Transatlantic Economic Challenges in an Era of Growing Multipolarity

The transatlantic partnership has since the early 20th century dominated the world economy, but countries outside the European Union and the United States now account for more than half of the world economy, and their share is growing rapidly. Their increasing role and concomitant demands for greater influence over global economic governance pose challenges to and present opportunities for the European Union and the United States. The contributions in this volume were first presented at two policy conferences organized jointly by the Peterson Institute for International Economics and Bruegel, one in Washington in October 2010 and the other in Berlin in September 2011. Experts were asked to consider how or whether the rise of outside actors of potentially equal, or even greater, economic weight would force a rethinking of two large issues: (1) the conduct of policy by the European Union and the United States toward the new rising economic poles and (2) the substantive contents of the EU-US bilateral economic and political relationship. But as volume papers were written and conferences organized in 2010-11, when the euro area crisis was still accelerating, the attention of several authors shifted toward answering an important policy question of the day: What is the impact of the euro area crisis on the transatlantic relationship and the global economy? Substantial policy controversies have emerged as the United States and Europe seek to appropriately diagnose the causes of and provide solutions to the euro area crisis. Given the differences in focus between the US and EU crisis management strategies and the political capital already invested in them on both sides of the Atlantic, it seems improbable that the two will converge in the immediate future. Instead, perhaps the best hope for renewed vigor in transatlantic cooperation is that the crisis will ultimately take on a less acute character, enabling policymakers to turn their focus toward policy areas where more fruitful collaboration is possible. In addition to papers directly related to the crisis and transatlantic responses to it, the volume also includes contributions on climate change, banking regulation, the global financial architecture, the international monetary system, the global postcrisis growth outlook, and the transatlantic debt challenge. Book jacket.