EVENT AUDIO | Term Limits, Tariffs, and Reflections on U.S.-China Relations with Jeffrey Bader

On Sunday, February 25, 2018, the world learned that the Chinese Constitution would be amended to allow the president and vice president to stay in office beyond two terms (ten years) – the limit established in the 1982 constitutional revision. On Thursday, March 1, President Trump announced that the United States would impose a 25 percent tariff on steel imports and a 10 percent tariff on aluminum imports. Although the tariffs apply to products from all over the world, many assume that they are aimed at China.

The National Committee invited the Honorable Jeffrey A. Bader to discuss the implications of these and other recent developments in China and the United States, in a teleconference moderated by NCUSCR President Steve Orlins on March 6, 2018.

Jeffrey Bader is a senior fellow at the Brookings Institution’s John L. Thornton China Center and the first director of the Center (2005-2009). From 2009 until 2011, Ambassador Bader was special assistant to the president of the United States for national security affairs at the National Security Council. In that capacity, he was the principal advisor to President Obama on Asia.

During his 30-year career with the U.S. government, Amb. Bader focused primarily on U.S.-China relations at the State Department, the National Security Council, and the Office of the United States Trade Representative. In 2001, as assistant U.S. trade representative, he led the United States delegation in completing negotiations on the accession of China and Taiwan into the World Trade Organization. As a foreign service officer, he served in the People’s Republic of China, Hong Kong, Taiwan, Namibia, Zambia, Congo, and the United States Mission to the United Nations. During the 1990s, he was deputy assistant secretary of state responsible for China, Hong Kong, Taiwan, and Southeast Asia; director of Asian affairs at the National Security Council; and director of the State Department’s Office of Chinese Affairs. He served as U.S. ambassador to Namibia from 1999 to 2001.

Amb. Bader is the author of Obama and China’s Rise: An Insider’s Account of America’s Asia Strategy, published in 2012 by Brookings Institution Press. He is president and sole proprietor of Jeffrey Bader LLC, which provides assistance to companies with interests in Asia, and a member of the National Committee’s board of directors. He received his bachelor’s degree from Yale University and his master’s and doctoral degrees in European history from Columbia University.