The Future of International Economic Policy with Deputy National Security Advisor Mike Pyle

Over the past year, the United States has made historic investments in rebuilding American manufacturing, strengthening supply chain resilience, and positioning the United States to lead the global clean energy transition. Recently, the Biden-Harris administration has negotiated deals with allies and partners over critical minerals and supply chain security, while encouraging them to embrace industrial strategy measures of their own.

Join the Carnegie Endowment’s American Statecraft Program for a conversation with Deputy National Security Advisor Mike Pyle, who also serves as the administration's sherpa to the G7 and G20. The discussion will address the Biden-Harris administration’s work on a modern American industrial and innovation strategy and diplomatic efforts to build broad international support. The conversation will be moderated by Carnegie nonresident scholar Peter Harrell.

Event Transcript

Note: this is a rush transcript and may contain errors.

Chris Chivvis:
... Biden NSC as the senior director for international economics where he was jointly appointed to the National Economic Council. One final point before I do, Peter will take questions from the audience about 25 minutes from now. So if you're watching remotely, you can submit your questions online. In person, please just raise your hand and Peter will try to get to you directly. Our time with Mike is limited of course, but I know that he's eager to hear from you and respond to your queries. Peter, the floor is yours.

Peter Harrell:
Terrific. Thank you very much Chris, and thanks to all of you for joining this morning. Both those of you who are able to be here in the room with us and also those of you who are joining, I believe from all around the world online. I really want to... It's such a pleasure for me to welcome to Carnegie, a former colleague and a friend Mike Pyle. Chris gave a great introduction to Mike's professional background, but what I'll add is somebody who had the opportunity to work with Mike is that apart from all his skill and work ethic, he's just a pleasure as a colleague and someone to work with, the type of colleague who's always on hand to talk about an idea or an issue that you're thinking over and who you can always learn something from. Mike, I think it's safe to say there's no shortage of international economic topics to discuss and certainly more than we'll get through this morning.

Just yesterday the president gave a speech outlining his vision of Bidenomics. Earlier this spring, the National Security advisor, Jake Sullivan, gave a speech at which he laid out the administration's strategic vision for international economics. And you're at the center of actually selling that vision to America's friends and allies around the world. I suspect that pretty much everyone in this room is interested in the direction of US economic policy towards China, especially following Secretary Blinken's trip and with Secretary Yellen expected to go to China soon as well.

Secretary Yellen last week made interesting remarks in Paris about World Bank and IMF reform and ways to mobilize hundreds of billions of dollars of additional financing for the developing world and to tackle global threats like climate change. Indian Prime Minister Modi just completed what by all accounts, was a tremendously successful visit here to Washington last week, and I know that the administration is gearing up for a full agenda at the G20 summit that Prime Minister Modi is chairing later this year.

Just last night I saw press reports negotiations between the US and Europe on the global steel arrangement on carbon border adjustment mechanisms for steel are heating up. And Mike, you have the privilege of being at the center of all of this. And I should have mentioned earlier, Mike has a tendency not to need much sleep, as best I can tell.

Mike, I'd like to start by asking about a couple of topics close to home. Over the past couple of years, there's been nothing short of a revolution in American industrial policy with the CHIPS Act, the bipartisan infrastructure law and the Inflation Reduction Act mobilizing hundreds of billions of dollars in investment in American infrastructure and manufacturing. Just earlier this week I saw that the Treasury Department put out an analysis noting that the US has experienced a striking surge in construction spending for manufacturing facilities and that real manufacturing construction spending has doubled just since the end of 2021.

I think it's fair to say that while these investments are transformational here at home, at least initially, they spooked a number of America's allies and partners who feared US incentives would poach manufacturing capacity from them, and also worried that some of the US incentives were a departure from longstanding US commitments to WTO rules and other trade principles.

I know that you and your colleagues across the administration have done a ton of work to negotiate with allies over implementation and to encourage them to adopt parallel industrial policy measures of their own. Let me begin by asking you how you assess the current state of industrial policy discussions with key allies in Europe and Asia. And are you purely focused on the sectors that we've already made decisions about domestically, semiconductors, and clean energy and critical minerals, or are there other sectors that you're talking about coordinating on as well?

