"While fair competition from abroad is welcome, too often unfair foreign subsidies and other trade practices have adversely impacted US manufacturing and more broadly, US competitiveness," the White House said in a statement. "The US government must implement a comprehensive strategy to push back on unfair foreign competition that erodes the resilience of US critical supply chains and industries."
While the statement did not directly blame China for unfair trade practices, it said "supply chain resilience should be incorporated into the US trade policy approach toward China, including in the ongoing review of US-China trade policy."
On a broader scale, the Biden administration needs to develop a comprehensive strategy to support US competitiveness and said it would "also examine existing US trade agreements to identify ways to strengthen collective supply chain resilience," the statement said.
The White House said these efforts were critical because, as the coronavirus pandemic and resulting economic crisis have shown, structural weaknesses in both domestic and international supply chains threatened US economic and national security.
"While amplified by the public health and economic crisis, decades of underinvestment and public policy choices led to fragile supply chains across a range of sectors and products," the statement said. "Unfair trade practices by competitor nations and private sector and public policy prioritization of low-cost labor, just-in-time production, consolidation, and private sector focus on short-term returns over long-term investment have hollowed out the US industrial base, siphoned innovation from the United States, and stifled wage and productivity growth."
The US Senate is expected to approve by vote later on Tuesday a bill providing more than $200 billion in funds to help American technology companies to take on the competition from China in an intensifying showdown between the two world powers amid the global shortage of microchips.
