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By the authority vested in me as President by the Constitution and the laws of the United States of America, it is hereby ordered as follows:

     Section 1.  All executive departments and agencies of the Federal Government shall be closed and their employees excused from duty on Tuesday, December 24, 2024, the day before Christmas Day.

     Sec. 2.  The heads of executive departments and agencies may determine that certain offices and installations of their organizations, or parts thereof, must remain open and that certain employees must report for duty on December 24, 2024, for reasons of national security, defense, or other public need.

     Sec. 3.  December 24, 2024, shall be considered as falling within the scope of Executive Order 11582 of February 11, 1971, and of 5 U.S.C. 5546 and 6103(b) and other similar statutes insofar as they relate to the pay and leave of employees of the United States.

     Sec. 4.  The Director of the Office of Personnel Management shall take such actions as may be necessary to implement this order.

     Sec. 5.  General Provisions.  (a)  Nothing in this order shall be construed to impair or otherwise affect:

(i)   the authority granted by law to an executive department or agency, or the head thereof; or

(ii)  the functions of the Director of the Office of Management and Budget relating to budgetary, administrative, or legislative proposals.

     (b)  This order shall be implemented consistent with applicable law and subject to the availability of appropriations.

     (c)  This order is not intended to, and does not, create any right or benefit, substantive or procedural, enforceable at law or in equity by any party against the United States, its departments, agencies, or entities, its officers, employees, or agents, or any other person.

                              JOSEPH R. BIDEN JR.


THE WHITE HOUSE,
    December 18, 2024.

The post Executive Order on Providing for the Closing of Executive Departments and Agencies of the Federal Government on December 24, 2024 appeared first on The White House.

At The Brookings Institution
As Prepared for Delivery

Supply Shocks and Supply Chain Fragility

I am delighted to join you for this discussion on strengthening America’s supply chains as we release the first ever Quadrennial Supply Chain Review.

When President Biden came into office, the economy was experiencing the most disruptive supply shocks in a generation. Shipping costs skyrocketed as over a hundred ships queued up at the Ports of Los Angeles and Long Beach, and thousands of containers piled up on our docks. And when Russia invaded Ukraine, we saw further shocks, disrupting global grain and energy markets.

Following several decades of relative calm, the Global Supply Chain Pressure Index spiked to unprecedented levels. As disruptions led to shortages and price increases, goods inflation surged, after falling for much of the pandemic shutdown in 2020, tracking supply chain disruptions closely with a short lag.

Not since the oil price shocks of the 1970s had the U.S. economy experienced aggregate supply shocks of this magnitude. Both businesses and government were woefully unprepared.

Market pressures led businesses to adopt just-in-time, lean inventory practices and to seek out the lowest- cost production location for many components in their far-flung value chains. We now know that this came at a cost. When the pandemic shuttered semiconductor factories overseas, unfinished auto assemblies began piling up in America. Car and washing machine prices spiked, and wait lists lengthened.

The government had neglected to make critical investments in the resilience of our supply chains. Rails, ports, roads, bridges, and airports had fallen behind as successive administrations failed to secure the necessary infrastructure funding from Congress and did not take action as some foreign governments provided significant non-market incentives for investments in key strategic industries.

A New Playbook for Supply Chain Resilience

In short, we needed a new strategy to make our supply chains more resilient—and new partnerships with businesses and labor to make it work, as well as with foreign friends and allies. In his first month in office, the President signed the Executive Order on Supply Chains laying out a strategy to strengthen our supply chains. The new playbook rests on recovery, risk management, investment, and diversification.

Recovery

The first order of business was to restart the flow of goods.  The Administration immediately stood up a Supply Chain Disruptions Task Force to work with state and local officials, businesses, labor groups, and farmers to resolve bottlenecks.

An acute shortage of truck drivers was creating a major bottleneck for the 72% of shipments that move around the country by truck. In response, the Departments of Labor and Transportation implemented the Trucking Action Plan, which increased trucking employment by the most in two decades and doubled the issuance of commercial drivers’ licenses.

Similarly, with cargo piling up at our West Coast ports, the President appointed a Port Envoy, who worked with businesses and labor to clear the docks and get shipments moving again. As a result, the shelves were restocked in time for the Christmas shopping season.

Risk Identification and Management

Our goal was not only to restore the nation’s supply chains but also to build capacity to spot emerging risks and to resolve emerging problems sooner. We worked to build durable capabilities in key agencies to enable data analytics and information sharing with the private sector and states and localities.  

These new supply disruptions capabilities strengthened our ability to respond in 2022 to a significant baby formula supply shortfall due to a production quality lapse. To restore supply, the Administration used the Defense Production Act to get ingredients to manufacturers, coordinated air freight shipments of formula from overseas, and provided expedited pathways for new manufacturers to enter the market.

The Department of Transportation built out a new Multimodal Freight Office and a Transportation Supply Chain Indicators Tracker that gathers and publishes metrics in real time on container dwell times, sectoral employment trends, and rail intermodal volumes. Now when we start seeing a back-up in any of our ports, we can take action right away.

The Department of Commerce created a new Supply Chain Center with a first-of-its-kind diagnostic risk assessment tool known as SCALE. SCALE utilizes a comprehensive set of over 40 indicators of risk such as supplier concentration, reliance on a single point of entry, and inventory-to-sales ratios to evaluate supply chain conditions across more than 400 industries. With this new data, we can spot looming challenges early and take action before they become a crisis.

These data tools are critical for the private sector no less than for the government. When crisis strikes, the hundreds of independent operators that rely on or support our logistics networks must make decisions based on the information that is available to them, which may be only part of the bigger picture. It was vital to institutionalize greater data sharing and coordination to enable the hundreds of independent operators to manage risks more effectively.

The Department of Transportation created the Freight Logistics Optimization Works (“FLOW”) program, a public-private partnership that has built a shared data resource picture of live supply chain networks. Today, more than 85 FLOW participants use these data to inform their logistics decision making, helping to avoid bottlenecks, and shorten lead times for American businesses and consumers.

The collapse of the Francis Scott Key Bridge in Baltimore last spring was a crucial test of whether the new capacity we had built around supply chains would work in a crisis. Hours after a ship crashed into the bridge at 1:30 A.M., the federal government had already convened the Supply Chain Disruptions Task Force to minimize disruptions to the critical goods moving in and out of the port. We were immediately in communication with state and local officials, and we initiated calls with shipping companies, labor unions, ocean carriers, and other ports along the East Coast. We coordinated with rail and trucking companies to help reroute the flow of critical goods in real-time. This all-hands-on-deck approach kept goods flowing throughout the region, workers at their jobs, and the local economy operating at full capacity until the Port of Baltimore was able to fully reopen in less than three months.

Investing in Infrastructure and Manufacturing

The pandemic supply chain crisis also highlighted the costs of decades of underinvestment in the supply side of our economy. Our nation’s infrastructure had fallen further and further behind. Companies spread their supply chains to far flung parts of the globe as they focused on the costs of inputs, and not on the risks associated with where they were made.

In response, the President secured landmark legislation to revive the federal government’s role in supporting private sector investment in the critical value chains that underpin our economic and national security.

Thanks to the Bipartisan Infrastructure Law, the federal government has so far invested more than $568 billion in American infrastructure across 66,000 different projects. We are investing $8.7 billion in 18 of the nation’s most economically significant bridges that are vital to our supply chains, and we have announced $13 billion to improve our ports. These are investments that will pay dividends for decades to come.

When the President took office, almost 90% of semiconductors—vital for everything from advanced AI to gaming—were manufactured abroad. In the energy sector, we rely on China for more than 80% of the solar manufacturing supply chain, and there are at least 30 foundational mineral commodities for which the U.S. is more than 75% net import reliant—in many cases on sources that are Chinese or owned by Chinese producers. These aren’t just economic vulnerabilities—they are national security risks, and we cannot afford to wait until there is a disruption to take action. 

Together, the landmark CHIPS and Science Act and Inflation Reduction Act (IRA) have catalyzed nearly $1 trillion in announced private-sector investments in critical industries. Because of the CHIPS and Science Act, the U.S. is now projected to host nearly 30% of global leading-edge semiconductor manufacturing—up from zero—and we are already seeing the leading global manufacturer achieve production yields in the U.S. that are comparable to those in Taiwan.

Similarly, when the President entered office, U.S. producers were only able to supply 5 percent of global lithium demand. Because of the clean energy provisions of the IRA, the U.S. is now on track to supply more than one-fifth of global lithium demand outside of China by 2030, enabling us to power grid storage batteries and electric vehicles.

Diversification of Supply Chains

We are also working with likeminded partners to diversify our supply chains and manage risks. China has used a wide range of non-market practices to gain significant global share in key supply chains, including legacy semiconductors and electric vehicles. China’s growing overcapacity has caused a proliferation of unfairly low-priced exports that now make it difficult for competitors to meet market hurdles for investment and production. To level the playing field, we have coupled our investment incentives with tough trade enforcement measures like tariffs that are carefully targeted against those unfair trade practices in strategic sectors. Today’s Quadrennial Review lays out a comprehensive set of additional actions related to procurement, supply chain transparency, and market standards to counter non-market practices.

Importantly, we are partnering with allies to diversify global supply chains and ensure they are not excessively dependent on Chinese companies. By aligning our approaches, we are helping to ensure that the most vital global supply chains are diversified and China cannot undercut American industries, businesses, workers.

Building Future Resilience

We have come a long way. The Global Supply Chain Pressures Index, which in 2021 peaked at 4.4 standard deviations above its historical average, is now negative—a sharp decrease. The number of container ship stuck off our shores waiting to unload has fallen from almost 150 three years ago to around a dozen today. The days of sales covered by retailers’ inventories has increased by nearly 10% since June 2021 and is now close to the pre-pandemic average. Shipping rates to the West Coast have fallen from over $20,000 per container at the peak of the disruption back down to around $4,400.

The work on strengthening America’s supply chains should continue since we are likely to encounter additional supply shocks in the years ahead. In the past 4 years alone, we have confronted supply chain disruptions not only from the pandemic but also from hurricanes, foreign wars, and cyberattacks targeting critical infrastructure and digital supply chains. We saw 28 climate disasters last year that each cost at least a billion dollars—the highest number in U.S. history. Geostrategic instability, including Russia’s war in Ukraine and conflict in the Middle East, continues to disrupt global energy markets. Cyber actors regularly target supply chain operators as a way to take down major companies, including hospitals. And we have seen a variety of disruptions in shipping, including the Houthi attacks on cargo ships in the Red Sea and reduced water levels in the Panama Canal.

New dependencies are constantly emerging, and some supply chain chokepoints create national security risks, such as the ability of a foreign adversary to cut off supplies of a key mineral used in defense applications. It will be important to utilize the full scope of our national security tools to protect supply chains when necessary, as with the Department of Commerce’s ICTS rulemaking on data security for connected vehicles, ensuring that foreign adversaries cannot exploit consumer products that Americans use every day for harmful purposes.

Certain critical product areas—including minerals, information technology components, and medical supply chains—will require additional investment to achieve an acceptable level of resilience.

We can’t repeat the mistakes of the past by allowing future core technologies to completely leave our shores. America’s global position in the strategic industries of tomorrow require ongoing active attention. We need to work in partnership with the private sector when they identify a critical bottleneck. For instance, it is important support the rapid development of the requisite compute power through clean energy in the U.S. for the most advanced AI models.

Closing

When they are working smoothly, most people don’t pay any attention to supply chains. But when supply chains break down, it can impose tremendous hardship on our households, workers, businesses, and farmers. 

Supply chain resilience has always been vital to our economic and national security. President Biden once invoked a proverb attributed to Benjamin Franklin: “For want of a nail, the shoe was lost. For want of a shoe, the horse was lost…” and on and on and until, finally, “the whole kingdom was lost, all for the want of a horseshoe nail.” Our nation’s founders recognized that the breakdown of even minor inputs or processes can cascade into monumental national costs.

Building resilience in our supply chains is not a partisan effort. It’s a national priority borne out of hard-fought experience. It is also a shared responsibility—government enabled and private sector led. American workers are also vital to these efforts.

Today, not only have we recovered, we’ve come out stronger, and have laid the foundation for America’s supply chains to be more resilient in the years ahead.  Now it is important to build on this new playbook for resilient supply chains in partnership with business and government and in alignment with friends and partners around the world.

###

The post Remarks by National Economic Advisor Lael Brainard on Making America’s Supply Chains More Resilient appeared first on The White House.

At The Brookings Institution
As Prepared for Delivery

Supply Shocks and Supply Chain Fragility

I am delighted to join you for this discussion on strengthening America’s supply chains as we release the first ever Quadrennial Supply Chain Review.

When President Biden came into office, the economy was experiencing the most disruptive supply shocks in a generation. Shipping costs skyrocketed as over a hundred ships queued up at the Ports of Los Angeles and Long Beach, and thousands of containers piled up on our docks. And when Russia invaded Ukraine, we saw further shocks, disrupting global grain and energy markets.

Following several decades of relative calm, the Global Supply Chain Pressure Index spiked to unprecedented levels. As disruptions led to shortages and price increases, goods inflation surged, after falling for much of the pandemic shutdown in 2020, tracking supply chain disruptions closely with a short lag.

Not since the oil price shocks of the 1970s had the U.S. economy experienced aggregate supply shocks of this magnitude. Both businesses and government were woefully unprepared.

Market pressures led businesses to adopt just-in-time, lean inventory practices and to seek out the lowest- cost production location for many components in their far-flung value chains. We now know that this came at a cost. When the pandemic shuttered semiconductor factories overseas, unfinished auto assemblies began piling up in America. Car and washing machine prices spiked, and wait lists lengthened.

The government had neglected to make critical investments in the resilience of our supply chains. Rails, ports, roads, bridges, and airports had fallen behind as successive administrations failed to secure the necessary infrastructure funding from Congress and did not take action as some foreign governments provided significant non-market incentives for investments in key strategic industries.

A New Playbook for Supply Chain Resilience

In short, we needed a new strategy to make our supply chains more resilient—and new partnerships with businesses and labor to make it work, as well as with foreign friends and allies. In his first month in office, the President signed the Executive Order on Supply Chains laying out a strategy to strengthen our supply chains. The new playbook rests on recovery, risk management, investment, and diversification.

Recovery

The first order of business was to restart the flow of goods.  The Administration immediately stood up a Supply Chain Disruptions Task Force to work with state and local officials, businesses, labor groups, and farmers to resolve bottlenecks.

An acute shortage of truck drivers was creating a major bottleneck for the 72% of shipments that move around the country by truck. In response, the Departments of Labor and Transportation implemented the Trucking Action Plan, which increased trucking employment by the most in two decades and doubled the issuance of commercial drivers’ licenses.

Similarly, with cargo piling up at our West Coast ports, the President appointed a Port Envoy, who worked with businesses and labor to clear the docks and get shipments moving again. As a result, the shelves were restocked in time for the Christmas shopping season.

Risk Identification and Management

Our goal was not only to restore the nation’s supply chains but also to build capacity to spot emerging risks and to resolve emerging problems sooner. We worked to build durable capabilities in key agencies to enable data analytics and information sharing with the private sector and states and localities.  

These new supply disruptions capabilities strengthened our ability to respond in 2022 to a significant baby formula supply shortfall due to a production quality lapse. To restore supply, the Administration used the Defense Production Act to get ingredients to manufacturers, coordinated air freight shipments of formula from overseas, and provided expedited pathways for new manufacturers to enter the market.

The Department of Transportation built out a new Multimodal Freight Office and a Transportation Supply Chain Indicators Tracker that gathers and publishes metrics in real time on container dwell times, sectoral employment trends, and rail intermodal volumes. Now when we start seeing a back-up in any of our ports, we can take action right away.

The Department of Commerce created a new Supply Chain Center with a first-of-its-kind diagnostic risk assessment tool known as SCALE. SCALE utilizes a comprehensive set of over 40 indicators of risk such as supplier concentration, reliance on a single point of entry, and inventory-to-sales ratios to evaluate supply chain conditions across more than 400 industries. With this new data, we can spot looming challenges early and take action before they become a crisis.

These data tools are critical for the private sector no less than for the government. When crisis strikes, the hundreds of independent operators that rely on or support our logistics networks must make decisions based on the information that is available to them, which may be only part of the bigger picture. It was vital to institutionalize greater data sharing and coordination to enable the hundreds of independent operators to manage risks more effectively.

The Department of Transportation created the Freight Logistics Optimization Works (“FLOW”) program, a public-private partnership that has built a shared data resource picture of live supply chain networks. Today, more than 85 FLOW participants use these data to inform their logistics decision making, helping to avoid bottlenecks, and shorten lead times for American businesses and consumers.

The collapse of the Francis Scott Key Bridge in Baltimore last spring was a crucial test of whether the new capacity we had built around supply chains would work in a crisis. Hours after a ship crashed into the bridge at 1:30 A.M., the federal government had already convened the Supply Chain Disruptions Task Force to minimize disruptions to the critical goods moving in and out of the port. We were immediately in communication with state and local officials, and we initiated calls with shipping companies, labor unions, ocean carriers, and other ports along the East Coast. We coordinated with rail and trucking companies to help reroute the flow of critical goods in real-time. This all-hands-on-deck approach kept goods flowing throughout the region, workers at their jobs, and the local economy operating at full capacity until the Port of Baltimore was able to fully reopen in less than three months.

Investing in Infrastructure and Manufacturing

The pandemic supply chain crisis also highlighted the costs of decades of underinvestment in the supply side of our economy. Our nation’s infrastructure had fallen further and further behind. Companies spread their supply chains to far flung parts of the globe as they focused on the costs of inputs, and not on the risks associated with where they were made.

