America’s political leaders overcame political differences to enact $2 trillion in national economic support bill, while the Federal Reserve took historic steps to assure liquidity for the economy to address COVID-19. Important steps for sure, but a bigger challenge lies around the corner. This is a global pandemic causing global economic crisis; the United States must reassert its world economic leadership to protect our citizens and people everywhere from a deep, damaging recession worldwide.

The Trump administration took a small first step last week in a virtual meeting with leaders of major economies, the Group of 20 (G20). Bolder steps and concrete follow-through are needed. Congress can help.

The United States has been the driving force behind global responses to international challenges ever since the Marshall Plan. Bipartisan leadership from U.S. presidents and the Congress was essential in shaping such responses to the Asian financial crisis of the 1990s; to the 9/11 terrorist attacks in 2001; and to the Great Recession of 2008. It is now the turn of the Trump administration and this Congress.

The George W. Bush administration created the G20 to ensure a coordinated response to the Great Recession. G20 cooperation ensured that the United States, China and Europe worked together rather than at cross purposes. The G20 undertook large, coordinated economic stimulus programs, avoided self-defeating trade barriers and supported

International Monetary Fund and World Bank provision of crucial financial resources and policy advice for emerging market and low-income countries. The G20 should again be the epicenter of U.S. leadership.

The Trump administration and Congress must put their political muscle behind a global effort to subdue COVID-19 and head off economic collapse, first by assuring bold, coordinated G20 fiscal policy steps like the United States has now taken, not vague promises. Last week leaders seemed to promise support to vital World Health Organization programs but hedged by saying this would be on a “voluntary basis.” The administration and Congress need immediately to identify and provide the necessary resources to the WHO, and press others do the same, as George W. Bush’s administration did to combat the AIDS epidemic and the Obama administration did in the Ebola crisis. If the administration does not act promptly and decisively, Congress should take the lead. Exerting such bipartisan American leadership will not be easy in the midst of a contentious election cycle and likely tension between Democrats and Republicans. But such leadership will be crucial to inspiring concerted action to restart the global economy on which U.S. prosperity depends.

Similarly, countries must pull together to avoid and reverse unilateral trade protectionism, particularly on critical medical supplies, protective gear and food supplies, and ensure the arteries of trade flow, supply chains and financing for economic activity function smoothly. We welcome proposals that the administration might defer collection of some tariff for 90 days but that is no substitute for much more broadly based reductions in or elimination of trade barriers to spur global economic growth.

For the last three years, all nations benefited from the strong tailwind of a global economic expansion. This mitigated the growth-killing effects of rising trade barriers. Now those tailwinds have been replaced by the powerful headwinds of a global recession. Even before the pandemic, global trade flows were slowing and G20 economies had slapped on new trade barriers. There is a real risk more countries will erect barriers on the export of medical items to fight the health crisis, and even on food. If recovery is to take hold, global trade barriers need to be reduced across the board. Congress should push such an initiative.

The G20 also must also take concrete steps to stop the collapse in oil prices caused by the price war between two G20 countries, Saudi Arabia and Russia, which has needlessly increased global economic uncertainty. Both countries seek to undercut U.S. domestic oil production, including from shale. Sound energy security policies practiced by successive U.S. administrations and Congresses have assured our energy supply security and created thriving U.S. energy industries, which are now threatened by the price war. The United States and other G20 countries should continue to press the Saudis and Russians to end this oil skirmish in the interest of a broad-based global economic recovery, which is also essential to them.

As the largest shareholder, the United States should also vigorously support IMF, World Bank and regional development bank efforts to help emerging countries, who make up a substantial percentage of global GDP, avoid economic devastation. These international financial institutions will likely need capital increases to fulfill this role. The United States should lead the effort to ensure that these institutions have adequate funds. Congress can play a key role in ensuring that this happens.

Every administration and every Congress enters into office with great plans and goals, which often get mugged by unanticipated events. COVID-19 was not expected. Now the question is whether the administration and Congress can adapt to new realities and lead a global coalition to defeat the virus and the threat of a global recession. The resources required are minor compared with the massive U.S. stimulus Congress just provided. The crucial resource required now is global leadership.

Larson and Eizenstat are both former diplomats and ambassadors who served as senior officials in the State Department and Treasury Department of the Clinton and George W. Bush administrations.

Photo of Stuart E. Eizenstat Stuart E. Eizenstat

Ambassador Stuart E. Eizenstat is Senior Counsel  in Covington & Burling LLP’s international practice. His work at Covington focuses on resolving international trade problems and business disputes with the U.S. and foreign governments, and international business transactions and regulations on behalf…

Ambassador Stuart E. Eizenstat is Senior Counsel  in Covington & Burling LLP’s international practice. His work at Covington focuses on resolving international trade problems and business disputes with the U.S. and foreign governments, and international business transactions and regulations on behalf of U.S. companies and others around the world. He was an Adjunct Lecturer at Harvard University’s John F. Kennedy School of Government (1982-1991), where he taught a course on presidential decision-making. He has been a Guest Scholar at the Brookings Institution (1981) and the Woodrow Wilson Center (2001).

During a decade and a half of public service in six U.S. administrations, Ambassador Eizenstat has held a number of key senior positions, including Chief White House Domestic Policy Adviser to President Jimmy Carter (1977-1981); U.S. Ambassador to the European Union, Under Secretary of Commerce for International Trade, Under Secretary of State for Economic, Business and Agricultural Affairs, and Deputy Secretary of the Treasury in the Clinton Administration (1993-2001).

