Sarah Bianchi: I think the distinction I would make is Trump is comfortable really using tariffs in a lot of situations, including with US allies. And so, he’s talking about additional tariffs really on every importer. I think Biden was comfortable with some of the China tariffs that were left in the Trump administration as they tended to be a bit more one on China explicitly, but also on particular strategic areas.
Jason Bordoff: In passing and signing the Inflation Reduction Act, Congress and the Biden administration put hundreds of billions of dollars into the clean energy transition. The IRA marks the US’s largest ever investment in energy and climate. At the same time, the law left many countries worried over provisions requiring domestic manufacturing, which some see as protectionist. It’s a friction that’s part of ongoing green trade tensions as other countries implement their own major climate action plans, some including industrial policy measures, challenge international trade rules and norms. Two years in how are other countries responding to the IRA? Can trade policy, catalyze investment in and around clean energy and emerging and developing economies? And what does the concept of friendshoring even mean?
This is Columbia Energy Exchange, a weekly podcast from the Center on Global Energy Policy at Columbia University. I’m Jason Bordoff. Today on the show, Ambassador Sarah Bianchi. Ambassador Bianchi is now senior managing director and Chief Strategist of International Political Affairs and Public Policy at Evercore. She’s a distinguished visiting fellow here at the Center on Global Energy Policy, and she’s also on the advisory board of the Center’s New Trade and Clean Energy Transition Program, which aims to examine the intersection of climate action, trade policy, national security, and industrial strategy. Sarah Bianchi has nearly 30 years of experience in both the public and private sector.
Most recently, she was the Deputy US Trade Representative from 2021 to 2024 overseeing critical trading relationships across Asia and Africa. Her portfolio covered all aspects of trade, including the energy transition and the implementation of the IRA. Ambassador Bianchi joined me to talk about her work in the Biden administration and how climate policy and trade policy intersect. I hope you enjoy our conversation. Sarah Bianchi, welcome to Columbia Energy Exchange. Welcome to the Center on Global Energy Policy, as one of our distinguished visiting fellows, following your service in the Biden administration, it’s great to talk with you.
Sarah Bianchi: Thanks for having me. I’m glad to be here.
Jason Bordoff: Thanks for making time. I know how busy you are. And so you just help listeners understand what you were doing just before joining Columbia and Evercore, the Deputy US trade representative, what is USTR and what was involved in that role as ambassador?
Sarah Bianchi: Yeah, so the USTR, United States Trade Representative negotiates all the trade deals and provisions for the United States. And I was the deputy in charge of overseeing Asia, which of course, included China. Many of the ASEAN developing countries. Spent a lot of time with Japan, Korea, and then I had some verticals as well, including the energy transition industrial policy. So a busy time obviously, in that space, as when I was there was when the US passed the Inflation Reduction Act and other things that our allies and partners had a lot of questions about.
Jason Bordoff: Good. Well, you’re just the person to talk to. As you know, we’ve really spent a lot of time trying to build a program focused on trade and the clean energy transition. So I want to talk to you about that, but just maybe start by telling people sort of how you got there. In your late 20s, I think you were working for Al Gore. Just tell us about how you got from there to what you were doing in the Biden administration, what that path looks like, that career journey looks like for a policy advisor.
Sarah Bianchi: Yeah, so I’ve kind of split my career between the public and private sector, As you noted, I was in the Clinton-Gore administration, and then on the Gore campaign. I was also later, John Kerry’s policy director for his presidential campaign. And that was a campaign that really involved the interest of a lot of Wall Street folks and a very kind of emotional time for the country after 9/11. And so, I kind of got introduced to Wall Street that way. And so after that campaign didn’t work out, went to a hedge fund, Eton Park for six years and then wanted to go back and serve. And so worked for then Vice President Biden as his top economic and domestic advisor for a number of years in the Obama administration and went to Evercore soon thereafter.
But when Biden won, wanted to be part of that effort, so went back in. So kind of bouncing back and forth in different roles, which gives you perspectives from both angles.
Jason Bordoff: So give us a sense, you’ve mentioned in the portfolio of responsibilities you had as a Deputy US trade representative, the energy transition. This may increasingly, I hope is evident to people who would be listening, but why does the office responsible for trade diplomacy need someone thinking about the energy transition?
