Amid the country’s 250th anniversary festivities, US Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent last month delivered an important address, aiming to present a coherent doctrine of “economic statecraft”.
Stripping away references to one of the nation’s founding fathers, Alexander Hamilton, what remains is a remarkably candid admission: Washington intends to write one set of rules for itself, and another for everyone else.
The speech was less a strategy than a confession; an articulation of double standards so unselfconscious that it mistakes coercion for principle. In other words, it was yet another display of American exceptionalism.
Bessent claims: “For the better part of a century, the United States was the principal architect and guarantor of an open global economic system that delivered enormous benefits. It raised our allies from the ruins of war, widened the channels of global trade, lifted standards of living, and attained a position of influence that remains unmatched in modern history.”
But he adds that “the success of a system does not absolve us from revisiting its assumptions”.
