Initiative for U.S.-China Dialogue on Global Issues

The climate change research group’s work, along with that of many others has contributed to the current level of fairly high understanding between the United States and China on climate change, and what is a broad common position in terms of our national interests. At present, with the Trump administration in office we have an administration that is not channeling broad national interests, but rather a much narrower group of interests on their climate policy. We are at a difficult moment in terms of the U.S. federal government position on climate change, but the U.S.-China partnership continues and we are seeing an interesting flourishing of activity at the sub-national level with government leaders such as Governor Brown and Governor Cuomo in New York. At the same time, we are also witnessing a flourishing of non-governmental cooperation programs like the climate change research group Georgetown University is hosting. I think we are at a complicated place diplomatically at the national level but we are still driving forward to understand our commonalities and work in a collaborative way.