Geoff sits down with Chris Kennedy to unpack the Trump administration’s National Security Strategy and debate what it will take for the United States to overcome its dependency on Chinese rare earths. Chris is a Senior Economist with Bloomberg Economics’ Geoeconomics practice and a new Adjunct Senior Fellow with the Energy, Economics and Security Program.

Dean Acheson, Present at the Creation: My Years in the State Department

Ryan Fedasiuk, “In Search of a China Strategy,” The American Enterprise, December 15, 2025

National Security Strategy

Tom Wright joins to talk about his recent article, “What if 'America First' Appears to Work?" about the Trump administration’s “might makes right” approach to foreign policy, and whether this strategy is more politically viable than perhaps it should be, at least in the short term. Tom is senior fellow at the Brookings Institution and former senior director of strategic planning at the NSC under the Biden Administration.

Thomas Wright, "What If ‘America First’ Appears to Work?”, The Atlantic

Dan Wang, Breakneck: China's Quest to Engineer the Future

In a bonus episode this week, we're sharing an episode of the great Geoeconomic Competition podcast hosted by Francesca Ghiretti, director of the RAND Europe China Initiative and a research leader at RAND Europe. Geoff was a recent guest on the podcast to discuss Trump's tariffs and the future of US trade policy.

Listen to the Geoeconomic Competition podcast here.

Derisky Business is off next week for Thanksgiving, with episodes returning the following week.

Kathleen Claussen, Professor of Law at Georgetown University, joins Emily and Geoff to discuss the SCOTUS case on Trump's tariffs. They share their insights from the recent SCOTUS hearing, explore possible outcomes of the case, and lay out how the Trump administration will likely respond if some or all of the tariffs are struck down. Plus, Kathleen shares why she's not placing any Polymarket bets on the case's outcome.

Kathleen Claussen and Timothy Meyer, “The Foreign Commerce Power,” California Law Review, forthcoming, Duke Law School Public Law & Legal Theory Series No. 2025-44, August 24, 2025

Oral Arguments before the Supreme Court on the Legality of IEEPA Tariffs

International Economic Law and Policy Blog

Geoffrey Gertz and Emily Kilcrease, “A World Safe for Prosperity-How America Can Foster Economic Security”, Foreign Affairs, February 6, 2025

Emily Kilcrease and Geoffrey Gertz, “Launch Economic Security Agreements” in CNAS Report: The First 100 Days

Peter Harrell, “How Trump’s trade agreements can reduce US and allied economic ties with China”, Journal of International Economic Law, July 2, 2025

Geoffrey Gertz, Analysis of the new US-Malaysia trade agreement, LinkedIn

We interrupt our summer break to provide quick reactions to news this week that the Trump administration will begin allowing Nvidia and AMD to sell certain advanced semiconductors to China - so long as those companies agree to pay a commission fee to the U.S. government. While Emily is on vacation, Geoff is joined by CNAS Adjunct Senior Fellow and Managing Director of Garnaut Global Liza Tobin to dig into how we got to this point, if this arrangement is even legal, and what it means for the future of U.S.-China tech competition.

Matt Pottinger and Liza Tobin, “Trump Just Handed China the Tools to Beat America in AI”, The Free Press, August 11, 2025

Chris Miller, “China has its own concerns about Nvidia H20 chips”, Financial Times, August 11, 2025

Charles Rollet, “China's military tried to buy Nvidia chips for AI servers and a robot dog”, Business Insider, August 1, 2025

Emily and Geoff break their summer hiatus to launch a new CNAS report detailing insights from a trade wargame that examined how foreign governments might respond to a dramatic increase in U.S. tariffs. For this live event they are joined by trade experts Wendy Cutler, Meredith Lilly, and Thorsten Benner to discuss the report and catch up on the real-world trade wars. Derisky Business will return to regular programming in the fall.

While Derisky Business goes on summer break, revisit your favorite episodes of the podcast and dive into the Summer Reading List, featuring book recommendations from previous podcast guests and work from CNAS experts. Emily and Geoff will be back in the fall to catch up on all the economic security happenings.

Read the list here!

https://www.cnas.org/publications/commentary/happy-summer-from-derisky-business