In the Carter White House, he was major figure in all the domestic legislative achievements of the Carter Administration. He also recommended to President Carter a Presidential Commission on the Holocaust, headed by Elie Wiesel, which led directly to the congressional approval of the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum.

During the Clinton Administration, he had a prominent role in the development of key international initiatives, including the negotiations of the Transatlantic Agenda with the European Union (establishing the framework for the  U.S. relationship with the EU); the development of the Transatlantic Business Dialogue (TABD) among European and US CEOs; the negotiation of agreements with the European Union regarding the Helms-Burton Act and the Iran-Libya Sanctions Act; the negotiation of the Japan Port Agreement with the Japanese government; and the negotiation of the Kyoto Protocol on global warming, where he led the  U.S. delegation.

Much of the interest in providing belated justice for victims of the Holocaust and other victims of Nazi tyranny during World War II was the result of his leadership of the Clinton Administration as Special Representative of the President and Secretary of State on Holocaust-Era Issues, while continuing to hold his other Senate-confirmed positions. He successfully negotiated major agreements with the Swiss, Germans, Austrian and French, and other European countries, covering restitution of property, payment for slave and forced laborers, recovery of looted art, bank accounts, and payment of insurance policies. He was the principal negotiator of the 1998 Washington Principles on Nazi-Confiscated Art with 44 countries, which continues to be a basis for recovery and compensation for Nazi-looted art. His book on these events, Imperfect Justice: Looted Assets, Slave Labor, and the Unfinished Business of World War II, has been favorably received in publications like the New York Times, Los Angeles Times, Washington Post, Business Week, and Publisher’s Weekly. It has been translated into German, French, Czech and Hebrew.

In addition, during the Obama administration, he served as Special Adviser on Holocaust-Era Issues to Secretary of State Hillary Clinton and Secretary of State John Kerry (2009-2017). During this period of his public service, Ambassador Eizenstat negotiated significant Holocaust-related agreement with the governments of Lithuania (2011), and with France (2014), regarding the deportation of Jews on the French railway. During this time, he was also the principal U.S. negotiator for the Terezin Declaration with 47 countries (2009), which strengthened the Washington Principles on Nazi-Confiscated Art and urging measures to assist the social welfare of poor, elderly Holocaust survivors, and the agreement with over 40 countries on Best Practices and Guidelines for the Restitution and/or Compensation of Private (Immovable) Property Confiscated by the Nazis and their Collaborators Between 1933-1945. In the Obama Administration, he also served on the Defense Policy Board, for Secretary of Defense Chuck Hagel and Secretary of Defense Ashton Carter.

During the Trump administration, he was appointed by Secretary of State Mike Pompeo as Expert Adviser to the State Department on Holocaust-Era Issues (2008-2021).

In the Biden administration, he is currently serving as Special Adviser to Secretary of State Antony Blinken on Holocaust Issues. In this capacity, he played a major role in the negotiation of the Best Practices for the Washington Principles on Nazi-Confiscated Art (2024), now supported by 25 countries. He was appointed by President Biden as Chairman of the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum Council (2022-present).

Since 2009, he has served as pro bono Special Negotiator for the Jewish Claims Conference in negotiations with the German government, obtaining billions of dollars of benefits for poor Holocaust survivors, for home care, social and medical services, enhanced pensions, hardship payments, child survivor and Kindertransport survivors, special supplemental payments for the poorest of the poor, and worldwide educational benefits.

Ambassador Eizenstat has received more than eighty awards, including eight honorary doctorate degrees from universities and academic institutions. He has been awarded high civilian awards from the governments of France (two Legions of Honor awards in 2004 and 2024), Germany, Austria, Israel, Belgium and Lithuania, as well as from Secretary of State Warren Christopher, Secretary of State Madeleine Albright, and the Alexander Hamilton Award from Secretary of the Treasury Lawrence Summers. In 2003, he received the Great Negotiator Award from Harvard Law School. In 2007, he was named “The Leading Lawyer in International Trade” in Washington, DC by Legal Times. His articles appear in The New York Times, Financial Times, International Herald Tribune, Washington Post, Los Angeles Times, USA Today,  Foreign Policy magazine, and Foreign Affairs magazine, on a variety of international and domestic topics. He was the co-author of Andrew Young: The Path to History (1973), which chronicled how Andrew Young became for the first African American to win a congressional seat in the Deep South since Reconstruction following the Civil War.

His book President Carter: The White House Years (2018, 2020) is a definitive history of the Carter administration, which has been favorably reviewed by The New York Times, The Washington Post, National Review, National Interest, Minneapolis Star Tribune, Moment Magazine, and many other publications. His most recent book is The Art of Diplomacy: How American Negotiators Reached Historic Agreements That Changed the World (20240,which has also won accolades from a variety of publications.

Ambassador Eizenstat grew up in Atlanta and was educated in its  public schools. He was All-City and Honorable Mention All-American (Dell Sports Magazine) in basketball.  He is a Phi Beta Kappa, cum laude graduate of the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, where he was inducted into the Order of the Old Well and Golden Fleece Society, and has an endowed chair in his name, The Ambassador Stuart E. Eizenstat Chair of Modern Jewish History. He is a graduate  of Harvard Law School. He was  married for 45 years to the late Frances Eizenstat and has two sons, eight grandchildren, and one great-grandson.