On the afternoon of January 19, 2025, the second session of the "Grandwin Trade & Business Roundtable (Session II): Review of the Biden Administration's Economic and Trade Policies" was successfully held. The salon was hosted by Jian Guan, Partner at Beijing Grandwin Law Firm. This session was honored to invite several experts and scholars with long-term, in-depth experience in the field of international economics and trade to jointly review the economic and trade policies of the Biden administration, focusing on recently released documents, and to share insights on China-related issues during that period.

As the guiding speaker for this International Economic and Trade Salon, Professor Yang Guohua, Professor and Doctoral Supervisor at the Tsinghua University Law School, began by chronologically organizing the ten report documents released by United States Trade Representative (USTR) Katherine Tai from December 2024 to January 2025. Professor Yang Guohua noted that USTR Katherine Tai released a significant number of informative reports in the final one and a half months of her four-year term, providing an important resource and considerable reference value for research on U.S. government economic and trade policies.

Yu Minyou, Professor and Dean of the China Institute of Boundary and Ocean Studies at Wuhan University, a panelist at the salon, mentioned the work summary reports by U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken and U.S. National Security Advisor Jake Sullivan. He highlighted the particular emphasis in these reports on the significance of the "Indo-Pacific Strategy" for safeguarding U.S. national economic security. Sullivan's "Indo-Pacific Strategy" not only strengthens traditional military alliances but also, through economic and trade agreements, adds dimensions of economic and technological alliances, bringing allies closer. This is expected to exert greater competitive pressure on China in the future. Yu Minyou believes that the Trump administration, upon taking office, is highly likely to consolidate trade barriers, further forming systematic trade pressure on China, which warrants our special attention.

Hong Xiaodong, an expert at the China Society for World Trade Organization Studies and former Director-General of the WTO Department at the Ministry of Commerce, another panelist, conducted a more systematic study of the Biden administration's trade policies from both macro and micro perspectives and shared views on U.S. trade policy for the next four years.

Firstly, Hong Xiaodong offered an overall assessment of the Biden administration's trade policy, noting that externally, it continued the trade protectionist policies of the Trump 1.0 era, while internally emphasizing reindustrialization, "worker-centric" priorities, and "security-first" principles. Secondly, Hong pointed out that among the numerous issues raised by the Biden administration, most were targeted at China, such as maritime logistics, shipbuilding, and non-market economy status, reflecting a U.S. policy tendency to abandon multilateral governance in favor of bilateral negotiations and tariff measures in managing trade partnerships. The Biden administration also emphasized worker-centric policies, labor protection, rapid response mechanisms, and safeguarding the lives and health security of U.S. citizens. Furthermore, believing that factors like pandemics, war, and economic coercion could disrupt supply chains, the Biden administration prioritized enhancing supply chain resilience, emphasizing "internal circulation" and "friend-shoring." Finally, Hong Xiaodong suggested potential countermeasures: First, the U.S. "worker-centric" policy is likely to persist; attention should be paid to its requirements at both the regulatory and practical levels, while also focusing on studying the labor protection and rapid response mechanisms under the USMCA. Second, some issues from the Biden administration's China-related proposals might be continued by the Trump 2.0 administration; therefore, in-depth research into the U.S. trade agenda is necessary to prepare for potential future trade frictions. Third, a dual-track approach utilizing both bilateral and multilateral channels should be adopted, leveraging gaps in the U.S. engagement with the multilateral trading system to seek new opportunities.

Hu Jianguo, Associate Professor at the Nankai University Law School, another panelist, analyzed the characteristics and ideological origins of the Biden administration's economic and trade policies, made predictions about economic and trade policies in the Trump 2.0 era, and proposed China's response strategies.

