In her 2025 Zeidman Memorial Lecture, Katherine Tai ’92 explored the challenges of the US-China economic relationship.

Few Americans have witnessed the dynamics of US-China trade over the past three decades quite like Katherine Tai ‘92, who until January was the U.S. Trade Representative in the Biden Administration. In March, Tai delivered the John Fisher Zeidman ’79 Memorial Lecture, becoming the first Sidwell Friends alum and graduate of the School’s Chinese Studies Program to join the long list of Zeidman lecturers—a list that stands as a who’s who of scholars, diplomats, journalists, and other China watchers. 

It was a full-circle moment for the Zeidman family, who in the early 1980s founded the program as well as the memorial lecture, which each year brings experts in Chinese policy and culture to Sidwell Friends. Sidwell was among the first schools in the United States to have a Chinese studies program, Tai noted.

Tai’s first visit to China came after her junior year of Upper School in 1991—with a Sidwell Friends summer program. Since then, Tai has maintained a focus on China and its role in the world. Sidwell gave me the gift of “humanizing China,” Tai said, “and making real and familiar the relationships between the people of the United States and China, and the countries and the government.” After college at Yale, Tai lived in China to teach for two years.

But it was when she graduated from law school at Harvard that the world shifted and opened up a new realm of possibilities for Tai’s career. In 2001, China joined the World Trade Organization (WTO). “There was an enormous sense of possibility and positivity” [vis-à-vis China] at that time, Tai said. There was a widespread belief that becoming part of the global trade organization would “lead to economic and political reforms in China.”

It did not work out that way. Over the next 10 years, Tai worked in both the private sector and government, ultimately becoming an experienced WTO litigator. She developed and tried cases for the Office of the United States Trade Representative (USTR) and eventually became chief counsel for China trade enforcement in 2011. But during that time, the promise of China’s entry into the WTO—that free trade would influence human rights, make China more democratic, and lead to deep economic reforms—had collapsed. What’s more, she noted, a trio of economists—David Autor, David Dorn, and Gordon Hansons—famously documented that in the first 10 years after joining the World Trade Organization, there was a loss of 1 million manufacturing jobs in the United States. The economic and political consequences of that “China shock” continue to shape American politics, economics, and society.

As China quickly became the global leader in manufacturing, U.S. manufacturing employment plummeted. At the same time, Tai said, as many had warned, with the loss of domestic manufacturing came the loss of persuasive leverage to advocate for consumer safety, environmental codes, and fair wages. Not only had Chinese domestic policy remained relatively unaffected by the WTO, the United States had lost some of its most effective tools to promote respect for human rights.

But Tai still believed in the promise of trade as an instrument for good—so she got to work. Tai became chief trade counsel and Trade Subcommittee staff director for the U.S. House Ways and Means Committee. During that time, she played a pivotal role in the negotiations between congressional Democrats and the first Trump administration, which led to the historic ratification of the United-States-Mexico-Canada Agreement (USMCA) in 2020. The USMCA, which replaced the North American Free Trade Agreement (or NAFTA, signed in the pre-internet age of the early 1990s), specifically aims to benefit North American workers, farmers, ranchers, and businesses by improving labor standards, environmental protections, and affordable access to medicines. 

“Trade has to work within a larger suite of economic and social policies,” Tai said. That’s why, when she became the 19th U.S. trade representative and a member of President Joe Biden’s Cabinet, Tai challenged her agency “to put the U.S. back into USTR.” She and her team visited all 50 states during her four years in office as the nation’s principal trade advisor, negotiator, and spokesperson, including hosting United Automobile Workers President Shawn Fain in Detroit at a meeting of Asia-Pacific trade ministers to demonstrate the importance of trade policy leaders listening to and hearing the experiences and needs of workers. Tai noted that there is truth in the statement that “trade wars are class wars,” the title of a popular book published in 2020. She added that in the past, trade policy in the United States and globally had been formulated without seriously considering the needs and interests of workers.

Acknowledging the trade debates occurring in Washington and around the world, Tai told the audience that she is not fundamentally opposed to tariffs. “It might seem bewildering to some Americans, but for those Americans whose access to the middle class has been diminishing, tariffs are shields of protection,” she said. However, she added, tariffs should be applied where the benefits, including for workers and jobs and industries, are actually achieved and not just empty promises.

As for China, Tai said that its dominance as a manufacturing and export powerhouse remains a challenge not just to the United States but to much of the world. And while she believes that the United States still has economic advantages, she said she expects that trade tensions will continue, and perhaps even escalate. China and the United States “will need to clash,” she said, “before the contours of a new world order begin to take shape.”

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The John Fisher Zeidman ’79 Chinese Studies Fund, created in his memory by family and friends in 1982, advances the study of Chinese language, history, and culture at Sidwell Friends. Since its inception, the Chinese Studies Program has grown significantly and includes the annual John Fisher Zeidman ’79 Memorial Lecture.