[EAIオンラインセミナー] アフター・トランプ・シリーズ Vol. 4. 次期米国政権と米中経済デカップリング、韓国の選択

YouTube 링크 : https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kr0dkDAlH_U

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東アジア研究院(ソン・ヨル院長)は、本シリーズの第4回会議として「次期米国政権と米中経済デカップリング、韓国の選択(US-China Economic Decoupling under the New US Administration and South Korea’s Choices)」と題したオンラインセミナーを開催しました。米中競争の激化と経済デカップリング、そして相次ぐ米国の対外経済政策が、今回の米国大統領選挙を通じて新たな転換点を迎えるのか、世界が注目しています。本セミナーでは、韓国と米国の外交安保専門家たちが、TPP、多国間主義、対中技術同盟などの議題を通じて、米国の新政権の対外経済政策について議論し、「トランプ以前の正常軌道」への転換について討論しました。

• 日時：11月26日（木）10:30 - 11:40（韓国時間）
• 発表者：バリー・アイケングリーン（ジョージ・C・パーディー＆ヘレン・N・パーディー経済学・政治学教授、カリフォルニア大学バークレー校）、T.J. ぺンペル（ジャック・M・フォージー政治学教授、カリフォルニア大学バークレー校）
• 討論者：イ・スンジュ（EAI貿易技術転換研究センター所長、中央大学教授）
• 司会：ソン・ヨル（EAI院長、延世大学教授）

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welcome to eai webinar uh i'm your son um today's host uh i'm the president of the east asia institute and a youngster university professor uh today is the fourth and the last of uh eai's so-called after trump uh webinar series today's theme is u.s china economic decoupling under the new uh idaho administration and korea's choice um a great economic decoupling are looms large as uh u.s china economic relations uh are in danger of tariff wars uh trade diversion plants um tackle tariffs on the following and then some other

chinese companies and industries this is a profound challenge to not only uh two big powers but also uh countries like south korea uh for korea china is the largest market of course and um so there is a idea yet asymmetric uh economic interdependence between the two countries uh united states is south korea's military ally but also it's a technological superpower uh with which south korean economy has developed a highly independent relationship as well so uh south korea needs to accommodate china while at the same time supporting

support and engagement from the united states militarily and technologically so any sort of community coupling along the line of u.s china um you know rivalry will be a great challenge to uh south korea now the biden administration is coming um and we want to uh discuss if the current trend of decoupling um change course um and if uh you by the way i mean if we see a return to uh you know uh pre-trump normalcy um and uh would it be the china policy for the next uh administration uh and uh economic

regional regional economic architecture and some implications for south korea um with that said i'm very very excited to uh introduce to you our guest two great great scholars uh in the field of international economics and international political economy dr barry eichengreen and tj pentel both from the university of california berkeley professor eiken green is the world leading economic historian and the foremost international economist today he is the george parvee and the holland party professor of economics and

political science at berkeley uh he has written many many important books including uh paul of mirrors uh exorbitant privilege and globalizing um pj campell uh is jack m4c professor of political science at berkeley um a world leading east asianist uh with so many important works in the field of japan uh east asian political economy and east asian international relations um um tj is presidentially uh appointed commissioner on u.s and uh friendship commission and an active participant as well um last but not least uh we have

an excellent uh discussion today uh julie of uh university a leading ip scholar in korea header he also serves the chair of trade technology and transformation research center at eai he squarely works on uh political economy of international trade and new technology with regional focus on each teaching for the audience uh we are welcome to uh raise questions uh during uh the seminar uh you use uh your q a function at the bottom of the zoom uh and you can leave some comments to ea step also uh through to the eai's official

youtube channel lives now the live stream channel um so uh let's uh get it started let me begin with a question to uh barry uh first um in your most recent book uh the populist temptation you nicely delineated the historical processes by which uh economic insecurity uh combined with you know identity crisis led to destructive uh populist politics and policies can we um make sense of the short fluctuations uh in the u.s foreign economic policy years under trump by uh trump presidency in that way um

and will we see uh a return to uh trump normalcy uh so you've asked a very complicated question i think um one thing i can put in simple terms is that we've reached the point of no return i think that in in the sense that uh u.s chinese relations have changed in a fundamental way uh they can now change for the better i think but that's not uh the the same as saying they will return to their pre trump status my view of the explanation for those fluctuations in in u.s stance is they reflect partly fundamental economic

tensions what economists in the us call the china shock china's wto accession and the surge of exports to the us and the rest of the world but these shifts also reflect individuals and personalities and here i would uh point not only to president trump but also to president xi whose rise to to power and now firm grasp on power has changed the relationship as well so there was discomfort before trump over the intensity of chinese competition uh china we in the u.s accused china of being a currency manipulator not formally but

