An Economist at the Heart of U.S.-China Engagement
An obituary for David Dollar, whose work argued for the benefits of more open trade and investment for poor countries.
David Dollar, then U.S. Treasury Department's Economic and Financial Emissary to China, attends the Caijing Annual Conference in Beijing, 15 December 2011. Credit: Imaginechina via AP Images
It wasn’t that long ago that the U.S. and China sought closer economic relations. David Dollar was at the heart of that engagement, first as a World Bank economist and then as Treasury official, advising both Washington and Beijing on ways to move forward together.
During the 2009 global financial crisis, Wang Yang, a senior Communist party official who was then running Guangdong province in southern China, turned for advice to the World Bank’s Beijing office headed by Dollar. After Dollar and his staff wrote up recommendations, he told a Wall Street Journal reporter, Wang invited him to give a lecture to the provincial government, which was attended by hundreds of officials, with Mr. Wang in the middle of the front row.
Not long afterwards, the U.S. Treasury hired Dollar as its China representative, counting on his broad contacts for a better idea of Beijing’s thinking. “No one else came close to his depth of understanding and on-the-ground access,” say
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