Harvard | Harvard Kennedy School

NOVEMBER 6, 2025

Harvard Kennedy School

A container ship is loaded at the port in Lianyungang, in China's eastern Jiangsu province on December 10, 2024. (Photo by AFP / China OUT)

Business & Regulation

Industrial policy and U.S.-Chinese economic competition

Industrial policy—the strategy countries use to support certain industries—can play a role in a nation’s power and security. The Mossavar-Rahmani Center for Business and Government recently brought together economists, policymakers, and industry leaders to talk through the biggest questions related to industrial policy and national security today—and revisit lessons from past administrations. Looming large in the conversations was U.S.-Chinese economic competition, especially in terms of electric vehicles—where China has rapidly advanced in the last 15 years—and artificial intelligence, where China, too, is quickly catching up with the United States. Read more insights from the convening.

See also: Professor Nicholas Burns described President Trump’s summit meeting with Chairman Xi Jinping as a temporary “trade truce” that made some progress on issues such as stemming the supply of fentanyl precursors, reestablishing agricultural trade, and China temporarily pausing export controls on rare earth metals. Larger goals, however, remained unresolved.

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What we're Reading

We're deeply saddened by the passing of Setti Warren, director of the Institute of Politics. Read a message from the HKS and Harvard College deans.

Globalization

The interdependence of democracy, prosperity, and climate aims

Addressing climate change, shoring up the middle class to strengthen democracy, and eradicating poverty are three large issues that countries around the world grapple with. But too often countries make trade-offs that focus on one or two of these goals at the expense of another, Professor Dani Rodrik explains. In an HKS conversation about his new book on the topic, he discusses what it would take to achieve “shared prosperity.” Rodrik explains, “Under hyper-globalization, global integration had become the end for policymakers around the world and domestic social and economic arrangements the means. I propose a ‘thinner’ version of globalization that recognizes U.S.-China rivalry and also that nations require significant policy space to pursue economic goals, social cohesion, and environmental objectives.”

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What we're Doing

Greenplexity is a free data-and-strategy tool created by the Growth Lab at HKS that shows how countries can lead in green value chains to deliver new paths to prosperity in a decarbonizing world. Use it to see how countries rank in terms of their green value chains.

Fairness & justice

Improving the pretrial bail system in Massachusetts

The Criminal Justice Reform Act, enacted seven years ago in Massachusetts, has helped support pretrial defendants, although this effect has been weaker for people of color. A report released by the Program in Criminal Justice Policy and Management at HKS’s Malcolm Wiener Center for Social Policy has identified key areas to reform the bail system further in Massachusetts and address racial disparities in pretrial detention. Areas identified include the reliance on cash bail, the unaffordability of bail, the lack of procedural protections for people who have bail set, the burdensome system of after-hours bail assessment, and other sources of pretrial detention. Katy Naples-Mitchell, Ali Mirza MPP 2024, and Isabella Jorgensen MPP 2022 authored the report, and Professor Sandra Susan Smith leads the Program in Criminal Justice Policy and Management and the Malcolm Wiener Center as faculty director.

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