Mike Pyle:
So first, it's a great pleasure to be here at Carnegie. Thank you for the introduction, Peter, it's great to be here with you. I mean, I think about all that I've learned from you over the past decade or more and all of the work that you did to really think through and be one of the key architects for all of the kind of new approaches on thinking about global economics. It's just a great pleasure to be sitting up here with you and have been your colleague for the period that we were.

To your question, I guess the first thing I'd do is take a step back and maybe echo a little bit about what Jake talked about in terms of the diagnosis that the president had coming into office and really seeing there being at least four interlocking challenges that he faced. One was the hollowing-out of American industrial capacity.

Two was the stiffening competition with China, particularly recognizing that they were a country and economy that wasn't playing by global rules. Three, obviously the climate crisis and the need to meet the moment on climate change. And four, the extent to which the hollowing-out of our industrial base had caused deep challenges for the American middle class, the American working class, and the ways in which those challenges, the undermining of the position of the American middle class was causing pressures on American democracy itself.

And I think what the president concluded, and I think you heard him talk about this at length yesterday, was the extent to which public investments, public investment in American infrastructure in the key sectors that are going to define the future in building our capacity to restore our industrial wherewithal was really an answer to each of those four challenges, industrial hollowing-out, China, climate change, challenge to American democracy.

And I think we've seen that play out. These historic pieces of legislation each embodying out an approach around public and investment and then some of the statistics that you cite around the investment boom, around ongoing strength in our labor markets, around inflation coming down. So that's really been the heart of the president's approach here at home. But I think what we've said to allies, and one thing I would say is I think that it's funny in some ways to hear question marks around the US relationship with its allies on some of these issues because I think in some ways, in many ways, this is a period of historic strength, of unity between ourselves and our closest partners and allies around the world. But our message to them has been, we can't do this alone. In fact, we need you to come along with us. We think that President Biden's vision is a model for the rest of the world and we think that if you join us, we can meet these challenges together.

And I think that's in large part what we've seen. We've seen the EU take significant steps with things like its green deal industrial plan, with things like its critical raw materials act, to take significant steps towards public investments around the clean energy transition, around chips and others. We've seen things like this in the Canadian budget, significant incentives around clean energy production in Canada, Japan, a handful of others. So this model of public investment meeting these challenges, rebuilding capacity, resilience, inclusivity, meeting the moment on climate I think is really a model that we've seen take hold not just here, but around the world. What is the work that I do? What's the work that we do in the NSC and the NEC at the White House? It's really saying, okay, we're taking these common steps. How do we be sure that our approaches are aligned with one another?

How do we be sure that our acts of investing to together work to achieve our common ends, not work at cross purposes with one another? So for example, I think you saw in March when President Biden met with President von der Leyen, they articulated these shared objectives, these shared goals, the shared path to getting there then said, okay, we're going to do a couple of things to really make that work. We're going to have a dialogue on our respective incentives around clean energy to make sure that we really are expanding global supply around clean energy deployment, that we're being sure that our incentives aren't just providing windfalls to private interests, aren't undercutting one another. You also saw this in terms of the announcement around there being a critical minerals agreement negotiation between the US and the EU saying, okay, we need to build an ecosystem around the materials that will power the clean energy transition in a high standard way.

And that's going to be a mark of the cooperation that we have with one another. I think similarly at the G7 in Hiroshima last month, you saw really that model between the president and president von der Leyen extended to the G7 as a whole. And again, a kind of recognition that we have a shared set of goals, we have a shared toolkit to get there, and we're going to use instruments like dialogues, on incentives like working together on critical minerals to be proof points on the ways in which we're going to work together to achieve those ends.

Peter Harrell:
Thank you. Thank you for that. I'd like to turn away from a bit from the agenda for the industrial world because I think you kind of laid out a nice encapsulation of the agenda for the industrialized world, for G7 and other peer economies, around coordinating and investment first approach to economics. But I'd like to turn to the agenda for the developing world, particularly with the G20 coming up in a couple of months in the US hosting APEC this year. You're obviously the APEC senior official amongst your many other hats.

