Former Trump Administration Trade Negotiator Calls for Multinational Approach on China

Clete Willems, former White House deputy assistant to the president for international economics, believes the U.S. must convince allies to present a unified front to China on industrial subsidies, censorship and cybersecurity issues. Willems, who is now a lobbyist with Akin Gump, was speaking during a June 12 online program of the Asia Society. When it's just the U.S. arguing for reforms, he said, China can portray it as the U.S. trying to keep China down. But, he said, it might be possible to get China to change, “if we are able to portray them as an international outlier, which I think they are.”

Willems said there's no possibility of phase two trade talks beginning before the November election, but he also doesn't expect the administration to abandon the phase one deal. “I think staying in the deal while China is faithfully implementing it is a political winner for the president,” he said. But if China stops working towards the structural reforms “that are so very important to [U.S. Trade Representative Robert] Lighthizer; if China cancels purchases that are important to the president and [Agriculture Secretary] Sonny Perdue, that may force his hand.”

Willems said that in his view, the Huawei export controls are a mistake, even though he said he sees China as “an existential threat.”

“If you really think China’s acquisition of data, or the security of devices in 5G networks is an issue,” he said, it would be better to keep the company dependent on critical U.S. technology, and put in security patches through those chips. That way, he said, not only do U.S. chip companies get the revenue that allows them to continue to innovate, you also can “keep [Chinese companies] behind on the development curve.”