A former top Obama advisor says the United States can apply pressure on China by tapping its international allies.
Jason Furman, who headed the White House Council of Economic Advisors from 2013 to 2017, told Yahoo Finance this week that the international community’s approach to Huawei serves as an example. In the face of security concerns that the Chinese tech giant was using its equipment to spy, Australia, New Zealand, and the United Kingdom were among the countries that joined the U.S. in banning Huawei from their 5G networks.
Furman argues that the same could be done as the Biden administration applies pressure on China for its policies regarding human rights and territorial aggression.
“What can you do together with, effectively, a coalition of the willing?” Furman said at Yahoo Finance’s US-China Forum. He added that the U.S. “accomplished its goals by getting a lot of other countries on board.”
Furman, a professor of economics at Harvard University, said this would not require the U.S. to rejoin the Trans-Pacific Partnership. The TPP aspired to create a trade pact among 12 Pacific Rim countries, including the United States. The Obama administration sought to be a part of the deal, but former President Donald Trump withdrew from the TPP in his first days in office as a first step to his bilateral trade approach.