IJD x PSIA Trade Rounds | How to Win a Trade War with Chad Bown

Europe did not pick a trade war and is in it anyway. Tariffs, export controls on rare earths and advanced chips, subsidy races, procurement exclusions: a growing number of instruments are used by Washington and Beijing, and the question for Europe is which combination of them to reach for. The choice is harder than it looks, because economic security measures all have a way of wounding the country that applies them.

In How to Win a Trade War, written with the Financial Times columnist Soumaya Keynes, Chad Bown argues that the old rules have been abandoned and that waiting for them to work again is not a strategy. Winning, on their account, may mean preserving your economic model, or simply losing less than your rival. Some of what the West needs to learn it will have to learn from China.

Join us for a fireside chat with Chad Bown, Reginald Jones Senior Fellow at the Peterson Institute for International Economics and former chief economist at the US State Department, on what a European playbook should contain, how far the EU can borrow Chinese tools without giving up the model it is trying to defend, and how trade wars ends.

The discussion will be moderated by Nicolas Köhler-Suzuki, Adviser for Trade and Economic Security at the Jacques Delors Institute, and will close with a Q&A.

This event is part of the JDI x PSIA Trade Rounds series.

Trade Rounds is a debate series dedicated to the major challenges of international trade policy, jointly organised by the Jacques Delors Institute and Sciences Po’s Paris School of International Affairs (PSIA). Bringing together researchers, policymakers, negotiators and private sector representatives, it provides a space for open dialogue on the transformations reshaping global trade. Open to the public and held several times a year, these discussions aim to enrich the debate on the challenges shaping the future of international trade relations.