Steven Okun: U.S.-Southeast Asia Trade, Tension, and Turning-points

In this conversation with Steven Okun, we discuss the evolving relationships economic relationship between Washington and Southeast Asia.

During his career in and out of government, Steve has worked on policy issues on both sides of the Pacific. Today, as the founder of APAC Advisors, he counsels clients on sustainability and public affairs strategy.

Richard Gray

Hello, everyone. Welcome to Pacific Clarity. Today we're talking with Steve Okun. Steve's career spans government service, consulting, and social impact. A seasoned Democratic presidential campaigner, Steve received a political appointment to the U.S. Department of Transportation where he was deputy general counsel.

Thereafter, he entered the world of public affairs in Singapore, working for KKR and UPS. Today, he's the founder of APAC Advisors, where he counsels clients on sustainability and public affairs strategy. Steve maintains an active presence in the American expat community, having served as governor of AmCham Singapore and chair of AmChams of the Indo-Pacific.

Steve, pleasure speaking with you.

Steven Okun

Great to be with both of you.

Richard Gray

So we wanted to start this conversation thinking about the lattice work of existing trade frameworks in Southeast Asia and how they relate to US and China economic entanglement with the region. And so, Steve, as Americans, for better or worse, IPEF is kind of de facto dead at this point. However, the region is in many ways still very interconnected with a lot of these multilateral frameworks, whether it's the Comprehensive and Progressive Trans-Pacific Partnership, the China ASEAN Free Trade Agreement, and the Regional Comprehensive Economic Partnership. And, while original offerings of the TPP and IPEF were meant to be a countervailing force by the US against China's economic role in the region, these organizational remnants seem to be more connectivity between Southeast Asian and Indo-Pacific states as opposed to the US and the region writ large.

In some ways, this has led to more economic engagement within ASEAN, although that's had limited success, but more so investment from Japan and South Korea into countries like Vietnam where they're maintaining pretty significant corporate footholds. And so, looking at the trends of all of these things, and particularly now as we think about the aftermath of the Liberation Day, tariffs, there's a renewed conversations about things like the CPTPP and RCEP integration, and the role that the Europeans might have as diversification of commerce and of supply chains.

Taking into account all these different factors, how do you think about the developments happening in this period? Are the trends as simple as the US disengaging and other players increasing their engagement? Is there more complexity of this ecosystem?

Steven Okun

Let's break it down into four components, and then we'll figure out where the world is going to head next.

If you think from a Southeast Asia perspective, the U.S. is the most important country in certain ways, historically had been from a trade, an investment perspective; China's now increasing, but the U.S. remains one of the most important markets, if not the most important market for everybody in Southeast Asia from an investment perspective, so what is the FDI coming in, which is critical, of course, and then a trade perspective, both a trade in goods, which is what you get from Southeast Asia to the U.S., but where the U.S. dominates is trade and services, which, of course, President Trump doesn't care about, although he should, right? So trade in services, trade in goods, incredibly important between each of the 10 countries, some more than others, and the United States.

Now let's bring in China, which is increasingly almost as important, if not as important, as the United States, depending on the country in Southeast Asia. China is now, from a bilateral perspective, very much a focus both for trade in goods, less so for trade in services, and certainly increasingly for FDI.

Now, what is it that the countries in Southeast Asia want to do and have been doing, and what Donald Trump, I think, Richard, to your question, may accelerate? Well, first, you need to get the countries in Southeast Asia to trade with one another, right? And so that's intra-ASEAN, that's trade between all of the 10 countries or some subset of them. They're OK when it comes to having increasing that intra-ASEAN trade, when you have things like an ASEAN single window, so you can have customs that's going to be user-friendly between the different countries in Southeast Asia.

So you try and foster intra-ASEAN trade, and that has been going on. But there's only so much investment here. There's only so much manufacturing here. There's only so much domestic consumption here. You still have to sell somewhere else. But you do have this increase in intra-ASEAN trade.