Sarah Bianchi: Well, it’s a great question and it’s an increasingly important intersection, which is why I’m so glad that Columbia is focused on it and want to do anything I can to help you all build there. So first of all, there is a number of interest in industrial policy in and around, the energy transition. And most notably during my tenure, the Inflation Reduction Act, called into question whether parts of that or maybe even all of that act was compliant with a lot of our trade rules. And so there were some kind of formal cases including from China into the WTO, but also many of the closest US allies and partners like the EU, like Japan, like Korea, came quite quickly to the United States and said, “Hey, wait a minute here you are encouraging our investment” and some of the parts of this law are actually unhelpful in that area.
So it does come into … the intersection is clear even in the formal trade rules, but also, just in how you partner with these countries, again, many of whom we needed their investment to make the IRA work.
Jason Bordoff: The things that were challenged presumably were various tax credits have requirements that a certain amount of manufacturing activity happened in the United States or in certain cases in neighboring or free trade countries. That was what others pushed back on.
Sarah Bianchi: Absolutely. So in the example of Korea, as an example, President Biden had literally months before been to the Hyundai plant in Georgia that’s coming online that’s going to make a lot of electric vehicles, and there was a requirement that the final product had to be in the US and that plant wasn’t underway. Similarly, with Japan, even though it’s a very close ally, they’re not a free … we do not have a full-blown FTA with Japan. And so, I think a lot of countries felt that that FTA distinction was somewhat arbitrary. So we worked in and around. So there were different issues for different countries, but all of them required careful negotiations.
Jason Bordoff: In your view, did these things sort of sync up well or is there a tension between the goals of domestic politics, job creation in the US, supply chain security and we want a lot more clean energy, a lot faster, we want it to be as cheap as possible. Is it easy to square that circle or are there real tensions there that are hard for policymakers to navigate?
Sarah Bianchi: I think there are real tensions. We were able to do some rulemaking for some of them to resolve some of them. So for example, with Japan, we were able to do a critical minerals agreement that built on some other trade language we had with Japan that enabled them to effectively count as an FTA for purposes of the law. But in other places, it’s much bigger friction. One of the areas, as I know you all know well, is that critical minerals. Many of our minerals are processed almost exclusively in China, and the law is quite clear on not having involvement from a so-called foreign entity of concern and certainly China fixed that bill.
And so you’ve seen that Biden Administration have to make some exemptions in and around graphite for now, but potentially other materials going forward. The way that the geology of the earth was formed is not necessarily consistent with the geopolitics of today.
Jason Bordoff: You’re right about mining for the minerals, but if the concern about China is even more of a refining and processing, presumably that’s not about geology, that could be done almost anywhere, right?
Sarah Bianchi: Well, actually of course you’re right. That can be done anywhere. It happens today that the market has almost exclusively developed. So that example on graphite was really a processing one, but the issues go beyond that. A lot of the nickel right now comes from Indonesia. That’s not a country where the United States has an FTA. So there are challenges in geology, but I would say just as great right now are the ways that the market unfolds today and that China does have a lead in a lot of the processing and competing on that from a price perspective and a know-how perspective is not where the market is right now. And so there’s challenges on both ends.
Jason Bordoff: And we were talking a little bit about some of the tax credits that had certain restrictions on them in terms of where manufacturing took place. Another tool which has been deployed is tariffs on imports. How do you think about tariffs in service of what I think you said earlier, use the phrase industrial policy. So first, how do you think about what that phrase means and then how do you think about the use of tariffs as a tool to achieve it?
Sarah Bianchi: Well, industrial policy means lots of things to lots of people. I think that what we saw between 2017, I guess and 2020 when the Trump administration put some tariffs, new tariffs in place, on average, the China tariff went from 3% into the US to 10%, that doesn’t necessarily achieve … doesn’t necessarily give folks the incentive that they might need to then go build a electric vehicle plant or whatever. I think the IRA and some of those generous tax credits proved probably more effective in terms of actually getting things built. But tariffs are an important tool and they are also a signal to other countries. And so some of the tariffs that are in place in and around critical minerals and the like are important.
