Shihoko Goto

As Vice President of Programs and Director of the Asia Program at the Foreign Policy Research Institute, Shihoko Goto has become one of the leading interpreters of geoeconomics. She believes that the real contest for influence is being fought through trade routes, semiconductor supply chains, energy security and critical minerals.

What sets Goto apart is her refusal to see the world in binaries. While much of the conversation around China centres on confrontation or decoupling, she makes the case for something more measured. Nations cannot simply untangle decades of economic integration, she argues. Instead, they must become harder to coerce by strengthening supply chains, investing in new technologies, diversifying energy sources and building trusted partnerships. It is a perspective that has become increasingly influential as companies rethink risk in an era of tariffs, export controls and strategic competition.

Japan sits at the heart of much of Goto’s thinking. She has written extensively about the country’s emergence as a quiet but decisive force in the Indo-Pacific, not through military strength alone, but through its ability to bring partners together around shared economic interests. For Goto, the future of the region will depend less on great power rivalry than on whether middle powers can preserve openness while adapting to a far less predictable world.

Before joining FPRI, Shihoko Goto led the Indo-Pacific Program at the Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars, where she directed research and dialogue on US strategic interests across Asia. She is also a Senior Fellow for Indo-Pacific Affairs at the Mansfield Foundation and serves on the executive board of the Japan-America Society of Washington, DC.

Shihoko Goto began her career as a financial journalist with Dow Jones Newswires, covering international political economy. That grounding remains evident in her work today. She has an instinct for connecting policy with markets, and global events with the decisions facing executives. Whether writing about energy shocks in the Middle East, economic coercion, Taiwan, or the future of the rules-based order, she asks the same question: how will this reshape the way countries do business with one another?