Can you replace the United States with intra-ASEAN trade? And those are things like the CPTPP, as you mentioned, where you have countries like Malaysia and Vietnam and Singapore and Japan and Australia and New Zealand being members. So you then can have intra-Asia trade, and then you also have China overlapping on that through another trade agreement, not nearly as comprehensive as the CPTPP, but the Regional Comprehensive Economic Partnership. So that's China, Japan, Korea, Australia, New Zealand, and the 10 countries now in Southeast Asia. So you have all of these dynamics, you have U.S. bilateral trade, you have China bilateral trade, you have intra-ASEAN trade, you have intra-Asia trade.

And all of this is evolving in President Trump and what he has been doing, through his actions on Liberation Day, is to show the countries here, you have to come up with some rules-based system. You can't rely on the United States anymore. Now, they are also very concerned about China. So they're concerned about the U.S. and the tariffs that the U.S. is putting on. They're concerned about China. They are very nervous about all of these Chinese goods, which had been going to the United States, now need a new market. Well, in a trade term, these goods, if they get dumped into Southeast Asia, that harms the Southeast Asia manufacturing base, that harms Southeast Asia employment. So a lot of dynamics that we can try and unpack, but you have to think of it in all of those areas, not just that Trump is doing this, how are other countries going to react? Because there's too many other moving pieces to think about.

Richard Gray

As an extension of this question, what would be like your case for why some level of US economic multilateralism is important? So obviously one of this would be supply chains, perhaps you need that connectivity, and so having some level of FTA is beneficial on that end. But if you were trying to say, this is why IPEF or at least like pillar two, which was focused on supply chains is important, what would like your main case for that be?

Steven Okun

Well, there's two cases. In one case, you'll make from just a trade perspective. And this is what you call the spaghetti bowl of bilateral FTAs. They're impossible for businesses to use because if you have a U.S.-Singapore FTA or a U.S.-Singapore bilateral trade agreement, you have a U.S.-Vietnam FTA trade agreement, and then you have a US-Japan trade agreement, then those agreements don't mix, intertwine with one another. Well, then how are you going to be setting up supply chains? How are you going to be taking advantage of these FTAs when you've got just a spaghetti bowl? It's literally impossible, and it's certainly impossible for SMEs to do. It's hard enough for huge multinationals to take advantage of a bilateral spaghetti bowl of agreements. That's why having a plurilateral agreement like the TPP or a plurilateral agreement like IPEF or RCEP for that matter, let alone the multilateral frameworks like a WTO. That's what businesses need.

What the Trump administration has decided from a trade perspective is that the United States is worse off when it is in a plurilateral or multilateral framework. And the reason that is the case is because the US is the biggest, strongest, most powerful country, economy, military in the world. And anytime the US negotiates bilaterally, the U.S. is in a more powerful position; the U.S. has all the leverage, or as Donald Trump would say, the U.S. has all the cards. So you want to be in a bilateral negotiation because then you get a better deal. That is the America first philosophy. That does not work in an era of globalization and modern supply chains. And so that is one reason.

The second reason is a geopolitical reason. If the US sees China as its greatest competitor, which of course it is, the US should be working with partners and allies who also see China as a competitor. Maybe in a different way than the United States does, but they see it as a competitor too. Every president, other than Donald Trump, works with partners and allies from a geopolitical perspective. And so when you go bilateral, when you hit Vietnam with massive tariffs, when you hit Singapore with tariffs, a country that you have a trade surplus with if you're the United States, you are going to lose geopolitical advantage by not working with partners in allies.

That is the frustration I would say with the Trump administration, is that their America First bilateral approach doesn't advantage companies, businesses, or the United States, or the United States' economy from a trade perspective or a geopolitical perspective.

Jersey Lee

So let me try to slightly make, I suppose, the Trump administration's case for them. Part of what they're doing right now, holding potential high reciprocal tariffs over the heads of many of the countries in Southeast Asia that run trade surpluses against America, is that they are threatening them to curb imports from China. There's some reporting that they specifically asked the European countries, including the UK, that you're either with us or you're with China.

