For the generation that saw the Berlin Wall fall, the idea of global openness seemed inevitable. Ideas and people crossed borders, as did money and goods. The world was flat, a famous writer told us, for better or worse. Yet here we are. Trade wars are the order of the day. International alliances are fraying. America First. China First. Hungary First. What happened?
Award-winning author and journalist Scott Tong, co-host of NPR’s daily program "Here & Now," will give a long view of globalization and where it may be going. He’ll speak from his own experience and reporting, drawing on the world’s two largest economies: China and the United States. He has reported from more than a dozen countries, most recently in China during the May 2026 Summit between President Xi Jinping and President Donald Trump. Tong will intersperse his talk with audio excerpts and photos from his own interviews and reporting.
His parents were born in China. He was based in Shanghai from 2006-2010, as Bureau Chief for the public radio business show "Marketplace." There, he revealed how the parts inside an Apple iPad reveal a global supply chain. Tong has also chronicled China’s on-again, off-again relationship with the outside world through his book A Village with My Name: A Family History of China’s Opening to the World.
Born in New York state, Tong has reported extensively on the economic globalization debate in the United States. He partnered with "Marketplace" correspondent Sarah Gardner in an hour-long special: "Trade-off: Globalization and Backlash." The series traces the long history of protectionism in this country, including the 1920s Smoot-Hawley Act, which worsened the Great Depression. In the series, Tong goes “back to school,” returning to his alma mater, Georgetown University, which he attended at the height of globalization fever, to ask professors, “What happened? What went wrong?”
Tong joined "Here & Now" in 2021 and has interviewed a range of newsmakers, from Ringo Starr to Ai Weiwei, Henry Louis Gates to Barbara Kingsolver, and Salman Rushdie to Cate Blanchett.
An aspiring foodie, Tong has a soft spot for food stories. Often, he’s tried out recipes – many failures, sporadic successes – before talking to chefs including Jose Andres, Tom Colicchio and Kenji Lopez-Alt.
In 2024, Tong reported a special series on how eastern Kentucky turned politically from blue to red in a generation. "Asking Appalachia: Coal, Trump and the Politics of Eastern Kentucky" won the 2025 National Headliner Award.
In 2022, Tong hosted WBUR’s narrative nonfiction podcast "Captured," a five-part series on a bold, behind-the-scenes industry attempt to take over the EPA in the Reagan administration, and the agency insiders who pushed back. It revealed hidden ties between industry and government that continue today.
Before joining "Here & Now," Tong served as a correspondent for the public radio business show "Marketplace" for 16 years, reporting from more than a dozen countries. He profiled families displaced after Fukushima, visited a Somali refugee camp during the 2011 East Africa famine, and reported on Venezuela’s "oil curse" as its economy cratered in 2016. He covered the 2010 UN Climate Summit in Cancun, Mexico, and in 2009 snuck into Myanmar with the help of middlemen, a few bucks, and a hole in a fence.
In Washington, he led a 2016 investigation into the doctoring of EPA science findings on the risks of oil and gas fracking. A year later, the agency reversed course.
From 2006 -2010, Tong served as Shanghai Bureau Chief for "Marketplace." He chronicled the mainland’s economic boom, investigated baby selling in China’s international adoption system, and reported on slave labor in Chinese brick-making plants and the economic suppression of the Uyghur Muslim minority in Xinjiang province.
Before "Marketplace," he worked as a producer and reporter for the "PBS NewsHour," where he joined a team covering post-invasion Iraq in 2003.
Tong was a Knight-Wallace journalism fellow at the University of Michigan in 2013-2014. He lives in Arlington, Virginia, with his wife, Cathy. They have three grown children and one rescued doodle named Josie.
