Marian Miner Cook
Athenaeum

A distinctive
feature of social and
cultural life at CMC

 

New Economic Statecraft: From Cooperation to Coercion

Mon, April 20, 2026
Dinner Program
Vinod K. Aggarwal P'12

The rise of “new economic statecraft”—the use of trade and investment as tools of foreign policy—is increasingly threatening the stability and predictability of the global economic system. The United States, principal architect of the post–World War II neoliberal international economic order, has surprisingly become a major driver of dramatic change through the expanded use of coercive economic tools, not China as most analysts expected. Both superpowers now employ new economic statecraft to influence third countries, and these practices are spreading to middle powers as well. What, then, is the likely fate of the neoliberal order? Will existing institutions adapt through reform, or will they be increasingly bypassed in favor of unilateral measures and bilateral or mini-lateral arrangements? As Vinod Aggarwal P'12, professor of political science at U.C. Berkeley will explore, the result may not be institutional collapse, but a global economic order that is increasingly contested, fragmented, and harder to govern.

Vinod (Vinnie) Aggarwal P'12 is Distinguished Professor and holds the Alann P. Bedford Endowed Chair in in the Travers Department of Political Science; Affiliated Professor at the Haas School of Business; Director of the Berkeley Asia Pacific Economic Cooperation Study Center (BASC); and Fellow in the Public Law and Policy Center at Berkeley Law School, all at the University of California at Berkeley. He is also Editor-in-Chief of the journal Business and Politics. He is the former Chair of the U.S. Consortium of APEC Study Centers. From 1991-1994, he was Chair of the Political Economy of Industrial Societies Program at UC Berkeley.

He has held fellowships from the Brookings Institution, Rockefeller Foundation, Council on Foreign Relations, East-West Center, Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars, and was a Japan Foundation Abe Fellow. He has been a Visiting Professor at the Graduate Institute of International Studies in Geneva, the University of Geneva’s IOMBA program, INSEAD, Yonsei University, NTU Singapore, Bocconi University, Chung-Ang University, and the University of Hawaii. He is also an elected lifetime member of the Council on Foreign Relations.

Aggarwal consults regularly with multinational corporations on strategy, trade policy, and international negotiations, and he has been a consultant to the Mexican government, Malaysian government, the U.S. Department of Commerce, U.S. Defense Department, U.S. State Department, World Trade Organization, OECD, the Group of Thirty, FAO, IFAD, the International Labor Organization, ASEAN, and the World Bank. In 1990, he was Special Adviser on Trade Negotiations to the United Nations Conference on Trade and Development (UNCTAD) and has worked with the APEC Eminent Persons Group. In 1997, he won the Cheit Outstanding Teaching Award at the Haas School of Business for PhD teaching; in 2003 he was first runner up for the Cheit Award for MBA teaching and won first place for the MBA program in 2005.

His authored books include Liberal Protectionism, International Debt Threat, Debt Games, Le Renseignement Stratégique d'Entreprise, Une Nouvelle Approche des Phénomènes Sociaux, and he has edited or co-edited Institutional Designs for a Complex World, Asia-Pacific Crossroads, Winning in Asia: European Style, Winning in Asia: Japanese Style, Winning in Asia: U.S. Style, Sovereign Debt Management, European Union Trade Strategies, The Strategic Dynamics of Latin American Trade, Bilateral Trade Agreements in the Asia Pacific, Asia’s New Institutional Architecture, Northeast Asia: Ripe for Integration?, Trade Policy in the Asia-Pacific, Responding to a Resurgent Russia, Linking Trade and Security, Responding to China's Rise, and Great Power Competition and Middle Power Strategies. His most recent books are the Oxford Handbook of Geoeconomics and Economic Statecraft, eds., Oxford 2025 (with Tai Ming Cheung); and Governing Growth: Industrial Policy from Hamilton to Trump, Oxford, in press (with Marco Di Tommaso). He has also published eight special journal issues and 140 articles and book chapters. His current research examines industrial policy and the political economy of high technology new economic statecraft. 

Aggarwal received his B.A. from the University of Michigan and his M.A. and Ph.D. from Stanford University. Born in Seattle, Washington, he speaks five languages.

Professor Aggarwal’s Athenaeum presentation is co-sponsored by the Keck Center for International and Strategic Studies at CMC.

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Marian Miner Cook Athenaeum

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