Part of the calculus or the justification is that this is intended to deal with the issue of transshipments, particularly in the case of Southeast Asia, which occurred mostly as a result of Trump's initial tariffs on China during his first administration. And Trump had said even before his re-election that he wanted to tackle this issue of transshipments. So would this be the kind of hard decoupling that you have argued against? And how should the U.S. deal with the real issue of transshipments, in your view?

Steven Okun

Okay, so the question is from a transshipment perspective, and obviously we're only talking about China, Jersey, as you said, what is the good that you are concerned about when it comes to China? And if you have a tariff on a Chinese good, you can make that tariff, you know, China plus one.

So fine, if you say we don't want to have Chinese electric vehicles coming into the United States because these Chinese electric vehicles have been subsidized, because the government has protected Chinese domestic electric vehicles from competition, which has enabled them to become as good as these cars are, and there's no question these are world class cars that the Chinese are producing; but if they've done so because of unfair advantages, then you put the tariffs on those cars, whether they come from China or if they come from China through Vietnam or through Mexico or wherever else you want. If that's your issue, then tariff those cars. And you have a full justification to do that.

To blanket reciprocal tariffs, whatever reciprocal means, but to have a universal tariff on top of reciprocal tariffs without a justification, that is what the issue is. So by all means, if you want to protect US manufacturing from unfair China competition, you can do that. There are ways to do that. The Trump administration did that in its first term. The Biden administration did that in his one term. The Trump administration could be doing that and is doing that to some degree in its second term. But not putting a 10% universal tariff on the world, that is not going to address that problem. And it's going to cause more economic harm than otherwise.

And what we can get into, there are issues in other countries beyond the transshipment issues. There are non-tariff barriers that should be addressed; I mean, just because Peter Navarro says something doesn't make it wrong. So I agree that there are significant issues across Asia with non-tariff barriers. And by all means, the Trump administration should address those. The Biden administration should address those. The Obama administration should have addressed those. They tried to do it. The Obama administration tried to do it through TPP. The Biden administration did it in a less fulsome way in IPEF. Now let's see if the Trump administration does it. And we hope they do it. Speaking on behalf of the business community writ large, and not just the US business community, all of the business community wants to see these non-tariff barriers addressed.

Jersey Lee

More broadly for Southeast Asia, it seems like there are no good choices. On the one hand, as you mentioned, a significant part of the economy is built on a China plus one strategy. And this sometimes leads into transshipments. On the other hand, as you mentioned earlier, they don't want there to be a flow of goods that were displaced, Chinese exports that were displaced from the American market to destroy their own domestic industries. So faced with a potential forced choice that Trump is apparently raising right now, what choice could they make? And how do you think this could develop if it ends up being this forced choice?

Steven Okun

Well, Jersey, that's what we're all watching to see what happens, you know, in the coming weeks and months, because it's not just what Washington is going to do. It is what is Beijing going to do. And now we have to watch both of those.

Look, we already see tariffs from Southeast Asia onto China to protect their domestic manufacturing. Thailand has imposed tariffs. Indonesia has imposed tariffs. Russia has imposed tariffs on China. They don't want the Chinese automobiles coming into Russia to decimate the Russian domestic auto market because they need that for national security reasons, the same as the US needs a strong auto manufacturing sector for national security. So we need to watch what are the countries here going to do if China shifts its exports from the United States to Southeast Asia and other countries. So that's one thing we're watching.

We have already seen the Malaysian government say to the Chinese government, do not put investment into Malaysia if it is just to avoid U.S. tariffs, we don't want that; if you want to put Chinese investment into Malaysia, that is going to play by Malaysianrules, that is going to hire Malaysian citizens, that is going to put money into the Malaysian economy, of course, you're welcome, but if you're doing it for tariff avoidance, we don't want it. I was very surprised when the Malaysian vice minister for trade said that publicly.

So you now are seeing that the countries in Southeast Asia recognize that they don't want to see just a flood coming in from China, either from a transshipment perspective or from a goods perspective. And we're all watching to see how this plays out. Now, the countries in ASEAN have said, we need to come together, it's better if we negotiate together as one versus the U.S. It would certainly be true if that were the case, it'd be true against China.

