风萧萧_Frank
以文会友
White House's Sullivan: US Not Looking to Decouple From China Economy
By Reuters April 27, 2023
White House's Sullivan: US Not Looking to Decouple From China Economy
首先，我要感谢大家允许国家安全顾问讨论经济学。
正如你们大多数人所知，上周耶伦国务卿就在街上就我们对中国的经济政策发表了重要讲话。今天，我想着眼于我们更广泛的国际经济政策，特别是因为它与拜登总统的核心承诺有关——实际上，与他对我们的日常指导——更深入地整合国内政策和外交政策有关。
二战后，美国带领支离破碎的世界建立国际经济新秩序。 它使数亿人摆脱了贫困。 它持续了激动人心的技术革命。 它帮助美国和世界上许多其他国家实现了新的繁荣水平。
但过去几十年揭示了这些基础的裂缝。 不断变化的全球经济让许多在职美国人及其社区落在了后面。
一场金融危机震撼了中产阶级。 大流行暴露了我们供应链的脆弱性。 不断变化的气候威胁着生命和生计。 俄罗斯入侵乌克兰凸显了过度依赖的风险。
所以这一刻要求我们达成新的共识。
这就是为什么美国在拜登总统的领导下正在推行现代工业和创新战略——无论是在国内还是与世界各地的合作伙伴。 一个投资于我们自己的经济和技术实力的来源，促进多元化和有弹性的全球供应链，为从劳动力和环境到可信技术和良好治理的一切制定高标准，并部署资本来提供公共产品 比如气候和健康。
现在，一些人所说的“新华盛顿共识”在某种程度上是美国独有的，或者是美国和西方被排除在外的想法是完全错误的。
这一战略将建立一个更公平、更持久的全球经济秩序，造福于我们自己和世界各地的人民。
所以今天，我想做的是阐述我们正在努力做的事情。 我将首先定义我们所看到的挑战——我们面临的挑战。 为了接受它们，我们不得不重新审视一些旧的假设。 然后，我将逐步介绍我们的方法是如何量身定制的，以应对这些挑战。
两年多前，当拜登总统上任时，在我们看来，这个国家面临着四项根本性挑战。
首先，美国的工业基础被掏空。
在战后年代——实际上在我们的大部分历史中——为美国项目注入活力的公共投资愿景已经消退。它已经让位于一系列倡导减税和放松管制、私有化而非公共行动以及贸易自由化本身作为目的的思想。
所有这些政策的核心都有一个假设：市场总是高效地分配资本——不管我们的竞争对手做了什么，不管我们共同面临的挑战有多大，也不管我们拆除了多少护栏。
现在，没有人——当然不是我——在低估市场的力量。 但以过于简单化的市场效率为名，战略商品的整个供应链——连同制造它们的行业和工作岗位——都转移到了海外。 深度贸易自由化将帮助美国出口商品而不是就业和产能的假设是一个承诺，但没有兑现。
另一个内在的假设是增长的类型并不重要。 所有的增长都是好的增长。 因此，各种改革结合在一起，使金融等一些经济部门享有特权，而半导体和基础设施等其他重要部门则萎缩了。 我们的工业能力——这对任何国家持续创新的能力都至关重要——受到了真正的打击。
全球金融危机和全球大流行病的冲击暴露了这些普遍假设的局限性。
我们面临的第二个挑战是适应地缘政治和安全竞争所定义的具有重要经济影响的新环境。
过去几十年的大部分国际经济政策都依赖这样一个前提，即经济一体化将使各国更加负责任和开放，全球秩序将更加和平与合作——将各国纳入基于规则的秩序将激励 他们遵守它的规则。
事实并非如此。 在某些情况下确实如此，而在很多情况下却没有。
到拜登总统上任时，我们不得不面对一个现实，即一个庞大的非市场经济体已经以一种带来相当大挑战的方式融入国际经济秩序。
中华人民共和国继续对钢铁等传统工业部门以及清洁能源、数字基础设施和先进生物技术等未来关键行业提供大规模补贴。 美国不仅失去了制造业——我们还削弱了我们在决定未来的关键技术方面的竞争力。
经济一体化并没有阻止中国扩大其在该地区的军事野心，也没有阻止俄罗斯入侵其民主邻国。 这两个国家都没有变得更加负责任或更加合作。
忽视几十年来自由化建立起来的经济依赖性已经变得非常危险——从欧洲的能源不确定性到医疗设备、半导体和关键矿物的供应链脆弱性。 这些是可以利用经济或地缘政治影响力的依赖类型。
我们面临的第三个挑战是日益加剧的气候危机以及对公正高效的能源转型的迫切需求。
当拜登总统上任时，尽管奥巴马-拜登政府已尽最大努力取得重大进展，但我们仍未实现我们的气候雄心，没有明确的途径来大量供应稳定且负担得起的清洁能源。
太多人认为我们必须在经济增长和实现气候目标之间做出选择。
拜登总统的看法完全不同。 正如他常说的，当他听到“气候”时，他会想到“工作”。 他认为，建设 21 世纪的清洁能源经济是 21 世纪最重要的增长机遇之一——但要利用这一机遇，美国需要一种深思熟虑、切实可行的投资战略来推动创新 ，降低成本，创造良好的就业机会。
最后，我们面临不平等的挑战及其对民主的破坏。
在这里，普遍的假设是贸易推动的增长将是包容性增长——贸易收益最终将在国家内部得到广泛分享。 但事实是，这些收益未能惠及很多劳动人民。 美国中产阶级失去了优势，而富人却比以往任何时候都做得更好。 随着尖端产业向大都市地区转移，美国制造业社区被掏空。
现在，经济不平等的驱动因素——你们中的许多人比我更清楚——很复杂，其中包括数字革命等结构性挑战。 但这些驱动因素中的关键是数十年的涓滴经济政策——诸如递减税、大幅削减公共投资、不受控制的企业集中以及破坏最初建立美国中产阶级的劳工运动等政策。
在奥巴马政府期间采取不同方法的努力——包括努力通过应对气候变化的政策、投资基础设施、扩大社会安全网和保护工人的组织权——遭到共和党反对派的阻挠。
