This is "Wall Street Week." I'm David Westin, bringing you stories of capitalism. Chrystia Freeland served as Canada's Deputy Prime Minister, Foreign Minister, and Trade Minister. In her new book, "Unreliable Boyfriend," she tells why she thinks the United States has gone in the wrong direction in its economic relations with the rest of the world. And she sits down with former Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen to lay out their shared hopes for a world that has moved beyond peak globalization. Plus, the U.S. pivots from EVs to BESS—that's Battery Energy Storage Systems—in the search for more reliable electricity to power all those data centers. And Chicago Fed President Austan Goolsbee takes us to the farmland of Illinois for a view of the economy from his district's farmers.
But we start here in India, where Bloomberg convened the New Economy Forum this week, bringing together leaders from government, business, and the markets to share views on an increasingly uncertain world. The forum began at the top with the leader of the most populous country in the world and the fastest-growing large economy, India's Prime Minister Narendra Modi, who warned about the risks of countries using economic engines against one another.
[Speaking Hindi] Things that connected the world at one time are today being weaponized—be it supply chains or energy, be it minerals or payments or technology. They are all becoming tools for coercion and for exerting pressure.
[Speaking Hindi] We are all seeing when and where the routes created by globalization over the last few decades became choke points. And in the midst of all this, artificial intelligence is changing the way we work in every sector. In several countries, aging-related challenges are also increasing at a fast pace. In this situation, one of the biggest questions facing the world today is that of trust, of confidence—the confidence that supplies will continue uninterrupted in times of need, the confidence that promises made will also be kept, the confidence that partner countries will stand by us in times of need.
Speaking on stage in Delhi, former U.S. Commerce Secretary Gina Raimondo echoed Prime Minister Modi's concerns about geopolitical conflicts and their effects on the global economy.
We are in the middle of a number of conflicts at the moment that are urgent and, I would argue, need to be urgently resolved. You know, the conflict in Iran is urgent, with challenges reverberating around the world, driving up energy prices, hurting supply chains. So that's urgent. Ukraine, urgent. You know, so these are things that require immediate attention and hopefully resolution.
But given the uncertainties, Raimondo underscored the need for companies to adapt to whatever they face.
I think it's also important for businesses, for all of us, but for businesses to innovate—not just in the technology, but be open-minded to new ways of doing business. Specifically, I have seen companies—they want to do more manufacturing in the U.S. to avoid the tariff. They want to have higher... more scale, for obvious reasons. So I'm even seeing traditional competitors work together to, in some ways, combine their supply chains, which, I don't know, even five years ago, you would think that's a crazy thing to do. Why would we want to do that? Our supply chains for us is a competitive advantage. But now they're saying it's more scale, stronger, tariff-resistant. And so I think you're starting to see, to adapt to some of this craziness and unpredictability, you're seeing even, you know, competitors figure out ways to work together in areas that will make them both stronger.
For investors like Rob Goldstein, Chief Operating Officer of BlackRock, the answer lies in planning not for one set of contingencies, but for a range of possible outcomes.
If you're managing a portfolio, you no longer could say there's a base case and then I'll be plus or minus relative to the base case. We're living in a world that's being driven by geopolitical fragmentation, by demographics, by technology, by the way the capital markets are changing, such that the aggregate of this is a world that's much more about discrete outcomes. And how do you think through what I would do to manage my portfolio across each of those discrete outcomes? And if you think about it through a portfolio lens, many asset owners, in fact, you could argue a standard in terms of how one would approach a portfolio would be to have a strategic asset allocation that they would review every few years. And that asset allocation would be about individual asset classes. And what's clear is that, in today's world, the themes that we're talking about, particularly themes like AI, what's happening with regard to the different wars going on, these themes are more important than individual asset classes in portfolios. And these themes don't wait for your next, you know, every three-year meeting that you're going to have. So you just need to continually adapt to make sure that you're keeping up with the pace that the world is changing. And that pace is likely going to continue to get faster and never go back to what it was.
The forum's host country of India seeks to attract capital and companies buffeted by the winds of change in part by streamlining what it takes to do business here, according to its Finance Minister, Nirmala Sitharaman.
Most of the sectors in which we were drawing capital have been freed of very many regulations which had prevailed earlier. So the laws were made simpler, regulations were made transparent and consultative. And even more importantly, I think the human resource necessary for these sort of scaling-up activities have been strengthened. And finally, the Indian economy becoming digitized has really opened up the markets. So India and its middle class with its purchasing power has provided the confidence that you can manufacture here for the domestic market and manufacture here for exporting as well.
Blackstone is one of those attracted to India in part because of the reforms it's undertaken. And its president and COO Jon Gray helped kick off the forum in Delhi.
