Walking Out: America’s New Trade Policy in the Asia-Pacific and Beyond

On Monday, February 10th, the Clements-Strauss Asia Policy Program hosted Dr. Michael Beeman for a book talk on his latest publication, Walking Out: America’s New Trade Policy in the Asia-Pacific and Beyond. The event was at 12:15 PM in SRH 3.122 at the LBJ School of Public Affairs.

From tariff wars to torn-up trade agreements, Walking Out explores America’s recent and dramatic turn away from support for freer, rules-based trade to instead go its own new way. Focusing on America’s trade engagements in the Asia-Pacific, Beeman contrasts the trade policy choices made by America’s leaders over several generations with those of today–decisions that are now undermining the trading system America created and triggering new tensions between America and its trading partners, allies and adversaries alike. With keen insight as a former senior U.S. trade official, he argues that America’s exceptionally deep political divisions are driving its policy reversals, giving rise to a new trade policy characterized by zero-sum beliefs about the kind of trade America wants with the world and about new rules for trade that it wants for itself. With enormous implications for the future of regional and global trade, this timely analysis unravels the implications of America’s seismic shift in approach for the future of the rules-based trading order and America’s role in it.

Dr. Beeman served as a senior trade official at the Office of the U.S. Trade Representative for over 16 years, most recently as the Assistant U.S. Trade Representative for Japan, Korea, and APEC from 2017-23 during which he led the negotiation for the U.S.-Japan Trade Agreement and the renegotiation of the U.S.-Korea Free Trade Agreement. From 2023-24, he was a Visiting Scholar and Lecturer at Stanford University. He received his DPhil in Politics from the University of Oxford in 1998 and is the author of Walking Out: America’s New Trade Policy in the Asia-Pacific and Beyond (2024) and Public Policy and Economic Competition in Japan (2002).