Ep. 17 – WITA’s Friday Exchange: Art of the Deal(s): Trump & Xi Meet; Asian Trade Deals; Soybeans, Chips, Critical Minerals and More

Wendy Cutler is Senior Vice President at the Asia Society Policy Institute (ASPI), based in Washington, D.C. In this role, she focuses on leading initiatives that address challenges related to trade, investment, economic security, and innovation, as well as women’s empowerment in Asia.

Cutler joined ASPI following an illustrious career of nearly three decades as a diplomat and negotiator in the Office of the U.S. Trade Representative (USTR), where she also served as Acting Deputy U.S. Trade Representative. During her time at USTR, she worked on a range of bilateral, regional, and multilateral trade negotiations and initiatives, including the U.S.-Korea Free Trade Agreement, the Trans-Pacific Partnership, U.S.-China negotiations, and the WTO Financial Services negotiations.

Cutler has published a series of ASPI papers on the Asian trade landscape and serves as a regular media commentator on trade and investment developments in Asia and the world.

Dawn Shackleford is the President of Looking Glass Trade, LLC, providing strategic trade policy solutions for complex international trade challenges. She is a Director-at-Large on ANSI’s Board of Directors and a member of ANSI’s International Policy Advisory Group. Dawn was awarded the Association of Women in International Trade’s 2025 Government Service Award due to her long and distinguished career with the U.S. government, serving the United States and representing U.S. companies in the global trade space. She served as the Executive Director for Trade Agreements Policy & Negotiations at the U.S. Department of Commerce, International Trade Administration from 2022 to 2025. In this capacity she oversaw Commerce Department engagement in multilateral trade institutions to help U.S. exporters, monitoring and import licensing of steel and aluminum trade to help U.S. importers and domestic industry, 232 related matters in cooperation with the Bureau of Industry & Security, and the facilitation of the U.S. Foreign Trade Zones program to bring jobs and manufacturing to the United States. Prior to this position, Dawn served in various positions in the Office of the U.S. Trade Representative from 2004 to 2022, including as the Assistant U.S. Trade Representative for the Office of Southeast Asia and the Pacific where she served as senior official for the Trade Pillar of the Indo-Pacific Economic Framework (IPEF) negotiations, the Assistant U.S. Trade Representative for WTO and Multilateral Affairs where she served as senior official for WTO, OECD, G20 and G7 engagement, and the Deputy Assistant U.S. Trade Representative for India, Nepal and Bhutan. She also served as the lead U.S. negotiator for the WTO Trade Facilitation Agreement, the customs and trade facilitation chapter of the Trans-Atlantic Trade and Investment Partnership Agreement, multiple WTO accession negotiations, and the government procurement chapters in the U.S. FTA negotiations with Oman and the United Arab Emirates. She also worked on various WTO, OECD, APEC, G20, and UN trade policy issues. Ms. Shackleford was elected to an international leadership position as the first female chairperson of the Trade Committee of the Organization of Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD) from 2020 to 2021. From 1998 to 2004 Ms. Shackleford served as a policy analyst within the Office of the Under Secretary of Defense for Policy and in the Department of the Navy. From 2003 to 2005 she served as an adjunct professor at American University’s School of International Service. She holds a Master of Arts Degree in International Affairs from American University in Washington, DC, a Bachelor of Arts Degree in Politics from the University of California, Santa Cruz, and studied at the National University of Ireland, Galway, and Friedrich Schiller University, Jena, Germany.

Sara Schuman is a Managing Director at Beacon Global Strategies, where she leads the firm’s International Trade Practice. She brings unparalleled experience and insight at the forefront of U.S.-China trade relations, having served in senior U.S. government roles for more than a decade in Washington and Beijing.

Prior to joining Beacon, Schuman was the Senior Trade Representative for China at the Office of the United States Trade Representative (USTR), where she was one of the key U.S. officials responsible for trade negotiations with China and for developing and implementing U.S. trade policy toward China, including coordinating with U.S. trading partners and allies on economic security initiatives. She also served as Minister Counselor for Trade Affairs at the U.S. Embassy in Beijing during the first Trump and Biden administrations, acting as USTR’s envoy to the People’s Republic of China and the top U.S. trade official in the country. In that role, she was deeply involved in the Phase One Agreement trade negotiations and held broad responsibility for monitoring China’s implementation of its commitments under the agreement.

During the second Trump Administration, Schuman took part in multiple rounds of high-level negotiations with China and USTR’s review of China-related trade issues under the Presidential Memorandum on America First Trade Policy. She also has extensive experience with trade enforcement, including work on several World Trade Organization disputes against China involving rare earths, raw materials, aircraft, automobiles, aluminum, intellectual property rights, subsidies, electronic payments, and agriculture, and played a leading role in USTR’s Section 301 investigation of China’s technology transfer practices during the first Trump Administration.

Throughout her government career, Schuman worked extensively with other federal agencies, including the Departments of Treasury, Commerce, State, Agriculture, Energy, and Homeland Security. She was also detailed for one year to the U.S. House of Representatives’ bipartisan Select Committee on the Strategic Competition with China, serving as senior advisor on trade and economic security to the Ranking Member.

Schuman is fluent in Mandarin Chinese and has spent more than a decade living and working in China. Before joining USTR in 2013, she practiced law with an international law firm in New York and Beijing. She holds a J.D. magna cum laude from Brooklyn Law School, a B.A. cum laude in International Politics and Economics from Middlebury College, and a certificate in China Studies from the Johns Hopkins University Nanjing Center.

Joe Damond’s career spans more than 40 years in both the government and private sectors in Washington. He served 16 years as a trade official at the Department of Commerce and the Office of the United States Trade Representative, which included a diverse set of responsibilities. Most notably, for seven years as deputy assistant United States trade representative for Asia and the Pacific, he was responsible for executing United States trade policy with Southeast Asia and the Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation forum and served as chief negotiator of bilateral trade agreements with Laos and Cambodia and the historic Bilateral Trade Agreement with Vietnam, which was concluded in 2000. He also served as the chair of the Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation Committee on Trade and Investment. Mr. Damond then spent more than 20 years in the private sector, holding senior positions in the pharmaceutical and biotechnology sectors focused on international trade and health policy issues and global government affairs, and representing the sector during numerous bilateral and global trade agreements. In addition, he has spent the last four years as a consultant on healthcare and trade policy issues, representing both private sector and government clients with a focus on Asia and Europe. He is the author of Give Trade a Chance: The Negotiation of the U.S.-Vietnam Bilateral Trade Agreement.