坦率地说，我们的国内经济政策也未能充分考虑到我们国际经济政策的后果。
例如，所谓的“中国冲击”对我们国内制造业的打击尤为严重，影响巨大而持久，但没有得到充分的预期，也没有得到充分的应对。
这些力量共同破坏了任何强大而有弹性的民主赖以生存的社会经济基础。
现在，这四个挑战并不是美国独有的。 成熟经济体和新兴经济体也面临着它们——在某些情况下比我们更尖锐。
当拜登总统上任时，他知道应对这些挑战中的每一个挑战的方法是恢复支持建设的经济心态。 这是我们经济方法的核心。 建造。 在国内和与国外的合作伙伴一起建设能力，建立复原力，建立包容性。 生产和创新的能力，以及大规模提供强大的物理和数字基础设施和清洁能源等公共产品的能力。 抵御自然灾害和地缘政治冲击的能力。 以及确保强大、充满活力的美国中产阶级和为世界各地的劳动人民提供更多机会的包容性。
所有这些都是我们所谓的中产阶级外交政策的一部分。
第一步是在国内奠定新的基础——采用现代美国工业战略。
我的朋友兼前同事布赖恩•迪斯 (Brian Deese) 已经详细地谈到了这个新的产业战略，我向你推荐他的评论，因为它们比我能就这个问题发表的任何评论都好。 但总而言之：
现代美国产业战略确定了特定部门，这些部门是经济增长的基础，从国家安全的角度来看具有战略意义，而且私营企业本身还没有准备好进行确保我们的国家雄心所需的投资。
它在这些领域部署有针对性的公共投资，释放私人市场、资本主义和竞争的力量和独创性，为长期增长奠定基础。
它有助于使美国企业能够做美国企业最擅长的事情——创新、扩大规模和竞争。
这是关于挤入私人投资——而不是取而代之。 这是关于对对我们国家福祉至关重要的部门进行长期投资，而不是选择赢家和输家。
它在这个国家有着悠久的传统。 事实上，即使“产业政策”这个词已经过时，它仍然以某种形式悄悄地为美国发挥作用——从 DARPA 和互联网到 NASA 和商业卫星。
现在，回顾过去几年的进程，这一战略的初步成果是显着的。
据英国《金融时报》报道，自 2019 年以来，对半导体和清洁能源生产的大规模投资已经激增 20 倍，而自 8 月以来宣布的投资中，有三分之一涉及在美国投资的外国投资者。
我们估计，未来十年，拜登总统议程中的公共资本和私人投资总额将达到约 3.5 万亿美元。
以半导体为例，它对我们今天的消费品和塑造我们未来的技术（从人工智能到量子计算再到合成生物学）都至关重要。
美国现在只生产世界上大约 10% 的半导体，而且生产——一般来说，尤其是最先进的芯片——在地理上集中在其他地方。
这造成了严重的经济风险和国家安全漏洞。 因此，多亏了两党的 CHIPS 和科学法案，我们已经看到对美国半导体行业的投资出现了数量级的增长。 现在还为时尚早。
或者考虑一下关键矿物——清洁能源未来的支柱。 如今，美国仅生产满足当前电动汽车需求所需的4% 的锂、13% 的钴、0% 的镍和 0% 的石墨。 与此同时，超过 80% 的关键矿物由中国这个国家加工。
清洁能源供应链面临被武器化的风险，就像 1970 年代的石油或 2022 年的欧洲天然气一样。因此，通过对《降低通货膨胀法》和《两党基础设施法》的投资，我们正在采取行动。
与此同时，在国内建造一切都是不可行或不可取的。 我们的目标不是自给自足——而是我们供应链的弹性和安全性。
现在，建设我们的国内能力是起点。 但这种努力超出了我们的边界。 这让我想到了我们战略的第二步：与我们的合作伙伴合作，确保他们也在建设能力、弹性和包容性。
我们向他们传达的信息始终如一：我们将在国内坚定不移地推行我们的产业战略——但我们明确承诺不会将我们的朋友抛在后面。 我们希望他们加入我们。 事实上，我们需要他们加入我们。
面对经济和地缘政治现实，创建一个安全和可持续的经济将需要我们所有的盟友和合作伙伴做更多的事情——没有时间可以浪费了。 对于半导体和清洁能源等行业，无论是公共投资还是私人投资，我们都远未达到全球所需投资的饱和点。
最终，我们的目标是建立一个强大、有弹性和领先的技术产业基地，美国及其志同道合的合作伙伴，无论是成熟经济体还是新兴经济体，都可以共同投资和依赖。
上个月，拜登总统和欧盟委员会主席乌尔苏拉•冯德莱恩在华盛顿谈到了这一点。
他们发布了一个非常重要的声明，如果你还没有读过，我真的鼓励你读一读。 声明的核心内容如下：对我们各自工业能力的大胆公共投资需要成为能源转型的核心。 冯德莱恩总统和拜登总统承诺共同努力，确保未来的供应链具有弹性、安全并反映我们的价值观——包括劳工价值观。
他们在声明中列出了实现这些目标的实际步骤——比如在大西洋两岸调整各自的清洁能源激励措施，并就关键矿物和电池的供应链展开谈判。
不久之后，拜登总统访问了加拿大。 他和贾斯汀•特鲁多总理成立了一个工作组，以加速加拿大和美国之间的合作，以实现完全相同的目标：确保我们的清洁能源供应并在边界两边创造中产阶级就业机会。
就在几天之后，美国和日本签署了一项协议，以深化我们在关键矿产供应链方面的合作。
因此，我们正在利用《降低通货膨胀法案》建立一个植根于北美供应链并延伸至欧洲、日本和其他地方的清洁能源制造生态系统。
这就是我们将 IRA 从摩擦之源转变为力量和可靠性之源的方式。 我想您会在下个月于广岛举行的G7 峰会上听到更多相关信息。
现在，我们与合作伙伴的合作不仅仅局限于清洁能源。
例如，我们正在与欧洲、韩国、日本、台湾和印度的合作伙伴合作，以协调我们的半导体激励措施。
分析师对未来三年半导体投资地点的预测发生了巨大变化，美国和主要合作伙伴现在位居榜首。
我还要强调，我们与合作伙伴的合作不仅限于先进的工业民主国家。