But I would say that is secondary to the greater domestic incentives that some countries, including the United States are offering.
Jason Bordoff: The Trump administration’s trade policy was … I mean, explicitly I think defined as confrontation, both the threat and the actual imposition of tariffs to agree we haven’t really seen in a long time. And of course, the Biden administration has continued some of those, left many Trump tariffs in place. I mean, how would you distinguish between the approaches of the two administrations when it comes to how to think about global trade and also the use of tariffs in particular?
Sarah Bianchi: Well, certainly President Trump is a big believer in the use of the tariff. I think that’s, as he says, is one of the most beautiful words in the English language. So a big fan, I think the distinction I would make is Trump is comfortable really using tariffs in a lot of situations, including with US allies. And so, he’s talking about additional tariffs really on every importer. I think Biden was comfortable with some of the China tariffs that were left in the Trump administration as they tended to be a bit more one on China explicitly, but also on particular strategic areas that are kind of consistent with the sort of small yard, high fence approach that the Biden administration has taken.
But I think if you look more holistically that Biden would say you need a series of tools, not just tariffs, and that would include export controls, of course, tariffs, but also a set of domestic incentives. And I think based on the manufacturing that we’ve seen come into the country or plants announced and such as a result that you probably … do probably need that mix.
Jason Bordoff: You used another term of art. Some listeners may or may not be familiar with the sort of small yard high fence which Jake Sullivan used in a brooking speech a year or two ago. And the idea of being, there should be a small set of products that are very strategically important to the country. I don’t advance semiconductors with sensitive military applications, things like that. And we should really make sure that there’s a high fence where we have domestic capacity. We’re not completely dependent on imports, particularly from one country, maybe particularly from China. A question or potential criticism that you hear about that concept is in practice, when the goals are not just national security, but they’re winning elections and their job creation and their politics and the yard is not so small.
And a solar panel in the view of some is a cheap manufactured product from China. It’s maybe not the same as a sensitive military piece of technology. Is that a fair criticism? How do we think about how small that yard actually is or should be?
Sarah Bianchi: I think that policymakers do need to be vigilant and probably, particularly as we go forward, enunciate what should and shouldn’t fit into that yard. Otherwise, as you note, you can kind of sweep anything in, and honestly, sometimes the countries get broader than ones you maybe shouldn’t be concerned about. So I think it does behoove us to be a very careful and explicit, but at the same time, I do think, and ultimately, at least the tariff on China as we found them when we entered the Biden administration, the ones that had so far been implemented were on some sectors that I do think is reasonable to be concerned and thoughtful about. And semiconductors is a good example of something.
I do think there are … the Biden administration right now is looking at a range of things around what’s in an electric vehicle, some of the software that really does have quite a bit of capacity, both on the data collection side, on the radar side, what you can look into so. As the world becomes more technologically advanced and even products like a car that 20 years ago may not have had as much technology, I do think it makes sense to continue to ask ourselves these questions in terms of what moves into security and whatnot. I guess the other thing I’d say, Trump now for a second term is looking at this idea of an across the board tariff and there’s a different, very different policy aim in and around that. And that was something that the Biden administration never did take a look at.
Jason Bordoff: And when you look at clean energy, broadly batteries and EVs and solar panels and critical minerals does that seem like a sector that really should be in that yard. And look, the answer might be there are other reasons why it’s important to have domestic capacity. Maybe it’s just as a matter of political economy, you can’t maintain support for the IRA if everyone in the auto industry in Michigan is losing jobs in the process because all the cars are Chinese EVs. I mean there may be other reasons, but how do you think about the right approach to domestic capacity and to trade when it comes to clean energy? As we said, there may be a tension with the cost of these clean energy products.
Sarah Bianchi: There’s no question there’s a tension in the cost of the products. I think the IRA has to be thought about through the lens of a country coming out of COVID and at a time when there were supplies that were really, really difficult to get, that people felt like they needed. And I do think that that really informed some of the current thinking about supply chain. So have we gone overboard? I’m not sure potentially, but it is a reasonable thing to think about that a country could literally not being able to have access to certain things. So I do think probably yes, it is in our interest to at least have some domestic supply and critical minerals and some of these other things.
