Episode 144: Economic Resilience as Economic Security
Denis Redonnet
European Commission
Denis Redonnet is an economist by training and started his career as a corporate banker for a French bank in the city of London. Since 1995 he has been a career European Commission official, having held positions in the monetary, international economic affairs, and internal market directorate generals of the EU Executive. He served as advisor to EU Trade Commissioner Pascal Lamy and a deputy chief of staff to EU Trade Commissioner Peter Mandelson. Afterward, he headed the WTO division and then the Strategy division in the Directorate General for Trade in the European Commission. Between 2015 and 2020 he acted as Director for "WTO, Legal Affairs, and Trade in Goods" in the Directorate General for Trade in the European Commission. In July 2020, he was appointed Deputy Director General and Chief Trade Enforcement Officer in the Directorate General for Trade in the European Commission.
Jeff Rathke
President of AGI
Jeffrey Rathke is the President of the American-German Institute in Washington, DC.
Prior to joining AGI, Jeff was a senior fellow and deputy director of the Europe Program at CSIS, where his work focused on transatlantic relations and U.S. security and defense policy. Jeff joined CSIS in 2015 from the State Department, after a 24-year career as a Foreign Service Officer, dedicated primarily to U.S. relations with Europe. He was director of the State Department Press Office from 2014 to 2015, briefing the State Department press corps and managing the Department's engagement with U.S. print and electronic media. Jeff led the political section of the U.S. Embassy in Kuala Lumpur from 2011 to 2014. Prior to that, he was deputy chief of staff to the NATO Secretary General in Brussels. He also served in Berlin as minister-counselor for political affairs (2006–2009), his second tour of duty in Germany. His Washington assignments have included deputy director of the Office of European Security and Political Affairs and duty officer in the White House Situation Room and State Department Operations Center.
Mr. Rathke was a Weinberg Fellow at Princeton University (2003–2004), winning the Master’s in Public Policy Prize. He also served at U.S. Embassies in Dublin, Moscow, and Riga, which he helped open after the collapse of the Soviet Union. Mr. Rathke has been awarded national honors by Estonia, Latvia, and Lithuania, as well as several State Department awards. He holds an MPP degree from Princeton University and BA and BS degrees from Cornell University. He speaks German, Russian, and Latvian.
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Peter S. Rashish
Vice President; Director, Geoeconomics Program
Peter S. Rashish, who counts over 30 years of experience counseling corporations, think tanks, foundations, and international organizations on transatlantic trade and economic strategy, is Vice President and Director of the Geoeconomics Program at AICGS. He also writes The Wider Atlantic blog.
Mr. Rashish has served as Vice President for Europe and Eurasia at the U.S. Chamber of Commerce, where he spearheaded the Chamber’s advocacy ahead of the launch of the Transatlantic Trade and Investment Partnership. Previously, Mr. Rashish was a Senior Advisor for Europe at McLarty Associates, Executive Vice President of the European Institute, and a staff member and consultant at the International Energy Agency, the World Bank, UN Trade and Development, the Atlantic Council, the Bertelsmann Foundation, and the German Marshall Fund.
Mr. Rashish has testified before the House Financial Services Subcommittee on International Monetary Policy and Trade and the House Foreign Affairs Subcommittee on Europe and Eurasia and has advised three U.S. presidential campaigns. He has been a featured speaker at the Munich Security Conference, the Aspen Ideas Festival, and the European Forum Alpbach and is a member of the Board of Directors of the Jean Monnet Institute in Paris and a Senior Advisor to the European Policy Centre in Brussels. His commentaries have been published in The New York Times, the Financial Times, The Wall Street Journal, Foreign Policy, and The National Interest, and he has appeared on PBS, CNBC, CNN, NPR, and the BBC.
He earned a BA from Harvard College and an MPhil in international relations from Oxford University. He speaks French, German, Italian, and Spanish.
The world’s leading economies are putting economic security at the top of their policy concerns. Among them, the European Union is taking a risk-based approach that seeks to deter weaponizable dependencies while still pursuing efficiency in its trade, regulatory, industrial, and technology policies. How do economic security considerations affect the global economy and the transatlantic economic partnership? In this episode of The Zeitgeist, European Commission Deputy Director-General for Trade and Economic Security Denis Redonnet discusses how the EU leverages its leadership and partnerships to ensure a resilient European economy.
Host
Jeff Rathke, President, AGI
Guests
Peter Rashish, Vice President and Director, Geoeconomics Program, AGI
Denis Redonnet, Deputy Director General and Chief Trade Enforcement Officer, Directorate General for Trade, European Commission
