US Trade Representative Katherine Tai is expected to denounce Thursday an “unsustainable version of globalization that requires reform and improvement”, in a speech she is to deliver in the early afternoon in Washington and which AFP was able to consult.
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According to Ms. Tai, the chain of crises, in particular the pandemic and the war in Ukraine, underlined “the fragility of supply chains and the unsustainable version of globalization” in its current form.
“It is perfectly clear that these challenges have repercussions for competition policy as well as trade policy,” she insisted, stressing that “our global supply chain, created to maximize short-term efficiency and minimize costs, must be reinvented in order to ensure its resistance”.
“Strong supply chains are vital for better economic and national security,” said Ms. Tai.
In order to reduce its dependence on China in particular in terms of trade, the United States has launched several reindustrialization and investment projects in sectors considered essential, such as batteries for electric vehicles, semiconductors or energy. own.
A political choice that has raised fears among the main trading partners of the United States, in particular the European Union, Japan and South Korea, which fear a subsidy war aimed at attracting companies to the territories of the different countries. .
It is in particular the great climate plan voted last summer and promising significant subsidies, the IRA, which crystallized these fears, the EU responding to them with an equivalent project integrating substantially equivalent subsidies.