Everyone from farmers to Fortune 500 companies are now feeling the impact of Trump administration tariffs aimed primarily at reducing the trade deficit and reviving domestic manufacturing. University of Delaware experts offer insight into the economic, political and social impacts of these tariffs and what the future of U.S. trade policy may hold.
Experts available: Alice Ba, associate professor, International Relations and Comparative Politics – Topic: Economic implications of tariffs on domestic industries and global supply chains.
Dan Green, associate professor, International Relations and Political Theory – Topic: Political dynamics of U.S. trade policy and congressional responses.
Dan Kinderman, professor, Comparative Politics and International Relations – Topic: Impacts on international business relationships and corporate strategy.
Robert Denemark, professor, International Relations – Global geopolitical implications and international relations perspectives.
Stuart Kaufman, professor, Political Science and International Relations – Historical context and comparative analysis of past U.S. trade policies.
Journalists who would like to speak with these experts can click on their profiles or email mediarelations@udel.edu.
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2 min
In the bustling geopolitical arena of Southeast Asia, the rivalry between the United States and China often takes center stage. This region, where great powers converge, has become a pivotal battleground for influence and control. But the reality is that this contest involves more than just these two giants. It's a multi-dimensional chessboard, and Southeast Asian nations aren't just passive pieces; they are active players with their own agendas.
In a new analysis of the ongoing contest between these superpowers, University of Delaware professor Alice Ba discussed the ways in which Southeast Asian countries are not only impacted by the struggles over economic influence and military expansion but also can and will play a major role in the outcome. She can also address the following topics:
The expansion of U.S.-China tensions into additional economic realms, especially the politicization of supply chains, and how that broadens the impact on Southeast Asia. For all Southeast Asian states, economics is regarded as the foundation for legitimacy and regime stability and thus, unlike the South China Sea, U.S. and Chinese economic policies are felt more widely across the region. The U.S.-China rivalry's destabilizing integration trends of the last four decades and the foundations on which Southeast Asian states have achieved highly prized degrees of regional stability, economic prosperity, diplomatic standing and regime legitimacy. Ba can talk about how Southeast Asian states can respond to this destabilization and new policies they can adopt to address the surging rivalry. The viewpoint that the United States has not taken sufficient advantage of Southeast Asian interest in greater economic and diplomatic engagement — a perception that for some states is also reinforced by Washington’s normative democracy agenda. Ba is available for interviews and can be contacted by clicking on her profile below.
Media
Social
Biography
Alice D. Ba is professor of political science and international relations at the University of Delaware. She studies the structures, processes, and systemic effects of regionalism and regional integration; relations between Southeast Asian states and major powers, especially China and the United States; and the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN). Recent work investigates the politics and effects of competing US, China, and ASEAN initiatives; regional multilateralism; ASEAN’s institutional legitimation challenges and strategies in response to Myanmar and other challenges; China as a leading power; and the role of strategic narratives in China-Southeast Asia relations. The author of (Re)Negotiating East and Southeast Asia: Region, Regionalism, and the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (Stanford 2009), she has received US Fulbright awards for work in Beijing and Singapore and serves on several editorial boards. She teaches courses on Southeast Asia's world relations and development, the international relations of Asia, Chinese foreign policy, and comparative regionalisms and served as director of Asian Studies at the University of Delaware from 2009-2014.
Areas of Expertise
International Relations of East and Southeast Asia
China's "Belt and Road" in Southeast Asia: Constructing the Strategic Narrative in Singapore
Asian Perspective
2019
China's Belt and Road Initiative (BRI) is viewed by most as symbolic of a new era of Chinese initiative and ambition. But while much attention has focused on how the BRI fits into China's—and specifically Xi Jinping's—grand narrative of national rejuvenation, less has been said about regional narratives—that is, the narratives of China's target audiences. Toward addressing this oversight, I consider the case of Singapore in relation to BRI. Specifically, I give attention to strategic narratives that offer analytic windows into the complex relationships being negotiated between China and Southeast Asian states. Strategic narratives, as instruments of policy, also play roles in constructing the strategic space in which BRI enters, with implications for the opportunities and constraints faced by China in Southeast Asia.
