Source: Lookout Think Tank (zhczyj)
Author: Ding Yi
On March 17, local time, Katherine Tai, a Chinese-American nominated by US President Biden, passed the Senate vote with 98 votes in favor and 0 votes against to become the US Trade Representative. This is the first Asian and female of color in the position's 60-year history.
This veteran economic and trade female lawyer, a Chinese scholar, openly expressed her desire to speak for American workers, spent several years representing the United States in trade lawsuits with China, and believed that china should be "tough" and "strategic" to deal with China, and is a loyal defender of the global interests of the United States, which can be called a typical "banana man".
Under the political system of separation of powers in the United States, in addition to the executive branch that can greatly influence national policymaking, Congress and interest groups can also achieve the same goal by putting pressure on the president and the bureaucracy involved in the decision-making process. This requires a focal point to maneuver between the executive and legislative bodies and interest groups. The Office of the United States Trade Representative (U.S. Trade Representative) plays its role as coordinator and trade guardian, and the head of the agency, the U.S. Trade Representative, is a cabinet-level official who is directly accountable to the president and Congress.
The Article on the Website of the Wall Street Journal in the United States commented that Dai Qi was proficient in China issues, experienced and skilled in diplomacy.
What will this veteran of China do next?
1 ABC under the aura of "Xueba"
Katherine Tai was born in 1974 in Connecticut and grew up in Washington, D.C. Like many Chinese children, she has excellent academic performance and is a school bully.
Katherine Tai.
Before going to college, Dai Qi attended Sidwell Friendship School. Founded in 1883 and located in Washington, D.C., this school is one of the most famous private schools in the United States. Former US President Clinton's golden Chelsea, former US President Barack Obama's two daughters, and former US Vice President Gore's son have all studied here. After that, Dai Qi received degrees in history and literature from Yale University and law degrees from Harvard Law School.
She has worked at a number of U.S. law firms and is a veteran lawyer specializing in economic and trade litigation; she has successfully handled several complex trade cases in the Omarba administration as a member of the legal team of the Office of the U.S. Trade Representative; and she was the chief trade adviser to the House Fundraising Committee before being nominated.
Dai Qi has claimed to be "the daughter of immigrants" on several official public occasions. Born in Chinese mainland, her parents grew up in Taiwan and later went to the United States as a graduate student in science and engineering.
Her father was a Walter Reed National Center for Military Medicine researchers who helped Vietnam Veterans heal war wounds in the U.S. military. Known as the "President's Hospital," the medical facility treated then-Presidents Nixon, Eisenhower, and Johnson, and was sent here for treatment in October 2020 after then-President Trump was diagnosed with COVID-19.
Her mother works at the National Institutes of Health and currently leads a clinical trial network that works in therapeutic work in curbing the proliferation of opioid drugs.
Stemming from family factors and school studies, Dai Qi is fluent in Mandarin, but also speaks Cantonese and Hokkien dialect. As a child, she attended Sidwell Friendship School, the most Chinese-focused school in the Washington area, with students having to learn Chinese from junior high school until high school graduation. From 1996 to 1998, she taught English as a Yale Scholar at Sun Yat-sen University in Guangzhou, China. She is one of the few senior U.S. officials fluent in Mandarin.
But no matter how obvious the "black-haired, yellow-skinned" Chinese-American physical features are and how well he speaks Chinese, Dai Qi is a typical ABC (Chinese-born in the United States). In her december 2020 speech at the nomination ceremony, she mentioned a china-related past: she traveled to Geneva with her American colleagues to sue China against the World Trade Organization, and when she held up a sign to make a statement on behalf of the United States, she was extremely proud.
2 "Migrant workers' spokespersons" with a good reputation
In the AMERICAN political arena with fierce party strife and serious political polarization, Dai Qi is a rare figure who is supported by both the Democratic Party and the praise of some Republican lawmakers.
U.S. Presidents Joe Biden and Dai Qi (right).
