Command of Commerce

Why it’s on the list: Vagle and Brooks re-measure the US-China economic balance and argue the American lead is larger than commonly appreciated — because the firms driving global commerce are overwhelmingly American or allied, and because China’s capacity is overstated by manipulated data and poor comparability. The best-argued recent version of the case that the China panic is mispriced; the measurement argument is the part worth reading closely.

Where I heard about it

• A 2026 university syllabus — assigned, in two separate weeks, on a course on U.S. security policy in the 21st century, alongside America Abroad and Restraint, and paired with Kurt Campbell and Rush Doshi’s “Underestimating China,” which argues the reverse. Shared with me in a July 2026 conversation about whether the China threat is over- or under-priced.

About this edition

Oxford University Press, April 2025, 296 pages. The subtitle is the thesis. It makes the same measurement claim Michael Beckley made in Unrivaled, and it is either right or it isn’t.

Connections

• Chip War — Chris Miller’s account of semiconductor concentration is the hardest case against a clean American-advantage story, and the natural companion read.
• The Anduril Thesis (Book) — the industrial-capacity numbers there (shipbuilding, drones, magnets, machine shops) are the specific counter-evidence this book has to answer.
• America Abroad — same lead author, the security-posture half of the same argument.
• Restraint — the case for pulling back, assigned against it.
• China · Semiconductors · Manufacturing