In response, the President secured landmark legislation to revive the federal government’s role in supporting private sector investment in the critical value chains that underpin our economic and national security.

Thanks to the Bipartisan Infrastructure Law, the federal government has so far invested more than $568 billion in American infrastructure across 66,000 different projects. We are investing $8.7 billion in 18 of the nation’s most economically significant bridges that are vital to our supply chains, and we have announced $13 billion to improve our ports. These are investments that will pay dividends for decades to come.

When the President took office, almost 90% of semiconductors—vital for everything from advanced AI to gaming—were manufactured abroad. In the energy sector, we rely on China for more than 80% of the solar manufacturing supply chain, and there are at least 30 foundational mineral commodities for which the U.S. is more than 75% net import reliant—in many cases on sources that are Chinese or owned by Chinese producers. These aren’t just economic vulnerabilities—they are national security risks, and we cannot afford to wait until there is a disruption to take action. 

Together, the landmark CHIPS and Science Act and Inflation Reduction Act (IRA) have catalyzed nearly $1 trillion in announced private-sector investments in critical industries. Because of the CHIPS and Science Act, the U.S. is now projected to host nearly 30% of global leading-edge semiconductor manufacturing—up from zero—and we are already seeing the leading global manufacturer achieve production yields in the U.S. that are comparable to those in Taiwan.

Similarly, when the President entered office, U.S. producers were only able to supply 5 percent of global lithium demand. Because of the clean energy provisions of the IRA, the U.S. is now on track to supply more than one-fifth of global lithium demand outside of China by 2030, enabling us to power grid storage batteries and electric vehicles.

Diversification of Supply Chains

We are also working with likeminded partners to diversify our supply chains and manage risks. China has used a wide range of non-market practices to gain significant global share in key supply chains, including legacy semiconductors and electric vehicles. China’s growing overcapacity has caused a proliferation of unfairly low-priced exports that now make it difficult for competitors to meet market hurdles for investment and production. To level the playing field, we have coupled our investment incentives with tough trade enforcement measures like tariffs that are carefully targeted against those unfair trade practices in strategic sectors. Today’s Quadrennial Review lays out a comprehensive set of additional actions related to procurement, supply chain transparency, and market standards to counter non-market practices.

Importantly, we are partnering with allies to diversify global supply chains and ensure they are not excessively dependent on Chinese companies. By aligning our approaches, we are helping to ensure that the most vital global supply chains are diversified and China cannot undercut American industries, businesses, workers.

Building Future Resilience

We have come a long way. The Global Supply Chain Pressures Index, which in 2021 peaked at 4.4 standard deviations above its historical average, is now negative—a sharp decrease. The number of container ship stuck off our shores waiting to unload has fallen from almost 150 three years ago to around a dozen today. The days of sales covered by retailers’ inventories has increased by nearly 10% since June 2021 and is now close to the pre-pandemic average. Shipping rates to the West Coast have fallen from over $20,000 per container at the peak of the disruption back down to around $4,400.

The work on strengthening America’s supply chains should continue since we are likely to encounter additional supply shocks in the years ahead. In the past 4 years alone, we have confronted supply chain disruptions not only from the pandemic but also from hurricanes, foreign wars, and cyberattacks targeting critical infrastructure and digital supply chains. We saw 28 climate disasters last year that each cost at least a billion dollars—the highest number in U.S. history. Geostrategic instability, including Russia’s war in Ukraine and conflict in the Middle East, continues to disrupt global energy markets. Cyber actors regularly target supply chain operators as a way to take down major companies, including hospitals. And we have seen a variety of disruptions in shipping, including the Houthi attacks on cargo ships in the Red Sea and reduced water levels in the Panama Canal.

New dependencies are constantly emerging, and some supply chain chokepoints create national security risks, such as the ability of a foreign adversary to cut off supplies of a key mineral used in defense applications. It will be important to utilize the full scope of our national security tools to protect supply chains when necessary, as with the Department of Commerce’s ICTS rulemaking on data security for connected vehicles, ensuring that foreign adversaries cannot exploit consumer products that Americans use every day for harmful purposes.

Certain critical product areas—including minerals, information technology components, and medical supply chains—will require additional investment to achieve an acceptable level of resilience.

We can’t repeat the mistakes of the past by allowing future core technologies to completely leave our shores. America’s global position in the strategic industries of tomorrow require ongoing active attention. We need to work in partnership with the private sector when they identify a critical bottleneck. For instance, it is important support the rapid development of the requisite compute power through clean energy in the U.S. for the most advanced AI models.

Closing

When they are working smoothly, most people don’t pay any attention to supply chains. But when supply chains break down, it can impose tremendous hardship on our households, workers, businesses, and farmers. 

Supply chain resilience has always been vital to our economic and national security. President Biden once invoked a proverb attributed to Benjamin Franklin: “For want of a nail, the shoe was lost. For want of a shoe, the horse was lost…” and on and on and until, finally, “the whole kingdom was lost, all for the want of a horseshoe nail.” Our nation’s founders recognized that the breakdown of even minor inputs or processes can cascade into monumental national costs.

Building resilience in our supply chains is not a partisan effort. It’s a national priority borne out of hard-fought experience. It is also a shared responsibility—government enabled and private sector led. American workers are also vital to these efforts.

Today, not only have we recovered, we’ve come out stronger, and have laid the foundation for America’s supply chains to be more resilient in the years ahead.  Now it is important to build on this new playbook for resilient supply chains in partnership with business and government and in alignment with friends and partners around the world.

###

The post Remarks by National Economic Advisor Lael Brainard on Making America’s Supply Chains More Resilient appeared first on The White House.

Upon taking office in 2021, President Biden and his Administration immediately got to work addressing the shocks that were roiling global supply chains and moved swiftly to secure key industries for America’s economy and national security. Everything in our lives—the food we eat, the medicines in our hospitals, the energy that powers our homes, the computer chips in our devices—relies on supply chains, and the disruptions sparked by the COVID-19 pandemic and Russia’s war on Ukraine showed what happens when they are neglected for decades.

Four years later, America’s supply chains are stronger and more resilient. Working hand in hand with industry and all stakeholders, this Administration has cleared bottlenecks, increased investments in critical sectors, and shored up the transportation sector that move the goods that Americans rely on. Ocean shipping prices have fallen more than 70 percent from their peak, and today fewer than 20 containerships are waiting to dock at U.S. ports, compared to over 150 backed up during the peak of congestion. That progress has made supply chains more reliable for businesses and lowered inflation for the goods that families buy every day.

Today, the Biden-Harris Administration is releasing the first-ever Quadrennial Supply Chain Review, a formal assessment of four years of strengthening America’s critical supply chains, and announcing additional actions to support American businesses and consumers.

Progress to Date

The Quadrennial Supply Chain Review assesses the progress made over the past four years to bolster the resilience of our most critical supply chains. This strategic approach has included:

• Responding to disruption. The Administration quickly set to work to develop new government tools and capacity to respond to disruptions, both active ones when it took office, and new ones that have occurred since. The President’s Supply Chain Disruptions Task Force (SCDTF) has effectively coordinated federal authorities and resources and also established a process to work with state and local authorities and the private sector in real time. This work has helped improved the flow of goods into and around the United States during disruptions—getting products critical to American families moving again through ports and to shelves.

• Investing in infrastructure and manufacturing and lowering costs. Over the past four years, the Biden-Harris Administration has taken a made historic investments to strengthen our industrial bases and lower costs. U.S. Government investment has helped catalyze over $1 trillion in private-sector announced investments since January 2021. These investments are supporting the construction of new factories and creating manufacturing jobs across the country.
• Responding to non-market policies and practices. On a level playing field, American businesses and workers can compete and win. However, our strategic competitors are continuing to engage in non-market policies and practices (NMPP) that undercut our collective resilience—directing their systems to target key industries for dominance by using excessive state subsidies and other forms of state support to dominate critical industries. As part of the Quadrennial Supply Chain Review process, the Biden-Harris Administration has developed a strategy to address NMPP, recognizing the need for early, comprehensive action to prevent harm to U.S. workers and industry, as well as modernized trade authorities that account for NMPP’s continued effects on global supply chains. This work has included raising tariffs on a select number of key sectors to safeguard U.S. supply chains in the face of unfair competition. These tariff modifications will protect historic domestic investments under BIL, the CHIPS and Science Act, and the Inflation Reduction Act, while also shielding American businesses and workers from unfair trade practices.

The Review builds on comprehensive efforts undertaken by the Administration over the last four years, including President Biden’s 2021 Executive Order on America’s Supply Chains (E.O. 14017), which directed rapid supply chain assessments for four critical products in the first 100 days of the Administration, a one-year review of six key supply chains in 2022, and the establishment of the White House Council on Supply Chain Resilience to support the enduring resilience of America’s critical supply chains in 2023.

Additional Actions to Strengthen Supply Chains

Continuing to strengthen supply chains over the next four years—and beyond—will require the United States to deliver on historic domestic investments, maintain and strengthen international partnerships, harness innovation to tackle 21st-century challenges, and mobilize and facilitate ongoing private investment and public-private partnerships. The work of the last four years has laid a strong foundation for the United States to continue safeguarding the enduring resilience of our supply chains for years to come, including for emerging industries of the future.

Below are additional steps the Biden-Harris Administration is taking to strengthen supply chains, including for energy, critical minerals, agricultural commodities and food products, medical products, information and communications technology, transportation, and defense.

Energy

• Announcing up to $6 billion in incentives to strengthen U.S. energy supply chains. Over the coming weeks, the IRS, supported by the Department of Energy’s Office of Manufacturing and Energy Supply Chains (MESC), is set to announce up to $6 billion in additional tax credits to strengthen U.S. energy supply chains through the Qualifying Advanced Energy Project Credit (48C) Program. This builds on the first round of $4 billion in announced tax credits for over 100 projects in 35 states to accelerate domestic clean energy manufacturing and reduce greenhouse gas emissions at industrial facilities. This also builds on over $12 billion of investment from the DOE MESC Office in domestic manufacturing capacity to strengthen the U.S. energy supply chains.
• Improving risk mitigation across the energy supply chain. To improve visibility across multiple technologies in the energy industrial base, DOE and a consortium of the National Laboratories have developed a new analytic framework—the Supply Chain Readiness Level—to quantify risks, gaps, and vulnerabilities, and to identify investment opportunities across the energy sector.

Critical Minerals

• Mapping America’s critical minerals deposits. The U.S. Geological Survey (USGS) is announcing new airborne geophysical mapping in the Ozarks Plateau (Missouri, Kansas, and Arkansas) and Alaska over areas known to host minerals such as antimony, tin, tungsten, and lead and zinc ores, as well as byproduct critical minerals such as gallium and germanium. USGS’s mapping work, funded by the Bipartisan Infrastructure Law (BIL), is revolutionizing the U.S. Government’s understanding of the nation’s mineral and geologic resources. USGS and NASA are partnering to complete the largest high-quality hyperspectral survey in the world, surveying more than 180,000 square miles of the Southwest with sensors that make it possible to “see” nuanced differences between materials.
• Updating the U.S.’s critical minerals market data. Next month, USGS will publish its 2025 Mineral Commodity Summaries.These annual reports help forecast supply chain disruptions resulting from a variety of risks including pandemics, natural disasters, and trade wars, and are the U.S.’s authoritative source of data on the supply, demand, and consumption of 100 mineral commodities. Additionally, last month, researchers at the USGS National Minerals Information Center developed a new model to assess how disruptions of critical mineral supplies may affect the U.S. economy. This model reflects the latest whole-of-government risk and resilience methodology.

Food and Agriculture

• Making $116 million in new investments to expand domestic fertilizer production. Today, the Department of Agriculture (USDA) is announcing eight new awards through its Fertilizer Production Expansion Program, part of a broader effort to increase American-made fertilizer production to spur competition and combat price hikes on U.S. farmers. Since President Biden announced the program in 2022, USDA has invested $517 million in 76 fertilizer production facilities to expand access to domestic fertilizer options for American farmers in 34 states and Puerto Rico. These investments will increase U.S. fertilizer production by 11.8 million tons annually and create more than 1,300 jobs in rural communities.This funding builds on the more than $1.4 billion USDA has invested to build or expand small and medium sized processing facilities and to create a more resilient U.S. food supply chain which gives farmers more market options while providing consumers with more choices and affordable grocery prices.

Medical Products

• Investing an additional $26 million in domestic sterilization capacity. Building on recent investments in industrial base capability and capacity expansion through DPA Title III authorities and Public-Private Partnerships, the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) expects additional investments of $26 millionin alternative sterilization capacity before the end of 2024.

• Releasing an action plan for the next four years. HHS will publish its Draft 2025-2028 Action Plan for Addressing Shortages of Medical Products and Strengthening the Resilience of Medical Product Supply Chains, outlining supply chain resilience goals and a strategic plan to achieve them. The HHS Action Plan will also include an HHS Research Plan to collate HHS and academic research priorities that would promote Action Plan goals.
• Issuing stronger supply chain standards for hospitals to combat drug shortages. In notice and comment rulemaking, CMS intends to propose new Conditions of Participation requiring hospitals to have certain processes to address and prevent medication shortages.

Semiconductors and Other Technologies

• Investing in domestic production. CHIPS for America has awarded over $26 billion in incentives to advance domestic production in semiconductors and the supply chain. Now, America is home to all five of the world’s leading-edge logic and memory providers, while no other economy has more than two. Since the beginning of the Biden-Harris Administration, semiconductor and electronics companies have announced nearly $450 billion in private investments, catalyzed in large part by public investment.
• Reducing national security risks in federal supply chains. The Department of Defense, General Services Administration (GSA), and National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) are finalizing a rule implementing Section 5949 of the James M. Inhofe National Defense Authorization Act for Fiscal Year 2023, which prohibits agencies from procuring or obtaining certain products and services that include semiconductors from entities of concern.
• Promoting the U.S. government’s use of domestically manufactured semiconductors. The Made in America Office and Office of Federal Procurement Policy (OFPP) has released a Request for Information (RFI) to gauge the best ways for government contractors to scale up their use of domestically manufactured chips, particularly for critical infrastructure. Responses solicit commercial ideas from industry that may inform future policymaking in support of the government-wide effort to leverage existing manufacturing capacity.
• Incentivizing supply chain diversity, competition, and transparency. The Office of Management and Budget (OMB) is issuing guidance to help the Federal Government—the world’s largest buyer—organize its demand for domestic semiconductors so that agencies can mitigate the risk posed by undue dependence on foreign manufacturing, limited competition, and possible higher manufacturing costs. The effort encourages agencies to develop strategies to dual or multiple source semiconductors, increase transparency for critical infrastructure supply chains, and provide the government’s forecasted demand for the products and services that use these chips.
• Protecting American businesses from unfair trade practices. In May, the President announced increased Section 301 tariffs on semiconductor imports from China, which were finalized by the USTR in September, as part of the Biden-Harris Administration’s efforts to further protect American semiconductor manufacturing and the sustainability of domestic investments.

Transportation

• Helping states improve their supply chain operations. The Department of Transportation (DOT) continues to advance this work by working closely with other levels of government and industry stakeholders. DOT’s Freight Office is establishing the National Multimodal Freight Network to assist States in strategically directing resources toward improved system performance for the efficient movement of freight on the Network, to inform freight transportation planning, and to assist in the prioritization of Federal investment.
• Expanding visibility into ocean freight supply chains. Today, DOT is announcing that it has added more members to the Freight Logistics Optimization Works (FLOW) program, a public-private partnership to build an integrated view of U.S. supply chain conditions, and which supported the response to the Francis Scott Key Bridge collapse. Today, FLOW now includes eight of the largest ten container ports representing over 80% of all U.S. imports; nine of the largest ten ocean carriers representing over 70% of all U.S. imports; and six of the largest ten importers.
• Building the transportation of tomorrow. USTDA, DFC, and EXIM are all making investments to improve transportation across air, land, and sea. EXIM’s investments will expand U.S. exports of all electric-powered aircraft, while USTDA is improving the efficiency and safety of freight rail and digital customs processes. In areas around the world with high vessel traffic, DFC is also developing new ports to move goods in critical supply chains from place to place. Since its creation, DFC investments in critical infrastructure have transported over 64 million passengers alone.

Defense

• Releasing a National Defense Industrial Strategy and Implementation Plan. This fall, the Department of Defense (DoD) released the Implementation Plan to accompany its first-ever National Defense Industrial Strategy (NDIS). The NDIS is guiding investments to strengthen supply chain resilience, including by purchasing key elements that we need for sustainable defense production. For example, the United States has invested $215 million to boost production of solid rocket motors, which are one of the most critical components used in our advanced missile systems.
• Establishing domestic manufacturing capability for strategic and critical materials. From mid-2023 through September 2024, DoD invested $250 million in defense-critical materials such as graphite, lithium, niobium oxide, and manganese. These investments will ensure secure access to sources and to domestic separation and processing in support of a range of defense applications, from large-capacity batteries to advanced aircraft to microelectronics.
• Investing in the defense industrial base workforce. The defense supply chain depends in large part on a strong and vibrant workforce. The Administration has pursued numerous initiatives to ensure Americans can access jobs in the defense industrial sector that pay competitive wages and get the training they need to turn these jobs into meaningful careers. Earlier this year, the Navy partnered with the Departments of Education and Labor and with the State of Michigan to launch the Michigan Maritime Manufacturing Initiative, which expands regional training pipelines for the submarine industry into the Great Lakes region.