We've seen an enormous amount of progress... In India. Yes, in India. No question about it, because the government has done all sorts of things to change the rules for capital markets. We've actually moved multiple companies to India to list. Can you imagine that 20 years ago, that the liquidity in the Indian market is probably second to the United States today because of what's happened here? Obviously, the physical infrastructure's improved, the ability to get dispute resolution. All of that has improved. And the government has been welcoming foreign investment. 20 years ago, most industries we couldn't even invest in. And what's happened as a result of that is a real acceleration in growth. So it's a very positive sign for this place.
Whether it was Gray or Raimondo, those gathering at the New Economy Forum this week agreed that the most consequential change of all is coming from technology, and particularly from AI.
I think the biggest thing when we look back in history, when we look back 10, 20 years from now, will be the technology. Because I think that's the thing that's going to define this era—that we're moving from a place, like we did in the U.S. from 1870 to 1900 with the Industrial Revolution, that when you bring this superintelligence to the entire world, that it's going to profoundly change how we live, how consumers live, how businesses are impacted, and how governments oversee societies. And to me, that's the big thing. That's the biggest challenge. These other things, yes, are making business more uncertain at times, but I think we'll find a way to plow through that. That's what we'll talk about, is really where things are changing.
Look, it's going to be transformative no matter who you... what estimates you look at. The productivity gains are astounding. And that ought to yield impressive GDP growth and growth rate. The U.S. economy has grown net-net for 100 years at 2% a year-ish, you know, GDP growth. And you can, even for our economy, you know, a hugely advanced economy, you can see AI changing that meaningfully. And that's exciting. What could...? I think a lot about, OK, what are the conditions for that to happen and what are the policies that government has to have in place so that we can all achieve the upside of AI? Because I think regulations done well are a public good, actually. Regulations done well help everybody to be more productive. You know, I've already talked a lot about safety, so I'll just leave it there. But I mean, if we don't get a hold of... If Congress doesn't act to say, 'These are the standards of safety,' just like we do for cyber, just like we do for, really, most products. You know, Americans deserve to know the products they use are safe. But what does safety mean? We need to define the safety standards and then test these models pre-deployment and make sure they, you know, hew to the safety standard. That isn't happening. So if models can be let out into the world without... and, by the way, then there have to be punishments, right? We need a whole structure for the standards, pre-deployment testing, inspection, fines or criminal penalties. So that has to happen quickly. And I fear that it's not... it won't happen until we have a massive cyber incident or some other safety incident. I think it's important to have an AI economy strategy, which is to say it's not enough to invest in AI and achieve the productivity enhancements. But how will we do that in a way that provides broad prosperity, not concentrated prosperity? How will we do that in a way that makes sure all workers have an opportunity, not just a few?
Next, we focus on one of the issues addressed in Delhi this week, the move away from peak globalization. It's the subject of a new book from our contributor, Chrystia Freeland, "Unreliable Boyfriend."
This is a story about rocky times—that is one way to describe what President Trump's aggressive trade policies have meant for U.S. relations with some of its closest allies around the world. Our special contributor, Chrystia Freeland, saw it firsthand when she served as the Canadian Trade Minister responsible for negotiating the USMCA, and then as her country's finance minister and deputy prime minister. She tells the story of how she came to be at the center of Canada's economic policies in her new book, "Unreliable Boyfriend," published this week. You have your new book out called "Unreliable Boyfriend." Let's start with the title.
It is an intentionally fun, slightly cheeky title, because I think it's important that when we're talking about the global economy, we don't act as if only the high priests of, you know, business and academia are allowed to talk about it.
And it is important, given your positions in the government of Canada and your relations with the United States on trade and on other things, that a fair amount of the book is about things that you like about the United States, that Canada likes about the United States.
Yeah, thank you for noticing that, David. You know, President Trump has been pretty clear how he feels about me. He said I was toxic. He said I was a nasty woman. He called me a whack. At one moment during the negotiations around the trade deal that we currently have between Canada and the United States, he actually announced at a meeting that he didn't like their negotiator very much—that was me—and said, 'She doesn't like the United States.' That's not true, David. I actually am a person who has a huge admiration for the United States and so many of the great things about the United States. And I also have a real respect for the partnership that the U.S. built in the post-war period with its allies, very much including Canada. Having said that, I think the way that the United States is treating its allies, very much including Canada today, is absolutely reprehensible. And I think that we Canadians, and other friends of America, do our American friends and neighbors no favors if we try to sugarcoat that.
You come from a place of deep, longstanding belief in free trade. And you talk about that in your book. At the same time you also talk about, in your book, some movement on your part there, that it's not just rampant. It's not peak free trade anymore. What changed?
