Events

How did the world’s most powerful country run out of ventilators and basic medicines in the midst of a public health catastrophe? The supply chain disruptions of the pandemic revealed vulnerabilities that had been building for decades: a reliance on faraway factories – especially in China -- and a largely unregulated international shipping cartel; the primacy of investor interests over resilience and common sense; dependence on exploited workers in warehouses, trucking and rail; the monopolistic power of companies to exploit shocks as opportunities to raise prices. The resulting shortages of goods combined with shifting geopolitics has revived geography as an important dimension of the global economy.

Decades of pretending that a factory in China is the functional equivalent of a plant in Ohio has been replaced by recognition of the risks of our recent mode of globalization. The chaos has also given rise to labor mobilization in pursuit of better pay and working conditions. Speaker Peter Goodman will trace the roots of our recent crisis and explore what happens next amid talk of reshoring, nearshoring, and friendshoring.

Audience Q & A will follow the talk.

ABOUT THE SPEAKER

Peter S. Goodman is the global economics correspondent for The New York Times. Over the course of three decades in journalism, he has covered some of the most momentous economic transformations and upheavals – the global financial crisis of 2008 and the Great Recession, as the Times' New York-based national economic correspondent; the emergence of China into a global superpower as the Shanghai bureau chief for The Washington Post. During a five-year stint in London for the Times, he wrote about Brexit, the rise of right-wing populism in Europe, and the catastrophe of the coronavirus pandemic.  

Goodman has been recognized with some of journalism’s top honors, including two Gerald Loeb awards. He appears frequently on major broadcast outlets including CBS News, CNN, the BBC, and MSNBC. He is the author three books, including HOW THE WORLD RAN OUT OF EVERYTHING: Inside the Global Supply Chain (HarperCollins, 2024), and the best-selling DAVOS MAN: How the Billionaires Devoured the World (HarperCollins, 2022).