US Commerce Secretary Gina Raimondo said Monday that the majority of US-China trade has nothing to do with national security, and that it’s possible to promote and protect exports at the same time.
It’s been almost a year since National Security Advisor Jake Sullivan called export controls “a new strategic asset” and said it was important to maintain “as large of a lead as possible” in foundational technologies like advanced logic and memory chips. “It is profoundly important that we have a stable economic relationship, which is to the benefit of both of our countries and in fact what the world expects of us,” Raimondo said. “It’s a complicated relationship, it’s a challenging relationship. We will of course disagree on certain issues, but I believe that we can make progress if we are direct, open and practical.”
On export controls, the two sides established an “information exchange” to “reduce misunderstanding of US national security policies,” with a first meeting set for Tuesday in Beijing. Before her trip, Raimondo had been criticized by Republicans in Congress for even considering letting the Chinese weigh in on the US export control regime. She has said repeatedly that the US goal is to explain its actions.
Despite the multiple visits from major US officials to China this year, no high-level Chinese officials have visited the US. “That gives Secretary Raimondo a lot of pressure in terms of what she can achieve during her trip,” said Zongyuan Zoe Liu, a fellow for China studies at the Council on Foreign Relations, in an interview on Bloomberg Television.