page_title: Robert Zoellick
section_title: Views
hierarchical_section_title: Robert Zoellick / Views
caption_attribution_description: Deputy Secretary of State Robert Zoellick pays a courtesy call on Japans Chief Cabinet Secretary Shinzo Abe on January 23, 2006 at the prime ministers official residence in Tokyo. U.S. Embassy Tokyo photo.
context_page_description: Robert Bruce Zoellick is an American public official and lawyer who was the eleventh president of the World Bank, a position he held from July 1, 2007 to June 30, 2012. He was previously a managing director of Goldman Sachs, United States Deputy Secretary of State and U.S. Trade Representative, from February 7, 2001 until February 22, 2005. Zoellick has been a senior fellow at Harvard's Belfer Center for Science and International Affairs since ending his term with the World Bank. He is currently a Senior Counselor at Brunswick Group.
context_section_description: In March 2016, Zoellick signed an "open letter" in which GOP national security leaders outlined their reasons not to support a ticket headed by Donald Trump. In August, Zoellick signed a letter from fifty GOP national security officials calling Trump a national security risk. Zoellick was one of three Cabinet-level Republican officials to oppose Trump's candidacy.  In an interview with Deutsche Welle(DW)Nov.1, 2016, Zoellick said "My belief differences with Trump were not only placed on policy -- his protectionism, his infatuation with authoritarian leaders and Vladimir Putin. But also that I think he is a narcissistic, ego-driven person and that he would be dangerous. I have had the good fortune to serve a number of different presidents and I know the importance of that job and I don't want him in the Oval Office."</ref News and current affairs from Germany and around the world | DW>
  Zoellick has written extensively on foreign policy and international economics. He is a proponent of free trade. In a September 2017 article, he urged Congress to assert its constitutional powers over trade before Trump's policies "unravel vital ties across the Asia-Pacific region, hurt an ally facing a security crisis, destroy a North American partnership ... and subvert confidence in the U.S. around the world." He is a frequent contributor to the Wall Street Journal<The Wall Street Journal - Breaking News, Business, Financial & Economic News, World News and VideoJanuary 22,2020; March 19,2020; April 8,2020;May 19,2020> and the Financial Times. Zoellick is the author of America in the World<Twelve>
  In Australia's New Left Review, Gavan McCormackwrote that USTR Zoellick intervened during a 2004 privatization issue in Japanese Prime Minister Junichiro Koizumi's re-election campaign.  McCormack has written, "The office of the U.S. Trade Representative has played an active part in drafting the Japan Post privatization law. An October 2004 letter from Robert Zoellick to Japan's Finance Minister Takenaka Heizo, tabled in the Diet on August 2, 2005, included a handwritten note from Zoellick commending Takenaka. Challenged to explain this apparent U.S. government intervention in a domestic matter, Koizumi merely expressed his satisfaction that Takenaka had been befriended by such an important figure… It is hard to overestimate the scale of the opportunity offered to U.S. and global finance capital by the privatization of the Postal Savings System."
  In a January 2000 Foreign Affairs <Vol. 79 No.1>essay entitled "Campaign 2000: A Republican Foreign Policy," he noted five Republican principles (respect for power, building and sustaining coalitions and alliances, recognizing common interests with international agreements and institutions, embracing new technologies for global politics and security, and the continuing presence of bad actors.  "[T]here is still evil in the world—people who hate America and the ideas for which it stands. Today, we face enemies who are hard at work to develop nuclear, biological, and chemical weapons, along with the missiles to deliver them. The United States must remain vigilant and have the strength to defeat its enemies. People driven by enmity or by a need to dominate will not respond to reason or goodwill. They will manipulate civilized rules for uncivilized ends." Much of the essay stresses the links between power and economics "The United States needs a strategic economic-negotiating agenda that combines regional agreements with the development of global rules for an open economy."<Foreign Affairs, Vol. 79 No.1 p.71>The same essay praises the idealism" of Theodore Roosevelt and Woodrow Wilson.
  In the lead-up to the 2010 G-20 Seoul summit and in the immediate wake of the U.S. elections and subsequent Fed QE2 monetary-policy move, Zoellick published a suggestion  for increased awareness of the function of gold in international currency markets.  This was misinterpreted by many economists as a call for the return of some form of gold standard in a post-Bretton Woods II world.  Zoellick's response was to point out the 
caption: Robert Zoellick with Shinzo Abe in January 2006
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