CSIS Surveys Show Expert Views on U.S.-China Trade and WTO Reform
The U.S.-China Global Economic Order (GEO) Dialogue, a long-standing track-two initiative hosted by the Center for Strategic and International Studies, has released findings from a series of three expert surveys conducted between May 2025 and July 2026.
The data tracks shifting sentiment among nongovernmental experts regarding trade volatility, the stability of the U.S. dollar, and the efficacy of global institutions in an era of heightened protectionism.
The surveys, which utilized anonymous polling at meetings in Washington, Shanghai, and Geneva, reveal a complex consensus: while participants from both Chinese and international institutions agree that the World Trade Organization (WTO) requires fundamental reform, they remain sharply divided on the mechanisms of that change.
CSIS reported that 46.2 percent of Chinese respondents view the WTO as highly valuable, contrasted with 52.9 percent of international participants who characterize the organization as merely somewhat valuable.
Trade policy emerged as the most volatile sentiment indicator. When the dialogue convened in May 2025, participants were grappling with the immediate aftermath of the administration’s “Liberation Day” tariffs.
By January 2026, sentiment had shifted significantly following a rapprochement with China that blunted the initial impact of the trade measures. Participants increasingly directed their focus toward the collateral effects of these policies on third-party markets, specifically the surge in Chinese exports to Europe.
The U.S. Supreme Court’s decision regarding the use of the International Emergency Economic Powers Act removed a key tool from President Trump’s arsenal. The administration has signaled it will pursue tariffs through alternative instruments such as Section 122 and Section 301 investigations, though both carry limitations: Section 122 permits tariffs for only 150 days, and Section 301 proceedings are typically drawn out.
Financial stability remains a rare point of alignment. Despite the depreciation of the dollar during the 2026 “sell America trade,” both cohorts maintain that the U.S. dollar will retain its role as the primary global reserve currency. While the renminbi has grown as a share of payment flows, Swift data confirms it accounted for only 2.73 percent of global payments in December 2025, compared to 50.49 percent for the dollar.
The July 2026 survey in Geneva highlighted a persistent disagreement regarding global economic imbalances. When asked how to resolve these issues, 84.6 percent of Chinese participants favored increased openness to Chinese investment in the United States and Europe. Conversely, 58.8 percent of international participants argued that the most effective solution lies in China rebalancing its domestic economy.
The surveys are not nationally representative, given the small sample sizes and the specialized nature of the participants, but they provide a window into how expert communities evaluate the state of U.S.-China commercial relations and the global economic order.
“On concrete reforms, Chinese participants thought that the WTO should be more restrictive in certain respects—their top two reforms were” creating rules constraining the use of economic security tools and reforming the dispute resolution system, according to the survey data, which captures the tension between international participants' support for plurilateral agreements among a subset of WTO members and Chinese participants' demand for stricter constraints on economic security tools.
The survey results stand as a record of these evolving expert assessments as of July 2026.