White House national security adviser Jake Sullivan reflects on China policy

For me, I think there is a practical answer, which is government-to-government agreements that put in place effective security guarantees and transparency around hardware, model weights and know-how, and that. This is what we worked on in our memorandum of understanding. [memorandum of understanding] with the United Arab Emirates, and I believe that this is a sustainable model to have a strong technological partnership with this country, as well as with other countries, which gives the United States a series of advantages both economic and strategic, where the alternative is to bring them into the Chinese technological orbit, which we do not want.

On the types of trade agreements desired by Asian countries:

In my opinion, what countries are looking for is increasingly personalized. It's not just some sort of expanded market access. These are the particular needs of a country which is thinking about its economic model for the future. So the economic dialogues we have with these countries and the attractiveness of the United States go well beyond the simple question: can we reduce barriers to market access?

So let me give you some examples. With Japan, they really wanted the Critical Minerals Memorandum of Understanding in order to have access to the IRA benefits. [Inflation Reduction Act]. It was sort of their number one demand, much more important to them than a broader trade agreement. With Indonesia, it's quite similar. This is what Indonesia is looking for. Basically, they want to reach an agreement on high-quality critical minerals so that there can be a flow of Indonesian nickel into American manufacturing of electric vehicles, batteries, etc. with other countries.

On whether American workers and industries have benefited from past free trade agreements:

So where did workers fit into all this? Now, you could say: well, workers fit into that. They're going to get goods at a lower cost, and that's good for them and to some extent that's true, so I'm not opposed to free trade. But it has to have an element of theory about how the American industrial base, the ability to build here, is supported, and that's why I actually think things like the IRA [Inflation Reduction Act] and an agreement on essential minerals with Japan constitute a more rational way of looking at free trade in the future.

On what Mr. Sullivan learned from his meetings with Mr. Xi and Mr. Wang:

The biggest thing that jumps out at me comes from the meeting with Xi and it was reinforced in the meeting that President Biden had with Xi, and a lot in the meetings with Wang Yi as well, but punctuated, which is In my opinion that when After we came to power, the Chinese point of view was: if you want to compete with us, then we will not cooperate with you and we will not have lines of communication. You can't have both. You have to choose. And we've stayed true to our theory, which is managed competition: we're going to compete, we're going to compete vigorously, but that doesn't mean we shouldn't find areas to work together where it's within our scope. mutual interest at the same time as we are in competition. And to compete responsibly, we must communicate at all levels, including military-to-military.

On leaving, the PRC [Peoples Republic of China] has, at least for the moment, adopted, not in the way of speaking, but in the way in which the relationship is conducted, the competition managed. We found areas to work on together: on the fight against narcotics, AI, nuclear risk and climate. We have sustained communication, including military-to-military, and we compete, obviously vigorously, and yet the relationship still has an element of stability, so it is not currently on the verge of a downward spiral. This is a significant development over four years in the way relations are managed on both sides, and it is consistent with our theory of relationship management which the PRC has now reflected.