The age when governments could pretend that trade was about commerce and geopolitics was about power is ending. Tariffs, export controls, sanctions, critical minerals and supply chains have become instruments of statecraft, wielded by the world’s two largest economies in an intensifying struggle over the international order.
There is a name for this: geoeconomics.
At the recent Helsinki Geoeconomics Society Week, private-sector executives, legal experts, policymakers and scholars wrestled with what the term means and why it matters. Stripped of academic jargon, the answer is straightforward: Geoeconomics is the use of economic tools to achieve political and strategic objectives.