Political posturing shifted from “How to avert a debt crisis” to “How to get tough on China.” The squabble also reflected misgivings about China’s growing influence, as countries move away from the U.S. dollar and toward the yuan as a settlement and reserve currency.

While the United States is experiencing dramatic levels of inflation, China is facing very low levels. Assessing various forms of economic stimuli, such as quantitative easing, is important to understand and mitigate current levels of inflation faced by economies all over the world.

“The old is dying and the new cannot be born,” the Italian Marxist theorist Antonio Gramsci wrote in the early twentieth century. We seem to be living in a similar interregnum today, likewise marked by “a great variety of morbid symptoms,” including, not least, the breakdown of global supply chains and the return of inflation. The only way forward is to support the development of new markets, industries, and institutions. But who will finance this effort?

The multipolarization of the global reserve currency system is accelerating. Ironically, Western sanctions against Russia have intensified the move away from the U.S. dollar.

Lip service notwithstanding, what Washington has been doing over the years is a form of decoupling with China — in the guise of national security. Top American officials have not articulated any boundary between decoupling and what they say are moves to “de-risk” the relationship. In many ways, they look the same.

The EU’s pursuit of becoming an autonomous and influential global power, while balancing relationships with the U.S. and China, was jolted by the Russian invasion of Ukraine. The EU aims to collaborate and compete as an equal with both powers, while improving its domestic strength, ensuring reciprocity, and linking trade to geopolitics, foreign policy, and security. And the Comprehensive Agreement on Investment, executing the EU strategy in Asia and the Indo-Pacific, and establishing a collective defense structure with operational objectives, are three projects that could help achieve these goals.

Five years into a once-unthinkable trade war with China, US Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen chose her words carefully on April 20. In a wide-ranging speech, she reversed the terms of US engagement with China, prioritizing national-security concerns over economic considerations. That formally ended a 40-year emphasis on economics and trade as the anchor to the world’s most important bilateral relationship. Yellen’s stance on security was almost confrontational: “We will not compromise on these concerns, even when they force trade-offs with our economic interests.”

Financial markets are grounded in trust. When trust falters, dislocation follows. Panic in short-term financing markets in the United States could ignite a larger crisis in the overall economy, creating a vicious circle that undermines growth.

The shift of the US policy from engaging China to containing China can be traced back to the Obama administration and his pivot to Asia strategy in 2009.

Recent years have seen a surge in interest in framing China’s developmental trajectory as an exceptional story attributable to the excellence of the Chinese people and its governance model. But to understand such transformations fully, we must recognize and acknowledge the role often played by Western ideals and innovation; only then, could we be seeking real truths from substantive facts.