从根本上说，我们必须——而且我们打算——消除美国最重要的伙伴关系只与成熟经济体建立的观念。 不仅要说出来，还要证明。 在印度证明这一点——从氢到半导体的一切。 用安哥拉证明这一点——使用无碳太阳能。 与印度尼西亚一起证明这一点——关于其公正的能源转型伙伴关系。 与巴西一起证明这一点——气候友好型增长。
这将我带到了我们战略的第三步：超越传统的贸易协议，转向专注于我们时代核心挑战的创新型新型国际经济伙伴关系。
1990 年代的主要国际经济项目是降低关税。 平均而言，美国适用的关税税率在 1990 年代几乎减半。 今天，即 2023 年，我们的贸易加权平均关税税率为 2.4%——这在历史上和相对于其他国家而言都是较低的。
当然，这些关税并不统一，许多其他国家的关税水平仍有待降低。 正如戴大使所说，“我们没有宣誓过市场自由化。” 我们确实打算寻求现代贸易协定。 但是，根据关税削减来定义或衡量我们的整个政策忽略了一些重要的事情。
问我们现在的贸易政策是什么——狭隘地定义为进一步降低关税的计划——是一个错误的问题。 正确的问题是：贸易如何融入我们的国际经济政策，它试图解决什么问题？
2020年代和2030年代的项目不同于1990年代的项目。
我们知道我们今天需要解决的问题：创建多样化和有弹性的供应链。 为公正的清洁能源转型和可持续的经济增长调动公共和私人投资。 一路创造好工作，支持家庭的工作。 确保我们数字基础设施的信任、安全和开放。 停止企业税收中的逐底竞争。 加强对劳动和环境的保护。 打击腐败。 这是一套与简单地降低关税不同的基本优先事项。
我们设计了一项雄心勃勃的区域经济倡议——印太经济框架——的要素，以关注这些问题——并解决这些问题。 我们正在与 13 个印太国家就章节进行谈判，以加快清洁能源转型、实施税收公平和打击腐败、为技术制定高标准，并确保关键商品和投入品的供应链更具弹性。
我说得具体一点。 如果在 COVID 对我们的供应链造成严重破坏并且工厂闲置时 IPEF 已经到位，我们本可以更快地做出反应——公司和政府一起——转向实时采购和共享数据的新选择。 这就是在这个问题上采用新方法的样子——就像在许多其他问题上一样。
我们与我们在美洲的一些主要合作伙伴共同发起的新的“美洲经济繁荣伙伴关系”旨在实现相同的基本目标。
同时，通过美国-欧盟贸易和技术委员会，通过我们与日本和韩国的三边协调，我们正在协调我们的产业战略以相互补充，避免各方竞相竞相竞争 目标。
一些人看过这些倡议后说，“但它们不是传统的自由贸易协定。” 这就是重点。 对于我们今天要解决的问题，传统的模式是行不通的。
事后政策补丁和再分配的模糊承诺的时代已经结束。 我们需要一种新方法。
简而言之：在当今世界，贸易政策不仅仅是降低关税，而且贸易政策需要完全融入我们的经济战略，无论是在国内还是在国外。
与此同时，拜登政府正在制定一项新的全球劳工战略，通过外交促进工人的权利，我们将在未来几周公布这一战略。
它建立在 USMCA 中的快速反应劳工机制等工具之上，该机制强制执行工人协会和集体谈判的权利。 事实上，就在本周，我们通过一项改善工作条件的协议解决了我们的第八个案例——这对墨西哥工人和美国的竞争力来说是双赢的。
我们现在正在继续领导与 136 个国家达成历史性协议，以最终结束损害中产阶级和劳动人民的公司税逐底竞争。 现在国会需要贯彻实施立法，我们正在努力让他们做到这一点。
我们正在采取另一种我们认为是未来重要蓝图的新方法——以前所未有的方式将贸易与气候联系起来。 我们正在与欧盟谈判的全球钢铁和铝安排可能是第一个解决排放强度和产能过剩问题的主要贸易协议。 如果我们可以将其应用于钢铁和铝，我们也可以看看它如何应用于其他行业。 我们可以帮助创造一个良性循环，并确保我们的竞争对手不会通过破坏地球来获得优势。
现在，对于那些提出问题的人来说，拜登政府仍然致力于世贸组织及其所基于的共同价值观：公平竞争、公开、透明和法治。 但严峻的挑战，尤其是非市场经济实践和政策，威胁着这些核心价值观。 因此，这就是为什么我们与许多其他 WTO 成员合作改革多边贸易体系，使其有利于工人，满足合法的国家安全利益，并解决当前 WTO 框架中未完全纳入的紧迫问题，例如可持续发展 和清洁能源转型。
总而言之，在一个被清洁能源转型、充满活力的新兴经济体、对供应链弹性的追求——数字化、人工智能和生物技术革命——所改变的世界中，游戏是不一样的。
我们的国际经济政策必须适应世界的现状，这样我们才能建设我们想要的世界。
这让我想到了我们战略的第四步：动员数万亿美元的投资进入新兴经济体——采用这些国家正在自己制定的解决方案，但资本是由不同品牌的美国外交提供支持的。
我们已经发起了一项重大努力来发展多边开发银行，使它们能够应对当今的挑战。 2023 年是重要的一年。
正如耶伦国务卿概述的那样，我们需要更新银行的运营模式——尤其是世界银行，但也包括区域开发银行。 我们需要扩大他们的资产负债表，以应对气候变化、流行病、脆弱性和冲突。 我们必须扩大低收入和中等收入国家获得优惠、高质量融资的渠道，因为它们应对的挑战跨越任何一个国家的边界。
上个月我们在这个议程上看到了提前支付的定金，但我们需要做更多的事情。
我们对 Ajay Banga 在世界银行的新领导层实现这一愿景感到非常兴奋。
在我们发展多边开发银行的同时，我们还发起了一项重大努力，以缩小低收入和中等收入国家的基础设施差距。 我们将其称为全球基础设施和投资伙伴关系 (PGII)。 从现在到本十年末，PGII 将动员数千亿美元用于能源、物理和数字基础设施融资。
与“一带一路”倡议中的融资不同，PGII 下的项目透明、高标准，服务于长期、包容和可持续的增长。 在这项倡议发起后不到一年的时间里，我们已经对从为电动汽车提供动力所需的矿山到全球海底电信电缆等方方面面进行了大量投资。
