The 35th Sokol Colloquium on Private International Law convened in April 2025 at the University of Virginia School of Law on the theme of ‘International Finance and Geopolitical Competition’. This issue of the Journal contains Part II of a special issue assembling selected papers from the Colloquium. The editorial that accompanied Part I introduced the theme and key common concepts, outlined a research agenda on international finance and geopolitics, and discussed the contributions included in Part I. This editorial introduces and discusses the papers included in this issue and concludes by offering some overall observations.
As noted in the editorial to Part I, the contributions included in the prior issue focused on the ‘“macro” level’, namely ‘developments that shape the overall patterns of global geopolitics around international finance’ and ‘themes that recur across issue-areas’. They explored the use of financial lawfare in US–China rivalry, the European Union’s (EU) turn to geoeconomics in financial regulation, the legal construction of ‘weaponized interdependence’, the history of geopolitically motivated monetary interventions, and normative questions raised by economic coercion.
In contrast, contributors to Part II examine how geopolitics interacts with specific areas of international finance. The first two articles build on Part I’s examination of China’s growing role and its geopolitical implications by examining two important cases: the dispute about auditing of US-listed Chinese firms and collateral practices in Chinese overseas lending contracts. The next three articles scrutinize how geopolitics affects the international financial infrastructure—the ‘pipes’ that keep money and financial assets flowing across borders—as well as core markets and institutions that anchor and stabilize international finance, namely, the US Treasury market and the Federal Reserve. The last three contributions present contrasting perspectives on the role of geopolitics in a core contemporary debate in finance: environmental, social, and governance (ESG) standards.