We have seen China in certain trade retaliation situations say, “Gosh, we’re not going to give you graphite” or other things where they currently have an advantage. So I do think it’s worthwhile to have something whether or not the IRA gets it precisely right, in terms of what … where we should be domestic and where we should be speeding along in terms of progress and acceleration of these really important technologies. I’m not sure anyone would say, you got it exactly right in all places, but I do think there are relevant reasons for these conversations.
Jason Bordoff: What do you think the right policy approach looks like to achieve that goal of diversification in supply chains? You talked about take refining a processing of minerals, which you were talking about a minute ago. That’s big industrial activity. Not a lot of people necessarily want that in their community, although maybe it creates jobs if you’re not careful about how you do it, it can have environmental impacts and tailing ponds at these facilities, it’s really hard to get permits to build anything in this country. So what’s necessary? You can have tariffs, maybe you have some subsidies.
Are we in a good place now to actually diversify or is a lot more need to be done to actually get those investments happening, whether it’s in the US or other allies?
Sarah Bianchi: Well, I do think the important thing is what you just said at the end there, which is and other allies. So look, do I think that we need to reform our permitting process in this country and make it easier to get projects off the ground? Yeah, I do. That’s important for clean energy transition. It’s important for capacity for AI, it’s important for a number of different reasons, but do I think that we are going to start processing our portion, the world’s graphite? No, probably not and that’s okay, but we do need to make sure. We’re also, I don’t think … Given the place where we are with China right now, it’s probably not great that 99% of the processing happens there.
We probably need to figure out and find other countries where some of that can happen given its strategic importance. And I think there are other places like Korea and others who are willing to do some of that. So it’s a balance, but anytime something is so overwhelmingly in China like that, I do think that is a cause for us to think through how those alliances should be. I’m not sure that the right level of standard is an FTA since the countries that we have … we have really great allies where we don’t have free trade agreements like with the EU as a block as an example. But I do think there is something to this notion of friendshoring that is critical in terms of thinking about our future supply chains.
Jason Bordoff: I’m curious how you … I was going to ask you about friendshoring, another kind of word that seems to have entered the lexicon recently. Maybe it’s quite a bit older, but we’re all talking about it now, like what it means to you and then how do we achieve it? As you said, free trade agreements on either side of the aisle don’t seem super popular now. Maybe that’s not the right way to think about what’s necessary to achieve friendshoring, but if it’s not an FTA, what are the tools of policy that help to achieve that?
Sarah Bianchi: Well, I think certainly there’s broader definitions, whether I think even in the earlier versions of the IRA they looked at if you were a NATO or other G7, there’s a range of different ways we signal allies that goes beyond whether we happened at some point in our history to chug out an FTA. So there is a broader set of ways
Jason Bordoff: Favorable trading terms that you could have. It doesn’t have to be a FTA partner, but it could be some other set of countries that you’re identifying as having favorable trading terms.
Sarah Bianchi: Exactly. So we’d be delighted to get any content from the United Kingdom as an example, but we don’t have an FTA with them. So that seemed to be a fairly arbitrary dividing line as is often as Jason Dunn in the last minutes of negotiating. And then, there’s also a ways of just saying, I’m not going to do it with a certain set of countries. I’m not going to have … and whether you call it a foreign entity of concern or whatever, that also could be a way to sweep in a whole range of countries, some of whom have minerals or capacities in these areas while not feeling that we’re overly dependent on a few places.
Jason Bordoff: In addition to favorable trading terms is another tools that encourage US investment, we have a development finance corporation that’s coming up for reauthorization next year. There’s an EXIM Bank, there are other tools. Is that an important tool and what do we have to do to encourage that and use that more effectively to stimulate private investment by US companies and some of the countries that you would put in the friendshoring Umbrella?
Sarah Bianchi: Yeah, DFC is an important tool. I think it’s a slower tool, right? So if you think about the number of, let’s say clean battery manufacturers that have invested in the United States since the IRA and compare that to some of what DFC has been able to pull off in clean energy in other places, it’s not of the same scale. So I do think we need to make it more flexible and easier for folks to do that.
Jason Bordoff: And maybe there are ways in reauthorization to achieve.