与此同时，我们也致力于解决越来越多的脆弱国家面临的债务困境。 我们需要看到真正的解脱，而不仅仅是“假装”。 我们需要看到所有双边官方和私人债权人分担负担。
这包括中国，它一直致力于通过向新兴世界提供大量贷款来建立影响力，而且几乎总是附带条件。我们同意许多其他人的观点，即中国现在需要加强作为援助债务压力国家的建设性力量。
最后，我们用小院子和高围栏保护我们的基础技术。
正如我之前所说，我们的职责是引领新一波数字革命——确保下一代技术为我们的民主和安全服务，而不是反对。
我们对向中国出口最先进的半导体技术实施了精心制定的限制。 这些限制的前提是直接的国家安全问题。 主要盟友和合作伙伴纷纷效仿，这与他们自身的安全担忧一致。
我们还在与国家安全相关的关键领域加强对外国投资的审查。 我们在解决与核心国家安全关系相关的敏感技术的对外投资方面取得了进展。
这些是量身定制的措施。 它们并不像北京所说的那样是“技术封锁”。 他们不针对新兴经济体。他们专注于一小部分技术和少数几个意图在军事上挑战我们的国家。
更广泛地谈谈中国。 正如冯德莱恩总统最近所说，我们要去风险化和多元化，而不是脱钩。 我们将继续投资于我们自己的能力，以及安全、有弹性的供应链。 我们将继续为我们的工人和公司争取一个公平的竞争环境，并防止滥用职权。
我们的出口管制仍将狭隘地集中在可能使军事平衡倾斜的技术上。 我们只是确保美国和盟国的技术不会被用来对付我们。 我们没有切断贸易。
事实上，美国继续与中国保持着非常重要的贸易和投资关系。 美中双边贸易去年创下新纪录。
现在，当你从经济上拉远距离时，我们在多个维度上与中国竞争，但我们并不是在寻求对抗或冲突。 我们希望以负责任的方式管理竞争，并寻求在力所能及的范围内与中国合作。 拜登总统明确表示，美国和中国可以而且应该共同应对气候等全球性挑战，例如宏观经济稳定、卫生安全和粮食安全。
负责任地管理竞争最终需要双方自愿。 它需要一定程度的战略成熟度才能接受我们必须保持开放的沟通渠道，即使我们采取行动进行竞争。
正如耶伦国务卿上周就此话题发表的讲话中所说，我们可以捍卫我们的国家安全利益，进行良性的经济竞争，并在可能的情况下共同努力，但中国必须愿意发挥自己的作用。
那么，成功是什么样子的呢？
世界需要一个为我们的工薪阶层服务、为我们的工业服务、为我们的气候服务、为我们的国家安全服务、为世界上最贫穷和最脆弱的国家服务的国际经济体系。
这意味着用一种鼓励有针对性和必要投资的方法取代单一方法，重点是我在演讲开头提出的过于简单化的假设——即使我们继续利用 市场和整合的力量。
这意味着为世界各地的合作伙伴提供空间，以恢复政府与其选民和工人之间的契约。
这意味着将这种新方法建立在深度合作和透明度的基础上，以确保我们的投资和合作伙伴的投资相辅相成、互惠互利。
这意味着回到我们 80 年前首次倡导的核心信念：美国应该成为充满活力的国际金融体系的核心，使世界各地的合作伙伴能够减少贫困并促进共同繁荣。 为世界上最脆弱的国家建立一个有效的社会安全网对我们自己的核心利益至关重要。
这也意味着建立新的规范，使我们能够应对先进技术与国家安全交叉所带来的挑战，同时不阻碍更广泛的贸易和创新。
这一战略需要下定决心——需要坚定不移地致力于克服阻碍这个国家和我们的合作伙伴像我们过去那样快速、高效和公平地建设的障碍。
但这是恢复中产阶级、实现公正有效的清洁能源转型、确保关键供应链安全以及通过所有这些修复对民主本身的信心的最可靠途径。
一如既往，如果我们要取得成功，我们需要国会的全面和两党合作。
我们需要国会的支持，以重振美国吸引和留住世界各地最聪明人才的独特能力。
在我们的发展金融改革举措中，我们需要希尔的全面合作。
我们需要加倍投资基础设施、创新和清洁能源。 我们的国家安全和经济活力取决于此。
让我结束这个。
肯尼迪总统喜欢说“水涨船高”。 多年来，涓滴经济学的拥护者将这个短语挪用为己用。
但肯尼迪总统并没有说对富人有利的事情就是对工人阶级有利的事情。 他是说我们都在一起。
看看他接下来说的话：“如果这个国家的一部分停滞不前，那么迟早会退潮，所有的船都会掉下来。”
这对我们国家来说是正确的。 这对我们的世界来说是正确的。 在经济上结束，随着时间的推移，我们将一起上升或下降。
这对我们民主制度的力量以及我们经济的力量都是如此。
当我们在国内外推行这一战略时，将会有合理的辩论。 这需要时间。 二战和冷战结束后出现的国际秩序不是一夜之间建立起来的。 这个也不会。
但是，我们可以一起努力提升所有美国人民、社区和行业，我们也可以与全球各地的朋友和合作伙伴一起做同样的事情。
这是拜登政府必须而且将努力实现的愿景。
当我们在经济、国家安全和民主的交叉点做出政策决定时，这就是我们的指导方针。
这就是我们不仅要作为一个政府，而且要与美国的每一个组成部分，以及在政府内外合作伙伴的支持和帮助下开展的工作。
结尾
FILE PHOTO: U.S. national security adviser Jake Sullivan speaks during a press briefing at the White House in Washington, U.S., April 24, 2023. REUTERS/Kevin LamarqueREUTERS
WASHINGTON (Reuters) - White House national security adviser Jake Sullivan said on Thursday the United States is not looking to decouple its economy from the Chinese economy, saying, "We're not cutting off trade."
