IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/eee/worbus/v60y2025i5s1090951625000379.html
   My bibliography  Save this article

Divorce or temporary separation? Lessons from the US’s history of decoupling with China and other nations

Author

Listed:
  • Prud’homme, Dan
  • Han, Nianchen
  • McCourt, David
  • Chacar, Aya

Abstract

Binational decoupling—especially between the United States and China—has received growing attention, with most research focused on its current drivers. We instead draw on history to explain why decoupling occurs, showing it is not unprecedented. The US has previously severed ties with Britain, Germany, Japan, the USSR/Russia, and earlier Chinese regimes. Through a comparative historical analysis grounded in a model of political-economic complementarities, we argue that current complementarities deter decoupling, while historical ones create path dependencies that enable future recoupling—even after war. Our findings suggest decoupling is not necessarily permanent and may give way to renewed coupling under favorable conditions.

Suggested Citation

  • Prud’homme, Dan & Han, Nianchen & McCourt, David & Chacar, Aya, 2025. "Divorce or temporary separation? Lessons from the US’s history of decoupling with China and other nations," Journal of World Business, Elsevier, vol. 60(5).
    • Handle: RePEc:eee:worbus:v:60:y:2025:i:5:s1090951625000379
    DOI: 10.1016/j.jwb.2025.101648
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S1090951625000379
    Download Restriction: Full text for ScienceDirect subscribers only
    File URL: https://libkey.io/10.1016/j.jwb.2025.101648?utm_source=ideas
    LibKey link: if access is restricted and if your library uses this service, LibKey will redirect you to where you can use your library subscription to access this item
    ---><---

    As the access to this document is restricted, you may want to

    for a different version of it.

    More about this item

    Keywords

    ;
    ;
    ;
    ;
    ;
    ;
    ;
    ;

    Statistics

    Access and download statistics

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:eee:worbus:v:60:y:2025:i:5:s1090951625000379. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    We have no bibliographic references for this item. You can help adding them by using this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: Catherine Liu (email available below). General contact details of provider: http://www.elsevier.com/wps/find/journaldescription.cws_home/620401/description#description .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.