A US foreign policy for the middle class

What is good for America is good for the world. That is the message the United States was trying to sell at the Group of Seven (G-7) meeting in Hiroshima. The Biden administration has recently been accused by both allies and adversaries of putting America first, if not alone, in some of its economic policies. But in Japan, the US team tried to connect the dots between their people and place-based domestic economic strategies and their new approach to foreign policy.

Mr Joe Biden’s national security adviser Jake Sullivan has said gross domestic product growth for its own sake is not good enough – it must be sustainable and equitable. This is the challenge of the next few decades and a move away from the traditional Washington consensus model, which focused on unfettered growth via deregulation and trade liberalisation.