And I think that while coordinating industrial policy measures can make a lot of sense for industrial democracies that have a lot of fiscal space, have a lot of the technology to actually make those kinds of investments, it can be a different question for the developing world which needs fiscal support, which needs investment from abroad and can't necessarily just drive a domestic industrial policy the same way we can across the G7.

It was interesting last week to hear Secretary Yellen lay out an iffy reform agenda and to push to galvanize hundreds of billions of dollars for the developing world. And I know the G7's moving forward with the Partnership for Global Infrastructure and Investment or PGII, but I do think one of the concerns we've heard out of a number of the developing countries, not to mention think tanks and trade associations here in Washington, is that for the developing world partners, if we're not doing traditional trade deals, we don't necessarily have a compelling kind of practical value proposition to put on the table to them. What do you see as the US agenda for the developing world, particularly in trade and finance as we look to the G20 and to APEC later this year?

Mike Pyle:
Absolutely. I think that's a critical question, and I think that just as the agenda with other industrial economies begins with investments, so too, as you say, does the agenda for the global south, for the developing world begin with investments, and building a toolkit to facilitate that investment. I think that when you look at the needs in the developing world, whether it's around the clean energy transition, whether it's around public health, whether it's around the digital economy, the needs are overwhelming. And I think Jake talked about the need to mobilize literally trillions of dollars to meet those ends. So I think very concretely we're working in real time around an agenda for the multilateral development banks, with the World Bank at the lead, to evolve those institutions for a changing set of global challenges with resources and a mandate that will be required to meet those.

So what are we working towards? I think you saw at the spring meetings some success at reorienting the approach of the World Bank to focus on some of those global challenges like clean energy, like public health, like fragility, while maintaining a core focus on the traditional goals of development. You've heard Secretary Yellen talk about the need for additional resource capacity at the World Bank and other MDBs and some of the reforms that were delivered at the spring meetings begin to do that, but that's really a down payment on a much more ambitious set of steps that we know we need to take moving ahead.

And lastly, there needs to be a focus not just on traditional World Bank and other MDB resources, but concessional resources for middle income countries in particular. We know that the Brazils and the Indias of the world are going to be core to meeting the moment on climate, to facilitating the clean energy transition across the world and including in the developing world and being sure that the World Bank and other MDBs have a toolkit that can reach to middle income countries like India and Brazil with concessional resources is going to be a critical part of what it means to meet those objectives.

So we're working between now and Delhi to really align the rest of the G20 behind not just this vision, but a concrete set of steps that we can take to deliver on it. And I think that's going to be core to the approach. Secondly, I point to things like the debt crisis that we're seeing in a lot of corners of the emerging world. This has been an issue that the president, that Secretary Yellen has spoken extensively to both in public and in private, to make clear that there are incredible pressures on emerging economies around the world, in particular around debt that all members of the global community have to play a part in in finding a solution to those debt challenges. Of course, China in particular has risen as a source of debt to a lot of emerging countries over the last decade, and China in particular has a critical role to play in producing a sustainable solution to that challenge.

We were encouraged by what we saw in Zambia, but there's a lot more to do even with respect to Zambia from China and the broader global community. And certainly a lot of other countries, whether it be Sri Lanka or Suriname or others that are going to require the same type of focus and ultimately constructiveness that has all too often been lacking from China to get to solutions for those countries. We're going to keep the focus there. We're going to keep raising this issue. We're going to keep pushing ahead to make sure that the debt is an issue that stays at the front of mind, that we get achievable solutions for countries that are under distress. And then I think the last piece I would say, going to the final piece of your question is I think we're very focused on new economic arrangements like the Indo-Pacific Economic Framework, like the America's partnership that we think are fit for purpose for the economic needs of the moment.

If you think about where we stand today kind, we're at a place where average US tariff rates are at historic lows, still 2.4%. Where you've seen trade between the United States and Southeast Asia double in dollar terms over the last six or seven years. And so I think that in a lot of respects, we don't see tariffs as being at the core of trade policy. We don't see trade policy as being at the core of international economic policy. What needs to be at the core of international economic policy? Well, an emerging set of challenges that haven't been addressed to date. Things like supply chain fragility and resilience, things like climate and clean energy, things like anti-corruption, things like global tax. These are the kind of pressing economic issues internationally right now. And those are the places where we're really focusing our efforts when it comes to engaging with Southeast Asia through IPEF, with Latin America through the Americas Partnership.

