Former Trade Staffer Emphasizes Danger of Export Control Overreach
Clete Willems, a former Donald Trump administration trade staffer, told the Senate Finance Committee that technology sales to China help pay for research and development here, so as Congress considers how to bolster the semiconductor industry, it should also be sure not to put export controls on goods that are not sensitive.
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Willems, who was testifying at a hearing April 22 on China and trade competitiveness, said that while many recent export controls have been justifiable, when companies based in Japan, Taiwan, South Korea or Europe sell the same product U.S. companies previously exported, the Chinese companies aren't denied access to the technology. The only result is lost market share, he said. “We need to be careful export measures don’t make it too difficult for us to send our products abroad,” he said.
“What you really need to do is coordinate those on a multilateral basis,” he said. “I think we can get on the same page, push back collectively, and that will be a much more effective approach.”
Willems, now a partner at Akin Gump, said President Joe Biden's administration need to resume negotiations with China, to build on the phase 1 agreement. Willems, who was a negotiator for that agreement, said the record-setting agricultural exports to China in 2020 resulted less because of purchase commitments than because of changes China agreed to make to tariff rate quota administration and other non-tariff barriers to agricultural exports.
He suggested the U.S. trade representative start with some of the text that China rejected in May 2019, on nontariff barriers, services market access and forced technology transfer. "We only got about half of what we were negotiating," he said. He said that tackling distorting subsidies will have to wait for a Japan-European Union-U.S. united front. China should be the focus and that is why it is important to prioritize ending trans-Atlantic disputes, such as digital services taxes, Section 232 tariffs and Airbus/Boeing subsidies, he said.