Speaking at the Brookings Institution, Sullivan said China should step up as a constructive force in assisting heavily indebted countries. He said Washington does not want China to use American technology against the United States but does not plan to end economic ties with Beijing.
(Reporting by Andrea Shalala, Doina Chiacu and Steve Holland; Editing by Chris Reese)
Full text April 27, 2023
Remarks by National Security Advisor Jake Sullivan on Renewing American Economic Leadership at the Brookings Institution
AS DELIVERED
I want to start by thanking all of you for indulging a National Security Advisor to discuss economics.
As most of you know, Secretary Yellen gave an important speech just down the street last week on our economic policy with respect to China. Today I’d like to zoom out to our broader international economic policy, particularly as it relates to President Biden’s core commitment—indeed, to his daily direction to us—to more deeply integrate domestic policy and foreign policy.
After the Second World War, the United States led a fragmented world to build a new international economic order. It lifted hundreds of millions of people out of poverty. It sustained thrilling technological revolutions. And it helped the United States and many other nations around the world achieve new levels of prosperity.
But the last few decades revealed cracks in those foundations. A shifting global economy left many working Americans and their communities behind.
A financial crisis shook the middle class. A pandemic exposed the fragility of our supply chains. A changing climate threatened lives and livelihoods. Russia’s invasion of Ukraine underscored the risks of overdependence.
So this moment demands that we forge a new consensus.
That’s why the United States, under President Biden, is pursuing a modern industrial and innovation strategy—both at home and with partners around the world. One that invests in the sources of our own economic and technological strength, that promotes diversified and resilient global supply chains, that sets high standards for everything from labor and the environment to trusted technology and good governance, and that deploys capital to deliver on public goods like climate and health.
Now, the idea that a “new Washington consensus,” as some people have referred to it, is somehow America alone, or America and the West to the exclusion of others, is just flat wrong.
This strategy will build a fairer, more durable global economic order, for the benefit of ourselves and for people everywhere.
So today, what I want to do is lay out what we are endeavoring to do. And I’ll start by defining the challenges as we see them—the challenges that we face. To take them on, we’ve had to revisit some old assumptions. Then I’ll walk through, step by step, how our approach is tailored to meeting those challenges.
When President Biden came into office more than two years ago, the country faced, from our perspective, four fundamental challenges.
First, America’s industrial base had been hollowed out.
The vision of public investment that had energized the American project in the postwar years—and indeed for much of our history—had faded. It had given way to a set of ideas that championed tax cutting and deregulation, privatization over public action, and trade liberalization as an end in itself.
There was one assumption at the heart of all of this policy: that markets always allocate capital productively and efficiently—no matter what our competitors did, no matter how big our shared challenges grew, and no matter how many guardrails we took down.
Now, no one—certainly not me—is discounting the power of markets. But in the name of oversimplified market efficiency, entire supply chains of strategic goods—along with the industries and jobs that made them—moved overseas. And the postulate that deep trade liberalization would help America export goods, not jobs and capacity, was a promise made but not kept.
Another embedded assumption was that the type of growth did not matter. All growth was good growth. So, various reforms combined and came together to privilege some sectors of the economy, like finance, while other essential sectors, like semiconductors and infrastructure, atrophied. Our industrial capacity—which is crucial to any country’s ability to continue to innovate—took a real hit.
The shocks of a global financial crisis and a global pandemic laid bare the limits of these prevailing assumptions.
The second challenge we faced was adapting to a new environment defined by geopolitical and security competition, with important economic impacts.
Much of the international economic policy of the last few decades had relied upon the premise that economic integration would make nations more responsible and open, and that the global order would be more peaceful and cooperative—that bringing countries into the rules-based order would incentivize them to adhere to its rules.
It didn’t turn out that way. In some cases it did, and in lot of cases it did not.
By the time President Biden came into office, we had to contend with the reality that a large non-market economy had been integrated into the international economic order in a way that posed considerable challenges.
The People’s Republic of China continued to subsidize at a massive scale both traditional industrial sectors, like steel, as well as key industries of the future, like clean energy, digital infrastructure, and advanced biotechnologies. America didn’t just lose manufacturing—we eroded our competitiveness in critical technologies that would define the future.
Economic integration didn’t stop China from expanding its military ambitions in the region, or stop Russia from invading its democratic neighbors. Neither country had become more responsible or cooperative.
And ignoring economic dependencies that had built up over the decades of liberalization had become really perilous—from energy uncertainty in Europe to supply-chain vulnerabilities in medical equipment, semiconductors, and critical minerals. These were the kinds of dependencies that could be exploited for economic or geopolitical leverage.
The third challenge we faced was an accelerating climate crisis and the urgent need for a just and efficient energy transition.
When President Biden came into office, we were falling dramatically short of our climate ambitions, without a clear pathway to abundant supplies of stable and affordable clean energy, despite the best efforts of the Obama-Biden Administration to make significant headway.
Too many people believed that we had to choose between economic growth and meeting our climate goals.
President Biden has seen things totally differently. As he’s often said, when he hears “climate,” he thinks “jobs.” He believes that building a twenty-first-century clean-energy economy is one of the most significant growth opportunities of the twenty-first century—but that to harness that opportunity, America needs a deliberate, hands-on investment strategy to pull forward innovation, drive down costs, and create good jobs.
