U.S. Extraterritoriality in an Era of Economic Insecurity

The U.S. position on how international economic policy best serves U.S. national security interests has, obviously and radically, changed. In 1997, then-Treasury Secretary Lawrence Summers said that “The United States’ economic policy should and will be based on the idea that promoting integration and prosperity around the world is enormously in our national interest because of the stability it brings in a world that is still a dangerous place.”¹

As of February 2025, integration is now seen by some as a vulnerability, not a strength. “Economic security—the idea that the government should more assertively intervene in the world economy to improve resilience and address national security risks—has emerged as perhaps the central objective of U.S. international economic policy,” write Geoffrey Gertz and Emily Kilcrease in Foreign Affairs magazine.² This is another turn of the kaleidoscopic “impossible trinity,” described recently by longtime U.S. foreign policy official Edward Fishman as “consisting of economic interdependence, economic security, and geopolitical competition”—any two of which “can coexist but not all three”³—with economic security falling today as competition rises but interdependence (for now) still existing.

As the U.S. focuses on addressing its economic insecurities, how will this impact multinational corporations, especially those headquartered in Europe?

By Michael Huneke

©Freepik

The U.S. Will View List-Based Economic Controls as Insufficient

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