News Snapshot:
As the world’s market-oriented democracies struggle to peacefully decouple from their authoritarian rivals, their trade dialogue sounds increasingly like insecure middle-schoolers: minerals clubs, resilience and “friendshoring.” That’s not much of a guide for real-world economic policy. Friendshoring sounds nice but remains ill-defined: Who, even, are our friends in the trade world? We’ve had disputes over trade matters recently with Canada and the European Union, after all. Still, the term is being used a lot these days. In the weeks after Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen coined it in April 2022, Google trends show that there was a sharp uptick in searches....
