Rep. Morgan Griffith, R-Va., a member of the House Energy and Commerce Committee, said the United States should not be depending on any resources from China. Griffith told Federal Newswire the U.S. should be focused on developing resources at home versus abroad.
"The U.S. should not be solely reliant on the Chinese for any sector!" Griffith said to Federal Newswire. "The U.S. should be working to have a significant percentage of all critical supplies, whether it be manufactured goods, active pharmaceutical ingredients or essential raw materials, produced at home.”
U.S. companies have begun to reduce dependency on China. The Washington Post cited the Census Bureau which found the U.S. imports from China are down 24% compared to last year. HP, Stanley Black and Decker and Lego were mentioned as example companies beginning to distance themselves from China.
Political tension is contributing to this departure as countries like Mexico, Thailand and Vietnam are growing closer to compete with China, the Washington Post reported.
“The behavior of the governments toward each other — the more hostile, confrontational stance — is starting to affect private-sector decision-making because it changes the risk profile,” Adam Slater, lead economist for Oxford Economics in London, said in the Washington Post report.
President Xi Jinping's economic strategy of suppression of private companies combined with the relationship with the Biden administration has led to a distancing of economic ties. The Washington Post reported one out of every six dollars is spent on Chinese imports down from one out of every four before the pandemic. Slater predicted this "decoupling" is "set to continue."
Additionally, U.S. imports from Mexico are up approximately $10 billion, according to the Washington Post.
The Biden administration has cut off advanced semiconductor exports to China and plans to continue cutting off investment in Chinese technology sectors, the Washington Post reported. Factoring in inflation and rising prices, research from the Cato Institute showed trade with China is down 7% compared to its peak in 2018. Mexico is now the top trading partner in the U.S.
According to previous reporting by the Federal Newswire, the Brookings Institute, using the Cambridge dictionary, defined decoupling as "a situation in which two or more activities are separated, or do not develop in the same way.”
The America First Policy Institute China Policy Initiative argues a strategic decoupling is necessary to protect American prosperity from "CCP exploitation."
In a statement last year, Steve Yates said, “The White House should announce strategic decoupling from China in which we deepen the previous administration’s efforts to end our dependence on China,” Steve Yates, senior fellow and chair of the AFPI China Policy Institute said Nov. 28, 2022. Yates is also the host of the China Desk Podcast by the Federal Newswire.
In a March China Desk Podcast interview, guest Christian Whiton spoke on decoupling. Whiton is the author of "Smart Power: Between Diplomacy and War." He is a senior fellow at the Center for the National Interest and former State Department senior advisor in the Bush and Trump administrations.
"That makes a lot of sense. So it's not that we're going to have an immediate traumatic break with China, which would be hard since we're so dependent on them for a lot of things," Whiton said in the interview. "But over time, we could shift away."
