Trade

Please join ITIF for an all-day conference with leading experts and policymakers to explore why and how Washington can look to Hamiltonianism for guidance in how to win the techno-economic contest with China.

The EU’s new cloud cybersecurity regime should focus on good security practices, as the U.S. FedRAMP regime does. Emulating China’s protectionist focus on firm nationality is a bad security practice that weakens transatlantic influence over cybersecurity issues globally.

Despite over a decade of policy debates and changes, the United States is still in dire need of tools to limit China’s ability to profit from industrial predation.

The Biden administration should use access to the IRA Act’s EV benefits as the wake-up call that its partners can no longer have it all and that there are meaningful differences between friends and acquaintances when it comes to trade and technology cooperation with the United States.

China and other countries with poor human rights records are trying to influence international standards mainly through the International Telecommunications Union. So, the Office of the High Commissioner should focus attention there to address the most problematic proposals for technical standards with clear and troubling human rights implications.

As economist Herb Stein once famously stated, “If something cannot go on forever, it will stop.” This is undoubtedly true about the United States’ massive trade imbalance, particularly with China.

The Biden administration (and other major trading partners) should push the EU to live up to its statements, abide by its WTO commitments, and support the development and use of international standards for new and emerging technologies.

Supporting manufacturing to lower the trade deficit doesn’t have to mean the dreaded “picking winners”. It could mean an investment tax credit and much higher R&D tax credit. It could be official policy to not defend the dollar. It could mean a regulatory system that spurs innovation.

In responding to China’s growing efforts to influence standards, the United States should not copy its approach to standards setting in closing off participation to foreign enterprises. Instead, the Biden administration and its like-minded trading partners in Australia, Japan, Singapore, and beyond should revert to first principles as agreed at the WTO and double down on their support for open, transparent, and industry-led standards development, which together demonstrates good governance for standards setting.

When Europe gets around to fixing its own trade and procurement imbalances and with the United States and discriminatory policies, then the Biden administration should talk. In the meantime, the Biden administration needs to stop being defensive against the EU attacks and counter with its own narrative that demonstrates the EU’s protectionist performance.