CHINA Town Hall on The First 100 Days: President Trump’s China Policy

World Affairs Council, Washington State China Relations Council, and UW East Asia Center are pleased to invite you to an in-person CHINA Town Hall event featuring both national and local sessions.

The national webcast session will feature a panel discussion on President Trump's China policy 100 days in with Ryan Hass, Director of John L. Thorton China Center at the Brookings Institution, Matthew Turpin, Visiting Fellow at the Hoover Institution, and Lingling Wei, Chief China Correspondent at The Wall Street Journal. A local in-person discussion session will follow the national webcast with a panel of local China experts.

The National Webcast will start at 3:30 pm and a local panel discussion in Seattle will follow right after at 4:30 pm.

This is an in-person program hosted by Dorsey & Whitney LLP free for World Affairs Council, Washington China Relations Council members, and students! Non-member registration will be $10. Registration is required. 

About Our Local Panelists

Dr. Spencer Cohen is the Principal and Founder of High Peak Strategy LLC, an international trade and economics research consulting firm based in Seattle, WA. Dr. Cohen consults and writes extensively on international trade, China’s economy, leading industries, and regional economic analysis. He has written opinion pieces in the South China Morning Post, The Daily Guardian (India), Puget Sound Business Journal, and Seattle Business Magazine. He works with ports, international trade associations, corporations, and economic development organizations across the U.S. and abroad. Prior to forming High Peak Strategy, Spencer served as senior economist with a Seattle-based economics consulting firm. He has also held policy and research roles with the State of Washington.

Spencer is a 2021-2023 Public Intellectuals Program fellow (seventh cohort) with the National Committee on U.S.-China Relations. He is also an affiliate professor in the Department of Geography at the University of Washington. Dr. Cohen has a PhD in geography from the University of Washington, an MA in China Studies, also from the University of Washington, and BA in mathematics and history from the University of Connecticut.

John VerWey is an East Asia National Security Advisor at Pacific Northwest National Laboratory (PNNL). In this role at a U.S. Department of Energy national lab, he supports U.S. government missions to protect and promote science and technology leadership for economic and national security. His current work focuses on critical technology protection, export controls, supply chain security, and nonproliferation in the context of U.S.-China technology competition. He is also a non-resident fellow at Georgetown University’s Center for Security and Emerging Technology (CSET).

Before joining PNNL, VerWey served in several U.S. government roles at the Office of the U.S. Trade Representative (USTR), the U.S. International Trade Commission (USITC) and the U.S. Department of Commerce. In these positions he analyzed the effects of international trade, supply chains, Chinese industrial policies, export controls, and foreign direct investment on U.S. advanced technology industries, with a focus on microelectronics. He also served as a staff-liaison to the Committee on Foreign Investment in the United States (CFIUS) at USTR and supported investigations for the executive branch and congressional committees on economic competitiveness issues at the USITC and Commerce. Prior to government service, he consulted for the European Parliament’s Internal Market and Consumer Protection Committee and worked as a program manager at the American Enterprise Institute.

John’s research has been published by the USITC, the Journal of International Commerce and Economics, IEEE-Computer, and CSET, among others, and he has testified before the U.S.-China Economic and Security Review Commission (USCC). He holds a graduate degree in international political economy from the London School of Economics and undergraduate degrees in Asian studies and history from Gonzaga University. VerWey is a Nonresident Fellow at the National Bureau of Asian Research (NBR).

About Our Moderator

Dori Jones Yang is an award-winning author, journalist, and speaker. Dori worked for eight years in the 1980s as Hong Kong bureau chief for Business Week, covering China during the pivotal years when it went from isolation to engagement with the outside world. Educated in history at Princeton and in international relations at Johns Hopkins SAIS, she has written eight books, including her most recent, When the Red Gates Opened: A Memoir of China’s Reawakening.

Fluent in Mandarin Chinese, she has traveled throughout China over forty years and spoken about her books across the United States, as well as in Beijing, Hong Kong, and Shanghai. Most recently, she has given lectures about contemporary China on cruise ships and at community groups in Greater Seattle. For more information, see https://dorijonesyang.com/.

Our partners:

Amazon is an underwriting sponsor of all World Affairs Council Community Programs.