Author name: Kamiryn Rose-Weinberg

“There are many reasons for the WTO’s irrelevance at this historic moment. Reason one is the failure of the WTO to address China’s non-market actions and how it got to its dominance in exporting to the world.” – Mark Linscott, TAG Senior Advisor Read: https://www.hinrichfoundation.com/research/article/trade-distortion-and-protectionism/trump-reciprocal-tariffs-took-root-in-the-wto-failings/

“My best guess would be that if the U.S. does some kind of blanket global policy on reciprocal tariffs, that Japan would not be excluded from that,” said TAG Managing Partner, Kurt Tong to The Japan Times, noting that Japan does not have particularly high tariffs against American products. Read: https://www.japantimes.co.jp/news/2025/02/10/japan/politics/ishiba-trump-meeting-analysis/

“By highlighting what Japan could do to help Trump’s America First agenda, Ishiba offered a template for other countries to deal with Trump’s transactional nature,” said TAG Vice President, Yuka Hayashi to Bloomberg. “Ishiba’s praise of Trump for everything from surviving an assassination attempt, removing restrictions on US fossil fuel extraction and spurring Japan’s moves

“It’s in Trump’s and Xi’s interest to strike a deal. China has more to lose.  If China cannot export its way to GDP growth it has little choice but to concentrate on boosting the economy through other means. We’ll have a better indication of how in the upcoming March Two Sessions.” – Han Lin, TAG

“The tariff tit-for-tat, while unfortunate, was not unexpected. China has the capacity to respond swiftly and strongly but appears to be taking a measured approach to demonstrate strength without over-escalating,” says Han Lin, TAG China Country Director on the BBC World News