Sarah Bianchi: I’m sure there are. I’m sure there are. I hope they will look to that because like you said, there is a lot of other countries, other countries that would be interested and willing to do some of the mining that have the resources, that have open spaces where they’re comfortable. And I think we do need some of those partnerships going forward. And right now, there probably is too slow of a process to deliver what the world is going to need in terms of a new set of minerals and other tools.
Jason Bordoff: You talked about the concerns raised by a very significant degree of Chinese dominance, concentration in supply chains, particularly clean energy, but there’s some disagreement on exactly where the line is between de-risking and decoupling when it comes to China. In your view, is there opportunity for cooperation in tackling China’s trade distorting practices or is there just now too much daylight between the US on the one hand and our European, Latin American, Asian partners on the other?
Sarah Bianchi: Well, I think there has to be cooperation given the scale and the scope of the climate. A problem that we’re seeing and that these are two the largest world economies are going to have to have, doing some things cooperatively if we are to get where we need to go in this transition and everybody is going to have to draw their own line of where that is. I think the EU has a more integrated auto supply chain with China and around electric vehicles and we see higher penetration there. There’s some probably downsides for their OEM. So it’s always going to be a balance and everyone is going to have to interpret their own … a level of risk, but 100% we have to be cooperating more.
And like you said, there’s some things like a solar panel that it’s pretty basic manufacturing. And so, I think we need to put our thumb on the scale of deployment in some of these cases over some of these trade considerations.
Jason Bordoff: You’re not only an expert in trade and economic policy, but a pretty astute observer of politics as well. So talk about the intersection, how do you see the politics of trade right now in DC, which are pretty challenging? Again, I think on both sides of the aisle, concerns from Congress, labor, environmental groups which have frustrated conclusion of critical mineral agreements with Europe, with Indonesia. You look at the trade plank of the Indo-Pacific economic framework. Do you see that changing anytime soon? And what’s the outlook … How can the US engage with the world on trade issues if it’s negotiation position in the agency you used to help lead is really, really constrained.
Sarah Bianchi: Well, it’s interesting because you’re absolutely right. At the same time, the most bipartisan trade agreement that was ever a passed with the most votes was not that long ago. It was in 2020 and that was the USMCA agreement, and that actually had a good labor standards. It may have set a bar that well, good for that agreement, makes it hard to get other ones done because it’s quite a high bar on labor, less on the environment but nevertheless. So I do think there are possibilities, but right now, I think that people aren’t necessarily seeing what the advantage of these FTAs is. And maybe in some senses that’s right because traditionally, FTAs has been about market access and lower tariffs and in this global world, things do bank shot through other places.
And so, I think we probably need to broaden the conversation and combine … rather than your straight-up kind of FTA, let’s have a conversation about all the tools of government and what we’re trying to achieve, whether it’s around export controls, tariffs, certain domestic incentive. All of these should put together in a strategy of what we’re trying to achieve in the US and that in and of itself is very hard, but it also … it might be a better way forward in terms of getting some goodwill than just kind of a straight up FTA.
Jason Bordoff: You mentioned US-Mexico relations, and then how trade can bank shot … And so when you look at some of the restrictions that have been put in place on Chinese products and then, we see Chinese investment activity in countries like Mexico, that have close trading relations with the US, I assume policymakers are going to have to figure out how to address those intricacies in the global supply chain to make sure there are not workarounds to some of the-
Sarah Bianchi: So traditionally in trade, the way that we thought about it was through quite a rules of origin, right? So you couldn’t make the whole car in China slap on the headlights in Mexico and call it something eligible for a USMCA. I think that actually is more of a dated idea in some senses. I mean, we should look at rules of origin of course, but sometimes now, we’re seeing some of these companies like the Chinese ready to just build a whole factory, rather than a green field something. And that requires a different set of tools. Again, we may decide in some cases that is just fine. In the area of electric vehicles, Chinese EVs became a big issue, right? In my latter part of USTR, and really tariffs wasn’t a tool really to deal with that.
But the Biden administration did look at other tools, including what is a security technology risks, and certainly EVs are a place where you ought to look at what some of the tools can do. So again, I think it’s going to be a more complex set of tools and I think we probably need to figure out a way for our agencies to take a coordinated approach in these spaces because I think you’ll find that some of the traditional tools don’t really make sense in a world as global as the one that we’re in.