Strengthening U.S. Government Data, Analytics, and Response Capacity

• Preparing for a second Supply Chain Summit. In September 2024, the Department of Commerce held its first Supply Chain Summit. Commerce convened officials from government, industry, academia, and civil society to discuss how to effectively prepare for and respond to supply chain disruptions, as well as proactively improve supply chain resilience. Commerce will host another Supply Chain Summit in 2025. The Summit will bring together government, industry, and other stakeholders to examine continual progress made in increasing American supply chain resiliency. The date of the Summit will be announced in the months ahead.
• Upgrading the new SCALE diagnostic tool. The Department of Commerce’s Industry and Analysis unit developed a first-of-its-kind supply chain diagnostic tool to assess supply chain risk across the whole of the U.S. economy. The tool proactively helps identify risks and strengthen the resilience of supply chains key to U.S. national and economic security. The Department of Commerce plans to launch a competition aimed at developing new data or analysis that can be used to expand the indicators of risk incorporated into the SCALE tool.
• Conducting supply chain tabletop exercises with industry. In 2025, Commerce will conduct two tabletop exercises with industry to better understand opportunities to address structural supply chain risks faced by the United States. One exercise will focus on supply chain risks in the chemicals industry; the second will focus on an emerging technology where it is critical the United States maintain a strategic advantage.
• Addressing supply chain risks for “critical chemicals.” Working with the interagency, Commerce is developing a list of chemicals that are essential to critical supply chains, and where supply is insecure. Alongside this effort, Commerce is finalizing short-, medium- and long-term policy proposals to strengthen the supply chain. Elements of this work will form the basis of the Chemical Tabletop Exercise in 2025.

Emerging Technologies

• Convening industry on AI data centers. Commerce continues to drive efforts to get ahead of supply chain risks in critical and emerging technologies by developing playbooks and conducting deep dive assessments into emerging technologies such as quantum computing and clean hydrogen. In the second half of 2024, Commerce carried out a sprint to assess under-the-radar risks in AI data center supply chains, engaging more than 35 companies and leveraging in-house industry expertise and the SCALE tool to assess the highest-risk components and identify steps that government and industry can take to address them. In December, Commerce convened companies to share the results of its analysis and identify next steps.

Building Resilience with Allies and Partners

• Presidential Summit on Global Supply Chain Resilience. In October 2021, President Biden convened over a dozen world leaders to improve international collaboration on supply chain resilience. Following the President’s convening, the Secretaries of State and Commerce hosted a Supply Chain Ministerial to further advance this work. The original Joint Statement from the ministerial now has 31 signatories who have agreed to make global supply chains more transparent, diverse, secure, and sustainable.
• Indo-Pacific Economic Framework for Prosperity (IPEF) Supply Chain Agreement. The IPEF Supply Chain Agreement entered into force in February 2024 and will improve the preparedness, resilience, and competitiveness of regional supply chains. The United States and 13 Indo-Pacific partners have established a Supply Chain Council. In 2025, the Council will develop and implement action plans to strengthen supply chains across several critical industries. A Crisis Response Network will serve as a warning system for potential supply chain disruptions, and a Labor Rights Advisory Board will convene IPEF government officials, employers, and labor officials to improve labor rights and workforce development across regional supply chains.
• Eradicating forced labor from supply chains. As part of the Partnership for Workers’ Rights launched in 2023, the U.S. and Brazil worked with businesses and unions to address worker vulnerability to forced labor in supply chains for cattle, coffee, gold, charcoal, and other goods.
• Partnership for Global Infrastructure and Investment (PGI). PGI is a bipartisan initiative in partnership with the G7 to provide strategic, values-driven, and high-standard infrastructure and investment in low- and middle-income countries. Through initiatives like the Lobito Trans-Africa Corridor, highlighted on the President’s recent visit to Angola, the United States is working with partners to strengthen and diversify supply chains.
• G7 Surge Financing Initiative. The U.S. International Development Finance Corporation (DFC), G7 development finance institutions (DFIs), European Investment Bank (EIB), International Finance Corporation (IFC), and MedAccess announced the Surge Financing Initiative for Medical Countermeasures (MCMs). Together, partners are working closely with global and regional health organizations to establish frameworks and innovative financing mechanisms to support more rapid and equitable pandemic response.
• Boosting critical mineral capacity with partners. DFC invested over $220m in rare earth, graphite, and nickel projects in the last four years, reducing dependence on strategic adversaries and improving resilience in the critical mineral supply chain. The Department of Labor, USAID, United States Trade and Development Agency (USTDA), and the State Department through the Minerals Security Partnership have also provided technical support to bring new capacity online to process critical minerals in line with international best practices.
• Strengthening resilient telecommunications. In Costa Rica, EXIM approved a preliminary commitment to support Costa Rica’s use of trusted vendors to deploy its 5G network. With Japan and Australia, DFC is supporting the delivery of high-quality telecommunication services for over 2.5 million subscribers across Papua New Guinea, Fiji, Vanuatu, Samoa, Tonga, and Nauru.

###

The post FACT SHEET: Biden-Harris Administration Marks Progress Strengthening America’s Supply Chains appeared first on The White House.

Upon taking office in 2021, President Biden and his Administration immediately got to work addressing the shocks that were roiling global supply chains and moved swiftly to secure key industries for America’s economy and national security. Everything in our lives—the food we eat, the medicines in our hospitals, the energy that powers our homes, the computer chips in our devices—relies on supply chains, and the disruptions sparked by the COVID-19 pandemic and Russia’s war on Ukraine showed what happens when they are neglected for decades.

Four years later, America’s supply chains are stronger and more resilient. Working hand in hand with industry and all stakeholders, this Administration has cleared bottlenecks, increased investments in critical sectors, and shored up the transportation sector that move the goods that Americans rely on. Ocean shipping prices have fallen more than 70 percent from their peak, and today fewer than 20 containerships are waiting to dock at U.S. ports, compared to over 150 backed up during the peak of congestion. That progress has made supply chains more reliable for businesses and lowered inflation for the goods that families buy every day.

Today, the Biden-Harris Administration is releasing the first-ever Quadrennial Supply Chain Review, a formal assessment of four years of strengthening America’s critical supply chains, and announcing additional actions to support American businesses and consumers.

Progress to Date

The Quadrennial Supply Chain Review assesses the progress made over the past four years to bolster the resilience of our most critical supply chains. This strategic approach has included:

• Responding to disruption. The Administration quickly set to work to develop new government tools and capacity to respond to disruptions, both active ones when it took office, and new ones that have occurred since. The President’s Supply Chain Disruptions Task Force (SCDTF) has effectively coordinated federal authorities and resources and also established a process to work with state and local authorities and the private sector in real time. This work has helped improved the flow of goods into and around the United States during disruptions—getting products critical to American families moving again through ports and to shelves.

• Investing in infrastructure and manufacturing and lowering costs. Over the past four years, the Biden-Harris Administration has taken a made historic investments to strengthen our industrial bases and lower costs. U.S. Government investment has helped catalyze over $1 trillion in private-sector announced investments since January 2021. These investments are supporting the construction of new factories and creating manufacturing jobs across the country.
• Responding to non-market policies and practices. On a level playing field, American businesses and workers can compete and win. However, our strategic competitors are continuing to engage in non-market policies and practices (NMPP) that undercut our collective resilience—directing their systems to target key industries for dominance by using excessive state subsidies and other forms of state support to dominate critical industries. As part of the Quadrennial Supply Chain Review process, the Biden-Harris Administration has developed a strategy to address NMPP, recognizing the need for early, comprehensive action to prevent harm to U.S. workers and industry, as well as modernized trade authorities that account for NMPP’s continued effects on global supply chains. This work has included raising tariffs on a select number of key sectors to safeguard U.S. supply chains in the face of unfair competition. These tariff modifications will protect historic domestic investments under BIL, the CHIPS and Science Act, and the Inflation Reduction Act, while also shielding American businesses and workers from unfair trade practices.

The Review builds on comprehensive efforts undertaken by the Administration over the last four years, including President Biden’s 2021 Executive Order on America’s Supply Chains (E.O. 14017), which directed rapid supply chain assessments for four critical products in the first 100 days of the Administration, a one-year review of six key supply chains in 2022, and the establishment of the White House Council on Supply Chain Resilience to support the enduring resilience of America’s critical supply chains in 2023.

Additional Actions to Strengthen Supply Chains

Continuing to strengthen supply chains over the next four years—and beyond—will require the United States to deliver on historic domestic investments, maintain and strengthen international partnerships, harness innovation to tackle 21st-century challenges, and mobilize and facilitate ongoing private investment and public-private partnerships. The work of the last four years has laid a strong foundation for the United States to continue safeguarding the enduring resilience of our supply chains for years to come, including for emerging industries of the future.

Below are additional steps the Biden-Harris Administration is taking to strengthen supply chains, including for energy, critical minerals, agricultural commodities and food products, medical products, information and communications technology, transportation, and defense.

Energy

• Announcing up to $6 billion in incentives to strengthen U.S. energy supply chains. Over the coming weeks, the IRS, supported by the Department of Energy’s Office of Manufacturing and Energy Supply Chains (MESC), is set to announce up to $6 billion in additional tax credits to strengthen U.S. energy supply chains through the Qualifying Advanced Energy Project Credit (48C) Program. This builds on the first round of $4 billion in announced tax credits for over 100 projects in 35 states to accelerate domestic clean energy manufacturing and reduce greenhouse gas emissions at industrial facilities. This also builds on over $12 billion of investment from the DOE MESC Office in domestic manufacturing capacity to strengthen the U.S. energy supply chains.
• Improving risk mitigation across the energy supply chain. To improve visibility across multiple technologies in the energy industrial base, DOE and a consortium of the National Laboratories have developed a new analytic framework—the Supply Chain Readiness Level—to quantify risks, gaps, and vulnerabilities, and to identify investment opportunities across the energy sector.

Critical Minerals

• Mapping America’s critical minerals deposits. The U.S. Geological Survey (USGS) is announcing new airborne geophysical mapping in the Ozarks Plateau (Missouri, Kansas, and Arkansas) and Alaska over areas known to host minerals such as antimony, tin, tungsten, and lead and zinc ores, as well as byproduct critical minerals such as gallium and germanium. USGS’s mapping work, funded by the Bipartisan Infrastructure Law (BIL), is revolutionizing the U.S. Government’s understanding of the nation’s mineral and geologic resources. USGS and NASA are partnering to complete the largest high-quality hyperspectral survey in the world, surveying more than 180,000 square miles of the Southwest with sensors that make it possible to “see” nuanced differences between materials.
• Updating the U.S.’s critical minerals market data. Next month, USGS will publish its 2025 Mineral Commodity Summaries.These annual reports help forecast supply chain disruptions resulting from a variety of risks including pandemics, natural disasters, and trade wars, and are the U.S.’s authoritative source of data on the supply, demand, and consumption of 100 mineral commodities. Additionally, last month, researchers at the USGS National Minerals Information Center developed a new model to assess how disruptions of critical mineral supplies may affect the U.S. economy. This model reflects the latest whole-of-government risk and resilience methodology.

Food and Agriculture

• Making $116 million in new investments to expand domestic fertilizer production. Today, the Department of Agriculture (USDA) is announcing eight new awards through its Fertilizer Production Expansion Program, part of a broader effort to increase American-made fertilizer production to spur competition and combat price hikes on U.S. farmers. Since President Biden announced the program in 2022, USDA has invested $517 million in 76 fertilizer production facilities to expand access to domestic fertilizer options for American farmers in 34 states and Puerto Rico. These investments will increase U.S. fertilizer production by 11.8 million tons annually and create more than 1,300 jobs in rural communities.This funding builds on the more than $1.4 billion USDA has invested to build or expand small and medium sized processing facilities and to create a more resilient U.S. food supply chain which gives farmers more market options while providing consumers with more choices and affordable grocery prices.

Medical Products

• Investing an additional $26 million in domestic sterilization capacity. Building on recent investments in industrial base capability and capacity expansion through DPA Title III authorities and Public-Private Partnerships, the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) expects additional investments of $26 millionin alternative sterilization capacity before the end of 2024.

• Releasing an action plan for the next four years. HHS will publish its Draft 2025-2028 Action Plan for Addressing Shortages of Medical Products and Strengthening the Resilience of Medical Product Supply Chains, outlining supply chain resilience goals and a strategic plan to achieve them. The HHS Action Plan will also include an HHS Research Plan to collate HHS and academic research priorities that would promote Action Plan goals.
• Issuing stronger supply chain standards for hospitals to combat drug shortages. In notice and comment rulemaking, CMS intends to propose new Conditions of Participation requiring hospitals to have certain processes to address and prevent medication shortages.

Semiconductors and Other Technologies

• Investing in domestic production. CHIPS for America has awarded over $26 billion in incentives to advance domestic production in semiconductors and the supply chain. Now, America is home to all five of the world’s leading-edge logic and memory providers, while no other economy has more than two. Since the beginning of the Biden-Harris Administration, semiconductor and electronics companies have announced nearly $450 billion in private investments, catalyzed in large part by public investment.
• Reducing national security risks in federal supply chains. The Department of Defense, General Services Administration (GSA), and National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) are finalizing a rule implementing Section 5949 of the James M. Inhofe National Defense Authorization Act for Fiscal Year 2023, which prohibits agencies from procuring or obtaining certain products and services that include semiconductors from entities of concern.
• Promoting the U.S. government’s use of domestically manufactured semiconductors. The Made in America Office and Office of Federal Procurement Policy (OFPP) has released a Request for Information (RFI) to gauge the best ways for government contractors to scale up their use of domestically manufactured chips, particularly for critical infrastructure. Responses solicit commercial ideas from industry that may inform future policymaking in support of the government-wide effort to leverage existing manufacturing capacity.
• Incentivizing supply chain diversity, competition, and transparency. The Office of Management and Budget (OMB) is issuing guidance to help the Federal Government—the world’s largest buyer—organize its demand for domestic semiconductors so that agencies can mitigate the risk posed by undue dependence on foreign manufacturing, limited competition, and possible higher manufacturing costs. The effort encourages agencies to develop strategies to dual or multiple source semiconductors, increase transparency for critical infrastructure supply chains, and provide the government’s forecasted demand for the products and services that use these chips.
• Protecting American businesses from unfair trade practices. In May, the President announced increased Section 301 tariffs on semiconductor imports from China, which were finalized by the USTR in September, as part of the Biden-Harris Administration’s efforts to further protect American semiconductor manufacturing and the sustainability of domestic investments.

Transportation

• Helping states improve their supply chain operations. The Department of Transportation (DOT) continues to advance this work by working closely with other levels of government and industry stakeholders. DOT’s Freight Office is establishing the National Multimodal Freight Network to assist States in strategically directing resources toward improved system performance for the efficient movement of freight on the Network, to inform freight transportation planning, and to assist in the prioritization of Federal investment.
• Expanding visibility into ocean freight supply chains. Today, DOT is announcing that it has added more members to the Freight Logistics Optimization Works (FLOW) program, a public-private partnership to build an integrated view of U.S. supply chain conditions, and which supported the response to the Francis Scott Key Bridge collapse. Today, FLOW now includes eight of the largest ten container ports representing over 80% of all U.S. imports; nine of the largest ten ocean carriers representing over 70% of all U.S. imports; and six of the largest ten importers.
• Building the transportation of tomorrow. USTDA, DFC, and EXIM are all making investments to improve transportation across air, land, and sea. EXIM’s investments will expand U.S. exports of all electric-powered aircraft, while USTDA is improving the efficiency and safety of freight rail and digital customs processes. In areas around the world with high vessel traffic, DFC is also developing new ports to move goods in critical supply chains from place to place. Since its creation, DFC investments in critical infrastructure have transported over 64 million passengers alone.

Defense

• Releasing a National Defense Industrial Strategy and Implementation Plan. This fall, the Department of Defense (DoD) released the Implementation Plan to accompany its first-ever National Defense Industrial Strategy (NDIS). The NDIS is guiding investments to strengthen supply chain resilience, including by purchasing key elements that we need for sustainable defense production. For example, the United States has invested $215 million to boost production of solid rocket motors, which are one of the most critical components used in our advanced missile systems.
• Establishing domestic manufacturing capability for strategic and critical materials. From mid-2023 through September 2024, DoD invested $250 million in defense-critical materials such as graphite, lithium, niobium oxide, and manganese. These investments will ensure secure access to sources and to domestic separation and processing in support of a range of defense applications, from large-capacity batteries to advanced aircraft to microelectronics.
• Investing in the defense industrial base workforce. The defense supply chain depends in large part on a strong and vibrant workforce. The Administration has pursued numerous initiatives to ensure Americans can access jobs in the defense industrial sector that pay competitive wages and get the training they need to turn these jobs into meaningful careers. Earlier this year, the Navy partnered with the Departments of Education and Labor and with the State of Michigan to launch the Michigan Maritime Manufacturing Initiative, which expands regional training pipelines for the submarine industry into the Great Lakes region.