ASEAN has never shown any capability to be a player from a geopolitical perspective. So can Donald Trump do the impossible and bring ASEAN together? I'm not holding my breath, but we'll see if there can be some type of collective action, both to Trump and to Xi Jinping.

Richard Gray

In March, the Singaporeans sounded the alarm that there were chips going from Singapore in servers that had those video chips internalized, and that those lacked compliance with the Biden administration's AI Diffusion Act, went through Malaysia and probably to China.

Now, as of this past week, the Singaporeans seem to be trying to add more compliance mechanisms in working with the Trump administration to increase their leverage position in the tariff negotiations. As a broad sense, what do you make of these leakages of U.S. export controls? How are corporates thinking about this? And what even is the objective of the administration if this is one of their focal points?

Steven Okun

Richard, this gets to a broader change from a trade perspective. I used to say, in my career going back into government in the 90s, that I used to work at the intersection of business and government. And now I say I work at the collision of business and government. And you just described that collision. And it's because in the old days, if you looked at trade in goods, you had national security on one side, and it was very clear you could not trade in items that would harm the US national security; most countries have this, but we'll just use the US. So you would have export controls on military equipment. You couldn't sell military equipment to the Chinese. You couldn't sell it to the Russians, or whoever right.

So military, no good; everything else was okay, with this very little category in themiddle called dual use goods, and these were goods that could be used both for civilian purposes and military purposes, and you need to make sure that, if you're selling a dual use good, it would only be used for civilian purposes. For example, a helicopter could be used both for military purposes, but it could be used for putting out forest fires. It could be used for search and rescue. So you would say it's okay to do it for one, but not the other. So that dual use was kind of a complicated area, but it was a pretty narrow area of what would be considered dual use.

Now, national security and trade are almost completely intertwined, especially on technology. There's no question, AI, how do you know if the AI is being used for civilian purposes or for military purposes? Facial recognition, drones, all of the things that go into making those drones in AI, you need semiconductors, you need certain chips, all of that is now national security. It now becomes much more difficult for businesses and governments to know what is a product that you can't send to a country, in this case, like China.

What happened here in Singapore, and this is obviously a very public example, is you had these Nvidia chips go into a Dell server. The Dell server then comes here to Singapore. It then goes from Singapore to Malaysia. And then, as you say, presumably on to China. And so now the businesses, the government say, the US company sold it to a Singapore company. It was a licensed Singapore company. The Singapore company sells it to a Malaysian company, which is permitted. Who's responsible for it going from Malaysia to China? And the answer is kind of, now it's everybody. So the amount of due diligence you now need to do in terms of your supply chain is much more than you ever needed to do in the past. Just because somebody has a Singapore business license, will the U.S. consider that to be a Singapore company? Maybe, maybe not. If the company has a Malaysian business license, will Singapore and the U.S. consider that to be a Malaysian company? You can't rely on that anymore. You now need to go and look behind it. And then who are they selling to?

This is why IPEF wasn't necessarily designed for this. IPEF was the Indo-Pacific Economic Framework, and this was the Biden administration, which would not go as far as having a trade agreement, because trade is now a four-letter word in the United States, but would try and bring the like-minded countries together to focus on supply chain resilience. A lot of this came out of COVID, and we can talk about the breakdowns in supply chain on COVID, but it's equally applicable in a national security perspective. And so you want to have governments like Singapore, Malaysia,and the United States all talking to one another, with their businesses, when you are in an era of national security and trade being intertwined. And that's not happening right now. And so every government and business is going to have to become much more intertwined, into knowing exactly who and what is in their supply chain and your trade costs, your compliance costs, your due diligence.

