Two Approaches to Economic Coercion

Western states have frequently employed the “economic instrument”—“the granting or withholding of [economic] indulgences or deprivations” in order to “induce another actor or a group of actors to change a policy”—and they have long resisted calls for its international regulation. Yet the United States and the EU, and states aligned with them, responding to China’s recent application of its economic leverage, have increasingly questioned economic coercion’s use. In May 2023, at the G7 Summit in Hiroshima, the leaders noted the “disturbing rise in incidents of economic coercion that seek to exploit economic vulnerabilities and dependencies;” “express[ed] serious concern” regarding such coercion; and “call[ed] on all countries to refrain from its use.” Shortly thereafter, the EU-US Trade and Technology Council expressed the “concern” of the EU and the United States “with the continued use of economic coercion.” In early June, the governments of Australia, Canada, Japan, New Zealand, the UK, and the United States endorsed a Joint Declaration Against Trade-Related Economic Coercion and Non-Market Policies and Practices that “express[ed] . . . shared concern [regarding economic coercion] and affirm[ed] [a] commitment to enhance international cooperation in order to effectively deter and address” it. A couple of weeks later, the European Commission and the EU High Representative for Foreign Affairs identified “weaponisation of economic dependencies or economic coercion” as one of four “categories of risks to economic security” in the European Economic Security Strategy. In December 2023, an EU regulation on “the protection of the Union and its Member States from economic coercion by third countries”—known as the “Anti-Coercion Instrument” (ACI)—entered into force.\nThough the United States and other states have for years expressed concern about Chinese economic coercion, these recent statements, remarkable for those who made them, were all carefully worded to omit direct accusations against China (indeed, China went unnamed), to avoid assertions of legality and illegality, to implicitly delineate Chinese actions (improper) from those of the United States (permissible), and to obscure differences between the EU’s broader understanding of economic coercion (which may in fact implicate U.S. actions as much as China’s) and the United States’s narrower construction. China itself denies the (indirect) accusations leveled against it, and asserts that it is instead U.S. actions that constitute “economic coercion and bullying.”\nIn light of this recent U.S. and EU practice asserting new claims concerning economic coercion, and the charges of hypocrisy leveled by China against the United States and its allies, this Essay will revisit a topic about which Michael Reisman has given considerable thought. It will seek to identify the content and bounds of these new claims, as well as related ones that appear in recent resolutions of the Security Council and Human Rights Council, and assess and evaluate their contributions. This recent practice reflects different views of the proper role and use of power in international relations, which in the context of economic coercion is manifested in two distinct approaches: regulatory and abolitionist.

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