Strengthening U.S. Government Data, Analytics, and Response Capacity

• Preparing for a second Supply Chain Summit. In September 2024, the Department of Commerce held its first Supply Chain Summit. Commerce convened officials from government, industry, academia, and civil society to discuss how to effectively prepare for and respond to supply chain disruptions, as well as proactively improve supply chain resilience. Commerce will host another Supply Chain Summit in 2025. The Summit will bring together government, industry, and other stakeholders to examine continual progress made in increasing American supply chain resiliency. The date of the Summit will be announced in the months ahead.
• Upgrading the new SCALE diagnostic tool. The Department of Commerce’s Industry and Analysis unit developed a first-of-its-kind supply chain diagnostic tool to assess supply chain risk across the whole of the U.S. economy. The tool proactively helps identify risks and strengthen the resilience of supply chains key to U.S. national and economic security. The Department of Commerce plans to launch a competition aimed at developing new data or analysis that can be used to expand the indicators of risk incorporated into the SCALE tool.
• Conducting supply chain tabletop exercises with industry. In 2025, Commerce will conduct two tabletop exercises with industry to better understand opportunities to address structural supply chain risks faced by the United States. One exercise will focus on supply chain risks in the chemicals industry; the second will focus on an emerging technology where it is critical the United States maintain a strategic advantage.
• Addressing supply chain risks for “critical chemicals.” Working with the interagency, Commerce is developing a list of chemicals that are essential to critical supply chains, and where supply is insecure. Alongside this effort, Commerce is finalizing short-, medium- and long-term policy proposals to strengthen the supply chain. Elements of this work will form the basis of the Chemical Tabletop Exercise in 2025.

Emerging Technologies

• Convening industry on AI data centers. Commerce continues to drive efforts to get ahead of supply chain risks in critical and emerging technologies by developing playbooks and conducting deep dive assessments into emerging technologies such as quantum computing and clean hydrogen. In the second half of 2024, Commerce carried out a sprint to assess under-the-radar risks in AI data center supply chains, engaging more than 35 companies and leveraging in-house industry expertise and the SCALE tool to assess the highest-risk components and identify steps that government and industry can take to address them. In December, Commerce convened companies to share the results of its analysis and identify next steps.

Building Resilience with Allies and Partners

• Presidential Summit on Global Supply Chain Resilience. In October 2021, President Biden convened over a dozen world leaders to improve international collaboration on supply chain resilience. Following the President’s convening, the Secretaries of State and Commerce hosted a Supply Chain Ministerial to further advance this work. The original Joint Statement from the ministerial now has 31 signatories who have agreed to make global supply chains more transparent, diverse, secure, and sustainable.
• Indo-Pacific Economic Framework for Prosperity (IPEF) Supply Chain Agreement. The IPEF Supply Chain Agreement entered into force in February 2024 and will improve the preparedness, resilience, and competitiveness of regional supply chains. The United States and 13 Indo-Pacific partners have established a Supply Chain Council. In 2025, the Council will develop and implement action plans to strengthen supply chains across several critical industries. A Crisis Response Network will serve as a warning system for potential supply chain disruptions, and a Labor Rights Advisory Board will convene IPEF government officials, employers, and labor officials to improve labor rights and workforce development across regional supply chains.
• Eradicating forced labor from supply chains. As part of the Partnership for Workers’ Rights launched in 2023, the U.S. and Brazil worked with businesses and unions to address worker vulnerability to forced labor in supply chains for cattle, coffee, gold, charcoal, and other goods.
• Partnership for Global Infrastructure and Investment (PGI). PGI is a bipartisan initiative in partnership with the G7 to provide strategic, values-driven, and high-standard infrastructure and investment in low- and middle-income countries. Through initiatives like the Lobito Trans-Africa Corridor, highlighted on the President’s recent visit to Angola, the United States is working with partners to strengthen and diversify supply chains.
• G7 Surge Financing Initiative. The U.S. International Development Finance Corporation (DFC), G7 development finance institutions (DFIs), European Investment Bank (EIB), International Finance Corporation (IFC), and MedAccess announced the Surge Financing Initiative for Medical Countermeasures (MCMs). Together, partners are working closely with global and regional health organizations to establish frameworks and innovative financing mechanisms to support more rapid and equitable pandemic response.
• Boosting critical mineral capacity with partners. DFC invested over $220m in rare earth, graphite, and nickel projects in the last four years, reducing dependence on strategic adversaries and improving resilience in the critical mineral supply chain. The Department of Labor, USAID, United States Trade and Development Agency (USTDA), and the State Department through the Minerals Security Partnership have also provided technical support to bring new capacity online to process critical minerals in line with international best practices.
• Strengthening resilient telecommunications. In Costa Rica, EXIM approved a preliminary commitment to support Costa Rica’s use of trusted vendors to deploy its 5G network. With Japan and Australia, DFC is supporting the delivery of high-quality telecommunication services for over 2.5 million subscribers across Papua New Guinea, Fiji, Vanuatu, Samoa, Tonga, and Nauru.

###

The post FACT SHEET: Biden-Harris Administration Marks Progress Strengthening America’s Supply Chains appeared first on The White House.

The U.S. Nationally Determined Contribution (NDC) is an economy-wide, all greenhouse gas target of reducing net emissions by 61-66 percent below 2005 levels in 2035

The emissions reduction strategy includes leveraging landmark investments from the Inflation Reduction Act and Bipartisan Infrastructure Law, complemented by federal standards; coordinating with local, state, Tribal, and territorial governments; and mobilizing private capital

In 2015, the world came together to finalize the Paris Agreement, an historic agreement joined by nearly every country in the world to address the climate crisis and protect the planet for future generations. On Day One of his Administration, President Biden fulfilled his promise to rejoin the Paris Agreement and set a course for the United States to tackle the climate crisis at home and abroad. In 2021, pursuant to the terms of the Paris Agreement, President Biden submitted a nationally determined contribution (NDC) with a target of reducing U.S. greenhouse gas emissions 50-52 percent from the 2005 baseline in 2030.

Today, as the United States continues to accelerate the transition to a clean energy economy, President Biden is announcing a new climate target for the United States: a 61-66 percent reduction in 2035 from 2005 levels in economy-wide net greenhouse gas emissions. It keeps the United States on a straight line or steeper path to achieve net-zero greenhouse gas emissions, economy-wide, by no later than 2050. In connection with this announcement, the United States is making a formal submission of this new target to the United Nations Climate Change secretariat as its next NDC under the Paris Agreement.

To develop the U.S. 2035 NDC, the Biden-Harris Administration analyzed how every economic sector – power generation, buildings, transportation, industry, agriculture and forestry– can spur innovation, unleash new opportunities, drive competitiveness, and cut pollution. Additionally, the United States anticipates, as part of achieving its 2035 NDC emissions target, methane reductions of at least 35 percent from 2005 levels in 2035. Cutting methane emissions is among the fastest ways to reduce near-term warming and is an essential complement to CO2 mitigation.

This 2035 NDC aligns with President Biden’s target of a net zero greenhouse gas economy no later than 2050 and marks an ambitious capstone to President Biden’s climate legacy, focused on investment, innovation, creating millions of good-paying and union jobs, building the clean energy economy of the future, reducing costs for all Americans, advancing environmental justice, and improving the health and security of communities across America. There are multiple paths to reach these targets, and U.S. Federal, state, local, territorial, and Tribal governments have numerous tools available to work with civil society and the private sector to mobilize investment in the years ahead while supporting a stronger, fairer economy.

Momentum from President Biden’s Climate and Economic Agenda

Since President Biden announced the 2030 NDC in April 2021 to reduce emissions 50-52% by 2030, the United States has designed and implemented a historic climate strategy that leverages emissions reduction and economic growth in every region of the country. Advanced through thousands of policies and actions undertaken by federal, state, territorial, Tribal, and local governments, the strategy includes passage of the landmarks Bipartisan Infrastructure Law (BIL) and the Inflation Reduction Act (IRA), paired with strategic implementation of a regulatory agenda to ensure emissions reductions across every sector of the economy. This approach has equipped federal, state, territorial, Tribal, and local governments with additional resources and regulatory certainty to partner with the private sector to grow a new clean energy economy that benefits American workers and consumers. Implementation of this broad and comprehensive strategy has already led to more than $450 billion of private sector investment in domestic clean energy and manufacturing projects. This progress will accelerate as the Biden-Harris climate agenda continues to drive a wide range of investments in clean energy deployment and manufacturing in the years ahead. Examples include:

• Arizona has added over 370,000 new jobs, and unleashed more than $120 billion in private sector investment. Investments include $5.5 billion to build a battery facility outside Phoenix that will produce batteries for 350,000 electric vehicles per year.
• California has added over two million new jobs and more than $45 billion in private sector manufacturing and clean energy investment, including a $4 billion Gigafactory to produce lithium-ion batteries in Imperial Valley.
• Georgia has added nearly half a million new jobs and mobilized more than $40 billion in private sector investment. Qcells is investing $2.5 billion to expand its solar panel and component manufacturing capacity in Dalton and Cartersville.
• Maryland has added over 160,000 new jobs, and attracted more than $2.7 billion in private sector investment, including a $350 million investment from Constellation Energy to increase the output and lifespan of its renewable energy portfolio.
• Pennsylvania has added more than 560,000 new jobs and unleashed nearly $4.3 billion in private sector investment, including a $500 million investment by Eos Energy Enterprises to expand battery manufacturing operations in Turtle Creek, supported by a loan guarantee from DOE’s Loan Programs Office.
• Wisconsin has added more than 188,000 new jobs and $5.4 billion in private sector manufacturing and clean energy investments, including $426 million for the state’s first large-scale solar and battery storage project outside Milwaukee.

These investments and many more tell a clear story: the clean energy revolution is being built in America, and that will not be reversed.

Fundamental Economic and Technological Trends

Over the past four years the prices of clean energy generation and infrastructure have fallen dramatically. President Biden’s economic agenda, supported by complementary subnational government actions and private sector innovation, has reshaped the energy landscape now and for future generations so that American consumers and workers will benefit, especially in energy communities that have historically powered our nation. Along with the boom in domestic investments, technological advances across the energy sector are also making the U.S. clean energy revolution irreversible, including:

• Clean Energy Generation. The levelized cost of utility-scale solar photovoltaic (PV) and onshore wind are dropping rapidly. In 2024, estimates for utility-scale solar PV and onshore wind are as low as $29 per megawatt hour and $27 per megawatt hour, respectively. On a levelized-cost basis, utility-scale solar is now broadly on par with fossil fuel sources, even before accounting for the environmental and public health benefits. A recent analysis indicates that 99 percent of all U.S. coal plants are more expensive to continue running than to replace with solar, wind, and energy storage resources. Geothermal power generation capacity is also accelerating, with 203 megawatts commissioned globally in 2023, up 12 percent from 2022. Recent technological advances, particularly in drilling, indicate the industry is on track to an average cost of $60-70/MWh by 2030 and $45/MWh by 2035. New enhanced geothermal capacity is already slated to meet the clean electricity demands of new industries. And the recent completion of the Vogtle nuclear power plant in Georgia, the nation’s first new nuclear reactors in over 30 years, as well as planned revitalizations of existing reactors, progress on advanced reactor technologies, and new private sector demand, are all signs of further progress expanding nuclear power capacity ahead.
  
  
• New and Better Transmission. Expanding and enhancing the U.S. transmission system is critical to the nation’s resilience and national security. Significant expansions of new and upgraded transmission lines by public and private sector entities, including SunZia Transmission in New Mexico, will facilitate the transmission of clean energy across the United States. Meanwhile, a new generation of modern grid technologies provides a significant opportunity to achieve power system capacity expansion, including through high-performance conductors that can carry two times (or more) the amount of power of conventional transmission wires, as well as grid enhancing technologies that maximize electricity transmission across the existing system through a family of technologies that includes sensors, power flow control devices, and analytical tools.
  
  
• Battery Storage. Utility-scale battery storage has the potential to provide much-needed flexibility that supports renewable energy sources, and helps address grid infrastructure challenges. Between 2010 and 2023, the cost of utility-scale battery storage projects declined by 89%, to $273 per kilowatt hour, driven by improvements in manufacturing, materials efficiency, and manufacturing processes. Storage capacity additions also increased significantly, with additions of 22 gigawatt hours (GWh) in 2023. As the private sector continues to invest in new battery technologies and manufacturing processes, battery storage costs will continue to decline, supporting the clean energy economy of the future.
  
  

• Energy Efficiency. Improvements in energy efficiency can cut pollution and save Americans on their energy and water bills. The Biden-Harris Administration has strengthened energy efficiency standards to save households and businesses money, with standards updated by DOE for dozens of appliances expected to provide nearly $1 trillion in consumer savings over 30 years, saving the average household more than $100 a year while also reducing greenhouse gas emissions by more than 2 billion metric tons. Efficient equipment such as heat pumps powered by clean electricity are already making heating, cooling, and hot water more affordable for a growing number of American homes. 2022 marked the first year that heat pump sales outpaced fossil fuel furnaces in the US; in 2023, heat pumps outsold gas furnaces by 27 percent, demonstrating the technology’s growing popularity with consumers. When paired with energy efficiency improvements, like insulation, heat pumps lower the cost of heating and cooling, while improving indoor and outdoor air quality.

• Clean Steel and Clean Concrete. Producing steel and concrete, fundamental building blocks of the modern economy, accounts for more than 15 percent of global greenhouse gas emissions. Clean steel and concrete are already being produced in the United States. Major steelmakers are now using Inflation Reduction Act investments to build and retrofit American steel facilities to produce cleaner steel. Innovative low carbon methods for concrete production can reduce emissions by eliminating the need for high temperatures or through the use of alternative low carbon feedstocks. These innovative concretes are more durable and stronger than conventional concrete, improving the performance of infrastructure investments and resulting in long term savings. As clean hydrogen and clean electricity prices continue to fall, producers will be able to further slash emissions using these cleaner inputs.
  
  
• Clean Hydrogen. Hydrogen has the potential to reduce emissions across a host of sectors, including transportation and heavy industry. Key cost drivers of green hydrogen production, including the capital expenditure for electrolyzers and the price of renewable energy, are expected to decline in years ahead due to economies of scale, delivering green hydrogen at a lower price point. Combined, these two cost declines could translate to a significant reduction in green hydrogen production costs, from $3-6 per kilogram today to $1.50 – 2 by 2035.

• Clean Cars and Trucks. Electric vehicles (EVs) are already selling at a record pace in the United States, supported by falling component prices as well as fuel and maintenance cost savings for consumers. From 2018 to 2022, the sales-weighted average price of electric cars decreased, and the price gap between internal combustion vehicles and EVs has begun to close. Through 2035, falling EV component prices will drive down the purchase price for EVs and bring new customers to the EV market. For instance, battery prices are set to fall by as much as 50 percent through 2026 thanks to improved technology and expanded production of key inputs. Federal standards support these market developments: the strongest-ever national pollution standards for passenger cars and heavy-duty vehicles are providing certainty for the automobile industry, catalyzing private investment, creating good-paying union jobs, improving public health, and expanding consumer choice in clean vehicles.

• Federal Sustainability. With broad support from America’s manufacturers, clean energy developers, labor organizations, business leaders, states, and communities, the Federal Government’s 300,000 buildings, 600,000 vehicles, and $750 billion in annual procurement power will continue to be more sustainable and resilient while supporting good jobs, cutting costs, and saving taxpayers money.

Action and Leadership from state, local, Tribal, and territorial governments

State, local, Tribal, and territorial governments in the United States have a long history of climate leadership that has laid the groundwork for subsequent federal action, including the Inflation Reduction Act. Many critical climate levers, especially in the transportation, electricity, and building sectors, lie largely within the domain of these governments. In the years ahead, leveraging and expanding the new clean energy economy enabled by the Biden-Harris Administration’s policies and bolstered by strong economic tailwinds supporting clean energy, these governments will ensure that the United States remains all-in on climate action. States, territories, cities, counties, and Tribal governments together have the capacity to step in and deliver on climate ambition. In the years ahead, we expect that subnational and Tribal governments will adopt new and strengthen existing climate-forward policies such as:

• Climate Action Plan Implementation: Through support from the Inflation Reduction Act, more than 45 states and more than 200 Tribes, territories, and metro areas have now developed their own Climate Action Plans, representing a historic set of opportunities for subnational climate progress across sectors. More than $4 billion of Climate Pollution Reduction Grants awarded by the Biden-Harris Administration will also advance 59 implementation projects across 30 states, 33 Tribal Nations, and 1 territory to reduce climate pollution from every sector of the economy. Many of these projects can be expanded and provide examples that other states, local governments, Tribes, and even businesses can replicate in their work to tackle the climate crisis.
  
  
• Innovative Solutions to Cut Pollution from the Existing Transportation Systems. California, Washington, and Oregon have developed and implemented, or started to implement, programs that reduce emissions from the transportation sector through a predictable, market-based approach, generating climate and local-air quality benefits for residents and communities. New York City and State adopted and implemented the country’s first-ever congestion pricing program, which will reduce climate pollution and provide a stable funding source for mass transit. Other states have the opportunity to build on these successful policy initiatives in their own jurisdictions.
  
  
• Renewable Portfolio Standards (RPSs) and Clean Energy Standards (CESs). Today, twenty-five states and the District of Columbia have set RPSs and eight others have adopted CESs, which will increase the generation of low- and zero-carbon electricity. Adoption of these standards by additional states, as well as the strengthening of existing standards, provides significant upside for reducing climate pollution.
  
  
• Building Energy Codes. Many subnational governments have already adopted or are in the process of adopting the most up-to-date energy codes to ensure new building construction is energy efficient and lowering emissions for years to come. Subnational governments are also reducing energy costs and emissions in existing buildings, with almost 25 percent of commercial buildings subject to a building performance standard or located in a community with plans to adopt building performance standards.
  
  
• State Procurement of Low-Carbon Materials. The Biden-Harris Administration’s landmark Federal Buy Clean Initiative leverages the sway of the U.S. government, as the largest purchaser on Earth, to spur demand for clean American manufacturing of materials that form the bedrock of our economy. Thirteen states have joined the Federal-State Buy Clean Partnership and committed to prioritizing efforts that support procurement of lower-carbon infrastructure materials in state-funded projects. These states can continue to work together to send a clear, harmonized demand signal to the marketplace for the long-term decarbonization of essential industries.
  
