Freeland and Yellen: Can America Rebuild Trust With Its Allies?

Former Canadian deputy prime minister and Wall Street Week contributor Chrystia Freeland and former US Treasury secretary Janet Yellen join the program to argue that globalization became dangerously dependent on countries willing to weaponize trade and supply chains. The two discuss how economic interdependence, once treated as a stabilizing force, has become a source of vulnerability and leverage in international relations. Freeland recounts her shared sentiment with Yellen in her new book, Unreliable Boyfriend, using the title's metaphor to capture the uncertainty allies now feel about American reliability as a partner. The conversation draws on both women's experience at the center of economic policymaking to explain how trust between nations erodes and what it would take to rebuild it. The segment connects trade policy, supply chain security and alliance management into a single argument about the risks of a global economy built on assumptions that no longer hold, offering viewers a high-level discussion grounded in firsthand experience.