Jason Bordoff: Yeah, I mean, I just want to ask you about one of those, I guess at this point, traditional tools, when … you often hear policy officials talk about … there were certain assumptions made in the 1990s about how the globalization would work and about what it would look like to play by the rules of the global trading system. And I think Jake in his Brooklyn speech even said, that’s not necessarily the way it’s working out, and China is not necessarily playing by those rules. And then you go to say, section 301 tariffs, some national security or strategic motivation, and you put mechanisms in place around say EVs or batteries, et cetera, to compensate for that, things like government subsidies, right? China, if they’re subsidizing their domestic industry.
There is a set of global trading rules, which is another way to go about addressing concerns like that. But I think it’s fair to say that in much of … many parts of the world, and specifically the US, the sense is the WTO is just not really worth talking about. It’s not the place to look anymore. The rules of the WTO are simply not up to the task anymore of addressing those concerns. Is that right? I mean is the view out of the trading system is of fundamentally failed to address Chinese non-market practices, and so the US just needs to chart its own approach, even if it means breaking with the WTO?
Sarah Bianchi: I think it’s fair to say that the WTO does not have the tools and is not responsive enough in a timely enough basis to make anybody feel that it can be the sole answer here. And so, you are seeing a lot more bilateral conversations. You’re seeing a lot more conversations within regions like USMCA, you’re seeing a lot of them, and I don’t see any reason that that is going to change for better or for worse.
Jason Bordoff: Is there a reform agenda there you think is worth pursuing or not so much? I mean, can the WTO be … is it still an important institution and can it be kind of made fit for purpose?
Sarah Bianchi: I think it is still an important institution. I think it still is a place where trading partners can come together, have a voice at the table, have some process in place. I just don’t think it’s sufficient and I’m not sure how to reform it to be so sufficient enough to deal with some of the non-market practices that we’ve seen coming out of China. I don’t think people will have the confidence in it to resolve those. And I think that it’s important to note, take the administrations out of it. The Congress is more hawkish than either prior to the Biden or the Trump administration in some of these issues. And so, I think we need to find a way forward and try to find our own balancing mechanism that people feel comfortable with.
Jason Bordoff: One of the ways trade and the energy transition of course, intersect is the idea that tariffs might be linked to carbon content of products to emissions. We do a big energy conference here every year, as you know, and John Podesta sort of put that idea out there much more … in a much stronger way than the administration had in the past. The Europeans are planning to implement a carbon border adjustment. There’s conversation in the US … on both sides of that, there’s conversations in the US about a carbon border adjustment. Is that a sensible policy idea to you? And how do you harmonize it if one country puts a price on carbon emissions and charges their industry and the other one subsidizes the cost of decarbonization through a trillion dollars like the IRA?
Sarah Bianchi: It’s challenging. In fact, it was some challenges in and around that on the global steel arrangement that the Biden administration tried to work through. And the EU kind of fairly said, we’re kind of doing some of this through our other means, and you guys might want to get on that as well. Ultimately, yeah, I think that some of those tools are going to be important. I understand why they have bipartisan support and I think Podesta is right, that we ought to take a hard look at them and make that a more front and center a part of the conversation. Look, it wasn’t that long ago that nobody would talk about 301s. That was somewhat of a dated policy tool until quite frankly, the Trump administration kind of revived it.
So we do need a whole new series of tools, I think, to deal with the energy transition and climate change. And I think some of them, that have been on … some tools that have been on the back burner, if we can put them in the forefront and get the right sponsors, I do think that we could make some real progress.
Jason Bordoff: How does that conversation look? I mean, you spend a lot of time in your role talking to emerging and developing market countries in Asia and elsewhere. Again, if the US and the EU are talking about imposing tariffs on carbon-intensive products, some of those are coming from developing countries, not responsible for most of the cumulative emissions to date. And we’re going to talk in Baku at the UN climate meeting later this year about these financial commitments that some wealthier countries have made toward lower-income countries. From a developing country perspective, you’ve heard this a lot. Emissions-linked tariffs may seem unfair because developed countries had the opportunity to develop using fossil fuels.
