Amazing to see headlines dominated by economic powers deciding not if they want to break from the free trade consensus but how: higher overseas corporate tax, frontier carbon tax, customs border in the Irish Sea, outright decoupling

We might be seeing something similar to the 90s when ”left” parties made good on the neoliberal dreams of the right. Austerity, welfare reform, free trade then; neomercantilism, protectionism, repatriation of supply chains now.

Another reason why the evergreen question “neoliberalism: alive or dead?” currently makes no sense unless seen in relation to the challenge of Chinese capitalism.

The 21st century so far has been about the loss of what the Germans call Deutungshoheit (interpretive sovereignty) over matters of political economy in the Western core. The illusion that “we” decide the shape of the world economy has slipped away.

It’s impossible to see neomercantilist gestures from Biden to von der Leyden as anything but a concession that Euro-America has entered an unfamiliar space: the reactive mode.

*Leyen