Gina Raimondo on How European Industry Is Getting Crushed

“The last time I was in Europe was I guess a month and a half ago for the Munich Security Conference and spent a lot of time with European ministers, military leaders, CEOs, and I think their patients is wearing thin with US as somewhat justifiably. So I don't think it's very thick. I understand the president's point if he thinks European countries aren't pulling their weight or doing their fair share as it relates to investing in their military capacity, but poor execution hurts the relationship.”

“If you look at now what China is doing to Europe, it's it's terrible for Europe. The Chinese imports to Europe have surged, and the German industrial base is going to get crushed. This is China's play. They run the play over and over again. They subsidize, they dump cheap products into the global market. In this case Europe also Africa, distort the price and it makes it impossible to compete. That weakens our allies in Europe and that’s why the ice is thinning.”

“I think we're in a bad place. I don't think we can effectively compete with China economically technologically without allies. They're just too big. They're too big, they're too determined, and so we need allies, including Europe, by the way, including Southeast Asia, including the Global South. If you were to say to me, what is the biggest mistake about how this administration is handling China and their China strategy? I would say, kissing off all our allies.”

“Winning isn't just innovating the technology at breakneck speed. If you create incredible social, political, and economic unrest, that is not winning; that’s automating America’s decline. As much effort as we're putting into winning the chip race, we better putting that same amount of urgency into coming up with systems to cushion us through the transition. Otherwise we won't win. We won't win with civil unrest, political violence, or a fifteen percent unemployment rate.”

“My biggest lesson from the chips program is when you do something like that, make sure it's bipartisan. It has mostly survived. Actually, now TSMC is making leading edge chips in Arizona the same way they are in Taipei, Taiwan, and they're going to expand, and this administration is helping, not hurting that. The same thing with Intel and all these other companies. It is surviving, and I think it's because it was bipartisan.”

“Not to alarm you further, but we still don't really do what's called advanced packaging. Packaging isn't put the chips in a box. Packaging is how they layer the chips, which is incredibly sophisticated to get enough compute on a chip. Even though we're making them in Arizona, they go back to Taiwan for packaging. Problem. You gotta get that in America. If you did a supply chain breakdown of an AI data center, you'd be not happy with how much still comes from China.”

“I think we have so many systems in this country that were just created for a different time. Adult education is essentially either non existent, poor quality, or stigmatized. Companies have precious little incentive to redeploy people instead of just laying them off. Let's get ahead of this crisis and do the change that's necessary now so we can thrive in an AI economy. America rises to the challenge in times of crisis, and we have a minute to figure it out.”