Peter Harrell:
No, thank you. And I think that's a fair point at the end. You take a country like Vietnam, which we don't have a trade agreement with, I think exported goods worth approximately a quarter of its entire GDP to the United States last year, which is well over double what it was five or six years ago. So you are seeing that happen anyway, and I can see the argument for focusing on other kinds of challenges. I want to ask you a question about China, and there are so many questions that I could ask. Outbound investment issues, semiconductor rules, the tariff review, and all the rest.

But I actually want to ask you a more strategic level question. When Jake Sullivan has talked about China, he has spoken about building a high fence around a narrow garden. Meaning that we should work, we as the US should work aggressively to protect our edge in a handful of key technologies and products, but that we'll allow most trade and investment ties to continue, largely on commercial terms. How do you think about the width of the garden and the height of the walls, and how do you assess your progress in getting to alignment on that width and the height of those walls within the G7 and our core industrial partners?

Mike Pyle:
Yeah, absolutely. I think that there has been a kind of caricature out there of how the US has been approaching China, how that differs from the way Europe and other key allies have been approaching China. But I think the caricature is just that, a caricature. If you look back to the Hiroshima summit last month, what you saw was a historic degree of unity on some core precepts about how in common we're going to approach the challenge of China's economy.

So things like making clear, to your point, we're not about decoupling from China, but we are about taking certain targeted steps to de-risk our economy, both in terms of protecting some core technologies as well as investing in our technological industrial capacity and our supply chain resilience. So I think that's really the cornerstone of an approach to say, three years ago the G7 didn't speak at all to China. And here we are today just three years later, seeing a really comprehensive approach in common on how to, in unity, sort of address the challenge presented by Chin.

To go into some more specificity around the particulars of your question around the small garden and the high fence. And I do think that some of you, you do have to get to the particulars because that's where the rubber meets the road in terms of making that principle real. To take an example like outbound investment. We think it's critical that for a handful of sensitive national security related technologies, that we have a toolkit that includes restrictions on outbound investment that can prevent those handfuls of critical technologies from enabling China's military and surveillance modernization. And we think that part of the way to make that toolkit effective, part of the way to make it durable over time, is to make sure that we are aligned with our closest allies and partners in taking steps in common to do that. So the work of much of the early part of this year was working to achieve that alignment on things like outbound investment with the EU, with the UK, with the broader G7.

And I think what you've seen over the period of the past few months has really embodied that degree of alignment, that sense of common purpose. And I think the second piece, and I think why there still hasn't haven't seen an official announcement of a program from the United States is this is hard to get right. And these are very technical questions both in terms of defining the technologies, in terms of defining the types of investments, in terms of consulting with not just allies and partners, but also industry and other stakeholders to make sure that we're doing this in a thoughtful, targeted way that gets it right when it comes to the shape of the garden, when it gets it right with respect to the height of the fence. And I think the core point I would just say is getting that right requires getting into the weeds of the particulars and getting that right means being really thoughtful about how you do some of these definitions. And that's what we're hard at work doing right now.

Peter Harrell:
Great. Thank you. I actually have many more questions I could ask you, and in particularly, I want to get to a question on climate and CBAs, but I actually want to... Because I know you have to leave in about 17, 18 minutes and I want to be respectful that you have the bosses calling. And so I would like to now open it up to the audience for some questions. And I'm going to take a couple at a time. If you're in the room, we can raise your hand. I'll take two or three at a time. If you are online, there is a link you can use online to ask questions online. I will see them here on this iPad in front of me and I'll begin to work the online questions in as well. Let me start with John over here and please identify yourself when you... I know who many of you are, but not everybody does.

Jonathan Elkind:
Good morning. I'm John Elkind with the Columbia University Center on Global Energy Policy. So I want to channel Peter and pose a question about EU and US trade and climate. Yesterday or the day before, press reporting says that the European Union has pushed back, resisting the proposal for the shape of a global arrangement for sustainable steel and aluminum. The question that this begs, at a time when they are very invested in Carbon Border Adjustment Mechanism and we have just gone through all the pain and agony of passing the Inflation Reduction Act, is whether there is space for compromise in these two very different approaches to making progress on climate change. Thank you.

