This is from a two part interview by CNN's Julia Chatterley with U.S. Trade Rep. Katherine Tai:
Chatterley: Another, and it's been described as a pivot point actually, in the relationship between the EU and the United States, when we spoke to the French finance minister this week, and he said, it's on China. and there's a difference of opinions and approach, that the perception in Europe is that America wants to confront and challenge China, whereas Europe wants to engage. Do you agree that China effectively wins if the US and the EU are at odds with this relationship, and how to tackle the issues with China?
Tai: Well, let me take a step back, I think that a lot of this talk has come from comments that Minister Le Maire made, and I wanted to give the Minister the fair shake that he deserves, and I went back and looked at his comments. And I don't think that they're as pointed or as sharp as the reporting seems to make it. And let me say I think that we are very much aligned, from the US and EU perspective, and also from my own conversations with the Minister, the US and French perspectives, in terms of the fact that we share really considerable competitive challenges right now, but also in terms of the values that we share as societies, as economies, in terms of our political philosophies. So what I would say is that we have so much potential here for aligning the US/EU, and in terms of our approaches to China, actually in the conversations that I've been having, and I assure you, I have been having a lot of these conversations, I don't feel that there are gaps. I think that there is just a lot of potential for how we coordinate our approaches.
"Confronting and challenging" is a form of "engaging," and I'm not sure the differences between the two sides are as great as some people think. Tai's response here, along with the progress on putting aside disputes such as Boeing-Airbus, digital services taxes, and perhaps soon the Section 232 steel and aluminum tariffs (which also came up in the interview), gives me some hope that U.S.-EU cooperation on China could actually emerge some time soon.
