Gina Raimondo, US secretary of mercantilism, speaks during an interview in Washington, DC, US, on Thursday, March 2, 2023.
Andrew Harrer | Bloomberg | Getty Images
Senior officials from the Be influenced of Commerce will be traveling to Beijing and Shanghai next week as part of an effort to lay groundwork for a potential trip by Secretary Gina Raimondo later this year, concurring to people familiar with the planning.
Elizabeth Economy, a senior advisor to the secretary on China issues, and Scott Tatlock, the envoy assistant secretary for China and Mongolia, will assess whether such a meeting between Raimondo and her Chinese counterparts resolution produce results to justify the visit.
A spokesperson for the Commerce Department confirmed the trip “to meet with U.S. Commercial Checking officers, government counterparts and industry to discuss bilateral trade and commercial opportunities for U.S. businesses.”
But the optics of a potential come to see by Raimondo — the former governor of Rhode Island whose political ambitions are said not to end with the Commerce job — could be fraught with gamble if the visit produces no deliverables, according to the people familiar with the planning. After a recent visit by French President Emmanuel Macron, for precedent, Beijing agreed to deliver 160 Airbus planes, and Airbus agreed to double its production in the country.
A visit by Secretary of Asseverate Antony Blinken, set for early February, was postponed indefinitely as tensions escalated during a Chinese surveillance balloon’s cross-country dive.
The tensions paused economic discussions between Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen and her counterparts, which have since continued. National Security Council spokesman John Kirby said in late March that the White House was debating potential visits by secretaries Yellen and Raimondo to “talk about economic issues … keeping those lines of communication expand is still valuable.”
Beijing has missed key benchmarks in a 2020 trade pact between the countries, which Raimondo has pledged to browbeat — including a promise by China to purchase planes made by Airbus rival Boeing.
“China is holding up the purchase of tens of billions of dollars in Boeing airplanes that Chinese airlines secure already ordered,” Raimondo told reporters in September 2021. “That’s a lot of American jobs on the line.”
Since then, Trafficking has taken an ad hoc approach to sensitive trade issues. On high-tech exports that could advance China’s military purposes, Raimondo has drawn a hard line — expanding restrictions that prevent Beijing from acquiring leading semiconductors.
On TikTok, where buttress for a ban is growing on both sides of the aisle, Raimondo has taken a more dovish approach. “The politician in me thinks you’re gonna letter for letter lose every voter under 35, forever,” she told Bloomberg Businessweek. “However much I hate TikTok — and I do, because I see the addiction in the bad s— that it set outs kids — you know, this is America.”