Lighthizer, a former U.S. Trade Representative and one of the key figures in the Trump administration, acknowledged Dai's work. Lighthizer praised her for playing a key role in the negotiation of the United States-Mexico-Canada Agreement (USMCA).
Dai Qi successfully persuaded Democrats to support the revision of the North American Free Trade Agreement in 2017 when he served as chief trade adviser to the House Fundraising Committee, which was later updated as the U.S.-Mexico-Canada Agreement.
In 2019, when renegotiating free trade agreements with Canada and Mexico, Dai Qi was considered to have excelled in improving social provisions. As a result of her advocacy, trade agreements include a precedent-setting series of strict labor and environmental clauses that have never been included before, better balancing the competitive needs of trade unions, environmental groups, and lobbying groups, and gaining support from trade unions and the business community.
Neil, chairman of the House Fundraising Committee, said Dai had a lot to achieve while working on the House Funding Committee, but the biggest achievement was "the role behind our success in improving the USMCA agreement and ensuring that it received broad support to be adopted."
The USMCA agreement is seen as a template for the Biden administration's future trade policy. Dai Qi believes that the US government should consider absorbing the results of the US-Mexico-Canada agreement in future free trade negotiations with the United Kingdom and Kenya.
Dai Qi also said that he would "speak for American workers" and pay attention to the American migrant workers, and his trade policy would focus on workers and the middle class. In her public statement at the Senate nomination hearing on Feb. 24, she said she had spent her entire career cheering on American workers. In an online video address to the National Council on Foreign Trade, she said the vision for the future is to implement labor-centric trade policies. In practice, this means that U.S. trade policy must benefit ordinary American workers.
Now in office, Dai Qi's top priority is to help the United States out of the shadow of the epidemic and the economic crisis. In the short term, the Office of the U.S. Trade Representative will work to strengthen U.S. supply chains and get the U.S. economy back on track; in the long term, it will support innovation and improve U.S. competitive advantage.
Despite being Democratic, she also openly admitted that the Trump administration has done some of the right things in terms of trade with China, and that "the Trump administration has not made a hundred percent mistake in trade policy."
Some analysts believe that although Dai Qi's strategy to solve trade disputes is labeled as a pragmatist, she will jump out of the ideological struggle between free traders and trade protectionists, make rational judgments based on reality, and is a figure between conservatives and progressives.
3 "Tough" and "strategic" veterans of China
Dai Qi has always been critical of China, favoring a tough China line and believing that China should be dealt with "tough" and "strategically." Bloomberg analysis said Dai Qi will take a hard line in the Sino-US negotiations, but at the same time adhere to a more methodical and pragmatic style.
The Wall Street Journal website article in the United States commented that she is proficient in China issues, experienced and skilled in diplomacy. The most remarkable "performance toward China" in Dai Qi's career is that he has joined forces with the European Union, Japan, Australia and other countries to establish an international alliance and file a lawsuit against China in the WTO to oppose China's restrictions on rare earth metal exports. In 2014, the WTO ruled that China had lost. The following year, China lifted the rare earth quota limit.
The Financial Times recently reported that China is renewing its feasibility study to restrict rare earth exports. Key components such as the power system of the F35 stealth fighter produced by Lockheed Martin rely heavily on rare earths. From 2015 to 2018, about 80 percent of U.S. imports of rare earths came from China.
Dai Qi was in charge of trade litigation against China in the WTO, spent several years in the Obama administration fighting trade lawsuits with China, served as a negotiator for the Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP), and handled China-related matters such as supply chain relocation in the House of Representatives. Her vast knowledge and skills in handling complex cases have earned her a reputation.
U.S. media believe that her expertise helps the United States confront China on issues such as intellectual property rights, while maintaining normal trade relations between the world's two largest economies. It is reported that she will fight for subsidies for US companies internally to reduce the Us dependence on China.
According to an article in the Nihon Keizai Shimbun, Dai Qi is familiar with China's structural problems.
