Our trade insiders unpack President Xi's visit, a victory for constructive strategic stability in that very little happened, with an extension of the trade truce, reportedly to January 10th, as its strongest deliverable. The panel weighs a summit long on pomp and short on substance, with no delegation of Chinese CEOs, and asks whether the administration is simply ragging the puck to buy time while China's domestic economy struggles. The conversation turns to diversifying away from Chinese inputs, from critical minerals to Chinese monopolies in intermediate goods far beyond rare earths, and whether the Hill will have to pay to address these choke points. The panelists then debate whether the Structural Excess Capacity 301 risks losing the plot by lashing out at countries other than China, and why USTR's legal position on the Forced Labor 301 may be quite strong ahead of next week's CIT hearing. They close with possible diesel export controls in advance of the U.S. elections.
Featured Speakers:
Peter Harrell, Visiting Scholar, Georgetown Institute for International Economic Law; former Senior Director, International Economics, at the White House under President Biden.
Chris Padilla, Senior Advisor, Brunswick Group; former Under Secretary of Commerce for International Trade whose Substack and LinkedIn posts, along with Peter’s, are much reads for trade nerds.
Stephen Vaughn, Partner, International Trade, King & Spalding LLP; former General Counsel, Office of the United States Trade Representative in first Trump Administration; and newly named nonresident senior fellow with the Atlantic Council’s GeoEconomics Center.
Moderator: Kellie Meiman Hock, Senior Counselor, McLarty Associates; Adjunct Professor, Georgetown University; Board Member, Inter-American Dialogue; former Director of Brazil and the Southern Cone, Office of the United States Trade Representative.