ASEAN’s constructed dichotomies: the ongoing need for complexity-sensitive research agendas
The Pacific Review
2019
How best to assess ASEAN as a collective enterprise are longstanding. Producing often polar assessments of the organization and its activities, the question has been a recurrent one in the scholarship on ASEAN and any retrospective on the organization. Stubbs’ (2019) article does not resolve the question, but it does offer ways to make sense of the debate. It also identifies ways forward with its identification of analytic criteria by which ASEAN’s performance as an international organization has been assessed. How well his two-camp categorization of the literature captures the state of play, however, can be debated. It is also not without potential costs.
Multilateralism and East Asian transitions: the English School, diplomacy, and a networking regional order
International Politics
2020
This article traces East Asia’s evolving multilateralisms and role in transitioning East Asia away from “US hub-and-spokes” bilateralism toward a more networked system of security arrangements. Drawing on the English School, it argues for revisiting multilateralism’s diplomatic foundations as a way to direct attention to (1) the practice’s region-specific content and (2) the ways that multilateralism has introduced system-transitioning changes that include system-level dynamics associated with membership, actor hood, and the types of security at stake. The result is a more complex security environment and normative context that calls for more multifaceted responses from all, including the United States and China whose current multilateral diplomacies both draw from and challenge the multilateral norms and practices that have been created. Theoretically, re-attention to multilateralism’s diplomatic foundations also offers the English School an opportunity to make more distinctive contributions to ongoing debates about East Asia’s networking processes and security arrangements.
Vietnam's Cautious Response to China's Belt and Road Initiative: The Imperatives of Domestic Legitimation
Asian Perspective
2021
China's Belt and Road may be China's "Project of the Century," but for Vietnam it encapsulates an age-old predicament, namely, how best to respond to the mix of opportunity and challenge represented by its very large neighbor next door. This article finds in Vietnam's response a mix of caution and engagement reflective of Vietnam's distinctive positionality on the asymmetry-authority framework outlined in the introductory essay. It gives special attention to how ongoing maritime disputes intensify the challenge on both asymmetry and especially, domestic authority dimensions, but also how Vietnam's response to BRI illustrates elites' dynamic adjustments between four key sources of domestic legitimacy—welfare, anticorruption, nationalism, and autonomy. While the domestic nationalist challenge posed by China largely explains Vietnam's caution and ambivalence about BRI, these tensions also make BRI's diplomatic and political functions and thus, Vietnam's engagement more important beyond the economic opportunities it may offer.
Diversification's legitimation challenges: ASEAN and its Myanmar predicament Get access Arrow
International Affairs
2023
International organizations (IOs) confront complex legitimation challenges with the diversification of audiences and actors asserting judgment and input. Drawing on Lenz and Söderbaum's agents-audience-environment (AAE) conceptualization of legitimation strategies, this discussion advances understandings of how diversification affects IO legitimation and legitimation strategies. Particular attention is given to their special sensitivity to internal IO diversification processes whose constitutive changes affect both the agent and audience ends of strategy. It especially highlights three commonly found sources of internal IO diversification: domestic change, new membership and new purposes. Providing illustration is the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN) and its 30+ year-long efforts to defend and legitimate the organization's choices vis-à-vis its most internationally criticized member, Myanmar, and to manage the delegitimating effects of association.
Southeast Asian Responses to Great Power Rivalry: Implications for US-Southeast Asia Relations
(2023) Southeast Asia in a World of Strategic Competition: Assessing Agency and Options Putrajaya, Malaysia
Great Power Rivalry and the Role of Middle Powers
(2023) Europe’s Foreign and Security Policy Webinar Series Philippines
Institutional Competition and Transition: Positioning Southeast Asia and ASEAN in the Indo-Pacific
(2022-2023 Lecture Series) Institute of East Asian Studies, University of Duisberg-Essen Online
China From Its Southern Periphery: Opportunities and Contradictions
(2021-2022) Foreign Service Institute, US Department of State Online
Legitimacy and Global IR
(2022) Future Directions in Global Legitimacy Research Stockholm, Sweden
Multiple Audiences, Institutional Legitimation Strategies, and A Changing ASEAN
(2021-2022) Practices of Legitimation in International Organizations Workshop, Legitimation of Regional Organisation (LegRO) Project German Institute of Global and Area Studies and University of Gothenburg
ASEAN and Asian Crossroads: Comparing Conditions of Institutional Change