  
• Financing Climate Solutions. With support from the Inflation Reduction Act’s Greenhouse Gas Reduction Fund (GGRF), the national network for financing clean energy and climate solutions across sectors is larger than ever before. The National Clean Investment Fund awardees are establishing national clean financing institutions that deliver accessible and affordable financing for clean technology projects nationwide, and the Clean Communities Investment Accelerator awardees are establishing hubs that provide funding and technical assistance to community lenders working in low-income and disadvantaged communities.

• State and Regional Efforts to Cap Emissions. 15 states and Puerto Rico have binding economy-wide emissions targets in law, covering more than 115 million Americans across the country. Voters in Washington State recently upheld a groundbreaking law requiring companies to cut carbon emissions while investing in programs that benefit the public, such as habitat restoration and climate adaptation. This recent success builds on initiatives such as the Regional Greenhouse Gas Initiative (RGGI), a regional program that requires certain power plants to acquire allowances for every ton of CO2 emitted.

In the years to come, leadership will come from all across American society – cities and states, Tribes and territories, small and big businesses, working communities, individual Americans and the private sector working together to seize the economic opportunity, create jobs, and build the clean energy economy. This new clean energy economy, enabled by the forward-looking policies of this Administration, will continue to grow – and the United States will continue to create good jobs and cut carbon pollution right here at home.

###

The post FACT SHEET: President Biden Sets 2035 Climate Target Aimed at Creating Good-Paying Union Jobs, Reducing Costs for All Americans, and Securing U.S. Leadership in the Clean Energy Economy of the Future appeared first on The White House.

The U.S. Nationally Determined Contribution (NDC) is an economy-wide, all greenhouse gas target of reducing net emissions by 61-66 percent below 2005 levels in 2035

The emissions reduction strategy includes leveraging landmark investments from the Inflation Reduction Act and Bipartisan Infrastructure Law, complemented by federal standards; coordinating with local, state, Tribal, and territorial governments; and mobilizing private capital

In 2015, the world came together to finalize the Paris Agreement, an historic agreement joined by nearly every country in the world to address the climate crisis and protect the planet for future generations. On Day One of his Administration, President Biden fulfilled his promise to rejoin the Paris Agreement and set a course for the United States to tackle the climate crisis at home and abroad. In 2021, pursuant to the terms of the Paris Agreement, President Biden submitted a nationally determined contribution (NDC) with a target of reducing U.S. greenhouse gas emissions 50-52 percent from the 2005 baseline in 2030.

Today, as the United States continues to accelerate the transition to a clean energy economy, President Biden is announcing a new climate target for the United States: a 61-66 percent reduction in 2035 from 2005 levels in economy-wide net greenhouse gas emissions. It keeps the United States on a straight line or steeper path to achieve net-zero greenhouse gas emissions, economy-wide, by no later than 2050. In connection with this announcement, the United States is making a formal submission of this new target to the United Nations Climate Change secretariat as its next NDC under the Paris Agreement.

To develop the U.S. 2035 NDC, the Biden-Harris Administration analyzed how every economic sector – power generation, buildings, transportation, industry, agriculture and forestry– can spur innovation, unleash new opportunities, drive competitiveness, and cut pollution. Additionally, the United States anticipates, as part of achieving its 2035 NDC emissions target, methane reductions of at least 35 percent from 2005 levels in 2035. Cutting methane emissions is among the fastest ways to reduce near-term warming and is an essential complement to CO2 mitigation.

This 2035 NDC aligns with President Biden’s target of a net zero greenhouse gas economy no later than 2050 and marks an ambitious capstone to President Biden’s climate legacy, focused on investment, innovation, creating millions of good-paying and union jobs, building the clean energy economy of the future, reducing costs for all Americans, advancing environmental justice, and improving the health and security of communities across America. There are multiple paths to reach these targets, and U.S. Federal, state, local, territorial, and Tribal governments have numerous tools available to work with civil society and the private sector to mobilize investment in the years ahead while supporting a stronger, fairer economy.

Momentum from President Biden’s Climate and Economic Agenda

Since President Biden announced the 2030 NDC in April 2021 to reduce emissions 50-52% by 2030, the United States has designed and implemented a historic climate strategy that leverages emissions reduction and economic growth in every region of the country. Advanced through thousands of policies and actions undertaken by federal, state, territorial, Tribal, and local governments, the strategy includes passage of the landmarks Bipartisan Infrastructure Law (BIL) and the Inflation Reduction Act (IRA), paired with strategic implementation of a regulatory agenda to ensure emissions reductions across every sector of the economy. This approach has equipped federal, state, territorial, Tribal, and local governments with additional resources and regulatory certainty to partner with the private sector to grow a new clean energy economy that benefits American workers and consumers. Implementation of this broad and comprehensive strategy has already led to more than $450 billion of private sector investment in domestic clean energy and manufacturing projects. This progress will accelerate as the Biden-Harris climate agenda continues to drive a wide range of investments in clean energy deployment and manufacturing in the years ahead. Examples include:

• Arizona has added over 370,000 new jobs, and unleashed more than $120 billion in private sector investment. Investments include $5.5 billion to build a battery facility outside Phoenix that will produce batteries for 350,000 electric vehicles per year.
• California has added over two million new jobs and more than $45 billion in private sector manufacturing and clean energy investment, including a $4 billion Gigafactory to produce lithium-ion batteries in Imperial Valley.
• Georgia has added nearly half a million new jobs and mobilized more than $40 billion in private sector investment. Qcells is investing $2.5 billion to expand its solar panel and component manufacturing capacity in Dalton and Cartersville.
• Maryland has added over 160,000 new jobs, and attracted more than $2.7 billion in private sector investment, including a $350 million investment from Constellation Energy to increase the output and lifespan of its renewable energy portfolio.
• Pennsylvania has added more than 560,000 new jobs and unleashed nearly $4.3 billion in private sector investment, including a $500 million investment by Eos Energy Enterprises to expand battery manufacturing operations in Turtle Creek, supported by a loan guarantee from DOE’s Loan Programs Office.
• Wisconsin has added more than 188,000 new jobs and $5.4 billion in private sector manufacturing and clean energy investments, including $426 million for the state’s first large-scale solar and battery storage project outside Milwaukee.

These investments and many more tell a clear story: the clean energy revolution is being built in America, and that will not be reversed.

Fundamental Economic and Technological Trends

Over the past four years the prices of clean energy generation and infrastructure have fallen dramatically. President Biden’s economic agenda, supported by complementary subnational government actions and private sector innovation, has reshaped the energy landscape now and for future generations so that American consumers and workers will benefit, especially in energy communities that have historically powered our nation. Along with the boom in domestic investments, technological advances across the energy sector are also making the U.S. clean energy revolution irreversible, including:

• Clean Energy Generation. The levelized cost of utility-scale solar photovoltaic (PV) and onshore wind are dropping rapidly. In 2024, estimates for utility-scale solar PV and onshore wind are as low as $29 per megawatt hour and $27 per megawatt hour, respectively. On a levelized-cost basis, utility-scale solar is now broadly on par with fossil fuel sources, even before accounting for the environmental and public health benefits. A recent analysis indicates that 99 percent of all U.S. coal plants are more expensive to continue running than to replace with solar, wind, and energy storage resources. Geothermal power generation capacity is also accelerating, with 203 megawatts commissioned globally in 2023, up 12 percent from 2022. Recent technological advances, particularly in drilling, indicate the industry is on track to an average cost of $60-70/MWh by 2030 and $45/MWh by 2035. New enhanced geothermal capacity is already slated to meet the clean electricity demands of new industries. And the recent completion of the Vogtle nuclear power plant in Georgia, the nation’s first new nuclear reactors in over 30 years, as well as planned revitalizations of existing reactors, progress on advanced reactor technologies, and new private sector demand, are all signs of further progress expanding nuclear power capacity ahead.
  
  
• New and Better Transmission. Expanding and enhancing the U.S. transmission system is critical to the nation’s resilience and national security. Significant expansions of new and upgraded transmission lines by public and private sector entities, including SunZia Transmission in New Mexico, will facilitate the transmission of clean energy across the United States. Meanwhile, a new generation of modern grid technologies provides a significant opportunity to achieve power system capacity expansion, including through high-performance conductors that can carry two times (or more) the amount of power of conventional transmission wires, as well as grid enhancing technologies that maximize electricity transmission across the existing system through a family of technologies that includes sensors, power flow control devices, and analytical tools.
  
  
• Battery Storage. Utility-scale battery storage has the potential to provide much-needed flexibility that supports renewable energy sources, and helps address grid infrastructure challenges. Between 2010 and 2023, the cost of utility-scale battery storage projects declined by 89%, to $273 per kilowatt hour, driven by improvements in manufacturing, materials efficiency, and manufacturing processes. Storage capacity additions also increased significantly, with additions of 22 gigawatt hours (GWh) in 2023. As the private sector continues to invest in new battery technologies and manufacturing processes, battery storage costs will continue to decline, supporting the clean energy economy of the future.
  
  

• Energy Efficiency. Improvements in energy efficiency can cut pollution and save Americans on their energy and water bills. The Biden-Harris Administration has strengthened energy efficiency standards to save households and businesses money, with standards updated by DOE for dozens of appliances expected to provide nearly $1 trillion in consumer savings over 30 years, saving the average household more than $100 a year while also reducing greenhouse gas emissions by more than 2 billion metric tons. Efficient equipment such as heat pumps powered by clean electricity are already making heating, cooling, and hot water more affordable for a growing number of American homes. 2022 marked the first year that heat pump sales outpaced fossil fuel furnaces in the US; in 2023, heat pumps outsold gas furnaces by 27 percent, demonstrating the technology’s growing popularity with consumers. When paired with energy efficiency improvements, like insulation, heat pumps lower the cost of heating and cooling, while improving indoor and outdoor air quality.

• Clean Steel and Clean Concrete. Producing steel and concrete, fundamental building blocks of the modern economy, accounts for more than 15 percent of global greenhouse gas emissions. Clean steel and concrete are already being produced in the United States. Major steelmakers are now using Inflation Reduction Act investments to build and retrofit American steel facilities to produce cleaner steel. Innovative low carbon methods for concrete production can reduce emissions by eliminating the need for high temperatures or through the use of alternative low carbon feedstocks. These innovative concretes are more durable and stronger than conventional concrete, improving the performance of infrastructure investments and resulting in long term savings. As clean hydrogen and clean electricity prices continue to fall, producers will be able to further slash emissions using these cleaner inputs.
  
  
• Clean Hydrogen. Hydrogen has the potential to reduce emissions across a host of sectors, including transportation and heavy industry. Key cost drivers of green hydrogen production, including the capital expenditure for electrolyzers and the price of renewable energy, are expected to decline in years ahead due to economies of scale, delivering green hydrogen at a lower price point. Combined, these two cost declines could translate to a significant reduction in green hydrogen production costs, from $3-6 per kilogram today to $1.50 – 2 by 2035.

• Clean Cars and Trucks. Electric vehicles (EVs) are already selling at a record pace in the United States, supported by falling component prices as well as fuel and maintenance cost savings for consumers. From 2018 to 2022, the sales-weighted average price of electric cars decreased, and the price gap between internal combustion vehicles and EVs has begun to close. Through 2035, falling EV component prices will drive down the purchase price for EVs and bring new customers to the EV market. For instance, battery prices are set to fall by as much as 50 percent through 2026 thanks to improved technology and expanded production of key inputs. Federal standards support these market developments: the strongest-ever national pollution standards for passenger cars and heavy-duty vehicles are providing certainty for the automobile industry, catalyzing private investment, creating good-paying union jobs, improving public health, and expanding consumer choice in clean vehicles.

• Federal Sustainability. With broad support from America’s manufacturers, clean energy developers, labor organizations, business leaders, states, and communities, the Federal Government’s 300,000 buildings, 600,000 vehicles, and $750 billion in annual procurement power will continue to be more sustainable and resilient while supporting good jobs, cutting costs, and saving taxpayers money.

Action and Leadership from state, local, Tribal, and territorial governments

State, local, Tribal, and territorial governments in the United States have a long history of climate leadership that has laid the groundwork for subsequent federal action, including the Inflation Reduction Act. Many critical climate levers, especially in the transportation, electricity, and building sectors, lie largely within the domain of these governments. In the years ahead, leveraging and expanding the new clean energy economy enabled by the Biden-Harris Administration’s policies and bolstered by strong economic tailwinds supporting clean energy, these governments will ensure that the United States remains all-in on climate action. States, territories, cities, counties, and Tribal governments together have the capacity to step in and deliver on climate ambition. In the years ahead, we expect that subnational and Tribal governments will adopt new and strengthen existing climate-forward policies such as:

• Climate Action Plan Implementation: Through support from the Inflation Reduction Act, more than 45 states and more than 200 Tribes, territories, and metro areas have now developed their own Climate Action Plans, representing a historic set of opportunities for subnational climate progress across sectors. More than $4 billion of Climate Pollution Reduction Grants awarded by the Biden-Harris Administration will also advance 59 implementation projects across 30 states, 33 Tribal Nations, and 1 territory to reduce climate pollution from every sector of the economy. Many of these projects can be expanded and provide examples that other states, local governments, Tribes, and even businesses can replicate in their work to tackle the climate crisis.
  
  
• Innovative Solutions to Cut Pollution from the Existing Transportation Systems. California, Washington, and Oregon have developed and implemented, or started to implement, programs that reduce emissions from the transportation sector through a predictable, market-based approach, generating climate and local-air quality benefits for residents and communities. New York City and State adopted and implemented the country’s first-ever congestion pricing program, which will reduce climate pollution and provide a stable funding source for mass transit. Other states have the opportunity to build on these successful policy initiatives in their own jurisdictions.
  
  
• Renewable Portfolio Standards (RPSs) and Clean Energy Standards (CESs). Today, twenty-five states and the District of Columbia have set RPSs and eight others have adopted CESs, which will increase the generation of low- and zero-carbon electricity. Adoption of these standards by additional states, as well as the strengthening of existing standards, provides significant upside for reducing climate pollution.
  
  
• Building Energy Codes. Many subnational governments have already adopted or are in the process of adopting the most up-to-date energy codes to ensure new building construction is energy efficient and lowering emissions for years to come. Subnational governments are also reducing energy costs and emissions in existing buildings, with almost 25 percent of commercial buildings subject to a building performance standard or located in a community with plans to adopt building performance standards.
  
  
• State Procurement of Low-Carbon Materials. The Biden-Harris Administration’s landmark Federal Buy Clean Initiative leverages the sway of the U.S. government, as the largest purchaser on Earth, to spur demand for clean American manufacturing of materials that form the bedrock of our economy. Thirteen states have joined the Federal-State Buy Clean Partnership and committed to prioritizing efforts that support procurement of lower-carbon infrastructure materials in state-funded projects. These states can continue to work together to send a clear, harmonized demand signal to the marketplace for the long-term decarbonization of essential industries.
  
  
• Financing Climate Solutions. With support from the Inflation Reduction Act’s Greenhouse Gas Reduction Fund (GGRF), the national network for financing clean energy and climate solutions across sectors is larger than ever before. The National Clean Investment Fund awardees are establishing national clean financing institutions that deliver accessible and affordable financing for clean technology projects nationwide, and the Clean Communities Investment Accelerator awardees are establishing hubs that provide funding and technical assistance to community lenders working in low-income and disadvantaged communities.

• State and Regional Efforts to Cap Emissions. 15 states and Puerto Rico have binding economy-wide emissions targets in law, covering more than 115 million Americans across the country. Voters in Washington State recently upheld a groundbreaking law requiring companies to cut carbon emissions while investing in programs that benefit the public, such as habitat restoration and climate adaptation. This recent success builds on initiatives such as the Regional Greenhouse Gas Initiative (RGGI), a regional program that requires certain power plants to acquire allowances for every ton of CO2 emitted.

In the years to come, leadership will come from all across American society – cities and states, Tribes and territories, small and big businesses, working communities, individual Americans and the private sector working together to seize the economic opportunity, create jobs, and build the clean energy economy. This new clean energy economy, enabled by the forward-looking policies of this Administration, will continue to grow – and the United States will continue to create good jobs and cut carbon pollution right here at home.

###

The post FACT SHEET: President Biden Sets 2035 Climate Target Aimed at Creating Good-Paying Union Jobs, Reducing Costs for All Americans, and Securing U.S. Leadership in the Clean Energy Economy of the Future appeared first on The White House.

Via Teleconference

2:03 P.M. EST

MR. FERNÁNDEZ HERNÁNDEZ:  Hi.  Good afternoon, everyone.  Thank you for joining today’s embargoed press call.  This press call will begin with on-the-record remarks from White House National Climate Adviser Ali Zaidi and Senior Adviser to the President for International Climate Policy John Podesta. 

After the remarks, there will be a question-and-answer period, which will be on background and attributable to “senior administration officials.” 

The contents of this call and the related materials you all should have already received over email are embargoed until tomorrow, Thursday, December 19th, at 5:00 a.m. Eastern. 

With that, I will turn it over to Ali.

MR. ZAIDI:  Thanks so much.  And thanks, everybody, for joining us.

Under the Paris Agreement, countries are called on to develop nationally determined contributions — NDCs — that collectively advance global progress on climate change.

In April 2021, the United States communicate — communicated its most recent nationally determined contribution.

When we did, we were cognizant of the baseline, a business-as-usual trajectory that projected 15 to 20 percent emissions reductions 2030 relative to 2005 levels.

Under President Biden’s leadership, against that backdrop, we set an ambitious path — a new target for the United States that sought to reduce emissions by 50 to 52 percent in 2030.