uh in so many words trump articulated that discomfort i think he framed the issue in an inappropriate way he looked at the competition between the us and china in the same way a businessman might look at the competition between samsung and and lg uh the the market share of the two players the us and china is not what it's all about but trump did present uh the interaction as a zero-sum game and bring the discomfort to a head um he came along at a time when there was growing awareness of domestic problems in the united states

like the opioid crisis and he could point to the decline of manufacturing in the us and the rise of china rightly or wrongly as a cause um i think his focus on uh inappropriate concern the bilateral trade imbalance caused his critics to instead identify and articulate valid concerns like forced technology transfer industrial espionage inadequate intellectual property rights um china did its part uh at as well i think by holding on to its poor country concessions in the wto long after it was no longer a poor

country by its non-transparent belt and and road lending to developing countries with the advent of president xi it then became clear to american observers that the hope that engagement would lead to democratization in china or to something like democratization that hope was disappointed assumptions needed to be revised and i think the relationship will change permanently uh as a consequence china has become more assertive and more nationalistic in its uh foreign policy again requiring assumptions to be

revised uh china has become a foreign policy player to be reckoned with uh causing cons uh security assumptions to be uh revised that plays into the controversy over 5g and now the united states has human rights concerns about china as well and that those are not going to go away to the contrary with the change in u.s administration so the short answer to the question will we see a return to quote pre-trump normalcy now the short answer is no i think the new intellectual property concerns foreign policy concerns human rights

concerns are not going to go away concern about china is now a bipartisan shared position in the united states it may be one of the few bipartisan shared positions in the united states all that will change is how the us seeks to advance its goals systematically rather than in a scatter shot fashion by building a coalition of like-minded governments rather than uh proceeding unilaterally on the basis of uh america first i don't think the united states will build that coalition by joining that trans-pacific

partnership i think the republican party in the u.s has gone over to the dark side it's become protectionist biden is a centrist but he has to accommodate the progressive wing of his party and that progressive wing is firmly opposed to trade agreements including ppp um biden may be more uh pro trade janet yellen is more free trade but biden campaigned against great agreements back when he was uh going for the the nomination so i think the prospects for multilateralism are better than uh they they were

last year or in uh um 2016 but they're worse than uh they were in the obama years because biden or uh no biden the u.s is now viewed understandably uh as a as a less reliable bilateral and uh multilateral alliance partner let me let me stop there you uh thank you very very nice i um so you you said that they're the source of change uh in trade policy uh from the united states and also from china too and um you know one one important consequence of those changes is economic decoupling as i mentioned

earlier given the dangers of economic coupling you know question to ej can baiden administration push back against the coupling pressures and hopefully i'll move to uh more nuanced uh china policy yeah i guess i guess the way i'd answer your question is to start with a comment or two about just why this uh discussion of decoupling has taken place now because up until uh a few years ago really the most policymakers in the united states were pretty much committed to a win-win situation with regard to china

basically presumed that china would accept the broad outlines of america's uh global economic order uh maybe with minor caveats here and there that china would stay focused uh in turn on its hide and bide uh philosophy and continue its peaceful rise and as we've seen with uh and certainly barry mention this uh with trump and the tariff wars the uh attacks on huawei wechat uh uh tick tock uh videos uh and the like uh as well as the expansion of the treatment of china now by pence pompeo national security strategy as an

existential threat the situation has moved it seems to me in the united states from simply an economic problem to something that is being portrayed and painted as a much more fundamental combination of economic and security challenges uh that is is quite serious and of course uh the uh as barry mentioned washington dc now has really become bipartisan in its worries about china and this is an issue that is going to be very difficult uh to address in what i think is a is a sensible way because of the combined fears of china

on both the republican and the democratic side but of course as as barry also mentioned china has not been at all free of blame in this deterioration of relations and the focus on decoupling with its emphasis on uh intellectual property theft on decoupling from the rest of the global internet particularly with regard to information that's available to its citizens uh the banning of social media companies such as google or twitter or facebook from from access to chinese citizens and the like and of course the human rights

violations are combined with foreign policy expansions and crackdowns on xinjiang on hong kong and chinese efforts to drive a wedge between the united states and many of its allies the phrase that you hear now is in china is very much outdated cold war alliance structures created by the united states so all of this uh decoupling talk has it seems to me been exacerbated by the colvit 19 situation airline flights have been canceled uh trade shows have been postponed tourism has halted we've seen uh investment flows drying up

uh high-tech exchanges have been truncated etc etc uh clearly i i'm a firm believer in the fact that decoupling uh and discussions of decoupling is extremely dangerous for the united states but also for other countries most fundamentally i the two economies are deeply enmeshed with one another you can talk about the trade relationship but you can talk about chinese investment in the united states american companies investing in in china but even more tangibly a number of u.s companies and u.s sectors

