Ryan Hass is director of the John L. Thornton China Centre and the Chen-Fu and Cecilia Yen Koo Chair in Taiwan Studies at the Brookings Institution. He is also a senior fellow at the think tank’s Centre for Asia Policy Studies. He is a former diplomat with a focus on China and served as a key member of the National Security Council during the administration of former US president Barack Obama.
He served as a foreign service officer in the US embassies in Beijing, Seoul and Ulaanbaatar, and in the State Department offices of Taiwan coordination and Korean affairs.
What is the likely scenario for after the current trade truce, and what will be the outlook for China–US relations during Trump’s second term?
He’s experimenting and adapting to changing circumstances until he arrives at an outcome that he believes he can characterise as a win.
Second, the trade war will be influenced by a lot of factors completely apart from and outside of the US-China relationship. For example, will the United States economy be in recession later this year? Will China’s economy be experiencing significant downward pressure?
