Biden Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen said during an interview over the weekend that the administration will take action to protect national security, even if it “harms our own narrow economic interests.”
Yellen made the remarks while in Beijing during an interview with CBS News’s “Face The Nation” with host Margaret Brennan.
Brennan asked Yellen if she had “a sense of what the retaliation will be from China” if the administration imposes further “restrictions on high-end technology sales” to the nation.
“Well, an objective of my trip was to explain that national security is something that we can’t compromise about and we will protect, and we will do so even if it harms our own narrow economic interests,” she said. “But that when we take such actions, which do have an effect on the Chinese economy, that we will make sure that they are transparent, narrowly targeted, and well explained.”
Yellen said she “certainly expressed concern” about China’s decision to restrict exports of two minerals critical to the U.S. economy and military.
“Our own actions are narrowly targeted to address national security concerns, and I- it’s not clear that the actions that the Chinese took are similarly narrowly targeted at their national security concerns,” she said. “So this is an area that I expressed concern about.”
She said she went to China to “make sure that we don’t engage in a series of unintended escalatory actions that will be harmful to our overall economic relationship with one another.”
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“And we have had very little contact, both senior officials, and also just the American people and the Chinese people who’ve had very little contact with one another over the last several years, in part because of COVID,” she said. “And that’s a situation where misunderstandings can develop. We have a new team on the economic side in Beijing, that it’s important to establish person-to-person relationships, and to open ongoing channels of communication, where concerns can be aired and discussed. And I do think my trip has been successful in forging those relationships and creating the opportunity for a deeper set of more frequent contacts at our staff levels.”
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