are deeply enmeshed in the china market and any kind of decoupling would be severely detrimental to them whether you're talking about boeing or whether you're talking about qualcomm or whether you're talking about tiffany's or whether you're talking about starbucks or um iowa soybean soybean farmers and the like so numerous sectors of the american economy numerous companies are just deeply dependent on the china market and in addition it seems to me american universities are deeply dependent on chinese students

for a good deal of their income and for teaching assistance and the like some one-third of all foreign students studying in the united states come from china and interestingly enough and positively enough when i checked the numbers about 20 percent of the stem graduates coming from china stay in the united states wind up working for american companies and in many cases become very powerful players in the success of american the american technological breakthroughs and lastly i think it's important to recognize that there

are uh numerous scientific exchanges between the two countries that are very positive and powerful whether it's the who on pandemics or whether it's simply science and technology uh more generally so it seems to be a realistic decoupling china policy for the non-decoupling china policy for the biden administration will not lead to a return to any pre-trump era or some imagined ideal time in the past i think it's necessary and i think this is picking up on what barry was saying to move in a in a somewhat new direction

and i guess the the starting point for me is to recognize that for the united states and for other countries china is a challenge of course but it's also an opportunity and i would want to suggest that there are basically five things that a biden administration has to take into account in order to create a very effective china policy first of all it has to acknowledge the simple fact that asia is the most dynamic economic area in the world it's going to be that for the medium and long-term range

but in the short-term range because of asia's success in dealing with colbit it's also going to be a very powerful engine of global economic growth in the short term so any any thought of getting out of asia i think is uh is ridiculous but the second point uh that i want to raise for biden administration would be to say that without decoupling the united states must still confront china's what i call it embedded mercantilism but uh distorted economic practices uh china's intellectual property theft

china's demand for access to global markets while at the same time cutting off global access to its markets promoting its soes state-owned enterprises providing incredible subsidies for that and doing its best to nationalize the benefits of economic growth within the country in ways that play unfairly with regard to uh other companies from other countries the third thing that's critical and i again this is something that barry said but i want to underscore it is the importance of multilateralism

there are numerous countries and numerous companies that feel very much like the united states does about the unfairness of china's practices and i think was a mistake for trump to move into this america first mindset and think that that was the way to deal with china when in fact companies across western europe in many parts of east asia are also anxious to confront um china on some of these specific practices and it seems to me that's that's a direction that has to be uh pursued additionally i think the long

run strategy for the united states has to be to compete with china in a head-to-head way on the cutting-edge technologies so the united states really needs to get its house in order on areas like um uh intellectual pride advanced um a uh 5g on on high-speed rail on science and technology on global warming on moving toward renewable energies on a whole host of things that china is now doing extremely well in and the united states has been very sluggish in particularly uh during the trump administration with

the efforts to promote fuel uh fossil fuel and to return to an economy hypothetically looking like the 1950s the fourth point i guess is that the united states just has to reject the trumpian links to multilateralism and focus on alliances but at the same time i think the last point that i want to make is that the biden administration has to recognize the tremendous damage that has been done to the united states image across the region um countries are not just waiting for the united states to come and take

leadership because they've been through the changes that went from clinton being positive on asia bush being much less positive on asia uh to an obama that was positive on the asia pacific to now a trump that was much less positive and i think countries in governments and foreign policy establishments across east asia are going to be scratching their heads and wondering what happens in four years biden may look very favorably on multilateralism but is that going to change in 2024 so i think the long-term

prognosis for u.s asia cooperation is something that the u.s and the bible administration are going to have to work very very seriously seriously about and i guess the last thing that the administration needs to think about in this regard is that asia has been moving ahead with a lot of things in terms of multilateral institutions free trade agreements uh rcep cptpp all of these things are pulling countries together in ways that are going to be somewhat of a disadvantage to american firms as american firms face tougher

regulations or tougher tariffs than some of the countries that are now part of these fdas and uh and the like the last point i want to make in regard to the united states is just the tremendous domestic obstacles that are going to be faced by abide in administration we first have the you know the incredible economic problems the united states is facing huge debt uh 3.1 trillion dollars in in the deficit right now and the uh that runs up against the fact that to make america competitive again is going to require

huge amounts of money it's going to require tax reforms it's going to require a willingness to take on borrowing for long-term benefits but that's going to run headlong into the protectionist sentiment that barry correctly identified as being bipartisan as well it's not just the mega trumpets but also a big wing of protectionists in the in the democratic party that are firmly convinced that globalization is the heart of the problem rather than technology and they're going to resist efforts by biden to

improve some of the things that need to be improved in terms of globalization and then finally i think it's just important that foreign analysts and observers recognize the deep partisan character of the american polity these days and so the binding administration regardless of what it's trying to do is going to face a republican establishment that is going to do its best to deny giving biden any kind of victory whatsoever the senate is likely to remain in republican hands the courts are completely under

