American economist and Tolani Senior Professor of International Trade Policy at Cornell University, Eswar Prasad, in The Doom Loop, brings into sharp and introspective focus the upheaval of the global order through the tectonic shifts reshaping central banking, democratic institutions, and political discourse. The ongoing crisis in West Asia, coupled with President Donald Trump’s penchant for imposing seemingly arbitrary and inexplicably erratic tariffs and even renaming geographical features associated with Canada, lends Prasad’s analysis an almost uncanny prescience. Prasad devotes considerable space to a discerning dissection of the nebulous China-United States relationship. Driven by an ascendant hyper-nationalism and an abiding faith in the insular tenets of protectionism, the world’s two largest economies are drifting apart rather than converging on issues of existential importance, from climate change to public health. Drawing on his extensive experience as the former head of the International Monetary Fund’s China team, Prasad offers incisive insights into the distinctive features of China’s economic model and its likely future trajectory. China, he suggests, has single-handedly rebuffed the popular consensus that free markets constitute the singular remedy for economic malaise.