And now the flow of money should be in the opposite direction, how do we reconcile that tension for a fair and just transition?
Sarah Bianchi: Well, I think it’s a really, really fair question. I do think that there are developing countries that are fairly asking that. I think there are others though, that are more open-minded, and that is why I do think that … look, they don’t just hear it from the government, they hear it from the private companies. So some of our companies are just aren’t going to get minerals or anything else from a mine, for example, that is doing tailing or whatever else. And so I think if we work together and set a clear set of standards, you will find some of those developing countries are willing to meet them provided that we’re willing to pay again, what can be a higher price. I think that we need to get in soon though on these standards because the longer we go … and China is super willing to make these investments without some of those standards.
The sooner the United States gets in and is willing to enunciate what it would count, I think we could do a better job of getting at least some parts of those developments. Again, I spent time in Indonesia, a lot of time, and there’s certainly some mines that are willing to do IRMA and every other mining standard, others that aren’t. But when we’re not in the game or participating, you don’t really have a shot at making some of those changes.
Jason Bordoff: Yeah, that’s interesting. I just want to make sure, if I heard you right … I mean obviously we’ve been hearing a lot about the failure of wealthy countries and international multilateral institutions to mobilize climate finance on the scale needed. Do you think trade policy can catalyze climate aligned investment in markets that are currently struggling to attract capital?
Sarah Bianchi: It can. It can. Right, certainly there were countries that most, many, many developing countries came to us and asked for a critical minerals agreement because it would send a symbol, a signal to markets that this was a place to do investing in and around a clean energy. And there were understandable concerns on the labor and environment, and we didn’t necessarily get where we needed to go. But I think some of them, because it is such an attractive marketplace of the future, were willing to entertain fairly high standards on labor and the environment, in order to be kind of given the gold star in that they are one of the places for the future.
I think everybody sees this transition coming and is going to have real winners and losers throughout the globe. And so getting that kind of signal early, I think they’re willing to do a fair amount for that.
Jason Bordoff: Just trying to … in a couple of minutes we have left, but trying to look toward maybe some of the opportunities or optimism, not just the risks and the concerns we’re seeing in terms of cooperation and coordination. We talk a lot about supply chain coordination now, which is an emerging area of emphasis for US trade policy and economic diplomacy, like the supply chain pillar of IPEF, for example. What does supply chain coordination mean in practice and will it actually contribute to economic security and resilience?
Sarah Bianchi: Well, I think we have to be careful to distinguish, there’s a lot now that is just kind of rhetorical and what we could do and should do and things we should all lean into. But the real measure of success is when you kind of see the boots on the ground, if you will, and the investment. So if you look at … Again, I spent a lot of time in Korea. If you look at Korean electric battery plant build in this country, they’re up a huge amounts. And that’s really a testament. That’s more than any kind of, quote, supply chain agreement on paper will mean. So I do think it’s about coming together and figuring out what do we actually need to do to get this underway?
And we should probably not just rely on things that say processes that … create processes because until the investment is happening and everyone can figure out how the cost is going to work and the supply is going to meet the demand on all of those things, the rest is at risk to just be rhetorical.
Jason Bordoff: So much more to talk about, but Ambassador Sarah Bianchi, thanks for being part of the Center on Global Energy Policy. Thanks for joining us for this podcast today, and thanks for your service in government.
Sarah Bianchi: Well, thank you, and thank you for the … the Columbia Center is doing such cool innovative work. I’m thrilled to be part of it.
Jason Bordoff: Thank you again, Ambassador Bianchi, and thank you for listening to this week’s episode of Columbia Energy Exchange. The show is brought to you by the Center on Global Energy Policy at Columbia University’s School of International and Public Affairs. The show is hosted by me, Jason Bordoff and by Bill Loveless. The show is produced by Tim Peterson from Latitude Studios. Additional support from Caroline Pittman, Lily Lee, Q. Lee, Trevor Sutton and Sagatom Saha. Sean Marquand engineered the show. For more information about the podcast or the Center on Global Energy policy, please visit us online at energypolicy.columbia.edu or follow us on social media @ColumbiaUEnergy.
And please, if you feel inclined, give us a rating on Apple Podcasts, it really helps us out. Thanks again for listening. We’ll see you next week.