Peter Harrell:
All right. I'm going to take one or two more over here. Let me take this one and then I'll come back to Tamika.

Peter Rashish:
Peter Rashish from the American German Institute at Johns Hopkins. It seems that starting in the forties and increasingly into the 1990s, we've had an economic order that's become global, but that global economic order isn't functioning well right now. Do you think that the US needs to invest in this concept of global economic order? Or rather, do you think that the discreet issue-based engagements that you describe sort of G7+, Asia, Latin America, those are sufficient?

Peter Harrell:
All right. And the last one I'll take is from Tamika here, and then I'll come back to you and then we'll open it for another round.

Tomicah Tillemann:
Thanks Peter, and thank you Mike for all the great work that you all are doing. You touched at the beginning on the extraordinary efforts that the administration has engaged in to reshore innovation capacity, specifically as it relates to semiconductors in the United States. And in that instance, you had a technology that was incubated here and for a variety of reasons did not seem particularly fashionable or strategically important and ended up overseas when other countries created more advantageous conditions for the growth of the technology.

We saw a similar story play out with 5G. Fast-forward to where we are today now with digital assets, and we see virtually every other advanced economy, the EU, the UK, Japan, all putting in place very thoughtful responsible regulatory frameworks. Your former colleagues at BlackRock, Fidelity, Schwab, a variety of the largest financial institutions in the US all signaling they think this is going to be an important piece of economic activity going forward. And yet the United States at this point appears to be speed-running some of the mistakes that were made in conjunction with those past technologies by not creating an environment that is conducive for the responsible evolution of that technology in the United States. I hope I'm wrong, but let me know how we can fix that. And Peter obviously did extraordinary work on this when he was in government. So Peter, I'd love to hear any thoughts you have as well.

Peter Harrell:
Well, I'm not going to share my thoughts here. This is for Mike, but I have three questions for you. John, I particularly appreciate because that was basically exactly the last question I had wanted to ask. So thank you very much. But obviously also important questions from Peter on sort of what's working and not and then Tamika on digital assets. Over to you.

Mike Pyle:
Sure. Yeah, so maybe take those in turn. I think, again, I'd sort of take a step back and sort of speak more conceptually about where we are with respect to the issue that you raised. President Biden and President von der Leyen, two Octobers ago said it is critical that the US and the EU come together to do a couple of things when it comes to steel and aluminum. And obviously steel and aluminum are critical industrial industries that are really at the foundation of so much that we're looking to do here, that the Europeans are looking to do in terms of rebuilding our infrastructure, our manufacturing capacity, and the like. And also of course, a source of really strong middle class union jobs both here and overseas.

And what were the challenges that the presidents identified at that time? One, a global market that had been distorted for years by the opaque non-market practices and policies of China that had led to global overcapacity, that had led to global oversupply and needing to be sure that any steps that the US and the EU took in common on steel and aluminum would meet the challenge of that distortion of the global market as embodied in China's practices. Secondly, a recognition that key industries like steel and aluminum needed to have a pathway to becoming more green, becoming less carbon intensive over time. And in fact, for the United States, that was going to be a key source of competitive advantage in those industries over time. I think that what you've seen is a really constructive set of dialogue on those key questions between the US and Europe, a recognition that now we're in a critical phase where we really do have to accelerate the work between now and the fall to see what progress can be achieved.

I think we're very hopeful that the timelines that the president's laid out two years ago or almost two years ago can be met. I will say, and I think that you sort of point to the kind of key conceptual challenge of the work, which is Europe has a particular approach on how to achieve these objectives built around price mechanisms, both domestically and with respect to how they look overseas. We have our own distinct approach founded in now the Inflation Reduction Act, founded in investing in innovative technology and investments in this space. And getting those two different approaches to speak to one another in ways that can work at the kind of granular detail of trade investment rules is a complicated challenge, and one that's being worked on at the expert level across a number of different forums globally.

