During an interview with Bloomberg on Monday, Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen stated that “we have and want to continue to have deep economic ties” with China and noted the near-record amount of trade between the two countries.
Bloomberg Washington Correspondent Annmarie Hordern asked, “But when you’re looking at de-escalating, we’re trying to figure out what would be left on the table. Because what it feels [like] now is the administration is actually just amping up when it comes to potential tit-for-tat with Beijing. There is the outbound executive order that potentially we could see as soon as the end of July or this summer. Could that be a place, pulling a punch from the outbound executive order, maybe making that a little bit more toned-down, could that be a place you could de-escalate with Beijing?”
Yellen answered, “I want to say that what we’re doing is not tit-for-tat. What we’re doing is putting in place controls that are designed to protect U.S. national security and, in some cases, to address fundamental human rights abuses. And we do intend to protect our national security. We have export controls that play an important role in accomplishing that. And what I tried to explain to our Chinese counterparts is that our desire is to make these U.S. policies clearly national security-focused, transparent, and narrow, that we’re not attempting to stifle economic progress in China, that we have and want to continue to have deep economic ties. After all, this year, our trade has reached almost $700 billion.”
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