Critical shipping routes around the world, from the Panama Canal to the Bosphorus Strait, hold strategic importance for global trade. As a result, these chokepoints are often caught in the crosshairs of geopolitical competition. But in a new age of economic warfare, invisible chokepoints are also emerging. The dominance of the US dollar, economic sanctions, and tariffs on imported goods can all be leveraged to achieve political goals. Meanwhile, nations are laying out plans to increase defense spending—potentially altering the outlook for productivity, industrial activity, and economic growth. With economic warfare becoming a lasting feature of the investment environment, new winners and losers based on country, region, sector and asset class could emerge. This episode of The Outthinking Investor explores how economic warfare, national security concerns, and friend-shoring in global trade are creating new implications for investors to consider. Our guests are: Edward Fishman, senior research scholar at Columbia University’s Center on Global Energy Policy and author of the new book, “Chokepoints: American Power in the Age of Economic Warfare” Katharine Neiss, PGIM Fixed Income’s Deputy Head of Global Economics and Chief European Economist Jeff Rathke, President of the American-German Institute at Johns Hopkins University and former American diplomat Do you have any comments, suggestions, or topics you would like us to cover? Email us at
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South Africa