A big part of the problem was China. And I think China's admission to the WTO in 2001 was well-intentioned by everyone, but incredibly naive. It overlooked the fact that China is an authoritarian communist regime that practices mercantilism very, very effectively and seeks to force Western countries out of some critical industries very intentionally.
You have told us in your book what you think doesn't work, particularly with U.S. relations with allies. Let me flip it around and say, as you look out there, what does work or what could work?
So I actually, David, am a real optimist. I think it's really important for us not to be, you know, lazy and fatalistic and say, 'Just because things have gone wrong and are going wrong now, we can never create something better.' And I really do believe that there is an opportunity now to rebuild the Western alliance. And rebuilding the Western alliance, I think, requires absolutely doubling down on the security partnerships. But it also really means building even stronger economic connections between the friends. Something, an idea that, actually, someone appointed by President Trump first came up with, that Janet Yellen popularized, the idea of friendshoring. So build your closest economic partnerships with countries that share your values and are your security allies. Do trade with other countries, but be more careful and don't become dependent on them.
That idea of friendshoring, popularized by Treasury Secretary Yellen, is something she collaborated on with Chrystia Freeland during their time in office. And the publishing of Freeland's book gave the occasion for the two colleagues to reunite on their common views about international economic relations.
So, Janet, you were not the person who first invented the idea of friendshoring, but you are the person who really popularized the idea. And you did this at a very difficult moment for the world. Can you remind us what that idea was and what the inspiration was for proposing this?
Friendshoring was intended as a response to what had happened during COVID, where we found ourselves short of critical supplies like PPE, Russia's invasion of Ukraine. We saw how devastating it had been for Europe, particularly Germany, to be so dependent on Russian natural gas and oil. Russia was weaponizing this, and we saw that trade could be weaponized and was potentially dangerous in that way, to trade with countries that really didn't share your values. But those were two of the motives for inventing friendshoring, because what we were realizing at the time was that globalization had proceeded to a dangerous point where our supply chains were no longer resilient. And perhaps even worse, we had become very dependent—rare earths, I think, would be the best example of this—on supplies from countries that were not our friends, did not share our values, and were willing to weaponize our dependence.
Today, speaking as a Canadian, we're experiencing an approach where we see the White House behave with incredible friendliness towards China, a state dinner of great opulence and grandeur. We see the White House putting its thumb on the scale on the Russian side when it comes to the full-scale invasion of Ukraine. And... and this, you know, makes Canadians feel angry, but also betrayed. We see America's closest allies be hit with unjustified and illegal tariffs that violate the trade agreement we have in place with the United States. So you proposed friendshoring. I'm seeing almost 'adversaryshoring' happening right now. How do you feel about this sort of, you know, absolute reversal?
I think it's appalling. And I... I understand exactly why you feel betrayed by the United States and are so angry about it, and believe that it's important for Canada and other countries not to accept this lying down and to retaliate. And I believe that both what our president has done in terms of undermining or even weaponizing our alliances, both on the security side and on the economic side, some of it has already been found to be illegal. And it certainly, I believe, runs against America's own interests. We have lost a great deal from the tariffs, and especially at a time when affordability is an overriding concern of Americans. They feel they can't make ends meet. The tariffs have only made that worse.
We do need to trade with our allies. Most notably, a great piece by Jamie Dimon about that. So do you think maybe the tide is turning? And do you think maybe we can rebuild that security and trade alliance among the friends?
Well, I think the answer is yes. And I was very heartened to see Jamie Dimon, as you noted, he wrote an op-ed that was published in The Wall Street Journal, arguing that the way forward for the United States is to rebuild both our security alliances and our economic alliances. And he noted that many of the pieces that we need to do that are already in place. But broadly speaking, what you see in his piece are the elements of what we have endorsed with the idea of friendshoring: strong alliances, both security and economic, an open trading system, but a system that recognizes that we were naive about trading with countries that don't share our values, and that we need a better form of trade that's more secure among countries with similar values. And I'd say he also noted briefly that Americans who feel they've been harmed by trade are not wrong. And that that issue needs to be addressed because we're not going to be able to accomplish much unless we, you know, broad... people broadly, working-class people in our countries, feel that the economic system is benefiting them. But I know, Chrystia, in your book, you argue that hope is a strategy. And I agree with you. And my hope is that you are right and things are changing in the United States, and that we will be able to go back to being good, reliable partners in both economic and security matters with Canada and our other friends.
That was former Fed Chair and Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen in conversation with Chrystia Freeland about their time working together and the opinions that they share about U.S. economic policy. Coming up, the promise of renewable energy has been long delayed because of the lack of reliable, efficient ways of storing electricity for when it's needed. But it turns out that that may be about to change.