The Wall Street Journal website article said that Biden's choice of Dai Qi showed that he intended to quickly resolve the outstanding trade issues, while working with allies to cope with increasing competition from China in the economic field.
Fundamentally, Biden intends to maintain a firm position on trade issues, but to form a united front with allies such as the European Union.
Analysts believe that the Biden administration will not completely shake off the Trump administration's tensions with China. Biden said Dai would use "a different way." She prefers multilateral implementation mechanisms to Lighthizer. Williams, the former chief trade negotiator at the White House, pointed out that the most likely difference between Dai Qi and Lighthizer is that the former will use the WTO system and the European Union to pressure China.
In August 2020, Dai said at the Center for American Progress that trade must have strong political support. She suggested that the U.S. government and Congress establish a partnership to both take defensive measures against China and take proactive actions to enhance their ability to compete with China. At her Feb. 24 nomination hearing, she re-emphasized the importance of a "healthy partnership" between the administration and Congress for U.S. economic and trade policy.
4 "Key interlocutors" with allies and the world
Biden has said that trade will be a key pillar for the United States to better resume and execute U.S. foreign policy. This shows the importance of trade policy in the national governance of the US government.
Biden was quoted as saying that he does not intend to launch new free trade negotiations "before making a major investment in the country and our workers," but that the new trade representative still has a lot of work to do, including ensuring that U.S. trade rules are fully enforced.
If Dai qi is approved as U.S. trade representative, he will be responsible for handling most of the trade issues left over from the Trump administration, implementing the relevant provisions of the U.S.-Mexico-Canada agreement, repairing trade relations with allies, reforming the WTO, addressing climate change, and so on.
She said the United States should rebuild international alliances and partnerships and re-engage with international institutions so that countries around the world can work together to address issues such as climate change, covid-19, and the international economic downturn. The U.S.-Mexico-Canada agreement is a unique cross-party achievement that represents an important step in reforming U.S. trade policy and should continue to focus on its implementation.
Colleagues who have worked with Dai Qi have commented on her: Dai Qi is a cooperative leader, which helps the rational return of US economic and trade policy and wins the respect of allies around the world.
European media have written that the Biden administration's trade policy will be much more beneficial to Europe than the Trump administration. For the EU, Dai Qi will be a key interlocutor, and her nomination is good for Europe.
The Nippon Keizai Shimbun pointed out that the barometer that tests the "seriousness" of US President Biden's diplomatic strategy is trade policy.
According to the article on the website of the US Consumer News and Business Channel, the Biden team chose Dai Qi as an intention to return to the multilateral trade route.
Liu Chen, an alumnus of Dai Qi's Kennedy School at Harvard University and a postdoctoral fellow in the Department of Economics at Harvard University's School of Arts and Sciences, told Uncle Ku that in terms of Dai Qi's experience and major policy perspectives, she has an international perspective, a sound knowledge structure and an interdisciplinary background.
Chen Liu studied under the famous American economist Professor Richard Cooper. Cooper is known as the father of the theory of international cooperation in international politics and economics, and is a former deputy secretary of state for economic affairs who served four U.S. presidents. In the 1970s, his theory of international cooperation led to the establishment of the G7 and the formal establishment of diplomatic relations between China and the United States in 1979. Cooper also presided over the design of the TPP and made it really land.
Liu Chen believes that the current world situation is similar to that of the 1970s, that is, Cooper's political career.
Historically, the cooperative perspective has been the basis for constructive policy, especially in the areas of macroeconomics, especially in the area of international trade. She pointed out that at a time when the world is facing major changes unprecedented in a century, it is worth looking forward to whether Dai Qi can put forward innovative theories and actionable action plans from the perspective of international cooperation and coordination, like Cooper and other political predecessors.
Column Editor-in-Chief: Gu Wanquan Text Editor: Cheng Pei Title Image Source: Visual China Photo Editor: Zhu Xuan
Source: Author: Lookout Think Tank