Wharton School Forum Argues for U.S. To Get On Belt and Road Bandwagon

April 21, 2019 (EIRNS)—A student-led forum at the 2019 Penn Wharton China Summit heard strong support for the Belt and Road Initiative (BRI) from U.S. academics, Xinhua reported. “Belt and Road is enormous. It’s no overstatement to say it could be the project of the century,” said Geoffrey Garrett, Dean of the Wharton School. (The University of Pennsylvania Wharton School of business is a top training ground for finance and Wall Street financiers.)

Garrett said that the BRI is dealing with the most difficult problem in emerging markets, which is the development of infrastructure. He said that the U.S. expected the private sector to invest in emerging market infrastructure, but the private sector isn’t doing it.

“Because the Chinese government is thinking about 20 years from today, 50 years from today—I think that the U.S. needs to follow China’s lead and think differently about the way it finances infrastructure development,” Garrett said.