In the time since, the United States has deployed a paradigm-shifting strategy that has both accelerated decarbonization and also expanded economic opportunity and economic growth.

We found a way to take on a global problem that was decades in the making, with an approach that makes a visible difference in communities right now — a chance to deliver cleaner air, lower costs, better jobs, and a real sense of pride and purpose.

The U.S. strategy is manifest in the investments from the Bipartisan Infrastructure Law and the Inflation Reduction Act and in a complementary architecture of federal standards that spur demand and generate the regulatory certainty needed to accelerate capital formation and encourage entrepreneurial risk-taking.

It is an important combination that has changed the equation: Climate action is no longer about gloom and doom but about hope and possibilities.

Catalyzed by these incentives, fiscal and regulatory, our partners have come together to swing for the fences in every sector of the economy.  Looking for wins everywhere — power and transportation, buildings and industry, lands and agriculture — gives us a better shot at sticking the landing and at delivering for everyone.

The coming together is key.  The robustness of the U.S. strategy comes from an approach that has mobilized public and private, at every level of government and every layer of the capital stack, in a tech-agnostic race to net zero as our North Star.

You can see this, as I have, not just in communities across America but as business leaders, mayors, governors, Tribal leaders, have joined every single United Nations Conference of the Parties since the president took office.  In Glasgow, in Sharm, in Dubai, and in Baku, these leaders showcased the efforts of the United States of America, of all our capacities and capabilities working together. 

Today, together, we set a new ambitious target for America — the United States communicating a new nationally determined contribution under the leadership of President Joe Biden.

The United States — all of us working together — will reduce our emissions by 61 to 66 percent by 2035, relative to 2005 levels — all greenhouse gases covered, every sector of the economy reached.

This entire range is on a linear or steeper-than-linear trajectory to net zero by 2050, meaning that America will do its part to keep 1.5 degrees alive.

Today, the U.S. is adding more capacity to its grid than it has in decades.  Ninety-six percent of that electricity will be clean.  Helped by clearer rules and faster permitting, pioneering offshore wind farms are delivering clean power, retired nuclear plants are coming back online, America is racing forward on solar and batteries — not just the deployment but also the means to stamp those products “made in America.”

Today, the U.S. is mining everything from nickel to the lithium, upgrading it, making the anodes and cathodes and the separators for batteries manufactured by union workers in factories that had once shut down. 

From laggard to leader, the U.S. is in the race again on electric transportation — a way to get from point A to point B without putting pollution in the sky or putting our kids and their health at risk.

Today, the U.S. has over 80,000 farmers and ranchers, over 75 million acres, advancing climate-smart agriculture practices; millions of families benefitting from energy efficiency upgrades; and countless new factories on the fore of clean materials, like clean steel and cement, in areas once seen as too hard to decarbonize.

In fact, across the country, we see decarbonization efforts to reduce our emissions in many ways achieving escape l- — velocity — an inexorable path, a place from which we will not turn back.

These proof points show what is possible when we set an ambitious target — informed through rigorous engagement with the techno-economic data — with federal agencies and scientific experts from across civil society, when we take stock of all that is possible when all of us work together. 

These proof points also show the massive prize — more good jobs, better public health, increased energy security, bolstered economic competitiveness — if and when we meet this new 2035 climate target.

We are excited about the ambition laid down by the president in this new NDC, and we are confident that, working together, the United States can achieve this goal.  And this progress that we continue to see here across the country is positioning America to lead and continue to push the ambition all around the world.

And with that, appropriately, let me hand it over to my partner and to the senior adviser for international climate policy here at the White House, John Podesta.

MR. PODESTA:  Thanks, Ali, and thanks to everyone for joining today’s call.

President Biden’s new 2035 climate goal is both a reflection of what we’ve already accomplished, as you’ve heard from my colleague, and what we believe the United States can and should achieve in the future.

Thanks to the Inflation Reduction Act and the Bipartisan Infrastructure Law, we’re on a path to achieve the goal President Biden set in 2021: to cut our emissions in half by 2030.

We’re working to slash pollution from every sector — power, buildings, transportation, industry, agriculture, and forestry — and we’ve ignited a clean energy boom across the country: north, south, east, and west.

Since President Biden and Vice President Harris took office, the private sector has announced over $450 billion in new clean energy investments.  Those projects are getting built as we speak.  They’ll keep creating good-paying jobs, and they’ll continue to reduce emissions.

Because we’ve implemented a government-enabled but private sector-led strategy, our investments under this administration are durable and will continue to pay dividends for our economy and our climate for years to come, allowing us to set an ambitious and achievable 2035 target.

And in this NDC, we’re being explicit about a methane reduction of at least 35 percent in 2035, showing that the U.S. is maximizing our ability to tackle the climate crisis by targeting all greenhouse gases, including the super pollutants.

The Biden-Harris administration may be about to leave office, but we’re confident in America’s ability to rally around this new climate goal, because while the United States federal government under President Trump may put climate action on the back burner, the work to contain climate change is going to continue in the United States with commitment and passion and belief.  That’s not wishful thinking; it’s happened before.

In the wake of COP22 in Marrakesh and President Trump’s decision in 2017 to pull the United States out of the Paris Agreement, the “We Are Still In” movement was born in the United States.  It’s now grown into the most expansive coalition ever assembled in support of U.S. climate action, with more than 5,000 businesses, local governments, Tribal nations, universities, and more, covering all 50 states.

That coalition, now called “America Is All In,” represents nearly two thirds of Americans, three quarters of U.S. GDP, and half of U.S. emissions.  Governor Inslee of Washington and other subnational leaders came to COP29 in Baku last month to share the same message with the world.

We’re looking to governors, mayors, business leaders, and more to carry this important work forward, because the rest of the world will now be looking to them to show how many Americans still care about the future of our planet and our communities.

The truth is, U.S. climate leadership has motivated the world to move faster.

After President Biden set an ambitious 2030 climate target in 2021, Japan, South Korea, Australia, Canada, Mexico, and others delivered stronger, more ambitious targets.

Once we passed the IRA, other countries — like Japan, Australia, the EU, and the UK — adopted our government-enabled, private sector-led strategy to investment in clean energy. 

I’ve spent a significant amount of time this year engaging in productive dialogue with my Chinese counterpart, Liu Zhenmin, and other leaders of the PRC government to encourage the — and I would note, the Pe- — the People’s Republic of China is now by far the world’s largest emitter — but I’ve encouraged them to submit a 2035 NDC target that is aligned with a 1.5-degree world that is economy wide and covering all greenhouse gans- — gasses in the range of a 30 percent cut off their peak emissions.

And at COP29 last month, we saw the UK, the UAE, and Brazil announce new, ambitious climate targets early and a coalition of leading — of leaders — including the European Union, Mexico, Chile, and others — committed to setting NDC targets that reflect a linear, steeper pathway to net zero, which is critical for 1.5 degrees.

Our new commitment meet — meets that standard. 

Some national leaders in the United States can continue to show the world that American climate leadership is determined by so much more than whoever sits in the Oval Office.

It happens on the ground, in our cities and states, from Phoenix to Pittsburgh, from Boise to Baltimore.  And I believe that with this new 2035 target as their North Star, leaders across Amer- — America can show the world that we are still in this fight for a better future.

Thank you, and let me turn it back to Angelo for your questions.

MR. FERNÁNDEZ HERNÁNDEZ:  Thank you, John.  And thank you, Ali.

As a reminder, we will be moving to the question-and-answer portion of the call.  Please use the “raise hand” function, as so many of you are already doing.  We love to see some excitement. 

As a reminder, this will be on background and attributable to “senior administration officials.”

With that, I will start with Jennifer.  You should be unmuted now.

Q    Thanks for doing this and taking my question. 

Just a quick clarification, because we haven’t seen the actual NDC submission yet.  I’m curious what kind of language it will include on fossil fuel transition.

And then, you know, there was some discussion, obviously, of the incoming president and his plans.  How much downward revision did you all do from the final target based on your assessments and expectations just prior to the election, which I understand were around 65 percent?

SENIOR ADMINISTRATION OFFICIAL:  Thanks for the question.

On the first, our nationally determined contribution will reflect the U.S.’s unwavering commitment to the Dubai consensus and to carrying that forward, and you’ll see that reflected in our submission to the United Nations.

On the second, this is a dynamic exercise.  And what we’ve really focused on is what are the multiple pathways to accelerate decarbonization across the economy while continuing to grow jobs and attract private capital.  The fundamentals of that exercise, where that economic opportunity lies, largely remain the same: are formed by the techno-economic trends that we see prevailing, notwithstanding outcomes in elections. 

The next four years will neither pause the impacts of climate change, nor will the next four years pause the continued acceleration in technology improvement and availability across every sector of our economy to decarbonize.

MR. FERNÁNDEZ HERNÁNDEZ:  Thanks, [senior administration official].

We will go to Lisa next.  You should be unmuted now.

Q    Thanks so much for doing this.  I appreciate it.

To what extent does this target consider that, you know, a future Democratic administration could reimpose regulations o- — you know, on power plants or automobiles and the like?  And, you know, similarly, I mean, if a Republican is elected again in 2028 — which would give us eight years without federal regulations, at minimum, and other things — can states meet this on their own?

SENIOR ADMINISTRATION OFFICIAL:  Great question.  We have, you know, in the United States, a track record of continuing to reduce our emissions when administrations that don’t prioritize climate or clean energy at the federal level are in charge.

In fact, the AIM Act, which helped drive down over a hundred million metric tons of emissions from hydrofluorocarbons, was passed in 2020, signed into law by the previous administration.

We have seen the tax code help accelerate private investment into clean energy deployment during Republican administrations and Democratic ones.

And it’s worth noting that — setting aside some of the more recent rhetoric around climate — that historically this has been an area of bipartisan focus.  And even in this last few years, after a party-line vote to pass the Inflation Reduction Act, Democrats and Republicans came together to ratify Kigali.  Democrats and Republicans came together to help accelerate the deployment of nuclear technologies in the United States. 

Those are bipartisan bills from the last two years, and I think they give us proof points that there is possibility even at the federal level.

To go to your analytical question of “what happens if,” this NDC is based on an analytical underpinning that actually allows us to carry forward this level of emissions reduction, largely propelled by state, local, Tribal action, as well as what we are seeing from the private sector and in terms of technology cost reductions.

America is going to claim the biggest share of the economic prize that comes from the clean-energy economy if we have a federal government that leans in and does what’s best for our economy, our people, and the environment we will hand to future generations. 

But the lower end of what we have laid out can largely be carried out without significant additional effort at the federal level.  That’s not where we should aim as a country, but analytically, we’ve grounded in multiple pathways, many of which do not rely on significant additional federal action.

SENIOR ADMINISTRATION OFFICIAL:  (Inaudible) let me — let me add a word on this. 

I think what we’re both saying is the direction of travel is firm.  Of course it matters who’s elected president of the United States and the level of ambition.  I think that’s particularly true in the international sphere where — the president’s leadership by rejoining Paris; by convening the MEF; by putting forward an ambitious NDC in 2021, by both pledging to come forward and raise the level of bilateral assistance in the international sphere to $11 billion, which we met this year — those things matter. 

The direction of travel is firm.  We’re moving in a direction that is going to invest in clean power, in clean transportation, and reduced emissions from the industrial sector. 

The pace is, of course, at issue.  And I think what [senior administration official] was just noting is that, given the weight in those states that, as I noted, have such a strong history of innovation and strong contribution to the overall GDP of this country, we’re going to see emissions reductions.  We can achieve the goal that the president is putting forward with that action.  But, of course, with strong leadership in the Oval Office, we can — we can do that and more. 

And it goes a little bit to Jen’s earlier question.  We did take account and consulted closely with those economists and modelers who work extensively with our subnational partners in trying to put forward an ambitious NDC, but one that’s also realistic.

MR. FERNÁNDEZ HERNÁNDEZ:  Thank you, [senior administration official].  We have time for a few more questions. 

We will go to Sara next.  You should be unmuted now.

Q    Thanks.  Thanks for doing this. 

So, I guess just a question on the Trump administration.  The president-elect has been quite clear that he intends to roll back and make great efforts to not continue forward momentum on all the — a lot of these climate policies.  So, why release this NDC?

And just to clarify, I believe there’s been quite a bit of modeling that shows the U.S. is still short of reaching the 50 to 52 percent target.  So, how does it pencil out to increase it by this much?

SENIOR ADMINISTRATION OFFICIAL:  Thanks for that, Sara. 

So, a lot to unpack there.  First, on the emissions trajectory for 2030, the U.S. will also be submitting a report to the U.N. — the BTR.  This is our sort of biennial review of our progress relative to our goals. 

There is progress that we anticipate will continue to sort of make as a result of technology improvements, states continuing to promulgate new policies.  So, there’s, I think, both the means and the need to fill the gap. 

But what we have found in our latest analysis is that we are very much positioned to close that gap.  The trajectory right now reaches up to 45 percent — 45, 46 percent, which leaves, as you know, some additional work to do over the next, essentially, five years to close the gap.  And that work — I think, part of what you heard from both me and from [senior administration official] is that work is not just propelled by the climate imperative but by a strong set of economic interest to race to close the gap. 

The second is, you know, underlying the first part of your question is this notion that one administration can somehow pause the progress we’re making or reverse the direction in which we’re traveling or close off the ability of the collective of state, local, Tribal actors and the United States private sector from moving to where it really wants to head over the next decade. 

And I think that just doesn’t — we haven’t seen that play out as federal policy has zigged and zagged in the past.  Instead, what we’ve seen is laying out a clear, analytical, and informed target has been animating of all of these actors running in the direction of further decarbonization and economic growth.

SENIOR ADMINISTRATION OFFICIAL:  I think — look, Sara, I think it — it’s important we’re — we are members of the Paris Accord and of — and it’s important to signal to subnational actors, as [senior administration official] just noted, what we think ambition looks like and what people need to work and strive for and to set off that virtuous cycle of investment and enhanced ambition.  And it’s important to do that across the globe to show that the United States has the means and the will, at least at the subnational level, to continue to be constructive players in the system and to move the world forward, because I think in every conversation, you know, I’ve had, people understand the stakes that we currently face: the effects of extreme weather, the burden on human security, the ability to deal with the consequences of — that we’re already seeing and that are only going to get worse on climate change. 

So, laying out this marker, I think, is, as has been noted, important to the private sector, to subnational actors to give people a guide star.  That — that occurred, as I — as I said, during the last Trump administration, and I think it will occur now.  But it’s also an important signal to the world about what the United States can do, even in these circumstances, and will do because of the drive, commitment, and resources available at the subnational level. 

MR. FERNÁNDEZ HERNÁNDEZ:  Thank you, [senior administration official]. 

We will go to CNN next.  Ella, you should be unmuted now. 

Q    Hi, everyone.  Thanks for doing this call and for taking my question. 

I wanted to ask about the differences between this NDC and some of the independent analysis that’s been done.  I know that there’s a lot of different analysis out there, but I’m looking at the University of Maryland. 

You know, basically, their high-ambition pathway kind of lines up with what you all have here, but when federal action is taken out of the equation, you know, it falls — it falls lower to 54 to 62 percent emissions reductions by 2035.  And so, I just wanted to ask about, you know, the difference between some of this independent analysis and the NDC here. 

And secondly, just wanted to ask about how important the IRA — I know that we don’t know exactly the future of it, how much it will get clawed back — but just how — how important that is in all of this.  Thanks.

SENIOR ADMINISTRATION OFFICIAL:  So, two — two things I want to maybe point out, Ella, in the first part of your question. 

The first is the expectations around what state and local actors can help drive in the economy.  The University of Maryland analysis is really, I think, unique in helping compute that, bring together those capacities and capabilities and put them into the model. 

As you noted, in their own analysis, when you take out additional federal action and you really make state and local governments be the load-bearing beams, in that — in that set of scenarios, they themselves forecast an ability of the United States, working together, to reach in the — up to 62 percent. 

So, I think that, in some ways, is reinforcing of the theory we’ve laid out here, which is that the state and local governments can actually carry a great deal of ambition.

One of the, I think, big factors that distinguishes, I think, our analytical work from — from some of what is out there is a real engagement with the technology — the sort of techno-economic cost curves and projections empowered by what our national labs know and have been able to collect — in some cases on a proprietary basis — with technology providers and firms in the field. 

That, to — to us and to our process, has actually provided an even more robust sense of what is achievable if the federal government is largely stagnant or even putting some downward pressure. 

This all sort of avoids the possibility and, I think, the — frankly, the real demand over the next several years for the federal government to actually do things that will be climate enhancing. 

There is a Farm Bill debate that must get engaged over the next year or maybe two that will pose the question: Will the United States government continue to stand with those 80,000 farmers and ranchers, or will we pull a critical revenue line out of those family businesses; where lawmakers will have to answer the question, as the Europeans and others race towards a trade system that prioritizes cleaner products, will the United States invest in our economic competitiveness to make sure our firms are well positioned for that global race — a hard-to-decarbonize sector that’s actually moving ahead around the world?

So, I — you know, I think the combination of what I think UMD very uniquely and smartly has done to understand and catalog the capacities at the state and local level paired with our sense of what is happening and potentially could happen from a techno-economic perspective actually gives us a sense of real robustness in the range that we have put forward. 

Of course, the higher ends of this range require the federal government to do what a responsible federal government would do in the face of an existential risk and the biggest economic opportunity the world has ever seen to invest in America.

SENIOR ADMINISTRATION OFFICIAL:  [Senior administration official], anything you want to add?

SENIOR ADMINISTRATION OFFICIAL:  Thanks.  I think [senior administration official] did a great job of laying all that out. 

