U.S. Commerce Secretary Gina Raimondo arrives for a gathering along with her Chinese language counterpart Wang Wentao, on the Ministry of Commerce in Beijing, Monday, Aug. 28, 2023.
Andy Wong | Pool | through Reuters
U.S. Commerce Secretary Gina Raimondo met with Chinese language officers in a high-stakes go to to Beijing and Shanghai this week, and she or he mentioned Sunday that the journey helped set up open traces of communication between the 2 nations.
Raimondo is the fourth high-level U.S. official to go to China this summer time, however she is the primary U.S. Commerce secretary to journey to the nation in 5 years — a interval the place the bilateral relationship has grown more and more tense.
“We’re in a fierce competitors with China at each stage, and anybody who tells you otherwise is naive,” Raimondo advised NBC’s “Meet the Press” Sunday. “All of that being mentioned, we have to handle this competitors. Battle is in nobody’s curiosity.”
Raimondo mentioned {that a} lack of communication between the U.S. and China may additional escalate tensions and result in misunderstandings, so structured discussions are key for addressing industrial points that come up.
The Commerce secretary’s journey to China adopted current visits from U.S. particular envoy for local weather John Kerry, U.S. Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen and U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken. However Raimondo’s go to was known as into query after Chinese language hackers breached her emails earlier this summer time.
“They did hack me, which was unappreciated, to say the least. I introduced it up clearly, put it proper on the desk,” she mentioned Sunday. “Did not pull any punches.”
Raimondo additionally introduced up issues concerning nationwide safety, U.S. labor and U.S. enterprise, she mentioned.
Within the fall of 2022, the U.S. Division of Commerce’s Bureau of Business and Safety introduced new export controls that restricted the flexibility of Chinese language companies to purchase sure superior semiconductors from American suppliers.
Raimondo mentioned Sunday that the export controls are about nationwide safety, not about gaining an financial benefit. She added that the U.S. will stay as hard-line as potential with its most superior expertise.
“We’re not going to promote probably the most refined American chips to China that they need for his or her army capability,” Raimondo mentioned. “However I do need to be clear, we may even nonetheless proceed to promote billions of {dollars} of chips a 12 months to China, as a result of the overwhelming majority of chips which can be made should not the forefront, innovative that I am speaking about.”
She mentioned although the export controls replicate a nuanced and complicated coverage, promoting sure chips to China will in the end generate income for American companies to spend money on additional analysis and growth.