‘Anxiety’ over new US trade policy focused on American workers, cutting China reliance: Katherine Tai
- Past championing of market liberalisation led to fragile supply chains, production abroad and Beijing’s clout, says Washington’s top trade official
- Tai acknowledged encountering some resistance to the new US tack yet cautioned that ‘complacency really isn’t an option’
US Trade Representative Katherine Tai on Thursday said “fragile supply chains” and “an unsustainable version of globalisation” were negative outcomes from decades of championing market liberalisation and low prices for consumers as domestic manufacturing suffered.
“When efficiency and low cost are the only motivators, production moves outside our borders,” Tai said in a speech at the National Press Club in Washington.
Such an approach, she continued, meant production was “increasingly consolidated in one economy, such as the PRC, which manipulates cost structures, controls key industries, and became a dominant supplier for many important goods and technologies”.
In a direct message to Beijing, Tai singled out “consuming” rather than “exporting and supplying” as an American “superpower” that the US needed to employ in deciding how to “leverage the power of access into our markets”.
Turning away from past practices was difficult, she said, noting that “there’s a certain comfort to hanging on to the old structures and the old ways because they’re comfortable”.
China fights US ‘de-risking’ with first-ever supply chain expo
“There’s one vein of anxiety and negativity that I encountered [that says] … you are just trying to take apart the system, you’re trying to take us back to a state of nature. And that is absolutely not what we are trying to do”.
Abandoning the TPP “was a missed opportunity”, Cole said during a House Rules Committee hearing last month on China’s economic tactics.
But Tai stressed that the Biden administration was doing “non-traditional things” that “promote resilience, sustainability and inclusiveness in terms of economic outcomes” because it saw “significant limitations” in “liberalisation qualification for the sake of liberalisation”.
Detroit, recent Apec host city, embodies Biden’s trade policy goal of renewal
“For those of us in the administration, it is just the usual course of business in ordinary conduct, that we have communication channels,” she said.
On Wednesday, US Assistant Secretary of State for East Asian and Pacific Affairs Daniel Kritenbrink voiced Washington’s aim of managing its competition with Beijing “in the most responsible way possible”.
“Intense competition requires intense diplomacy, if we’re going to manage tensions,” he said.