Finally, we faced the challenge of inequality and its damage to democracy.
Here, the prevailing assumption was that trade-enabled growth would be inclusive growth—that the gains of trade would end up getting broadly shared within nations. But the fact is that those gains failed to reach a lot of working people. The American middle class lost ground while the wealthy did better than ever. And American manufacturing communities were hollowed out while cutting-edge industries moved to metropolitan areas.
Now, the drivers of economic inequality—as many of you know even better than I—are complex, and they include structural challenges like the digital revolution. But key among these drivers are decades of trickle-down economic policies—policies like regressive tax cuts, deep cuts to public investment, unchecked corporate concentration, and active measures to undermine the labor movement that initially built the American middle class.
Efforts to take a different approach during the Obama Administration—including efforts to pass policies to address climate change, invest in infrastructure, expand the social safety net, and protect workers’ rights to organize—were stymied by Republican opposition.
And frankly, our domestic economic policies also failed to fully account for the consequences of our international economic policies.
For example, the so-called “China shock” that hit pockets of our domestic manufacturing industry especially hard—with large and long-lasting impacts—wasn’t adequately anticipated and wasn’t adequately addressed as it unfolded.
And collectively, these forces had frayed the socioeconomic foundations on which any strong and resilient democracy rests.
Now, these four challenges were not unique to the United States. Established and emerging economies were confronting them, too—in some cases more acutely than we are.
When President Biden came to office, he knew the solution to each of these challenges was to restore an economic mentality that champions building. And that is the core of our economic approach. To build. To build capacity, to build resilience, to build inclusiveness, at home and with partners abroad. The capacity to produce and innovate, and to deliver public goods like strong physical and digital infrastructure and clean energy at scale. The resilience to withstand natural disasters and geopolitical shocks. And the inclusiveness to ensure a strong, vibrant American middle class and greater opportunity for working people around the world.
All of that is part of what we have called a foreign policy for the middle class.
The first step is laying a new foundation at home—with a modern American industrial strategy.
My friend and former colleague Brian Deese has spoken about this new industrial strategy at some length, and I commend his remarks to you, because they are better than any remarks I could give on the subject. But in summary:
A modern American industrial strategy identifies specific sectors that are foundational to economic growth, strategic from a national security perspective, and where private industry on its own isn’t poised to make the investments needed to secure our national ambitions.
It deploys targeted public investments in these areas that unlock the power and ingenuity of private markets, capitalism, and competition to lay a foundation for long-term growth.
It helps enable American business to do what American business does best—innovate, scale, and compete.
This is about crowding in private investment—not replacing it. It’s about making long-term investments in sectors vital to our national wellbeing—not picking winners and losers.
And it has a long tradition in this country. In fact, even as the term “industrial policy” went out of fashion, in some form it remained quietly at work for America—from DARPA and the Internet to NASA and commercial satellites.
Now, looking over the course of the last couple of years, the initial results of this strategy are remarkable.
The Financial Times has reported that large-scale investments in semiconductor and clean-energy production have already surged 20-fold since 2019, and a third of the investments announced since August involve a foreign investor investing here in the United States.
We’ve estimated that the total public capital and private investment from President Biden’s agenda will amount to some $3.5 trillion over the next decade.
Consider semiconductors, which are as essential to our consumer goods today as they are to the technologies that will shape our future, from artificial intelligence to quantum computing to synthetic biology.
America now manufactures only around 10 percent of the world’s semiconductors, and production—in general and especially when it comes to the most advanced chips—is geographically concentrated elsewhere.
This creates a critical economic risk and a national security vulnerability. So thanks to the bipartisan CHIPS and Science Act, we’ve already seen an orders-of-magnitude increase in investment into America’s semiconductor industry. And it’s still early days.
Or consider critical minerals—the backbone of the clean-energy future. Today, the United States produces only 4 percent of the lithium, 13 percent of the cobalt, 0 percent of the nickel, and 0 percent of the graphite required to meet current demand for electric vehicles. Meanwhile, more than 80 percent of critical minerals are processed by one country, China.
Clean-energy supply chains are at risk of being weaponized in the same way as oil in the 1970s, or natural gas in Europe in 2022. So through the investments in the Inflation Reduction Act and Bipartisan Infrastructure Law, we’re taking action.
At the same time, it isn’t feasible or desirable to build everything domestically. Our objective is not autarky—it’s resilience and security in our supply chains.
Now, building our domestic capacity is the starting point. But the effort extends beyond our borders. And this brings me to the second step in our strategy: working with our partners to ensure they are building capacity, resilience, and inclusiveness, too.
Our message to them has been consistent: We will unapologetically pursue our industrial strategy at home—but we are unambiguously committed to not leaving our friends behind. We want them to join us. In fact, we need them to join us.
Creating a secure and sustainable economy in the face of the economic and geopolitical realities will require all of our allies and partners to do more—and there’s no time to lose. For industries like semiconductors and clean energy, we’re nowhere near the global saturation point of investments needed, public or private.
Ultimately, our goal is a strong, resilient, and leading-edge techno-industrial base that the United States and its like-minded partners, established and emerging economies alike, can invest in and rely upon together.
President Biden and European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen talked about this here in Washington last month.
They released a very important statement, which, if you haven’t read it, I really encourage you to read. At its heart, what the statement said was the following: bold public investments in our respective industrial capacity needs to be at the heart of the energy transition. And President von der Leyen and President Biden committed to working together to ensure that the supply chains of the future are resilient, secure, and reflective of our values—including on labor.
They laid out practical steps in the statement to achieve those goals—like aligning respective clean-energy incentives on each side of the Atlantic and launching a negotiation on supply chains for critical minerals and batteries.
Shortly after that, President Biden went to Canada. He and Prime Minister Justin Trudeau established a task force to accelerate cooperation between Canada and the United States toward exactly the same end: ensuring our clean-energy supply and creating middle-class jobs on both sides of the border.