the control of the federalist society these days many state governments are under tight republican control and for the most part they're going to line up against any kind of changes in the tax structure they're going to line up against many uh re-regulation of environmental rules et cetera et cetera so for the binding administration it's going to be a very tough uh path to pursue and it's not going to be very easy and i think he's going to be facing problems both in asia and in washington dc as he tries to

move forward so let me stop on that note thank you uh thank you tj uh the fascinating uh tremendous obstacles uh sound frustrating um now uh let's uh turn to our um discussion uh uh over to you thank you oh yeah actually both variant tj touched upon many issues well but i would like to take up two issues one is about decoupling of supply chains and another is about rsap actually of course uh tj also mentioned uh mentioned about the rsa in a passing way i would like to highlight some aspects of the answer for

my as a second question uh my first question is of about decoupling but because these days the coupling is a kind of buzzwords these days and in the wake of the global proliferation of kobe 19 the vulnerability of global value chains has been clearly revealed uh that's one of the reasons why we are having a numerous discussions about the restructuring of global value chains at the same time u.s china strategy competition emerged as another factor that facilitates the restructuring of global value chains so my question here

is that what do you think would be the future trajectory of the global value chains in the coming years uh how and how much do you think will geopolitical factors affect the global value chains reorganization process and another related question would be that what kind of policy changes will byton administration will make in terms of the trump administration's decoupling policies also do you think the vitals administration will continue to seek economic prosperity network as a means to induce cooperation from allies and

partners well it will be abandoned or and on another related question would be that what kind of cooperation dividend administration will seek from south korea in the process of decoupling that is to my first set of questions and the second question would be about i'll say as is well on the east asian countries finally managed to conclude also negotiations which took almost eight years how do we define the primary nature of the rsap and what would be the impact of ourselves on the asian regional economic

order and also given that also was understood as an initiative led by china and the president-elect biden made it clear that not china but the u.s can write the trade rules in the 21st century and also he made it clear that he will seek to strengthen cooperation with them democracies in the region so my question here is that what would be the primary nature of the regional economic strategy of the united states particularly under the biden administration in the coming months and and related question would be what kind of

cooperation dividend administration would expect from south korea particularly in redesigning the regional order after the isaf conclusion let me stop here thank you do you um want to pose those two set of questions to both speakers or do you want to designate each one and the second one is directed to tj thank you so um great questions but as soon as you you're supposed to answer them not only pose them as discussant um i think the notion of decoupling is misplaced or mistaken uh tj put it well the two

economies are too interdependent for anything that any any picture that springs in your mind about what decoupling would entail to become reality um i think you know apple is going to continue to assemble uh iphones in china under almost any conceivable circumstance that was true through four years of trump and it will certainly be true through uh four years of biden uh i think the strategy the the goals of of the biden administration are to on on the narrowly economic front to try to encourage china to continue to

allow its currency to be more market determined just as it has recently uh to strengthen its uh intellectual property rights regime to make clear that soes are not engaged in in what we might call industrial espionage and beyond that there will be two-way flows of uh foreign direct investment into sectors that are not sensitive from a defense and security point of view and i i would expect that to continue the question is how will it go about uh trying to advance or achieve those goals number one through

engagement with china which has not exactly been a strength of the trump approach engagement constructive engagement rather than antagonistic confrontation and trying to get other governments like seoul to be on the same wavelength in terms of pushing china in those directions let me uh let me try to pick up one or two threads from that and uh and then move on to the question of rsep and and alliances and the like i guess the the other thing that i would add on the uh on the trump i mean on the economic policy for east

asia would be that my guess would be that biden will continue to keep the tariffs in place that uh are there now i don't think we're going to see those shredded very quickly much as you might argue against them they do provide a powerful weapon for the biden administration and it's dealing with dealings with china i think you're going to see um you know tariffs are not going to be continued on various of the american allies whether japan or korea or elsewhere but i think those on china are likely to continue at least in the

short run but um in terms of our sep and other regional organizations regional economic uh arrangements my guess would be that the biden administration is not going to join those simply for the for the simple reason that that i tried to lay out earlier that there's such a strong protection of sentiment in the united states against these multilateral bodies i think the the multilateral approaches that the byte administration will try to make will be much more along lines of apec the east asia summit

etc. where you can go out, you can schmooze with leaders from other countries, try to deal with multiple issues simultaneously, and try perhaps to press for greater liberalization. I think, though, that as I tried to suggest, American companies are going to be at a singular disadvantage with regard to many of these mini-lateral or multilateral free trade agreements, including RCEP, because tariffs are being reduced or regulations are being reduced. I think Barry can probably speak to those much better than I, but my sense is that