Jersey Lee

Taking the broad view on what's going on, despite how terribly Trump has prosecuted this trade war, which you've argued a lot over the past months and also you argued a bit earlier in our conversation, you've also said that America likely still has an advantage or at least it's a wash. You know, even if America antagonizes all its allies, it would still be kind of a wash between whether it or China comes out on top. If that's so, why hasn't perhaps a more competent previous administration tried to decisively “win” competition with China with this kind of massive approach, as opposed to the more specifically targeted approach that, you know, there's been some frustration that it's not really doing enough, or engaging with the problem of China in a systemic enough manner.

Steven Okun

Great question. And to answer, you've got to go back to the early 2000s, basically. I'm not I'll keep it brief. But you've got to understand the history to know how we got here. So the U.S. position on China starting, I mean, maybe you don't want to start with Nixon and Carter who opened up China, President Carter formally did. But if you look at it, certainly President Clinton and maybe President Bush before him, but President Clinton onward, the view was that our policy towards China is going to be engage and accommodate; we are going to engage with China, we are going to bring them, invite them into the global rules-based system that we've all been following, that has been developed post-World War II. In particular, we want China into the WTO, and that we're going to bring them in as we engage with them. And we accommodate their rise. We are not going to expect them to follow all the rules immediately, because certainly in the 90s, China was a poor country and had a lot of people in poverty and did not have the systems in place and the businesses in place to fully follow the rules as they were written back then. So we will accommodate China. We'll accommodate their rise. And as they grow, they will become more like us and they will follow our rules.

That didn't happen. Now, you can argue that that was never going to happen. And the Americans in the West and the Japanese were always wrong to begin with, that was never China's plan. Or you could argue that China was on that path, and, let's say in 2012 or so, China diverted off of that path.

It doesn't matter why the Americans were wrong, either because they were always wrong or because China changed. China changed. That's what counts. And what happened was the Americans were late to the game on this. Everybody was late to the game on this. And you saw in particular in 2015, when China came out with its Made in China 2025 plan, and they said, we are going to use the power of the state and we are going to use state subsidies and we are going to protect our domestic market. We are going to create the champions of the 21st century on the key sectors, tech, AI, renewables, electric vehicles. pharma, all of those areas. And China was extraordinarily successful. They didn't accomplish everything they tried to do to dominate the 21st century key sectors, but they came close. And in some sectors, they did succeed.

That is what is now trying to be addressed. President Obama recognized this, started to recognize this, and he shifted away from accommodate and engage. And this is where TPP came in. This was how he was going to address what China has done, is that we are going to work with like-minded partners. We're going to not allow China to trade with us until they change. And that is what the TPP was all about. It got caught up in U.S. domestic politics. Even though it was signed by the United States, President Trump pulled out on day three in his first term.

Now, President Trump understood what was happening in China and he went much harder than President Obama did. And he went direct and he went with tariffs and export controls. And then President Biden kept up what President Trump was doing. And he upped the tariffs. He didn't take anything down that President Trump had put on, President Biden kept what President Trump did.

What Trump is doing very differently in Trump 2.0, is the tariffs that are going on China are at astronomically high levels, levels that have never been seen literally ever; forget going back to the 1920s, ever. And that way he is doing tariffs is having a great damage on the U.S. economy. But he's not only going after China on tariffs. He's going after the entire world with tariffs. He is going after tariffs on islands that only have penguins, okay? Everybody is getting hit with these tariffs. And that is where there is going to be such a pushback from other governments and businesses eventually are going to say this is not what is in the US interest. And that's where we are right now. And so we'll see if President Trump course corrects, and goes back to the focus mostly on China where it belongs, and hopefully on some non-tariff barriers in the rest of the world, or whether this keeps up and we end up in a global recession. And we also then have to see what China does, which is then going to have other knock-on effects.

Richard Gray

Speaking of recession, when you arrived in Singapore in 2003, Southeast Asia was approximately six years out from the 1997 Asian financial crisis and would face the 2007-2008 global financial crisis just four years later. Then the world faced economic shocks from COVID and now with reciprocal tariffs. Based on your experience now within Southeast Asia, what do you think about the region's resiliency? What has it learned in 1997 and 2007 and 2019 and perhaps now in 2025? What were those key lessons and what do you think are the remaining challenges to further booster that resiliency?