I will say that even in that UMD analysis, there is another scenario, which was kind of along the lines [senior administration official] was just talking about, showing a 65 to 67 outcome as well.  So, there is some documentation there, if people are interested. 

Thanks.

MR. FERNÁNDEZ HERNÁNDEZ:  Great.  Thank you.  And thank you, everyone, for joining us.  That’s all the time that we have today.

As a reminder, the contents of this call and the materials you received over email are embargoed until 5:00 a.m. Eastern tomorrow. 

Thanks again for joining us. 

2:35 P.M. EST

The post Press Call by Senior Administration Officials on the U.S. Nationally Determined Contribution appeared first on The White House.

Via Teleconference

2:03 P.M. EST

MR. FERNÁNDEZ HERNÁNDEZ:  Hi.  Good afternoon, everyone.  Thank you for joining today’s embargoed press call.  This press call will begin with on-the-record remarks from White House National Climate Adviser Ali Zaidi and Senior Adviser to the President for International Climate Policy John Podesta. 

After the remarks, there will be a question-and-answer period, which will be on background and attributable to “senior administration officials.” 

The contents of this call and the related materials you all should have already received over email are embargoed until tomorrow, Thursday, December 19th, at 5:00 a.m. Eastern. 

With that, I will turn it over to Ali.

MR. ZAIDI:  Thanks so much.  And thanks, everybody, for joining us.

Under the Paris Agreement, countries are called on to develop nationally determined contributions — NDCs — that collectively advance global progress on climate change.

In April 2021, the United States communicate — communicated its most recent nationally determined contribution.

When we did, we were cognizant of the baseline, a business-as-usual trajectory that projected 15 to 20 percent emissions reductions 2030 relative to 2005 levels.

Under President Biden’s leadership, against that backdrop, we set an ambitious path — a new target for the United States that sought to reduce emissions by 50 to 52 percent in 2030.

In the time since, the United States has deployed a paradigm-shifting strategy that has both accelerated decarbonization and also expanded economic opportunity and economic growth.

We found a way to take on a global problem that was decades in the making, with an approach that makes a visible difference in communities right now — a chance to deliver cleaner air, lower costs, better jobs, and a real sense of pride and purpose.

The U.S. strategy is manifest in the investments from the Bipartisan Infrastructure Law and the Inflation Reduction Act and in a complementary architecture of federal standards that spur demand and generate the regulatory certainty needed to accelerate capital formation and encourage entrepreneurial risk-taking.

It is an important combination that has changed the equation: Climate action is no longer about gloom and doom but about hope and possibilities.

Catalyzed by these incentives, fiscal and regulatory, our partners have come together to swing for the fences in every sector of the economy.  Looking for wins everywhere — power and transportation, buildings and industry, lands and agriculture — gives us a better shot at sticking the landing and at delivering for everyone.

The coming together is key.  The robustness of the U.S. strategy comes from an approach that has mobilized public and private, at every level of government and every layer of the capital stack, in a tech-agnostic race to net zero as our North Star.

You can see this, as I have, not just in communities across America but as business leaders, mayors, governors, Tribal leaders, have joined every single United Nations Conference of the Parties since the president took office.  In Glasgow, in Sharm, in Dubai, and in Baku, these leaders showcased the efforts of the United States of America, of all our capacities and capabilities working together. 

Today, together, we set a new ambitious target for America — the United States communicating a new nationally determined contribution under the leadership of President Joe Biden.

The United States — all of us working together — will reduce our emissions by 61 to 66 percent by 2035, relative to 2005 levels — all greenhouse gases covered, every sector of the economy reached.

This entire range is on a linear or steeper-than-linear trajectory to net zero by 2050, meaning that America will do its part to keep 1.5 degrees alive.

Today, the U.S. is adding more capacity to its grid than it has in decades.  Ninety-six percent of that electricity will be clean.  Helped by clearer rules and faster permitting, pioneering offshore wind farms are delivering clean power, retired nuclear plants are coming back online, America is racing forward on solar and batteries — not just the deployment but also the means to stamp those products “made in America.”

Today, the U.S. is mining everything from nickel to the lithium, upgrading it, making the anodes and cathodes and the separators for batteries manufactured by union workers in factories that had once shut down. 

From laggard to leader, the U.S. is in the race again on electric transportation — a way to get from point A to point B without putting pollution in the sky or putting our kids and their health at risk.

Today, the U.S. has over 80,000 farmers and ranchers, over 75 million acres, advancing climate-smart agriculture practices; millions of families benefitting from energy efficiency upgrades; and countless new factories on the fore of clean materials, like clean steel and cement, in areas once seen as too hard to decarbonize.

In fact, across the country, we see decarbonization efforts to reduce our emissions in many ways achieving escape l- — velocity — an inexorable path, a place from which we will not turn back.

These proof points show what is possible when we set an ambitious target — informed through rigorous engagement with the techno-economic data — with federal agencies and scientific experts from across civil society, when we take stock of all that is possible when all of us work together. 

These proof points also show the massive prize — more good jobs, better public health, increased energy security, bolstered economic competitiveness — if and when we meet this new 2035 climate target.

We are excited about the ambition laid down by the president in this new NDC, and we are confident that, working together, the United States can achieve this goal.  And this progress that we continue to see here across the country is positioning America to lead and continue to push the ambition all around the world.

And with that, appropriately, let me hand it over to my partner and to the senior adviser for international climate policy here at the White House, John Podesta.

MR. PODESTA:  Thanks, Ali, and thanks to everyone for joining today’s call.

President Biden’s new 2035 climate goal is both a reflection of what we’ve already accomplished, as you’ve heard from my colleague, and what we believe the United States can and should achieve in the future.

Thanks to the Inflation Reduction Act and the Bipartisan Infrastructure Law, we’re on a path to achieve the goal President Biden set in 2021: to cut our emissions in half by 2030.

We’re working to slash pollution from every sector — power, buildings, transportation, industry, agriculture, and forestry — and we’ve ignited a clean energy boom across the country: north, south, east, and west.

Since President Biden and Vice President Harris took office, the private sector has announced over $450 billion in new clean energy investments.  Those projects are getting built as we speak.  They’ll keep creating good-paying jobs, and they’ll continue to reduce emissions.

Because we’ve implemented a government-enabled but private sector-led strategy, our investments under this administration are durable and will continue to pay dividends for our economy and our climate for years to come, allowing us to set an ambitious and achievable 2035 target.

And in this NDC, we’re being explicit about a methane reduction of at least 35 percent in 2035, showing that the U.S. is maximizing our ability to tackle the climate crisis by targeting all greenhouse gases, including the super pollutants.

The Biden-Harris administration may be about to leave office, but we’re confident in America’s ability to rally around this new climate goal, because while the United States federal government under President Trump may put climate action on the back burner, the work to contain climate change is going to continue in the United States with commitment and passion and belief.  That’s not wishful thinking; it’s happened before.

In the wake of COP22 in Marrakesh and President Trump’s decision in 2017 to pull the United States out of the Paris Agreement, the “We Are Still In” movement was born in the United States.  It’s now grown into the most expansive coalition ever assembled in support of U.S. climate action, with more than 5,000 businesses, local governments, Tribal nations, universities, and more, covering all 50 states.

That coalition, now called “America Is All In,” represents nearly two thirds of Americans, three quarters of U.S. GDP, and half of U.S. emissions.  Governor Inslee of Washington and other subnational leaders came to COP29 in Baku last month to share the same message with the world.

We’re looking to governors, mayors, business leaders, and more to carry this important work forward, because the rest of the world will now be looking to them to show how many Americans still care about the future of our planet and our communities.

The truth is, U.S. climate leadership has motivated the world to move faster.

After President Biden set an ambitious 2030 climate target in 2021, Japan, South Korea, Australia, Canada, Mexico, and others delivered stronger, more ambitious targets.

Once we passed the IRA, other countries — like Japan, Australia, the EU, and the UK — adopted our government-enabled, private sector-led strategy to investment in clean energy. 

I’ve spent a significant amount of time this year engaging in productive dialogue with my Chinese counterpart, Liu Zhenmin, and other leaders of the PRC government to encourage the — and I would note, the Pe- — the People’s Republic of China is now by far the world’s largest emitter — but I’ve encouraged them to submit a 2035 NDC target that is aligned with a 1.5-degree world that is economy wide and covering all greenhouse gans- — gasses in the range of a 30 percent cut off their peak emissions.

And at COP29 last month, we saw the UK, the UAE, and Brazil announce new, ambitious climate targets early and a coalition of leading — of leaders — including the European Union, Mexico, Chile, and others — committed to setting NDC targets that reflect a linear, steeper pathway to net zero, which is critical for 1.5 degrees.

Our new commitment meet — meets that standard. 

Some national leaders in the United States can continue to show the world that American climate leadership is determined by so much more than whoever sits in the Oval Office.

It happens on the ground, in our cities and states, from Phoenix to Pittsburgh, from Boise to Baltimore.  And I believe that with this new 2035 target as their North Star, leaders across Amer- — America can show the world that we are still in this fight for a better future.

Thank you, and let me turn it back to Angelo for your questions.

MR. FERNÁNDEZ HERNÁNDEZ:  Thank you, John.  And thank you, Ali.

As a reminder, we will be moving to the question-and-answer portion of the call.  Please use the “raise hand” function, as so many of you are already doing.  We love to see some excitement. 

As a reminder, this will be on background and attributable to “senior administration officials.”

With that, I will start with Jennifer.  You should be unmuted now.

Q    Thanks for doing this and taking my question. 

Just a quick clarification, because we haven’t seen the actual NDC submission yet.  I’m curious what kind of language it will include on fossil fuel transition.

And then, you know, there was some discussion, obviously, of the incoming president and his plans.  How much downward revision did you all do from the final target based on your assessments and expectations just prior to the election, which I understand were around 65 percent?

SENIOR ADMINISTRATION OFFICIAL:  Thanks for the question.

On the first, our nationally determined contribution will reflect the U.S.’s unwavering commitment to the Dubai consensus and to carrying that forward, and you’ll see that reflected in our submission to the United Nations.

On the second, this is a dynamic exercise.  And what we’ve really focused on is what are the multiple pathways to accelerate decarbonization across the economy while continuing to grow jobs and attract private capital.  The fundamentals of that exercise, where that economic opportunity lies, largely remain the same: are formed by the techno-economic trends that we see prevailing, notwithstanding outcomes in elections. 

The next four years will neither pause the impacts of climate change, nor will the next four years pause the continued acceleration in technology improvement and availability across every sector of our economy to decarbonize.

MR. FERNÁNDEZ HERNÁNDEZ:  Thanks, [senior administration official].

We will go to Lisa next.  You should be unmuted now.

Q    Thanks so much for doing this.  I appreciate it.

To what extent does this target consider that, you know, a future Democratic administration could reimpose regulations o- — you know, on power plants or automobiles and the like?  And, you know, similarly, I mean, if a Republican is elected again in 2028 — which would give us eight years without federal regulations, at minimum, and other things — can states meet this on their own?

SENIOR ADMINISTRATION OFFICIAL:  Great question.  We have, you know, in the United States, a track record of continuing to reduce our emissions when administrations that don’t prioritize climate or clean energy at the federal level are in charge.

In fact, the AIM Act, which helped drive down over a hundred million metric tons of emissions from hydrofluorocarbons, was passed in 2020, signed into law by the previous administration.

We have seen the tax code help accelerate private investment into clean energy deployment during Republican administrations and Democratic ones.

And it’s worth noting that — setting aside some of the more recent rhetoric around climate — that historically this has been an area of bipartisan focus.  And even in this last few years, after a party-line vote to pass the Inflation Reduction Act, Democrats and Republicans came together to ratify Kigali.  Democrats and Republicans came together to help accelerate the deployment of nuclear technologies in the United States. 

Those are bipartisan bills from the last two years, and I think they give us proof points that there is possibility even at the federal level.

To go to your analytical question of “what happens if,” this NDC is based on an analytical underpinning that actually allows us to carry forward this level of emissions reduction, largely propelled by state, local, Tribal action, as well as what we are seeing from the private sector and in terms of technology cost reductions.

America is going to claim the biggest share of the economic prize that comes from the clean-energy economy if we have a federal government that leans in and does what’s best for our economy, our people, and the environment we will hand to future generations. 

But the lower end of what we have laid out can largely be carried out without significant additional effort at the federal level.  That’s not where we should aim as a country, but analytically, we’ve grounded in multiple pathways, many of which do not rely on significant additional federal action.

SENIOR ADMINISTRATION OFFICIAL:  (Inaudible) let me — let me add a word on this. 

I think what we’re both saying is the direction of travel is firm.  Of course it matters who’s elected president of the United States and the level of ambition.  I think that’s particularly true in the international sphere where — the president’s leadership by rejoining Paris; by convening the MEF; by putting forward an ambitious NDC in 2021, by both pledging to come forward and raise the level of bilateral assistance in the international sphere to $11 billion, which we met this year — those things matter. 

The direction of travel is firm.  We’re moving in a direction that is going to invest in clean power, in clean transportation, and reduced emissions from the industrial sector. 

The pace is, of course, at issue.  And I think what [senior administration official] was just noting is that, given the weight in those states that, as I noted, have such a strong history of innovation and strong contribution to the overall GDP of this country, we’re going to see emissions reductions.  We can achieve the goal that the president is putting forward with that action.  But, of course, with strong leadership in the Oval Office, we can — we can do that and more. 

And it goes a little bit to Jen’s earlier question.  We did take account and consulted closely with those economists and modelers who work extensively with our subnational partners in trying to put forward an ambitious NDC, but one that’s also realistic.

MR. FERNÁNDEZ HERNÁNDEZ:  Thank you, [senior administration official].  We have time for a few more questions. 

We will go to Sara next.  You should be unmuted now.

Q    Thanks.  Thanks for doing this. 

So, I guess just a question on the Trump administration.  The president-elect has been quite clear that he intends to roll back and make great efforts to not continue forward momentum on all the — a lot of these climate policies.  So, why release this NDC?

And just to clarify, I believe there’s been quite a bit of modeling that shows the U.S. is still short of reaching the 50 to 52 percent target.  So, how does it pencil out to increase it by this much?

SENIOR ADMINISTRATION OFFICIAL:  Thanks for that, Sara. 

So, a lot to unpack there.  First, on the emissions trajectory for 2030, the U.S. will also be submitting a report to the U.N. — the BTR.  This is our sort of biennial review of our progress relative to our goals. 

There is progress that we anticipate will continue to sort of make as a result of technology improvements, states continuing to promulgate new policies.  So, there’s, I think, both the means and the need to fill the gap. 

But what we have found in our latest analysis is that we are very much positioned to close that gap.  The trajectory right now reaches up to 45 percent — 45, 46 percent, which leaves, as you know, some additional work to do over the next, essentially, five years to close the gap.  And that work — I think, part of what you heard from both me and from [senior administration official] is that work is not just propelled by the climate imperative but by a strong set of economic interest to race to close the gap. 

The second is, you know, underlying the first part of your question is this notion that one administration can somehow pause the progress we’re making or reverse the direction in which we’re traveling or close off the ability of the collective of state, local, Tribal actors and the United States private sector from moving to where it really wants to head over the next decade. 

And I think that just doesn’t — we haven’t seen that play out as federal policy has zigged and zagged in the past.  Instead, what we’ve seen is laying out a clear, analytical, and informed target has been animating of all of these actors running in the direction of further decarbonization and economic growth.

SENIOR ADMINISTRATION OFFICIAL:  I think — look, Sara, I think it — it’s important we’re — we are members of the Paris Accord and of — and it’s important to signal to subnational actors, as [senior administration official] just noted, what we think ambition looks like and what people need to work and strive for and to set off that virtuous cycle of investment and enhanced ambition.  And it’s important to do that across the globe to show that the United States has the means and the will, at least at the subnational level, to continue to be constructive players in the system and to move the world forward, because I think in every conversation, you know, I’ve had, people understand the stakes that we currently face: the effects of extreme weather, the burden on human security, the ability to deal with the consequences of — that we’re already seeing and that are only going to get worse on climate change. 

So, laying out this marker, I think, is, as has been noted, important to the private sector, to subnational actors to give people a guide star.  That — that occurred, as I — as I said, during the last Trump administration, and I think it will occur now.  But it’s also an important signal to the world about what the United States can do, even in these circumstances, and will do because of the drive, commitment, and resources available at the subnational level. 

MR. FERNÁNDEZ HERNÁNDEZ:  Thank you, [senior administration official]. 

We will go to CNN next.  Ella, you should be unmuted now. 

Q    Hi, everyone.  Thanks for doing this call and for taking my question. 

I wanted to ask about the differences between this NDC and some of the independent analysis that’s been done.  I know that there’s a lot of different analysis out there, but I’m looking at the University of Maryland. 

You know, basically, their high-ambition pathway kind of lines up with what you all have here, but when federal action is taken out of the equation, you know, it falls — it falls lower to 54 to 62 percent emissions reductions by 2035.  And so, I just wanted to ask about, you know, the difference between some of this independent analysis and the NDC here. 

And secondly, just wanted to ask about how important the IRA — I know that we don’t know exactly the future of it, how much it will get clawed back — but just how — how important that is in all of this.  Thanks.

SENIOR ADMINISTRATION OFFICIAL:  So, two — two things I want to maybe point out, Ella, in the first part of your question. 

The first is the expectations around what state and local actors can help drive in the economy.  The University of Maryland analysis is really, I think, unique in helping compute that, bring together those capacities and capabilities and put them into the model. 