they're not going to be huge incentives for the participants to trade with one another, but they're still going to present substantial barriers to many American firms. As we saw with the TPP when it became the CPTPP, and the American government under Trump quickly insisted to Japan that the US be given the same agricultural access to the Japanese market that it would otherwise have had if it was in TPP. Clearly, it was being disadvantaged in favor of agricultural products from Thailand or

from Australia or from New Zealand, etc. So my guess would be that the United States is going to try to cut as many deals as it can for as many powerful companies as it can, but without joining those organizations. But I think we'll still see a planting of the American flag at these other institutions that America is part of, like the East Asia Summit, or APEC, or ARF. And I think there's going to be a lot more efforts to improve multilateral diplomacy with regard to North Korea, for example, and avoid the kinds of showboating

and photo op silliness that Trump was engaged in with North Korea. That's not going to be an easy issue to deal with, and it's certainly going to be a lot easier to deal with if the United States can get along and get cooperation from South Korea, from Japan, and even from China. Thank you. Um, before I'm moving on to the questions from the audience, I have a couple questions to you. One is, as Barry just touched upon, the issue of national security and trade in economic policies. It's like

it's about the balance between, you know, economic independence and national security. Here in China, yes, there are economic problems, and also you can invoke national security in certain practices, like following certain vulnerabilities in the networks of whole. And also, Trump made it explicit that we don't want to try to challenge the United States, so we want to slow down and put every way of measures to slow down or deter Chinese rise, etc. So all, you know, different

the cases of protecting American interests. So how do we, you know, differentiate or make it separate and have their own logics applied to a particular trade policy and muster support from your neighbors, your allies? For example, the third element that I mentioned, it's kind of protection for the ceremony competition. It's really hard for countries like South Korea to accept and then take sides with the United States. And also the national security clause, for example, Section 232 that applied to

Korean steel and aluminum, and it's hard to swallow. So how can we view this invocation of national security? So I think Trump's recourse to security concerns in order to slap tariffs on Chinese steel discredited, in a way, those security concerns more broadly. I would say that good security relations and good economic relations go together. South Korea and the US have a strong trading relationship in part because they've historically had a strong security relationship as well. My own

work looks at financial flows and reserve holdings. Countries hold the currencies of their alliance partners as reserves. The economics on the one hand, and the security relationship, the alliance, go together with one another. And conversely, to the extent that there are greater tensions in the security relationship between the US and China, that does spill over, obviously, into economic tensions, no doubt. You said one thing I kind of disagree with, which is that the goal of the United

States is to slow down China's emergence as an economic force, a security force. I don't think we can slow China down. All we can do is to try to speed the US up. And TJ had some ideas about how to achieve that. Just for fun, let me modestly disagree with a couple of things that TJ said. I disagree with the point that the US is constrained by its debt, because the interest rate on the debt is below the growth rate of the economy, and in my view, that's going to remain the case for many years now going forward.

Which means that we can outgrow our debt and we can add more without creating a problem. I put complicated economics in a very simple way, but that is my view. The other point I would stress is that I think in terms of US engagement with the world, it's the domestic politics in the United States that are the binding constraint, but in a different way than we've talked about so far. Re-engaging globally, re-engaging multilaterally, turning back the economic isolationist

measures requires addressing the concerns and problems that led those measures to be adopted in the first place and created some popular support for Trump, namely, we don't have an adequate social safety net in the United States, we don't provide access to healthcare for people that need it, we don't have an adequate minimum wage, we don't invest enough in preschool education. Is the Republican-controlled Senate, assuming there is a Republican-controlled Senate, going to go for any of that? And if not, the US is not going to

re-engage. Let me jump and not just defend myself on one point that Barry made. I think he made perfect sense economically that it would make its view it should not be constrained by its debt. I fully agree. But I do think that the Republicans in the Senate are now laying the groundwork to say that, my God, we've got tremendous debt. Yes, we created it, but we can't put any more in play. Opposition to the continued financial and fiscal stimulus for dealing with the coronavirus problems

whether it's local government, whether it's PPE, stimulus checks, whatever, all of this is now being resisted in part because the Republicans are claiming that the debt is too large, we can't afford any more. So I fully agree that economically it makes perfect sense to borrow money and do infrastructure and do a whole variety of these things, but I think for political reasons that's likely to be opposed. And I want to just make one or two more points very briefly, but I think that the economic and

security links are certainly going to be very important. My guess will be that the United States will probably take a much lower profile with regard to its economics in terms of engaging with East Asia, trying to win friends and allies for tangible and specific targeting of problems in China. But I think the US is going to be equally focused on trying to resuscitate some of the security alliances and to do its best to build up ties with South Korea, with Japan, with Vietnam, etc. But I would point out one more thing

that I think where I at least am starting to recognize, and that is that the Belt and Road Initiative and China's use of AIIB money is increasingly moving in the direction of Southeast Asia, Central Asia, around South Asia. And in many ways, this provides China with a way to advance its economic and security profile globally while avoiding the more touchy issues or touchy geographical spots in Northeast Asia that the United States has traditionally found its biggest partners in. So China will be, in many ways, not contesting the United

