WASHINGTON (Reuters) – U.S. Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen said on Tuesday the United States has become overly dependent on China for critical supply chains, particularly in clean energy products and needs to broaden out sources of supply.
Yellen, speaking at a Fortune CEO event in Washington, repeated her longstanding view that the United States does not want to decouple economically from China.
She said that she has not been “a strong believer” in industrial policy, but that the United States had stood by for too long while other countries built up semiconductor industries with massive subsidies.
The U.S. would face national security concerns without a robust semiconductor sector of its own, she said, adding that last year’s Chips and Science Act will help reverse that trend.
“We’re fooling ourselves if we think that abandoning, for all practical purposes, semiconductor manufacturing, is a smart strategy for the United States,” Yellen said.
(Reporting by David Lawder and Kanishka Singh in Washington; editing by Jonathan Oatis and Deepa Babington)
