Inside Timothy Talks
Why Outsourcing Happened
China Did Exactly What We Asked Them To Do
The awkward truth is that China did exactly what we asked them to. We asked China to open its economy. It did. We told Chinese factories we wanted everything cheap, cheap, cheap. They delivered. We asked for huge scale — a million iPhones a day. It said OK. After 30 years of doing what American companies asked, is it fair to be surprised and angry that China came through? An honest history of Asian outsourcing helps inform what the next phase of global supply chains should look like.
Decoupling vs. De-Risking
Building Supply Chains in a Fragmented World
Everyone is talking about supply chain resilience. But cutting China out of your supply chain is an absolute impossibility — and neither is it necessary. De-risking comes in many shapes and sizes, and China has too many advantages to ignore. Timothy breaks down today’s options for businesses trying to reduce risk without retreating from a world that still has so much to offer.
Bridging Cultures That Don’t Agree
How to Work Across the Table When the Table Is Very Wide
We think China is an evil empire. They think the same of us. Yet our economies are inextricably linked. Trade, throughout history, is two people who do not understand one another deciding to exchange anyway. Timothy offers a practical, story-driven guide to cross-cultural collaboration — drawn from a lifetime of negotiations where the language, the hierarchy, the humor, and the definition of “yes” were all different.
Sometimes simultaneously.
The Human Side of Globalization
Human Stories Behind the Systems
Most people think trade is just numbers or policy. It is not. It’s people working with people, making decisions with imperfect information, incomplete trust, and competing definitions of fairness. Trade, done right, is the story of strangers becoming less estranged. Timothy puts faces on the global economy, showing systems are just people moving in real time.
Strategic Advisory & Private Briefings
For When You Need Someone Who’s Actually Been There
For executives, boards, and policy teams who need grounded analysis without the consulting-firm markup, Timothy offers confidential sessions tailored to specific challenges — China strategy, supply chain transitions, tariffs, cross-cultural negotiations, or simply making sense of what’s happening and why.
Speaking Style
Conversational and, hopefully, fun. Timothy doesn’t do PowerPoint-driven keynotes full of buzzwords
and frameworks you’ll forget on the drive home. He tells stories, makes arguments, and trusts his
audiences to think.
The goal is to leave with a clearer picture of a complicated world, to empathize with others also trying to
make a go of things in this life, and to understand that the world is deeply nuanced. No person, no
people, no nation, no system of thought is reducible to a cartoon.
That’s the mission: re-humanizing others in the world.