States' links to Japan or South Korea or even Taiwan directly, but it can expand substantially in areas where the United States has traditionally not been deeply involved. Thank you. PJ, one question to you. Like I said before, Korea is economically dependent or asymmetrically dependent with China. So that means that China has leverage to influence Korea's foreign policy. If the United States, like, you know, Barry mentioned, for economic issues, you know, urge South Korea to be on their side, which obviously

country did Chinese interests, and should be a legitimate worry from Korea that China will retaliate with various economies. We saw that in so-called the THAAD case in 2018, that Korean people's equipment to Korea created a huge foreign policy crisis here. So that's the case. And also we see, so in that sense, how if the United States sort of trying to make a collective approach to China on various issues, if any of the countries in Asia, your friends

are in danger of retaliation, what would be the next step? What can the United States and US allies and partners do, or some sort of collective approach to potential Chinese retaliation? And relating to that, you know, Japan last year, Mr. Abe kind of followed Trump by making export controls on a few semiconductor components to South Korea, and he invoked national security to justify

that economic actual control behavior. So that also is kind of related to this broader issue of national security. I mean, it's a powerful and important question. Powerful, important question. And I guess I would simply say that China will do its best in every situation to deal with countries bilaterally, because 99 times out of 100, China will be the stronger of the two partners, of the two negotiators. Certainly that's true in South Korea. It may not quite be true with Japan, but certainly it's true with all 10 of

the ASEAN countries. It's certainly true with regard to Taiwan, etc. And so I mean, I shouldn't be giving cheap advice to Korea, but it seems to me that one of the problems that the Blue House faces is that it does allow itself to get boxed in on this bilateral relationship with China, rather than reaching out to probably ready allies, whether you're talking about Japan, and I know that's very difficult, or the ASEAN countries, etc. You know, in my view, Korean policymakers spend an inordinate amount of time

thinking about the Korean Peninsula as a territory unto itself, when in fact now the issues that involve the DPRK or possible invasion or possible security threats go much deeper. And at the same time, Korea has potential allies in many other parts of the region. So I would love to see less focus on the Korea question and the self-absorption of Korean scholars and policymakers with what do we do with the North and how is everybody going to help us deal with the North, and start thinking a little bit more

about what positive role can Korea play in the rest of the region? How best can it cooperate with countries that will allow it to enhance its own bargaining with regard to countries like China? You know, Japan plus Korea plus the United States dealing with China is a lot more likely to be effective on something like intellectual property rights or pushing back against cutting off of particular key components than Korea is ever going to be able to do by itself. So, you know, that seems to me is

something. Korea has this Look South policy now, which I think is probably a plus, but as I understand it, it's still largely focused on economics. And I think looking south would be something that ASEAN countries would welcome. Certainly Taiwan would welcome warm relations with Korea. And a little bit more effusive and expansive South Korean policy with regard to the rest of the region would probably be a plus. And if the administration could do anything to facilitate that, I think that would be a

plus. But clearly, the first hurdle, as you and I know, is going to be just getting any measure of cooperation between Japan and Korea. You know, it's easy to cooperate with Singapore. The issues there aren't quite so deeply embedded. But Japan hasn't been the greatest player in this relationship either. But getting those two to look at 2021 instead of 1930 or 1925 or 1940 would be a plus in my view. One point about the possibility of China's economic retaliation on South Korea, actually, this is not the

problems that only South Korea faces. Actually, these kinds of problems are widely shared with other East Asian countries. So I don't think South Korea can come up with a one-one policy, or rather, I think it's going to be better for South Korea to come up with a kind of combination of many policies to deal with the possibility of China's economic retaliation. The first one is that, like strengthening the bilateral cooperation with the United States would be a very useful means to reduce the

possibility of China's economic retaliation. But at the same time, secondly, I think it's going to be very difficult, if not impossible, very difficult to deal with China's economic sanctions by resorting to bilateral relations or bilateral diplomacy. That's one of the reasons why we need a regional strategy, a regional diplomacy, because there are many other countries in the region that share similar concerns with South Korea. So we better seek cooperation with those countries in the region. So we have to combine the bilateral

cooperation with the United States on the one side, and as well as the regional cooperation on the other side. At the same time, lastly, we also have to deal with the, we try to make an effort to reduce the structural limitations of our structural vulnerabilities. That's one of the reasons why we have to proceed the reorganization or restructuring of the global value chains. So we have to approach this issue not in terms of decoupling, but in terms of the diversification of the economic relationships or

