America's Arsenal in a Trade War with China

A Discussion Over Coffee with Yan Bennett

Please RSVP with Chris McDermott at chris.mcdermott@gatech.edu.

Trump is making good on his campaign promises, from tax cuts to repealing Obamacare.  One of his promises included that he would stop China from perpetrating “one of the greatest thefts in the world” by threatening a trade war with China through various legal mechanisms.  This talk will outline America’s current trade assault on China with a brief synapsis of the most current status of negotiations.  I will then compare this trade war to previous attempts, and assess whether such efforts ultimately succeed or fail.  It also evaluates the business negotiation techniques used by President Trump and whether such theatrics will alleviate the trade imbalance between the United States and China, decrease the use of unfair trade practices, and make America great again.

Yan Bennett is the Assistant Director for the Paul and Marcia Wythes Center on Contemporary China. She most recently worked at the Princeton-Harvard China and the World Program (now Columbia-Harvard China and the World Program) at the Woodrow Wilson School of Public and International Affairs where she served as the Assistant Director from 2009-2015. Before coming to Princeton, Bennett was a foreign service officer with the U.S. Department of State and served overseas in China and Bosnia-Herzegovina. In China, she served as vice consul and had the opportunity to report on U.S. corporate labor practices, intellectual property issues, and the results of a municipal election in Guangdong Province. In Bosnia, Bennett served as special assistant to the ambassador and supported senior staff in achieving foreign policy and national security objectives. She has received awards for superior performance from the State Department, including a personal commendation from Secretary Powell. Bennett teaches diplomatic studies at George Washington University as an adjunct professor at the Elliott School of International Affairs.  In her course, her students learn the interaction of law and diplomacy, as well as the structure of domestic and international law.

Co-sponsored by the China Research  Center