Hu Jianguo first pointed out that the Biden administration's economic and trade policies aimed to shape the future international economic and trade landscape through economic means, largely continuing the Trump 1.0 policies, and might be followed up by Trump 2.0. The Biden administration's worker-centric, values-based, security-focused, and alliance-based strategic approach to China's economic and trade policies can also be corroborated by the views of officials like the National Security Advisor and the Trade Representative. Subsequently, Hu analyzed the characteristics of the Biden administration's policies, including diverse and strategic objectives, scientific methodology, multiple core levers, and a restrictive rather than liberalizing nature. He suggested that China should innovatively interpret traditional economic and trade policies to better respond to challenges from the U.S. Regarding the Trump 2.0 era, he predicted that the Trump administration might maintain trade restrictions implemented during the Biden era and follow through on the legacy of Biden's policies; however, it might abandon the alliance policy and return to isolationism, continue raising trade barriers, and revert to aggressive transactional trade policies. Finally, Hu Jianguo stated that facing the Trump 2.0 era, China should continue adhering to multilateralism, calling on all parties to abide by WTO rules, applying normative pressure on the U.S. while trying to avoid overly rapid shifts in the economic and trade policies of other major economies like the EU. Secondly, China should further expand openness and engage in market-oriented, liberalization-focused bilateral and regional trade cooperation with key partners like the EU. Finally, China should explore updating international economic and trade rules for the new era, addressing contemporary issues within a multilateral framework.

Peng Jun, Partner at Beijing Jincheng Tongda & Neal Law Firm, shared his views from the perspective of a legal practitioner. Peng Jun believes that U.S.-China relations are unlikely to ease in the future because China is in a phase of rising development, and its need to grow the economic pie inevitably conflicts with core U.S. interests. However, for China, although the path forward is full of challenges, we must persist in the correct direction of development. A trade war seems inevitable, but China has the ability to find its own advantageous positions. In the long run, China still possesses clear competitive advantages.

Sun Lei, Partner at Beijing Dentons Law Firm, combined the U.S. Section 301 investigations into China's maritime, logistics, and shipbuilding industries to share how the Biden administration strengthened the legislation and enforcement of international trade remedy rules.

Firstly, regarding the legislative level, the Biden administration's measures to strengthen trade remedy legislation included lowering investigation thresholds, improving enforcement efficiency, and shortening procedural timelines, though some proposals remained in the Senate and were not fully advanced. Simultaneously, important changes were occurring in U.S. trade rules. Secondly, regarding the enforcement level, the U.S. intensified investigations into the connections between market economy and non-market economy enterprises, changed the criteria for selecting surrogate countries from "per capita income" to "GDP" levels to increase the targeting of trade remedy investigations. In Section 301 investigations, the U.S. applied only the "substantial transformation" standard for origin determination, creating significant uncertainty for Chinese enterprises.

Regarding the U.S. Section 301 investigations into China's maritime, logistics, and shipbuilding industries, Sun Lei pointed out that this investigation was more targeted and lacked historical logical support. Procedurally, Sun Lei analyzed that the U.S. Section 301 investigation process in this case exhibited three notable characteristics: early intervention and framing by legislators, with Senators and Representatives directly participating in hearings and speaking first even before completing registration procedures; initial opposition from the Federal Maritime Commission (FMC), which believed it, as the U.S. maritime industry authority, was more suited to handle related issues, though it subsequently withdrew its objection and did not participate in further hearings, possibly indicating internal coordination or pressure; and the hearing being limited to fact-finding, explicitly excluding discussion of potential trade measures, likely to preserve more negotiation space, aligning with the characteristic of Section 301 as a negotiation tool. On substantive issues, the investigation focused on three aspects: First, government control involving shipping, logistics, and related infrastructure (e.g., information systems), including equity policies, union labor arrangements, and policy interventions (like destocking policies). Second, the investigation confirmed subsidy practices by the Chinese government in the shipping and shipbuilding industries, including direct subsidies reflected in some listed companies' financial reports. Third, the U.S. claimed that China's dominant position in the global shipping industry could threaten its national security, extending beyond the typical trade fairness concerns of Section 301 into the security domain. If the U.S. were to impose taxes on Chinese-built ships, it would encounter difficulties because Chinese-built ships are not necessarily Chinese-owned, Chinese ships do not necessarily carry Chinese cargo, and the shipbuilding and shipping industries have international impacts, extending beyond the bilateral U.S.-China issue scope. Finally, Sun Lei pointed out that the U.S. attributing the rise of China's shipping industry to the decline of the U.S. shipping industry is illogical, as the decline in the U.S. shipping industry's global share began in the 1990s, while China's rapid development occurred in the early 2000s, indicating a reversed chronological order and a flawed logic.