LAS VEGAS — Attendees at this year’s CES are sharply attuned to the sea change of the past several years in America’s approach to trade and manufacturing. It makes sense: Everyone at the country’s largest consumer-tech conference, from device manufacturers like Bosch and Panasonic to software developers, makes something. Their businesses are dependent on the dizzyingly complex trade network that underpins the global supply chain. So when politicians decide to reroute that network’s pathways in order to bolster domestic industry it matters, a lot. The glossy, future-focused tech industry has become the center of some old-school policy ideas about supporting American business. “We’re seeing the emergence of a desire for what some people term ‘industrial policy’,” said Ana Meuwissen, director of government affairs at the Germany-based Bosch, during a morning panel titled “Trading With Friends — What Does It Take To Be a Trade BFF?” “I don't think that any of these actions are being done in a way to alienate allies, but to address what are identified as critical national priorities, gaps or vulnerabilities.” She was seeking, in a way, to soothe transatlantic anxieties that the Biden administration might be treating Europe more as a competitor than an ally. But of course an even bigger question looms over this whole issue: The “elephant in the room,” as one questioner put it to the panel, in China — a country whose “ally” status remains for many uncertain at best. In Washington, rhetoric about a “new Cold War” or “decoupling” from China’s economic influence can sometimes fly fast and free. But for the companies whose bottom lines depend on China’s heavyweight status both as a consumer and producer in the global economy, it’s not that simple — something Acting Assistant U.S. Trade Representative for Industry Sushan Demirjian acknowledged today on the same panel. “We're not alone in this global situation where things are changing,” Demirjian said. “It's not clear where things are going, and I think our partners are in the same place.” She pointed specifically to the importance of the kind of critical minerals largely mined in China, calling it “an area where a lot of the issues related to the availability of technology, sustainability, forced labor and worker issues are all coming together in ways that I know the industry and the USTR had not anticipated or fully appreciated.” On the industry side, this kind of talk raises some significant alarm bells. In an interview with POLITICO’s John Hendel at the Venetian this morning, Information Technology Industry Council CEO Jason Oxman had a stern warning for those who think a return to WWII-era “Made in America” culture is worth pursuing, or even possible. “I feel the dialogue both within the administration and in Congress has focused on well, how can we just decouple from China? And we can't, and we don’t want to,” Oxman said. “It's a country of 1.3 billion consumers, a lot of manufacturing takes place there. U.S. companies should be allowed to invest in China because we want the innovation that takes place in China to come back to the U.S.” While the American companiesbenefiting from these new policies might disagree, there’s another group that sees itself as a winner, if not with some reservations: American labor. I spoke this morning with Amanda Ballantyne, the director of the AFL-CIO’s Technology Institute, on the heels of a labor-centric tour through CES that included the federation’s president Liz Shuler, UNITE HERE president D. Taylor and Deputy Secretary of Labor Julie Su, among others. “I think it's a tremendous, important trend to be onshoring, and to be conscious about developing these industries,” Ballantyne told me. “We need this kind of technology and industrial policy, and we need rigorous planning around how to develop these competitive industries, and it’s critical that labor be a core component of that.” While labor and American industry cheer, Bosch’s Meuwissen took care to point out that the U.S.’ “decoupling” efforts haven’t had an entirely cold reception overseas, either — with the European Union looking warmly at the passage of the CHIPS and Science Act and considering similar action of its own. The ripple effects of America’s newly muscular approach to industrial policy are slowly, but acutely, making their way through the global economy. If the talk at this year’s CES is any indication, tech is likely to remain at its exact epicenter.
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