And just a few days after that, the United States and Japan signed an agreement deepening our cooperation on critical-mineral supply chains.
So we are leveraging the Inflation Reduction Act to build a clean-energy manufacturing ecosystem rooted in supply chains here in North America, and extending to Europe, Japan, and elsewhere.
This is how we will turn the IRA from a source of friction into a source of strength and reliability. And I suspect you’ll hear more on this at the G7 Summit in Hiroshima next month.
Now, our cooperation with partners is not limited to clean energy.
For example, we’re working with partners—in Europe, the Republic of Korea, Japan, Taiwan, and India—to coordinate our approaches to semiconductor incentives.
Analyst projections on where semiconductor investments will happen over the next three years have shifted dramatically, with the United States and key partners now topping the charts.
Let me also underscore that our cooperation with partners is not limited to advanced industrial democracies.
Fundamentally, we have to—and we intend to—dispel the notion that America’s most important partnerships are only with established economies. Not just by saying it, but by proving it. Proving it with India—on everything from hydrogen to semiconductors. Proving it with Angola—on carbon-free solar power. Proving it with Indonesia—on its Just Energy Transition Partnership. Proving it with Brazil—on climate-friendly growth.
This brings me to the third step in our strategy: moving beyond traditional trade deals to innovative new international economic partnerships focused on the core challenges of our time.
The main international economic project of the 1990s was reducing tariffs. On average, applied U.S. tariff rates were nearly cut in half during the 1990s. Today, in 2023, our trade-weighted average tariff rate is 2.4 percent—which is low historically, and relative to other countries.
Of course, those tariffs aren’t uniform, and there is still work to be done bringing tariff levels down in many other countries. As Ambassador Tai has said, “We have not sworn off market liberalization.” We do intend to pursue modern trade agreements. But to define or measure our entire policy based on tariff reduction misses something important.
Asking what our trade policy is now—narrowly framed as plans to reduce tariffs further—is simply the wrong question. The right question is: how does trade fit into our international economic policy, and what problems is it seeking to solve?
The project of the 2020s and the 2030s is different from the project of the 1990s.
We know the problems we need to solve today: Creating diversified and resilient supply chains. Mobilizing public and private investment for a just clean energy transition and sustainable economic growth. Creating good jobs along the way, family-supporting jobs. Ensuring trust, safety, and openness in our digital infrastructure. Stopping a race-to-the-bottom in corporate taxation. Enhancing protections for labor and the environment. Tackling corruption. That is a different set of fundamental priorities than simply bringing down tariffs.
And we have designed the elements of an ambitious regional economic initiative, the Indo-Pacific Economic Framework, to focus on those problems—and solving those problems. We’re negotiating chapters with thirteen Indo-Pacific nations that will hasten the clean-energy transition, implement tax fairness and fight corruption, set high standards for technology, and ensure more resilient supply chains for critical goods and inputs.
Let me speak a bit more concretely. Had IPEF been in place when COVID wreaked havoc on our supply chains and factories sat idling, we would have been able to react more quickly— companies and governments together— pivoting to new options for sourcing and sharing data in real-time. That’s what a new approach can look like on that issue—as on many others.
Our new Americas Partnership for Economic Prosperity, launched with a number of our key partners here in the Americas, is aimed at the same basic set of objectives.
Meanwhile, through the U.S.-EU Trade and Technology Council, and through our trilateral coordination with Japan and Korea, we are coordinating on our industrial strategies to complement one another, and avert a race-to-the-bottom by all competing for the same targets.
Some have looked at these initiatives and said, “but they aren’t traditional FTAs.” That’s exactly the point. For the problems we are trying to solve today, the traditional model doesn’t cut it.
The era of after-the-fact policy patches and vague promises of redistribution is over. We need a new approach.
Simply put: In today’s world, trade policy needs to be about more than tariff reduction, and trade policy needs to be fully integrated into our economic strategy, at home and abroad.
At the same time, the Biden Administration is developing a new global labor strategy that advances workers’ rights through diplomacy, and we will be unveiling this strategy in the weeks ahead.
It builds on tools like the rapid-response labor mechanism in USMCA that enforces workers’ association and collective-bargaining rights. Just this week, in fact, we resolved our eighth case with an agreement that improved working conditions—a win-win for Mexican workers and American competitiveness.
We’re in the process now of continuing to lead a historic agreement with 136 countries to finally end the race-to-the-bottom on corporate taxes that hurt middle-class and working people. Now Congress needs to follow through with the implementing legislation, and we are working them to do exactly that.
And we’re taking another kind of new approach that we think a critical blueprint for the future—linking trade and climate in a way that has never been done before. The Global Arrangement on Steel and Aluminum that we’re negotiating with the European Union could be the first major trade deal to tackle both emissions intensity and over-capacity. And if we can apply it to steel and aluminum, we can look at how it applies to other sectors as well. We can help create a virtuous cycle and ensure our competitors aren’t gaining an advantage by degrading the planet.
Now, for those who have posed the question, the Biden Administration is still committed to the WTO and the shared values upon which it is based: fair competition, openness, transparency, and the rule of law. But serious challenges, most notably nonmarket economic practices and policies, threaten those core values. So that’s why we’re working with so many other WTO members to reform the multilateral trading system so that it benefits workers, accommodates legitimate national security interests, and confronts pressing issues that aren’t fully embedded in the current WTO framework, like sustainable development and the clean-energy transition.
In sum, in a world being transformed by that clean energy transition, by dynamic emerging economies, by a quest for supply chain resilience—by digitization, by artificial intelligence, and by a revolution in biotechnology—the game is not the same.
Our international economic policy has to adapt to the world as it is, so we can build the world that we want.
This brings me to the fourth step in our strategy: mobilizing trillions in investment into emerging economies—with solutions that those countries are fashioning on their own, but with capital enabled by a different brand of U.S. diplomacy.
We’ve launched a major effort to evolve the multilateral development banks so they are up to the challenges of today. 2023 is a big year for this.
