U.S. Must ‘Ally-shore’ to Reassure Partners, Reassert Power of Democracies | Opinion

U.S. Must ‘Ally-shore’ to Reassure Partners, Reassert Power of Democracies | Opinion

When we first introduced "ally-shoring" in Newsweek (seizing on then-USAID deputy administrator Bonnie Glick's phraseology) as the most powerful path to rewire COVID-disrupted supply chains, it was in part due to anxiety that "onshoring" would carry the day. So many domestic leaders were trumpeting the need to make all our critical products and supplies in America, that we felt compelled to point out how impractical—and even counter-productive to our own economic health and the political health of the U.S.-led Western alliance—the narrow insistence on onshoring was. This does not mean that we should shy away from onshoring wherever it makes economic and security sense, but let's recognize that our global trading alliances with the right partners are a source of shared strength, security and resilience.

By leaning into what is, in essence, a highly machined, highly efficient global co-production system—but doing so with those countries that share our values and strategically ending overreliance on regimes that seek to harm us—ally-shoring meets more robust and interlaced economic, foreign policy and national security goals. It also offers a specific program to engage allies and demonstrate that by working together, democracies can trump authoritarian models of extraction, opacity and dependency-building like China's Belt and