‘Summer Davos’ panel mulls secret sauce of US economy – did China crack the recipe?

The American economy has outperformed others by relying on a sort of secret, magic “sauce”, but Washington’s tariff and immigration policies are threatening to shift the outlook, according to leading US scholars attending the “Summer Davos” in China.

At the gathering, formally known as the World Economic Forum’s 16th Annual Meeting of the New Champions, they collectively took stock of the US economy and debated whether it would be China or the US that most advances the frontier of tech and innovation.

In one discussion on Tuesday, panellists such as former World Trade Organization chief economist Robert Koopman and Harvard professor of government Graham Allison took a look back at the US from where they sat in Tianjin, and they discussed the outlook for potential developments in the face of Washington’s policy changes.

Explaining that America’s special concoction has several important ingredients, experts speculated that the US might be ditching key components, and that China may be advancing more quickly.

“Sectors have been able to get the capital and the workers they need, and it drives productivity growth in the US. You add immigration to that … It creates a nice magic sauce,” Koopman said.

That sauce also includes higher education, according to Paul Gruenwald, chief economist at S&P Global Ratings.