Welcome Remarks: Hong Nong, Executive Director, ICAS

Moderator: Sourabh Gupta, Senior Fellow & Head of ICAS Trade n’ Technology Program

Panelists: 

- Robert Sutter, Professor of Practice of International Affairs, Elliott School, George Washington University

- Zhiqun Zhu, Professor of Political Science and International Relations, Bucknell University

On November 5, Donald Trump was returned to the White House with a resounding victory over Kamala Harris. As the 45th president of the United States, Trump had brought the era of engagement in U.S.-China relations to an unceremonious close and declared China to be a revisionist power that was engaged in long term strategic competition with the United States. The era of $370 billion of tariff raises and hard-hitting technology denials, initially trained on the telecoms giant Huawei, was initiated thereafter. What will Trump have up his sleeve this time around, as the 47th president of the United States?

During the past 18 months, the Biden administration had begun to emplace guardrails and endow a modicum of stability to ties with China. Will this process continue under a second Trump administration? Or will perennial disruption once again become the order of the day, with the possibility of extreme competition degenerating into outright strategic rivalry? What has been the reception of other Indo-Pacific nations to Donald Trump’s return to the White House? And how will a second Trump presidency impact the delicate political and power balancing on the Taiwan Question? Could war break out in the Taiwan Strait? To listen to these and other engaging insights and answers on pressing U.S.-China questions, tune in to the ICAS Trade ‘n Technology Program event on November 18.