Steven Okun

Obviously you have 10 different governments, some of whom learned different lessons. But I think one of the lessons that they've learned is that liberalizing when it comes to investment, when it comes to trade, is going to help their economies. What they have tried to do and what they are doing is shifting from being an export driven economy, to having your own domestic market, to having domestic consumption, to serving your own people, not just exporting so that you're so subject to external shocks. There's been a lot of great businesses that have been created in SoutheastAsia, for Southeast Asia, for particular businesses, companies. I would say that is one of the lessons that has been learned.

The other thing is that it's also just demographically speaking, a very good time for Southeast Asia. A lot of people talk about the BRICS, you know, Brazil, Russia, India, China, and if you want to add S, in South Africa. Well, in this part of the world, we talk about the VIP countries, Vietnam, Indonesia, Philippines. What do the VIP countries have in common? They have large populations, close to 100 million between each of the three. Because you have such a large population, you can have a domestic market. These are young countries. This is not China, which is aging. It is not Japan, which is beyond aging in a way. They are going to have young people who are just now entering into the workforce, who are going to build a new middle class.So you have a great demographic dividend that is about to pay off in these countries.

And you can see that governance has been improving in these countries, in terms of transparency, in terms of rule of law, in terms of attacking corruption. Now, they have ways to go on this, right? All of these governments, and arguably, the United States has a way to go on transparency and rule of law now. But they are moving forward. And so it is an exciting time in Southeast Asia, especially when you look at the VIP countries, obviously you look at Singapore, which is gone from when I got here from being, you could argue, a sub-regional hub, and then has gone to becoming a regional hub. I'd argue that Singapore is a global hub right now. And so you've got that global hub here in Singapore. You've got the VIP countries. You've got others that are developing. Myanmar is a disaster, so we kind of put that one off to the side. But there is still excitement and opportunity here.

Jersey Lee

So a little bit on your current job at APAC Advisors. Part of your role involves ESG. Over the past few years across the Pacific, the idea of ESG investing has been all the rage in China, it's been all the rage here in Australia and until recently, America. Now it seems to be going the other way.

An example of this: I hold a certificate in ESG investing from the CFA Institute, but the name of the certificate was just changed, literally last month, April the 1st, into “Sustainable Investing Certificate”. This seems to fit into a broader pattern of global retreat from the concept of ESG. Do you see this as a specific response to Trump's return, or reflective of a broader and enduring change in the industry's understanding of this concept? And for Southeast Asia specifically, why is ESG an important tool for corporate operations?

Steven Okun

The answer is both. It is for both of those reasons. I'll start with what ESG was supposed to be and had been. I was the first person in global private equity to work on ESG in Asia. And that was not my foresight. That was when I joined KKR in 2011. As the head of public affairs for Asia, they said, you're going to work in three areas. You're going to work in government relations, public policy, communications, and ESG. I had to Google ESG. I had no idea what ESG meant in 2011. And most people didn't.

ESG is, had been, should have remained a financial term. ESG is about making money. That is what ESG is about. ESG is about how you reduce risk and create value. Sometimes you do both at the same time. Sometimes it's one, sometimes the other. And so, what do you do as an investor or as in a business? You ask yourself, how does my business impact the environment? How does my business impact my employees, my customers, my broader stakeholders? How is my business governed both internally and in dealing with government? How, in a material way, look at each factor in those three categories, and if that impacts my bottom line, either from a risk perspective or an opportunity perspective, then I need to focus on it, because I need to protect my business. I need to make money. I need to make a return for my shareholders, whatever the case may be.

So it was always about that, or it should have been always about that. That is what ESG was. Now, ESG got broadened out into a policy term. ESG never was a policy. It was financial. People conflated ESG with policy goals, and they would say a business should be making people's lives better. No, a business should be about making money. If they can do that and make people's lives better, that is a way to make money. That is different. But not all businesses are out there to have a social impact; some are. You need to look at ESG from a financial impact only. Every business impacts the environment, their workers, and customers, and this can impact how the business generates revenue ESG is not there to achieve a social or policy goal – a business incorporates ESG to reduce risk or create value from a financial perspective. ESG is misunderstood as a framework to achieve a policy objective – that is why the blowback to ESG occurred.

