In the run-up to last Friday’s U.S.-Japan summit at the White House, there had been a lot of talk that President Joe Biden and Prime Minister Yoshihide Suga would announce a new plan to challenge China’s Belt and Road Initiative.
In the end, it turned out that the two leaders did not address infrastructure development in their summit’s joint statement. However, there is still plenty of enthusiasm in both Washington and Tokyo for coming up with a way to stem China’s lead in building infrastructure throughout the Global South.
Elizabeth Losos, a senior fellow at Duke University’s Nicholas Institute for Environmental Policy Solutions, thinks that reviving the failed Blue Dot Network from 2019 might be the answer. She joins Eric and Cobus from Chapel Hill, North Carolina, to talk about why it’s critical to simultaneously tackle the climate crisis and confront the Chinese on infrastructure.
