Washington — Ending trade with foreign competitors to protect U.S. technology is not a path forward, National Security Advisor Jake Sullivan said Wednesday, underscoring the need for more nuanced and targeted export controls.
“It doesn’t make sense to allow companies to sell advanced technology to countries that could use them to gain military advantage over the United States,” Sullivan said in remarks at the Brookings Institution. “Now, it would be a mistake to attempt to return to the Cold War paradigm of almost no trade, including technological trade among geopolitical rivals.”
He said a system of nuanced and targeted export control should continue instead, “de-risking” trade with China rather than “decoupling” with the country.
“Yes, the fence is high, as it should be, and … the yard is small, and we’re not looking to expand it needlessly,” he said, using an Obama administration trope where the yard refers to the pool of the exported items controlled and the fence stands for the control itself.
The U.S. must consider four distinct questions when examining how to continue with the export control system of limited items under tight restrictions, Sullivan said. These questions include examining which sensitive technologies are most likely to become foundational to national security, as well as identifying where competitors will be exerting maximum effort.
Some experts say this statement is a turn from Sullivan’s previous remarks, moving from a more absolutist, idealistic tone to a more practical approach.
“I think that that set of four questions suggested a more moderate tone, a more kind of realistic, updated understanding of the limitations on what we can do,” said Martin Chorzempa, a Senior Fellow at the Petersen Institute of International Economics, comparing Sullivan’s remarks from two years ago.
But targeted export controls of this nature aren’t new.
Former President Barack Obama instituted the Export Control Reform Initiative (ECR) in his first term, creating new, more nuanced rules around working with foreign trade partners. The ECR liberalized trade in general, but put tighter controls on a select group of specific technologies, according to Robert Shaw, the program director for the Export Control and Nonproliferation Program at the Middlebury Institute of International Studies.
The system maintained its path throughout Donald Trump’s presidency and was picked up by the Biden administration.
“With respect to China in particular, [it’s] continued, essentially on a similar vector from the Obama administration and all the way to the present,” he said.
Still, Biden introduced some new policies into the system–-such as for semiconductors.
In 2022, the administration’s Chips and Science Act put roughly $52 billion into domestic research and development for these critical pieces, which are used in many electrical devices from medical equipment to smartphones. Around that time, the U.S. also introduced enhanced export controls focused on limiting China from accessing US-originating semiconductor technology.
“Export controls on semiconductors were new,” said Mary E. Lovely, Anthony M. Solomon Senior Fellow at the Peterson Institute. “It is, in some sense, echoing things we saw before, but also amplifying them and increasing their use,” comparing the initiative to export controls from the Trump administration.
Shaw said the export controls’ design under Biden sets them apart, particularly the way they allow for quick tweaks as needed.
“They can be easily adjusted to where they could be fairly quickly calibrated to either be tightened further or loosened,” Shaw said.
Sullivan ended his remarks by doubling-down on the need to utilize secure trade policy, not only for America’s interests now, but also for its future in the global economy.
“Our task ahead is to harness that power to take on the realities of today’s geopolitical moment in a way that will not only preserve America’s endurance strengths, but extend them for generations to come,” Sullivan said.
