US National Security Advisor Jake Sullivan. File | Photo credit: Reuters

US National Security Advisor Jake Sullivan defended the Biden administration’s industrial and technology policy, saying it was not “moving away from a positive-sum worldview.” His remarks come less than two weeks after a bitter presidential election in which Mr. Biden’s successor in the race, Vice President Kamala Harris, is widely expected to follow Mr. Biden’s industrial policies.

His opponent, former US President Donald Trump, has said he would rely heavily on tariffs on imports as his primary economic policy tool.

Mr Sullivan’s remarks were made at the Brookings Institution in Washington DC, returning to the think tank where he had outlined the Biden administration’s “small yard, high fence” approach to safeguarding industrial and technology interests Americans in 2023.

“We continue to believe deeply in the mutual benefits of international trade and investment, enhanced and enabled by bold public investments in key sectors, limited in rare cases but essential by principled controls on key national security technologies, protected against harmful non-market practices, labor law. and environmental abuses and economic coercion and, above all, coordinated with a wide range of partners,” Mr. Sullivan said.

The context for his remarks is partly explained by the administration’s Inflation Reduction Act (August 2022), which provides up to $1 trillion in investments in green energy, transportation and related sectors in the United States over the next decade. Some U.S. trading partners had complained that the United States was being protectionist. Other laws and policies aimed at shifting the balance in advanced technology manufacturing include the CHIPS and Science Act, which provides more than $50 billion to encourage semiconductor chip manufacturing in the United States.

Mr. Sullivan stressed that the United States is not giving up on international trade and investment. If the United States and its partners did not invest, China would dominate supply chains and could weaponize them for dependence, Mr. Sullivan said.

He criticized China for overproducing and dumping on the global market.

“To avoid a second Chinese shock, we had to act,” he said. “That’s what drove the decisions on our 301 tariffs earlier this year,” he added, referring to higher tariffs on some green technology, medical equipment and steel from China that went into effect last month.

Part of the US approach was to encourage its partners to invest in their own industries, he said, citing India’s production-linked incentive program and Japan’s green transformation policy.

It would be a mistake, Mr. Sullivan said, for the United States to return to a Cold War approach of no trade between geopolitical rivals, when he emphasized the “small yard, high fence” approach. . “That means being targeted on what we restrict, controlling only the most sensitive technologies that will define national security and strategic competition,” he said.

Mr. Sullivan called on the United States to invest in international organizations such as the World Bank and the International Monetary Fund to increase investment in developing countries.