diversification of the global value chains. Yes, it's going to be a very useful means to reduce Korea's economic vulnerability in dealing with possible China's economic sanctions. So my point here is that we have to combine various policies in order to effectively deal with China's economic sanctions. Thank you. Thank you for your prescriptions for the government. Now, the audience question. I got a bunch of questions. One, this one goes to Barry. This is where you excel. Everybody, there's a looming

currency competition. This question is from Professor of Korea University. Looming currency competition as China is rising. You wrote sometime after the 2008 financial crisis that there will be a multi-currency system coming. Do you still hold that position, and what's your prospect for the status of the Chinese currency? I do still hold that position. I've been predicting movement in the direction of a more multi-polar monetary and financial system, and I'll keep predicting it until I'm right. I do think the United States can't

provide safe and liquid assets all by itself to the rest of the world indefinitely, because the rest of the world will, to an extent, catch up and expand relative to the US. So there is going to have to be a more diverse supply of those safe and liquid assets. And just like biodiversity makes for a safer place, I think financial diversity will also. The question is, where will the diversity come from? I think it will come first from Europe, because Europe is more open financially, Europe is more developed

financially, Europe is having its mini-Hamiltonian moment financially, whereas China has a lot more ground to make up. If you look at transactions through SWIFT, the Society for Worldwide Interbank Financial Telecommunication, China accounts for 1.8% in the most recent month reported, where the US accounts for 50% and the Euro area for 30%. So the renminbi is coming as a global currency, but it is starting out way behind. China has a strategy for renminbi internationalization that

suffered some setbacks in 2015-2016. I think it remains committed to the goal, in the same way that a first-class country should have an aircraft carrier and a national flag airline, it should have an international currency, the argument goes. And I think Chinese officials believe that they're just going to have to be very patient. Thank you. The question to TJ, Professor Kamp, is that one policy prescription for the United States in order to compete with China is in a series of areas

such as high-tech, renewable energy, where the United States is sluggish. Could you elaborate more on this point? How can the United States? Yeah, I mean, basically, I start from the premise that the United States, particularly under the Trump administration, has been very slow to provide support for science and technology. It's focused very much on fossil fuels. It's focused very much on manufacturing. I think America's future is clearly going to lie, America's economic future is clearly going to lie

in greater success in higher tech, in advanced industries and the like, much as China, I think, has recognized it with its Made in China 2025 logic. So the United States has to begin moving, for example, away from fossil fuels and into solar or wind or other renewable energies. We know that more jobs are being created in those sectors of the economy than in fossil fuels or in coal or anything of the sort. And I think it becomes an important selling point for the Biden administration to make clear

particularly to folks in the in what you might think of as the red states, that if the United States can begin moving in this direction, there are jobs to be had for people who don't have a college education, who are capable of installing solar panels or raising towers for wind energy, etc., etc. I think it's also important to do more in terms of supporting the science that's linked to dealing with vaccine problems, dealing with world health, returning to the World Health Organization, but

bolstering the American scientific community. And I think the United States really has a great deal more to be done in terms of support for artificial intelligence and the like. So, you know, it seems to me that America does not lack in ingenuity on these things. I think it's really a matter of putting a little bit more government shoulder behind the wheel. And the last thing that I think is important in this regard is a change in immigration policy in the United States would be, in all likelihood, a very positive

impetus for greater technology. We know the numbers in Seoul, in Silicon Valley, but a huge number of the startup companies there are formed by immigrants who come to the United States with not a whole lot of money, but an awful lot of brain power. And companies like Google are very dependent on immigrant workers. And I think all of that would be moving away from it would be embracing Schumpeterian creative destruction, simply recognizing that the United

States is no longer going to be a great manufacturing company. Some things should be manufactured in the US, but that's not where the future is going to lie. It's going to lie in services, it's going to lie in higher tech, etc. Harry, let me just issue a little bit more in your book that I mentioned, the populist temptation. After the election, still we were saying, Trump isn't after Trump or Donald Trump. Do you think that this populist tendency

will continue during the Biden administration? Or so the simple explanation for populism I offer in my book is that it reflects a pair of concerns: number one, economic insecurity, and number two, identity politics, fear of the other, which is weaponized by certain politicians. As I said before, I have my doubts about whether we will effectively deal with the economic and security problem anytime soon, because doing so will require cooperation between the administration and the Congress.