As Secretary Yellen has outlined, we need to update the banks’ operating models—especially the World Bank but the regional development banks as well. We need to stretch their balance sheets to address climate change, pandemics, and fragility and conflict. And we have to expand access to concessional, high-quality finance for low income and for middle-income countries as they deal with challenges that span beyond any single nation’s borders.
We saw an early down payment on this agenda last month, but we will need to do much more.
And we’re very excited for Ajay Banga’s new leadership at the World Bank to make this vision a reality.
At the same time as we are evolving the multilateral development banks, we’ve also launched a major effort to close the infrastructure gap in low- and middle-income countries. We call it the Partnership for Global Infrastructure and Investment—PGII. PGII will mobilize hundreds of billions of dollars in energy, physical, and digital infrastructure financing between now and the end of the decade.
And unlike the financing that comes in the Belt and Road Initiative, projects under PGII are transparent and high-standard and in service of long-term, inclusive, and sustainable growth. And in just under a year since this initiative launched, we have already delivered significant investments in everything from the mines needed to power electric vehicles to global subsea telecom cables.
At the same time, we’re also committed to addressing the debt distress faced by an increasingly large number of vulnerable countries. We need to see genuine relief, not just “extending and pretending.” And we need to see all bilateral official and private creditors share the burden.
That includes China, which has worked to build its influence through massive lending to the emerging world, almost always with strings attached. We share the view of many others that China now needs to step up as a constructive force in assisting debt-stressed countries.
Finally, we are protecting our foundational technologies with a small yard and high fence.
As I’ve argued before, our charge is to usher in a new wave of the digital revolution—one that ensures that next-generation technologies work for, not against, our democracies and our security.
We’ve implemented carefully tailored restrictions on the most advanced semiconductor technology exports to China. Those restrictions are premised on straightforward national security concerns. Key allies and partners have followed suit, consistent with their own security concerns.
We’re also enhancing the screening of foreign investments in critical areas relevant to national security. And we’re making progress in addressing outbound investments in sensitive technologies with a core national security nexus.
These are tailored measures. They are not, as Beijing says, a “technology blockade.” They are not targeting emerging economies. They are focused on a narrow slice of technology and a small number of countries intent on challenging us militarily.
A word on China more broadly. As President von der Leyen put it recently, we are for de-risking and diversifying, not decoupling. We’ll keep investing in our own capacities, and in secure, resilient supply chains. We’ll keep pushing for a level playing field for our workers and companies and defending against abuses.
Our export controls will remain narrowly focused on technology that could tilt the military balance. We are simply ensuring that U.S. and allied technology is not used against us. We are not cutting off trade.
In fact, the United States continues to have a very substantial trade and investment relationship with China. Bilateral trade between the United States and China set a new record last year.
Now, when you zoom out from economics, we are competing with China on multiple dimensions, but we are not looking for confrontation or conflict. We’re looking to manage competition responsibly and seeking to work together with China where we can. President Biden has made clear that the United States and China can and should work together on global challenges like climate, like macroeconomic stability, health security, and food security.
Managing competition responsibly ultimately takes two willing parties. It requires a degree of strategic maturity to accept that we must maintain open lines of communication even as we take actions to compete.
As Secretary Yellen said last week in her speech on this topic, we can defend our national security interests, have a healthy economic competition, and work together where possible, but China has to be willing to play its part.
So, what does success look like?
The world needs an international economic system that works for our wage-earners, works for our industries, works for our climate, works for our national security, and works for the world’s poorest and most vulnerable countries.
That means replacing a singular approach focused the oversimplified assumptions that I set out at the top of my speech with one that encourages targeted and necessary investments in places that private markets are ill-suited to address on their own—even as we continue to harness the power of markets and integration.
It means providing space for partners around the world to restore the compacts between governments and their voters and workers.
It means grounding this new approach in deep cooperation and transparency to ensure that our investments and those of partners are mutually reinforcing and beneficial.
And it means returning to the core belief we first championed 80 years ago: that America should be at the heart of a vibrant, international financial system that enables partners around the world to reduce poverty and enhance shared prosperity. And that a functioning social safety net for the world’s most vulnerable countries is essential to our own core interests.
It also means building new norms that allow us to address the challenges posed by the intersection of advanced technology and national security, without obstructing broader trade and innovation.
This strategy will take resolve—it will take a dedicated commitment to overcoming the barriers that have kept this country and our partners from building rapidly, efficiently, and fairly as we were able to do in the past.
But it is the surest path to restoring the middle class, to producing a just and effective clean-energy transition, to securing critical supply chains, and, through all of this, to repairing faith in democracy itself.
As always, we need the full and bipartisan partnership of Congress if we are going to succeed.
We need support from Congress to revive America’s unique capacity to attract and retain the brightest talent from around the world.
We need the Hill’s full partnership in our reform initiatives in development finance.
And we need to double down on our investments in infrastructure, innovation, and clean energy. Our national security and our economic vitality depend on it.
Let me close with this.
President Kennedy was fond of saying that “a rising tide lifts all boats.” Over the years, advocates of trickle-down economics appropriated this phrase for their own uses.
But President Kennedy wasn’t saying what’s good for the wealthy is good for the working class. He was saying we’re all in this together.
And look at what he said next: “If one section of the country is standing still, then sooner or later a dropping tide drops all the boats.”
That’s true for our country. That’s true for our world. End economically, over time, we’re going to rise—or fall—together.
And that goes for the strength of our democracies as well as for the strength of our economies.
As we pursue this strategy at home and abroad, there will be reasonable debate. And this is going to take time. The international order that emerged after the end of the Second World War and then the Cold War were not built overnight. Neither will this one.
But together, we can work to lift up all of America’s people, communities, and industries, and we can do the same with our friends and partners everywhere around the globe as well.
This is a vision the Biden Administration must and will fight to achieve.
This is what is guiding us as we make our policy decisions at the intersection of economics, national security, and democracy.
And this is the work that we will do not just as a government, but with every element of the United States, and with the support and help of partners both in government and out of government around the world.
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