Biden's Trump-lite China trade policy
The US Trade Representative's highly anticipated address was a letdown as it did not reveal any new insights, leaving the audience with more questions than answers.
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IT WAS billed as the most anticipated speech of the political season in Washington, attracting not only the city's wonks but also foreign diplomats and business executives who were expecting to finally get the full picture of the Biden administration's China trade policy.
Recall that one of the top criticisms of former president Donald Trump's trade strategy towards China was that it wasn't, well, a strategy. That it was incoherent, ad-hoc-ish, running all over the place and creating uncertainty. It was threatening China with sanctions and trade wars one day and praising the leadership in Beijing and trying to make a deal with them the next. No one in the White House seemed to be in charge or knew what was going on.
So the expectation in Washington, Beijing and other world capitals was that this would all change both in terms of style and substance under President Joe Biden, with the best and the brightest policymakers who would conduct his diplomacy and trade policy.
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