Biden’s trade agenda is “very, very aggressive,” said David Autor, an economist at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology who has extensively documented the effects of trade with China on the U.S. economy, including factory job losses .
In his view, there are key distinctions between Biden’s and Beijing’s trade strategies as both nations seek to lead the clean energy race.
China has focused more on sending cheap exports to global markets, Autor said, and on preventing foreign companies from dominating China’s domestic markets.
Biden, he said, is more focused on blocking imports from China and denying China access to some key American technologies, such as advanced semiconductors.
At a meeting last week in Italy of Group of 7 finance ministers, leaders from both sides of the Atlantic warned that the United States and Europe must coordinate their protectionism and subsidies if they hope to catch Beijing in the race to dominate key industries.
