Looking at A Seat at the Table: An Insider’s Account of Trump’s Global Economic Revolution (Mitchell A. Silk)
Bombadier Press, 2025
Review by Neville Teller
After a career spent in powerful legal advocacy and US government service at the highest level, it seems that 61-year old Mitchell Silk still has to pinch himself to believe he has been able to come so far and achieve so much. He never forgets that his grandfather was born in a typical shtetl – Nadvorna in western Ukraine – and that he is connected by way of Torah study with Reb Mordecai, the town’s one-time renowned Hassidic scholar. Silk was raised as a Hassidic Jew, has remained so, and became the first to be confirmed by the US Senate for a senior administrative position.
“How did I get here?” he asks himself early on in “A Seat at the Table”, and spends the rest of the book not only providing the answer, but also recounting the details of his outstanding career and his insights into the major issues he was involved in. Yet the sense of wonder at his extraordinary elevation into the highest echelon of America’s governance never leaves him. He returns to it in his Epilogue, where he writes again of his “humble beginnings”.
As in most cases of success in life, luck plays its part in Silk’s story. Silk, however, will have none of it. He knows precisely where responsibility for his good fortune resides. In every phase of his journey, he writes, “I have seen the quiet, steady hand of Divine kindness guiding my steps.” He titles his first chapter: “The good Lord sent me to a Chinese restaurant.”
While still a schoolboy, circumstances led him to an abiding friendship with an immigrant Chinese family, and then to working part-time in their Chinese restaurant. There he acquired a working knowledge of Cantonese, which he later enhanced by studying Mandarin. He thus became proficient in China’s two main languages – and this facility, augmented by his own abilities and his dedication to hard work, opened the door to his wide-ranging career spanning international law and high-level trade negotiations, especially as affecting the US-China relationship. Along the way he made substantial contributions to government policy in general, and also to the Hassidic Jewish community in America.
Silk was in government service only during Trump’s first term. He served from October 2017 until January 2021. But his book embraces also Trump’s return to office, and what he terms the “flurry of executive orders and policy moves” that instantly ensued. He believes Trump hit the ground running because he was working to a plan from the very beginning. Based on his experience of working closely with Trump, Silk is absolutely clear in his own mind that the president has a well-considered approach to the problems that face America. Silk sees it as “focused, strategic and aggressive”.
It was his work during Trump’s first term that helped lay the foundation for the policies, especially in relation to US-China trade and tariff agreements, that the president is pursuing in his second. While playing a significant role in shaping US responses to global economic challenges in general, Silk focused on trade negotiations with China, countering China’s Belt and Road Initiative, and constructing legal frameworks to support infrastructure finance.
Silk provides a fascinating insight into the two years of high-stakes trade talks between the US and China he was involved in. He explains how the idea arose of using tariffs as leverage, and describes the negotiations with the Chinese over intellectual property rights and cyber concerns, leading eventually to the Phase One trade agreement in January 2020.
He explains in some detail the challenges posed by China’s negotiation tactics, and how the US handled predatory finance practices, while aiming for more balanced trade terms.
Using his diplomatic and legal expertise, Silk consistently supported Trump’s policy of promoting US interests by steering policy toward market-driven and transparent practices. He helped foster international partnerships, and provided an alternative to Chinese influence in global development projects.
It is clear that throughout his career Silk kept the common touch. He never sought to disguise his origins or who he was – a Hassidic Jew, with the high moral standards that his upbringing had inculcated in him. His working life exemplifies his emphasis on the value of faith, personal diplomacy, and cultural awareness. His colleagues appreciated him for who he was, and speak of his recourse on occasion to “a timely Yiddish proverb”, “Talmudic wisdom” and “a steady stream of Yiddish quips”.
These attractive characteristics shine through A Seat at the Table, which Silk himself describes as a “hybrid: part personal history, part professional growth, part roadmap.” Despite the sometimes complex issues he deals with, Silk writes with clarity and attractive frankness and, as the account flows along, he never loses the reader’s interest and attention. It makes for a wonderful read, and is highly recommended.
***
Neville Teller was born in London, read Modern History at Oxford University, and then had a varied career in marketing, general management, publishing, the Civil Service and a national cancer charity. In 2011 he moved to Israel, where he now resides.
He began writing about the Middle East in the 1980s, sometimes using the pen-name Edmund Owen. He has published five books on the subject, his articles appear regularly in the Jerusalem Post, and he is the Middle East correspondent for Eurasia Review.
He has consistently written for BBC radio and other broadcast media as a radio dramatist. In the Queen’s Birthday Honours in 2006 he was awarded an MBE “for services to broadcasting and to drama.”
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