An economic Iron Curtain

Book review of Superpower Showdown: How the Battle Between Trump and Xi Threatens a New Cold War

Hank Paulson, former US treasury secretary and one of the enthusiastic champions of closer US-China economic and commercial relations, is quoted in Superpower Showdown as warning, “An economic Iron Curtain may be descending, one that throws up new walls on each side and unmasks the global economy as we know it.” The book by Bob Davis and Lingling Wei, both journalists with The  Wall Street Journal, traces the tortuous journey of how visions of benign symbiosis gave way to an intensifying trade war that has now taken on the character of geopolitical contestation. The book contains 20 short chapters arranged