If there ever was a truism among the U.S. foreign policy community—across parties,

administrations, and ideologies—it is that the United States must be strong

at home to be strong abroad. Hawks and doves and isolationists and neoconservatives

alike all agree that a critical pillar of U.S. power lies in its middle class—

its dynamism, its productivity, its political and economic participation, and, most

importantly, its magnetic promise of progress and possibility to the rest of the world.

And yet, after three decades of U.S. primacy on the world stage, America’s

middle class finds itself in a precarious state. The economic challenges presented

by globalization, technological change, financial imbalances, and fiscal strains

have gone largely unmet. And that was before the novel coronavirus plunged the

country into the worst economic crisis since the Great Depression, exposed and

exacerbated deep inequities across American society, led long-simmering tensions

over racial injustice to boil over, and launched a level of societal unrest that

the United States has not seen since the height of the civil

rights movement.

If the United States stands any chance of renewal at

home, it must conceive of its role in the world differently.

That too has become a point of rhetorical consensus across

the political spectrum. But what will it actually take to fashion

a foreign policy that supports the aspirations of a middle

class in crisis? The Carnegie Endowment for International Peace established

a Task Force on U.S. Foreign Policy for the Middle Class to answer that question.

This report represents the conclusion of two years of work, hundreds of interviews,

and three in-depth analyses of distinct state economies across America’s

heartland (Colorado, Nebraska, and Ohio). It proposes to better integrate U.S.

foreign policy into a national policy agenda aimed at strengthening the middle

class and enhancing economic and social mobility.Five broad recommendations

bear highlighting up front.