At the OECD, the G7 under Germany's presidency founded what's called a climate club to do exactly this type of methodological work. And I think that this is a really important proof point, the global steel and aluminum arrangement that's going to hopefully take that methodological work about getting different systems to speak to one another and really begin the process of turning that into a system, turning that into a set of arrangements that can work durably over time to get different approaches to work together. So that's the work that we're in the midst of right now and expect to be very focused on in the months ahead.

On the second question, I would just say again, the work that I do day in and day out is exactly about engaging in the diplomacy of ensuring that we have a set of global economic relationships that work together, that further both our own interests around rebuilding capacity, around building resilience, around building inclusivity and being sure that same set of objectives is achievable by our closest allies, like through the G7 as well as a broader set of partners around the world, including the developing world going to the question that Peter asked earlier. So when I think about where I'm spending my efforts, it's all about, okay, we're investing. You're investing. How do we align our efforts in ways that are going to work in common to achieve those objectives?

The needs in the developing world are overwhelming. How do we build a toolkit that's going to allow us to facilitate investment to meet the overwhelming needs in that part of the world? That to me is the business of the moment. That's a very, I think, positive global vision for what it means for the United States to lead in the global economy. I think that's what we're all focused on doing.

With respect to the third, I will say this is an issue that I'm at some remove from. I got plenty on my plate and I have some friends who are much more expert at this than me, but I will say that I think we're very focused on ensuring that we have a regulatory framework that is going to promote consumer protection, is going to promote financial stability. Certainly we've seen risks from emerging financial technologies even in the past kind of handful of months. And being sure that we have a regulatory approach that can really manage those risks, be fit to purpose for those risks, I think is something that we're very committed to doing and I would say is going to be a core focus looking ahead.

Peter Harrell:
Other questions and while people are raising their hands, I'm going to offer a comment. It's sort of an interesting... We've laid out, I think a pretty interesting thesis that the macroeconomic challenge of the world we face today is not around shortages of movement of goods around the world. Plenty of movement of goods around the world. The shortage both at home and internationally really is a shortage of investment and the solution is to galvanize investment. And so it's just been interesting to hear a really kind of investment-forward international economics agenda.

One other comment I wanted to make on John's question, and I'm quite loath to make this comment because here I am at Carnegie about to give some credit to rival think tank, but it's important to have good ideas no matter where they're from. And I would recommend to everybody, my friend and colleague, Brad Setser at CFR, some of his thinking recently on how you might be able to square this circle between the US and EU. Because I do think there's a thorny... Strategically a lot of alignment, a lot of challenges on our different systems having to mesh up. And just a thought for folks around the room.

Questions? Questions coming in. Let me come here and then I'm going to take, I'm also going to weave in a couple from online.

Jim Mann:
Hi, I'm Jim Mann, author based at Johns Hopkins sites. This is not current events, but what they came from, the industrial policy, as you said, stemmed from hollowing out and competition with China. So that raises the question... And both of those stem from the China's entry into the WTO. So I hear now three different, I hear there shouldn't have been a deal. I hear that those job losses stem from the fact that were too many loopholes in the deal. And I hear from those who negotiated the deal, the argument that the deal was fine, but the successor administration through the aughts didn't enforce the deal. I just wondered what you thought.

Peter Harrell:
Other questions in the room? Well, I also want to weave in a question from online. We've gotten a couple of questions online. Coming back to the question about the agenda for the global south. And in particular in Latin America for countries like Brazil and Argentina, we have a long sort of history of political and geopolitical interest in our hemisphere. Haven't always had the warmest economic relationships or the warmest political relationships. If you could elaborate a little bit on what some of the agenda is for our hemisphere. Maybe those two questions.

Mike Pyle:
With respect to China, I would just say I'm mostly focused on what it means to manage the relationship from where we are today. And I think where we are today is still confronting a China that has a set of policies and practices that aren't market oriented, that are incredibly opaque, that are still centered on seeking forms of technology and IP transfer that don't play by core rules. And how do we have an approach that, both for ourselves and alongside our allies and partners, addresses those core concerns and builds an economy here and in our longtime [inaudible] allies and partners allow us to be resilience to that. So ensure we aren't dependent on...

