While a practiced speaker, Ali Zaidi appears to have minimal public opinions on China or the U.S.-China relationship at this time. In a recent group phone call on April 1, 2021, Zaidi did emphasize the inevitable intersection between climate policy and economic development and how the U.S. is in a race with other countries in “important industries of the future.”

We’ve got all of that integrated into what amounts to very good economic policy, economic policy that’s good for creating good-paying union jobs, economic policy that propels us forward on environmental justice and economic policy, that helps us square shoulders and face the challenge of the climate crisis head-on…Every year that we delay, we’re talking about other countries racing ahead to seize the competitive advantage in these incredibly important industries of the future…So, the cost of inaction is mounting already.

Although part of his work in the Obama Administration was dedicated to reducing American dependence on foreign oil, it can be inferred that Zaidi has a strong appreciation for multilateral cooperation and the role of international forums in resolving climate issues. In addition to being a first-generation immigrant, Zaidi helped negotiate the 2016 Paris Agreement within the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change, which has currently brought together more than 190 nations as signatories. In an April 8, 2021 interview, Zaidi commented: “On day one, the President got America back into the Paris Agreement, and that was really important for our credibility overseas, our engagement with global partners.”

More specifically, according to a fellow Stanford professor in late 2020, Zaidi has “an appreciation for how the technology might fit in, both politically, economically, and culturally, [to solving climate problems] and what some of the interdependencies could be.”