps among American teenagers, and yet, American software and social media companies are largely banned for the Chinese market.
Ricky Mulvey: I’m Ricky Mulvey, and that’s Edward Fishman. He’s the author of Chokepoints: American Power in the Age of Economic Warfare. Fishman now teaches at Columbia University’s School of International and Public Affairs. But previously, he served at the US Department of State working on economic sanctions against foreign adversaries. What a time for a chat with him on Motley Fool Money. My colleague Mary Long caught up with him to discuss his book, the history of America’s trade dispute with China, the weapons other than tariffs that countries have in an economic war, and new questions about the US dollar is a risk-free asset.
Mary Long: Your book essentially opens with a prediction in the intro that I truly, on reading it, I wrote in the margins, called it, exclamation point. You wrote, “Economic warfare, now the baseline feature of our world, will permeate other areas of foreign policy, global economics, domestic politics, and business. The result will be a scramble for economic security that redraws the geopolitical map and ends globalization as we know it.” That’s the end of the again, road in the margins, called it, because that sounds about right. As on-the-nose as that prediction seems to be, there’s also a lot of uncertainty that comes in this current moment that we’re at. From where you’re sitting, how is the geopolitical map getting redrawn right now? What is something new taking shape?
Edward Fishman: Sure, so, look, I think what Trump has been doing in the last few months is new, in a sense, but it’s also the continuation of a trend that has been playing out over the last several decades. As you might have guessed, I started writing Chokepoints before we knew that Donald Trump was coming back as president in 2024. What we’ve really been seeing is a shift from what we had in the 1990s, where we viewed economic relations between countries as win-win. Between the US and China, more trade, more investment was considered good for both sides to something that looks much more conflictual, that looks much more like geopolitical competition. This is what I call the age of economic warfare, in which sanctions, tariffs, and export controls have become the primary way that great powers are competing with each other.
It’s definitely true of the United States in terms of using sanctions and tariffs more and more for every single president in the 21st century. But increasingly, it’s true of other countries, too: China, Russia, the European Union, Japan. Every country is using these weapons, and I think what I saw several years ago when I started writing the book and what is even more true today is that we can’t just continue with the global economy as we know it when these tools are just part of the fabric of our everyday lives, and there’s going to be a massive rupture in the global economy. I think, the thing that Trump could be shaping is what that rupture looks like, whether it’s going to be a clean break down the middle between two blocks or something significantly more chaotic.