Peter Harrell:
Yeah, you're back.

Mike Pyle:
I'm back. That ensures that we don't have any strategic dependencies on any one country, including China. And that's the kind of agenda that I talked about earlier. It's an agenda around protecting with the toolkit, a very narrow set of technologies that have national security application. It's around investing both for ourselves and our allies and in some of those key areas like industries in clean energy and semiconductors, like building in common a set of resilient supply chain relationships. Those are the things that I'm focused on because I think that that's really the work today of ensuring we have a vibrant industrial sector that employs a vibrant middle class and that ensures that our network of economic relationships and supply chains is going to be not dependent on any one source, including China, so that we're in a position to confront shocks, whatever those are. And ultimately a system that will be able to stand up to whatever challenges that the economy presents.

Peter Harrell:
And Latin America.

Mike Pyle:
And Latin America. Yeah, I mean think one of the things that's been clear I think in my own engagements in the region is just how hungry for economic engagement that part of the world is. I think one of the things that's unique about Latin America is how extensive the network of free trade agreements already is in that part of the world. And so in some ways the question that you posed around IPEF is even more acute. Or my response to that is even more strongly felt in Latin America versus other parts of the world. Which is to say, there are already FTAs. The problems that we face are forward-looking problems or emergent problems or problems of supply chains or problems of clean energy or problems of tax and anti-corruption, and how do we advance an agenda there that meets those needs, recognizing that the trade question really just isn't of moment in the same way there.

I think that one of the key questions that we face in particular with respect to countries like Chile with whom again we do have an FTA, is how do we build a vibrant relationship around critical minerals, recognizing that ultimately the success of our clean energy investments here, of putting Americans to work around the clean energy transition, around EVs is going to be incumbent on building secure, stable sources of supply to feed those industries. And countries like Chile have to and need to be a critical part of how we do that, recognizing that the needs are so great that domestic sources of those materials are never going to be enough to really feed where that industry needs to go in the US.

Peter Harrell:
Well, I would love to go on, but I know you have to get back to the White House and we are now at 10:45. What I do before we close, I want to give you a chance to offer any final thoughts or remarks, and I'm sorry we're not able to get to all the questions that I know folks have.

Mike Pyle:
Yeah, I mean, I think the last thing I would say is, I'm struck regularly by two things that I sometimes hear in the conversation. One is a kind of sense that relative to the past, that America's approach to the world economy is somehow less optimistic, more pessimistic. And secondly, a sense that our relationships with allies and partners aren't kind of front and center in how we're approaching the global economy.

And I'll just say from where I sit, those just both seem fundamentally off base to me. I think as Jake talked about, the Biden domestic economic vision, the Biden international economic vision is one that puts building at its core. Building capacity, building resilience, building inclusivity. And I can think of nothing more optimistic than investing and building for the future as we're working to do at home and working to do alongside our allies and working to do alongside partners around the world. But it's at its core, I think not just an optimistic vision for the moment, but an optimistic vision kind of across the longer sweep of history. And I'm just wildly excited to be a part of it.

And then the second thing is, when I look at, and I know you were a key part of this as well, when I look at our relationships with our closest allies and partners, this is a historic moment in terms of that degree of unity. Certainly that was sort of founded in important ways in this administration with Russia's invasion and the unity that came out of that and the common response, including through sanctions regime that you were so important to building but has gone on from there to encompass, okay, how do we work together and partner on the clean energy transition? All the work that I talked about, how do we strike a common approach on China when three years ago, we weren't talking about China at all in forums like that.

And so when I look across the work that we're doing with allies and partners on easy issues, on hard issues, on issues that weren't even talked about and are incredibly complicated, I just see a historic moment in terms of that degree of unity and that sense of common purpose and a common kind of work plan for what it means to achieve some big common objectives in the global economy. And that too, I think is historic and important and at the heart of how the President has thought about the global economy and the global order for a long time, which puts America's allies at the center of that conversation.

Peter Harrell:
Well, that is a really hopeful and optimistic and very appropriate note to end on. Please join me in thanking Mike for joining us today. Really appreciate it. Thank you very, very much.