It will require the House and Senate to pass bills that either address the source of that insecurity or better provide the kind of compensation and adjustment assistance that people who are hurt by the destruction part of TJ's creative destruction are very aware of. I think we know how to address those concerns, and the issue is, do we have the political will to do so or not? On the identity politics, I think that really reflects fear of the other, and the way that fear of the other is

weaponized. We are now going to have a president who will ratchet down the rhetoric and try to counter the efforts of others who weaponize that fear, and that will be a positive, to be sure. Unfortunately, I think the addressing that concern more broadly will take time. I think about how to deal with these identity politics problems in my book, and I say, well, there's a lot of literature in sociology and economics and elsewhere that shows when people actually encounter immigrants, they

grow less fearful of them, or when they actually interact with people of other religions, they are less suspicious of them. So what can we do? We can promote residential integration, we can promote the integration of schools, and that will go a long way to solving the problem over a period of decades. In other words, it will take time for those attitudes to change, and that worries me, given where we're at at the moment. Another question to you: China is on the way to develop its digital currency. How will this play in the relations

among US, South Korea, and China? I think not very much. China will be the first country of consequence to roll out a digital currency, and that will at least modestly enhance the attractiveness of using its currency, the renminbi, for cross-border transactions. But I also saw a survey of merchants in Seoul a couple of months ago where they were asked, are you happy to take Alipay from Chinese tourists when they buy something from you? And everybody said, yeah, sure. And then they were asked, would you be happy to take a Chinese

digital currency in payment for purchases by tourists? And they said, tell me first whether that digital currency would have a back door, whether it would be a mechanism for surveilling my transactions as well as those of Chinese residents. So I think more generally, every consequential international currency in history has been the currency of a political republic or democracy. China, China's the People's Republic of China, but it doesn't have the checks and balances on executive power in place that would

reassure people who might otherwise be tempted to use its currency, digital or otherwise. I see. Thank you. I think that's going to be the last question to TJ. You mentioned mercantilism. We saw that in almost every phase of academic growth in East Asian political economies, Japan, Korea, Taiwan. So is it that the mercantilism that you mentioned isn't just the same stage of economic growth that we saw in the history of East Asian academic development, or is it just a

different kind? I mean, is it really a different kind, so that you need a different kind of approach to deal with this? Yeah, I guess, I mean, the success of Japan, Korea, and Taiwan did, in my view, rest very heavily on the fact that they could protect their domestic markets from a great deal of competition while having relatively open access to global markets. But I think the United States, as one of the leaders of that global liberal order, by the time the Cold War began to wind down, and I would start it in Asia with

China's moves toward accepting the Deng Xiaoping reforms, so it's, you don't have to wait till 1991 for the collapse of the Soviet Union to see the Cold War breaking down. But the United States, for domestic reasons and global reasons, really began to push back against particularly against Japan, but also against Korea in particular, and began to push for more openness, more domestic liberalization, for radical currency readjustments and so forth. For the most part,

the United States has tolerated, and I guess the rest of the world to a large extent has tolerated, that same philosophy within China. And Barry put it in the context of China demanding to be treated as a poor developing country when in fact its living standards have vastly improved and it's no longer in that situation. So my feeling is that this is not just a stage that countries go through. It was one that was very deeply linked to America's and to a lesser extent Europe's tolerance of Japan,

Korea, and Taiwan. But the heavy dependence of all of their exports on the US market made it powerful for the United States to not be pushing back. Now we're starting to see some pushback against China. And my sense is that China is going to be anxious to move toward more of a service economy. I don't know how Barry feels about that, to move toward higher tech and the like, and move away from some of the low-end packaging and manufacturing that were endemic to its original growth. But I don't see ultimately

China wanting to see non-Chinese at the heads of corporations, non-Chinese taking out big chunks of money, non-Chinese shaping the direction of the economy. I think the Communist Party wants to very much remain that final authority. And I think ultimately it's going to want to be able to cut deals with Han Chinese in the advance of the economy and do its best to prevent foreign intervention in any way or foreign penetration in serious ways. And that seems to me is where Western European countries,

companies, and the United States, and South Korea, and Japan have a collective interest in trying to dismantle that economic policy of the economic regime that's been so successfully advancing China's growth. Thank you. I yell, time's up after 11:40 AM here in Korea. So let me conclude. Thank you so much, Barry and PJ, for your wisdom and intellectual power commanding all the sorts of issues and questions. And also, I thank you for your great participation today.

This is the fourth and final of the after Trump series. And we have covered election and domestic politicians in the United States, the Biden administration's foreign policy and the alliance between the US and Korea under the Biden administration, and then foreign. Rough conclusion is, yeah, the Biden administration, you'll see continued change, but not much more than expected in various aspects of foreign policy and economic policy. So though

and also kind of a common conclusion that the new administration will be stifled with the domestic policies, shockingly divided politically, ideologically, and racially. So, you know, we have very keen interest in China and Chinese development, change, and also we really need to look closely into what's going to happen in the United States politically, economically, policy. So with that said, let me conclude. Thank you so much. I still have many questions left on

insert from the audience, but I'm sorry about that. Again, thank you so much. And thank you. Bye. Thank you for having me. Thank you for organizing it. Thank you.