The newly-elected Biden government looks set to continue the Trump administration's hostile and protectionist stance toward China. How should the ongoing trade war between the world's largest economies be explained and what is its effect on these two countries' working people?

Barry Naughton, Aaron Benanav, and Matthew Klein join us to discuss the recent book Trade Wars are Class Wars, by Klein and Michael Pettis. The authors argue that trade conflicts should be interpreted as governments' efforts to promote not so much the interests of their nations at the expense of international rivals as the interest of their nations' elites at the expense of their nations' workers.

Speakers:

Matthew C. Klein is the economics commentator at Barron’s. He previously wrote for the Financial Times, Bloomberg View, and The Economist.

Barry Naughton is a leading authority on China's economy  and holder of the Sokwanlok Chair of Chinese International Affairs at the University of California, San Diego.

Aaron Benanav is a postdoctoral researcher at Humboldt University, Berlin. He recently reviewed Klein and Pettis’s book for the New Left Review.