This is a story about unintended consequences. President Trump has made no secret of his skepticism about government support for renewable energy. And up to now, the sector has been limited by the lack of good ways to store electricity for when the sun isn't shining or the wind isn't blowing. But it turns out that the Trump administration's efforts to cut back on electric vehicles may be just what's needed to make real advances on wind and solar. Our colleague Ed Ludlow got an inside look at how makers of small batteries for cars are pivoting to make much larger versions for homes, businesses, and cities.
Renewable energy, while an alternative to fossil fuels, has one major limitation: it runs on nature's schedule, not the power grid's. Battery Energy Storage Systems, or BESS, is helping to close that gap.
There's a lot of great generation sources that are cheap and green. The challenge with them is they're not dispatchable.
The most significant improvement to the reliability and utility of solar renewable energy has been battery storage. Otherwise, it's dawn to dusk, and then you're out of power.
That flexibility is becoming more valuable as data centers, new factories, and spikes in electricity use increase the need for power that's available on demand. And even as the administration scales back support for wind and solar, batteries remain eligible for federal tax incentives, including an additional benefit for projects using US-made components. To get a first-hand look at where that domestic supply is coming from, we traveled to Lansing, Michigan, home to LG Energy Solution's largest wholly-owned U.S. battery cell plant currently in operation. This is a really massive facility.
It's 2.8 million square feet, 226 acres on the site. It's a pretty large site. And it's purpose-built.
Why is that important that it's purpose-built?
It means, when you look at this site, we also can scale vertically as well as horizontally.
At full output, Lansing's expected to reach more than 35 gigawatt-hours of annual battery-making capacity for both electric vehicles and grid storage.
This is just one of five cell facilities we have in North America. And through that, we're able to deliver a larger amount of ESS cells for the U.S. than any other manufacturer.
LG's experience manufacturing in the U.S. has come at the perfect time as Washington pushes the power sector to reduce its reliance on foreign equipment. In August, President Trump issued an executive order targeting reliance on foreign-made grid equipment, including battery storage, and pushing energy developers toward US-made alternatives.
The government policy has really enabled the U.S. industry to develop.
Devon Wilson leads sales for LG Energy Solution's North American grid-scale storage business. He said demand is pulling the market forward, but federal policy helped build the factories needed to meet that demand. How much is this sort of driven by and the direction of travel dictated by regulation? Like, is America pushing to have ESS?
Yes, certainly. I think the government, both sides of the aisle, recognize that battery technology is a really vital technology for our country. And so there's been a lot of policies that have been put in place to try to make sure that we have a thriving battery industry here. And it's been really successful. What we've seen is, through the signals placed by those policies, we've been able to see facilities like this come online and support this industry at a great time.
We've seen a huge growth in battery storage over the past five years. The annual installations have gone from 1.2 gigawatts a year to 19 gigawatts last year. So that's a 16-times higher installation rate.
Allison Weis is the Head of Global Energy Storage at research firm Wood Mackenzie. She says installations are ramping up fast.
We've seen this growth of storage accelerated, certainly with tax credits, first paired with solar. And then for standalone storage projects as well under the Inflation Reduction Act.
Weiss also says new sourcing rules are forcing developers to rebuild supply chains. As of 2025, the U.S. still imported 59% of its lithium-ion batteries from China.
The new restrictions for getting the investment tax credit for battery storage projects have made it so that companies need to rework their supply chains after they get through developing whatever they were able to safe harbor by the end of last year. And so that's why we forecast that '26 and '27 will have a little bit less growth than they would have otherwise had. As we progress through the later 2020s and early 2030s, there'll be a lot of domestic supply available for those projects. And together with the tax credit of 30% that you get, and then the additional 10% domestic content bonus adder, they will cost comparably to what might have otherwise been procured from China, especially with the tariffs that Chinese systems are facing.
Even as tax and trade policies lay the groundwork for growth tomorrow, policy changes forced a reckoning for American battery makers late last year. While Trump's One Big Beautiful Bill preserved some incentives, it ended federal electric vehicle credits in September of 2025. The result: EV sales fell and the demand outlook weakened, leaving manufacturers built for faster EV growth that would never show up. The answer: not a write-off, but a pivot.
So the EV industry was producing batteries at a very large scale, driving down cost. And what that enabled was the battery and storage industry to go and take those similar or same cells, same fundamental manufacturing process, but purpose-built for ESS, and go and apply it to that industry.
Now across the country, battery makers are shifting their focus from the garage to the grid. And even the automakers themselves are getting into the game. GM and Ford are now redirecting parts of their battery operations towards stationary storage, while Tesla expands its grid storage business. Lansing captures that shift.
