Tipsheet

Commerce Secretary: The US Does Not Want to 'Decouple from China'

Secretary of Commerce Gina Raimondo made it clear the United States has no intention of decoupling its economy from China despite its desire to replace the United States as the world-leading superpower.

“The United — I want to be also clear, though. The United States does not seek to decouple from China, nor does it seek a technological decoupling from China. What we seek to do is ensure that certain technologies where the United States is ahead and where China’s explicit strategy is to have these technologies and deploy them in the Chinese military apparatus, those are technologies that we have used export controls to ban the sale of to China," Raimondo said.

"So, we enjoy trade with China. The vast majority of trade with China is in benign products, and that will and should continue. So, this isn’t about decoupling," she added.

The Washington Free Beacon has reported Raimondo's husband is a top executive at a venture capital firm backed by the Chinese government is a major investor in an artificial intelligence. Danhua Capital, which is based in California but was started with financial backing from the Chinese Communist Party, has been invested in PathAI since at least 2017, when it joined five other funders to contribute $11 million worth of seed funding for the artificial intelligence startup.

Raimondo's position as Commerce Secretary is to ensure the United States maintains its strong business relationships around the world. Since the COVID-19 pandemic, with evidence pointing to the virus possibly originating from a lab in Wuhan, there have been calls to not be so reliant on China for economic matters.