The other issue that we had is that people got away from explaining why an ESG factor impacted the bottom line. And an illustration of this is diversity in quotas. If you say, 50% of our board has to be women, or if you say, 50% of our senior management has to be women, the answer would be, well, why is that? What are you trying to achieve with that? And then you start getting into quotas, and then you start saying, we're just hiring somebody because of their gender, not because they're good at their job.

Instead of saying that, if you were to say, our board needs to be reflective of our customers, we need to make sure that our board is reflective of who is buying our product or our service, we need to make sure that our board is representative of our employees. And if it happens that the people who are making 70 percent of the decisions are women, of who's going to buy your product or service, you better have a lot of women on your board. You're not smart financially if you don't know how your customers are thinking. So instead of saying a quota, instead say, we need to have a diverse board that matches our customer base or matches our employees, you can't argue with that. And so that's what the shift now is.

ESG writ large, we lost a little bit of sight that this is about the bottom line. This is about businesses. This is about for-profit businesses. Look, government should be doing policy. NGOs can be doing policy. If you're an impact investor and you want to be doing policy, that's fine.

But if you're a business, focus on the bottom line and acting responsibly. So, Jersey, when you told me your story, I figured your certificate was either going to change to being a sustainability professional or a responsible investing professional, because that's what we've always been when we talk about ESG.

Richard Gray

Steve, to close our conversation today, I want to go back to the beginning of your career when you were a campaigner in three successive campaigns for Clinton and Gore twice and then Gore-Lieberman in the third roundabout. While we're still three years out from the 2028 election, what would your Asia policy recommendations be for a 2028 Democratic campaign?

Steven Okun

Way too soon right to figure out; we don't know so much. First of all, I would say let everybody possible campaign on the Democratic side, we need to see who's the best,so please run. If I’m a democrat, you know, AOC, if you want to run, get into the race; Pete Buttigieg, if you want to run, get into the race; Governor Pritzker, if you want to run, get into the race; Governor Whitmer, Governor Moore, there are so many potential good candidates.

So one, you don't know who's going to be good until they run. And then you will see who is going to be a good candidate or not a good candidate. And this really hurt Vice President Harris last time that she never had the opportunity to really run. I think it would have made her a much stronger candidate. And we can blame Joe Biden for that. But that's another story. So one, you don't know who's good until people run,you’ve got to get as many people to run as possible. And also, your arguments get stronger as you run against one another. And I think you know, President Obama became such a strong candidate because he had such a tough race against Secretary Clinton, then Senator Clinton, right? That is what really made him a good candidate,you had two different candidates. You've got to put them into that pressure cooker of a presidential campaign, and then you see what arguments the American people will buy.

So way too early to figure out who the right person is or even, and then the other thing we don't know, where the world is going to be two years from now. Is the US economy going to be in a depression? God, I hope not. Is it going to be in a recession? Is the US economy going to be very strong? Is Donald Trump right in that his plans are all going to work and turn around? What's the economy going to look like? What are the American people going to think about immigration? Are we going to still have wars going on in Ukraine with Russia, with its unlawful attacks and continuing to slaughter Ukrainians? What's going to happen in Gaza? Are we going to have peace in Asia? All of those things, until you know what that situation is, it will be impossible to say this would be the right candidate.

Do we want somebody with more of a foreign policy experience? Do we need someone with a domestic experience? Do we want a strong economic experience? Who knows? So just get everybody in, see what works, see who's the best, and then let's watch what happens, at least in the midterms, which are still too far away to predict.

Richard Gray

All right, great. Well, thank you so much, Stu. It's been lovely speaking with you.

Steven Okun

Richard, great to talk to you again; Jersey, great to meet you.

This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit pacificpolarity.substack.com