As you noted, in their own analysis, when you take out additional federal action and you really make state and local governments be the load-bearing beams, in that — in that set of scenarios, they themselves forecast an ability of the United States, working together, to reach in the — up to 62 percent. 

So, I think that, in some ways, is reinforcing of the theory we’ve laid out here, which is that the state and local governments can actually carry a great deal of ambition.

One of the, I think, big factors that distinguishes, I think, our analytical work from — from some of what is out there is a real engagement with the technology — the sort of techno-economic cost curves and projections empowered by what our national labs know and have been able to collect — in some cases on a proprietary basis — with technology providers and firms in the field. 

That, to — to us and to our process, has actually provided an even more robust sense of what is achievable if the federal government is largely stagnant or even putting some downward pressure. 

This all sort of avoids the possibility and, I think, the — frankly, the real demand over the next several years for the federal government to actually do things that will be climate enhancing. 

There is a Farm Bill debate that must get engaged over the next year or maybe two that will pose the question: Will the United States government continue to stand with those 80,000 farmers and ranchers, or will we pull a critical revenue line out of those family businesses; where lawmakers will have to answer the question, as the Europeans and others race towards a trade system that prioritizes cleaner products, will the United States invest in our economic competitiveness to make sure our firms are well positioned for that global race — a hard-to-decarbonize sector that’s actually moving ahead around the world?

So, I — you know, I think the combination of what I think UMD very uniquely and smartly has done to understand and catalog the capacities at the state and local level paired with our sense of what is happening and potentially could happen from a techno-economic perspective actually gives us a sense of real robustness in the range that we have put forward. 

Of course, the higher ends of this range require the federal government to do what a responsible federal government would do in the face of an existential risk and the biggest economic opportunity the world has ever seen to invest in America.

SENIOR ADMINISTRATION OFFICIAL:  [Senior administration official], anything you want to add?

SENIOR ADMINISTRATION OFFICIAL:  Thanks.  I think [senior administration official] did a great job of laying all that out. 

I will say that even in that UMD analysis, there is another scenario, which was kind of along the lines [senior administration official] was just talking about, showing a 65 to 67 outcome as well.  So, there is some documentation there, if people are interested. 

Thanks.

MR. FERNÁNDEZ HERNÁNDEZ:  Great.  Thank you.  And thank you, everyone, for joining us.  That’s all the time that we have today.

As a reminder, the contents of this call and the materials you received over email are embargoed until 5:00 a.m. Eastern tomorrow. 

Thanks again for joining us. 

2:35 P.M. EST

The post Press Call by Senior Administration Officials on the U.S. Nationally Determined Contribution appeared first on The White House.

On December 17, the Biden-Harris Administration hosted the first-ever White House Sustainable Freight Workshop, bringing together nearly 100 public and private stakeholders from across the freight sector to discuss a path forward to reducing emissions from the freight system while protecting the economic vitality created by President Biden’s Investing in America agenda. Recognizing the critical importance of the freight sector and the associated challenge of reducing emissions to improve global and local environmental and public health impacts, the workshop convened Federal agency and White House staff alongside leaders representing the freight industry, civil society, and environmental justice organizations to realize the Administration’s commitment to developing a national zero-emissions freight strategy.

The freight sector, including maritime, rail, and trucking, is a critical part of the Nation’s transportation system, transporting more than 20 billion tons of freight worth more than $18 trillion dollars annually. The economic impact of freight helps make it the largest source of climate pollution in the U.S. In the United States, the transportation sector (including the freight sector) is a leading contributor to local pollution, responsible for more than 50% of total NOx emissions, over 30% of volatile organic compound emissions, and over 20% of particulate matter emissions, pollution that particularly impacts communities of color and low-income families. Worldwide, the freight sector contributes approximately eight percent of greenhouse gas emissions. Historically, challenges to decarbonize the freight sector have been in part due to slow fleet turnover and associated acquisition costs.

The transformative economic agenda of the Biden-Harris Administration has helped accelerate the freight sector toward a cleaner future. Recent historic investments include $3 billion from the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA)’s Clean Ports Program and $735 million from EPA’s Clean Heavy-Duty Vehicle Program to help applicants purchase 2,400 zero-emission commercial vehicles; $2.4 billion from the Department of Transportation’s Consolidated Rail Infrastructure and Safety Improvements (CRISI) grants program administered by the Federal Rail Administration for low- and zero-emission locomotives; and $150 million in grants from the Federal Highways Administration to reduce truck emissions at port facilities. The Biden-Harris Administration has also upheld its commitment to protecting communities that have historically suffered disproportionate public impacts of the freight sector.

Taking a holistic approach to freight sustainability, the Workshop presented opportunities to align as an integrated freight ecosystem across the maritime, rail, and trucking industries and builds on the Administration’s 2023 National Blueprint for Transportation Decarbonization, the March 2024 release of a National Zero-Emission Freight Corridor Strategy, and the April 2024 announcement of the first-ever national goal to transition to a zero-emissions freight sector. The workshop also served as an opportunity to launch the Action Plans for freight sector all stemming from the National Blueprint for Transportation Decarbonization.

The following actions were announced at Tuesday’s workshop:

• The Electrification Coalition, an industry consortium and nonpartisan organization, announced the launch and call to action of the Sustainable Freight Partners Group to align interests and coordination on the deployment low to zero-emission freight solutions across the maritime, rail and trucking industries. The Group will serve as a critical platform to regularly convene on freight sustainability priorities, communicate the value of emission reduction solutions, and facilitate strategic vision on competitive and economic approaches across the freight ecosystem.
  • The Department of Energy, along with its Blueprint agency partners, brought to life the recently announced modal action plans through results-driven discussions on measures for implementation on the top modal actions including;  
    • Maritime: Scaling the production of low and zero-emission fuels for marine vessels through the “Sustainable Grand Maritime Challenge.”
    • Rail: Designing the future rail network for low to zero-emission short and line haul freight locomotives through a public-private partnership framework.
    • Medium- and Heavy-Duty Vehicles: Developing the Play Book for Phase I and 2 of the National Zero-Emission Freight Corridor Strategy to deploy charging and refueling infrastructure in freight hubs and along corridors for battery electric and hydrogen fuel cell trucks.
  • A Zero Emissions Freight Map developed by the Joint Office of Energy and Transportation and Atlas Public Policy presented over 700+ projects worth $12.8 billion across the freight ecosystem for maritime, rail and trucks showcasing strong alignment with the prioritization of public and private investments through the ‘all of government’ National Zero-Emission Freight Corridor Strategy.
    • Sixty-five percent of the investments in zero-emission freight were funded through industry, utilities, cities and states where only 35% of the share is funded through the Federal government, demonstrating a strong commitment across the private and public sectors for freight sustainability. These projects will take fold over the next three to five years proving strong momentum and advancement in zero- emission technologies and infrastructure.
  • Environmental groups and industry consortia participated in an externally led social media campaign #RouteZeroWeek to celebrate clean transportation from “Sustainable Freight to Clean Cars” presenting supporting messages for the billions of dollars in public and private investment, advanced technologies and partnerships for clean transportation solutions throughout the U.S.

Participating organizations include:

• Alstom
• American Association of Port Authorities
• American Bureau of Shipping
• American Short Line and Railroad Association
• American Truck Association
• A Public Power Association
• Association of American Railroads
• Atlas Public Policy
• BlueSky Maritime
• California Department of Transportation
• CALSTART
• Carnival
• Chamber of Shipping of America
• CharIN
• CN
• Commercial ZEV
• CPKC
• Cruise Line Industry Association
• CSX
• Detroit/Wayne County Port Authority
• East Yard Communities for Environmental Justice
• Edison Electric Institute (EEI)
• Electrification Coalition
• EPRI
• Exelon
• FHWA
• Forum Mobility
• Fuel Cell & Hydrogen Energy Association (Cummins)
• IKEA Supply Chain Operations
• Innovative Rail Technologies
• International Brotherhood of Electrical Workers
• International Bunker Industry Association
• International Council on Clean Transportation
• Joint Office of Energy & Transportation
• Little Village Environmental Justice Organization
• Methanol Institute
• Microsoft
• Moving Forward Network
• MSC
• NADA
• National Association of Truck Stop Operators
• National Grid
• Navistar/ International
• NESCAUM
• New Jersey Environmental Justice Alliance
• Nikola
• New Jersey Environmental Protection Agency
• NREL
• Ocean Conservancy
• Pacific Environment
• Port Authority of New York and New Jersey
• Port of Seattle
• Partnership Project
• Penske
• People’s Collective for Environmental Justice
• PG&E
• Sierra Club
• Smart Freight Centre
• South Ward Environmental Justice Alliance
• Southern Company
• Sustainable Maritime Coalition
• Tesla
• TruCurrent
• U.S. Department of Energy
• U.S. Department of Transportation
• U.S. Environmental Protection Agency
• United Electrical, Radio and Machine Workers of America
• Voltera
• Volvo Trucks
• Powering America’s Commercial Transportation
• Wabtec
• Watco
• Zeem Solutions

###

The post Readout of White House Sustainable Freight Workshop appeared first on The White House.

On December 17, the Biden-Harris Administration hosted the first-ever White House Sustainable Freight Workshop, bringing together nearly 100 public and private stakeholders from across the freight sector to discuss a path forward to reducing emissions from the freight system while protecting the economic vitality created by President Biden’s Investing in America agenda. Recognizing the critical importance of the freight sector and the associated challenge of reducing emissions to improve global and local environmental and public health impacts, the workshop convened Federal agency and White House staff alongside leaders representing the freight industry, civil society, and environmental justice organizations to realize the Administration’s commitment to developing a national zero-emissions freight strategy.

The freight sector, including maritime, rail, and trucking, is a critical part of the Nation’s transportation system, transporting more than 20 billion tons of freight worth more than $18 trillion dollars annually. The economic impact of freight helps make it the largest source of climate pollution in the U.S. In the United States, the transportation sector (including the freight sector) is a leading contributor to local pollution, responsible for more than 50% of total NOx emissions, over 30% of volatile organic compound emissions, and over 20% of particulate matter emissions, pollution that particularly impacts communities of color and low-income families. Worldwide, the freight sector contributes approximately eight percent of greenhouse gas emissions. Historically, challenges to decarbonize the freight sector have been in part due to slow fleet turnover and associated acquisition costs.

The transformative economic agenda of the Biden-Harris Administration has helped accelerate the freight sector toward a cleaner future. Recent historic investments include $3 billion from the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA)’s Clean Ports Program and $735 million from EPA’s Clean Heavy-Duty Vehicle Program to help applicants purchase 2,400 zero-emission commercial vehicles; $2.4 billion from the Department of Transportation’s Consolidated Rail Infrastructure and Safety Improvements (CRISI) grants program administered by the Federal Rail Administration for low- and zero-emission locomotives; and $150 million in grants from the Federal Highways Administration to reduce truck emissions at port facilities. The Biden-Harris Administration has also upheld its commitment to protecting communities that have historically suffered disproportionate public impacts of the freight sector.

Taking a holistic approach to freight sustainability, the Workshop presented opportunities to align as an integrated freight ecosystem across the maritime, rail, and trucking industries and builds on the Administration’s 2023 National Blueprint for Transportation Decarbonization, the March 2024 release of a National Zero-Emission Freight Corridor Strategy, and the April 2024 announcement of the first-ever national goal to transition to a zero-emissions freight sector. The workshop also served as an opportunity to launch the Action Plans for freight sector all stemming from the National Blueprint for Transportation Decarbonization.

The following actions were announced at Tuesday’s workshop:

• The Electrification Coalition, an industry consortium and nonpartisan organization, announced the launch and call to action of the Sustainable Freight Partners Group to align interests and coordination on the deployment low to zero-emission freight solutions across the maritime, rail and trucking industries. The Group will serve as a critical platform to regularly convene on freight sustainability priorities, communicate the value of emission reduction solutions, and facilitate strategic vision on competitive and economic approaches across the freight ecosystem.
  • The Department of Energy, along with its Blueprint agency partners, brought to life the recently announced modal action plans through results-driven discussions on measures for implementation on the top modal actions including;  
    • Maritime: Scaling the production of low and zero-emission fuels for marine vessels through the “Sustainable Grand Maritime Challenge.”
    • Rail: Designing the future rail network for low to zero-emission short and line haul freight locomotives through a public-private partnership framework.
    • Medium- and Heavy-Duty Vehicles: Developing the Play Book for Phase I and 2 of the National Zero-Emission Freight Corridor Strategy to deploy charging and refueling infrastructure in freight hubs and along corridors for battery electric and hydrogen fuel cell trucks.
  • A Zero Emissions Freight Map developed by the Joint Office of Energy and Transportation and Atlas Public Policy presented over 700+ projects worth $12.8 billion across the freight ecosystem for maritime, rail and trucks showcasing strong alignment with the prioritization of public and private investments through the ‘all of government’ National Zero-Emission Freight Corridor Strategy.
    • Sixty-five percent of the investments in zero-emission freight were funded through industry, utilities, cities and states where only 35% of the share is funded through the Federal government, demonstrating a strong commitment across the private and public sectors for freight sustainability. These projects will take fold over the next three to five years proving strong momentum and advancement in zero- emission technologies and infrastructure.
  • Environmental groups and industry consortia participated in an externally led social media campaign #RouteZeroWeek to celebrate clean transportation from “Sustainable Freight to Clean Cars” presenting supporting messages for the billions of dollars in public and private investment, advanced technologies and partnerships for clean transportation solutions throughout the U.S.

Participating organizations include:

• Alstom
• American Association of Port Authorities
• American Bureau of Shipping
• American Short Line and Railroad Association
• American Truck Association
• A Public Power Association
• Association of American Railroads
• Atlas Public Policy
• BlueSky Maritime
• California Department of Transportation
• CALSTART
• Carnival
• Chamber of Shipping of America
• CharIN
• CN
• Commercial ZEV
• CPKC
• Cruise Line Industry Association
• CSX
• Detroit/Wayne County Port Authority
• East Yard Communities for Environmental Justice
• Edison Electric Institute (EEI)
• Electrification Coalition
• EPRI
• Exelon
• FHWA
• Forum Mobility
• Fuel Cell & Hydrogen Energy Association (Cummins)
• IKEA Supply Chain Operations
• Innovative Rail Technologies
• International Brotherhood of Electrical Workers
• International Bunker Industry Association
• International Council on Clean Transportation
• Joint Office of Energy & Transportation
• Little Village Environmental Justice Organization
• Methanol Institute
• Microsoft
• Moving Forward Network
• MSC
• NADA
• National Association of Truck Stop Operators
• National Grid
• Navistar/ International
• NESCAUM
• New Jersey Environmental Justice Alliance
• Nikola
• New Jersey Environmental Protection Agency
• NREL
• Ocean Conservancy
• Pacific Environment
• Port Authority of New York and New Jersey
• Port of Seattle
• Partnership Project
• Penske
• People’s Collective for Environmental Justice
• PG&E
• Sierra Club
• Smart Freight Centre
• South Ward Environmental Justice Alliance
• Southern Company
• Sustainable Maritime Coalition
• Tesla
• TruCurrent
• U.S. Department of Energy
• U.S. Department of Transportation
• U.S. Environmental Protection Agency
• United Electrical, Radio and Machine Workers of America
• Voltera
• Volvo Trucks
• Powering America’s Commercial Transportation
• Wabtec
• Watco
• Zeem Solutions

###

The post Readout of White House Sustainable Freight Workshop appeared first on The White House.

Republicans need to stop playing politics with this bipartisan agreement or they will hurt hardworking Americans and create instability across the country. President-elect Trump and Vice President-elect Vance ordered Republicans to shut down the government and they are threatening to do just that—while undermining communities recovering from disasters, farmers and ranchers, and community health centers. Triggering a damaging government shutdown would hurt families who are gathering to meet with their loved ones and endanger the basic services Americans from veterans to Social Security recipients rely on. A deal is a deal. Republicans should keep their word.

###

The post Statement from Press Secretary Karine Jean-Pierre on Republicans Threatening a Government Shutdown appeared first on The White House.

Republicans need to stop playing politics with this bipartisan agreement or they will hurt hardworking Americans and create instability across the country. President-elect Trump and Vice President-elect Vance ordered Republicans to shut down the government and they are threatening to do just that—while undermining communities recovering from disasters, farmers and ranchers, and community health centers. Triggering a damaging government shutdown would hurt families who are gathering to meet with their loved ones and endanger the basic services Americans from veterans to Social Security recipients rely on. A deal is a deal. Republicans should keep their word.

###

The post Statement from Press Secretary Karine Jean-Pierre on Republicans Threatening a Government Shutdown appeared first on The White House.

New York, New York

MR. BREMMER:  So, I mean, for a lot of us here, this is the coolest thing going on in New York City right now.  There’s a lot of self-selection in this crowd.  (Applause.)  So, a very warm welcome to my friend, Jake Sullivan. 
 
And also, just to say, we’re going to run this for, like, you know, 45 minutes, an hour, and then we’ll get some questions from the audience, which will be fun.  They’ll come in on cards, so please fill them out, make them interesting and hard and engaging, because we both like that.
 
And also, this is being livestreamed, and I don’t know if they have any capacity to send us questions, and I suspect we’ll ignore those.  But nonetheless, we’re delighted that there are people that are joining us.
 
So with all of that, Jake, welcome.
 
MR. SULLIVAN:  Thank you for having me.  It’s really good to be here.
 
MR. BREMMER:  Thank you for being here.  You just got back from the Middle East.
 
MR. SULLIVAN:  Yes.
 
MR. BREMMER:  We’re going to talk about the whole world, but maybe start there.
 
You know, in the last year, you and I have spoken a lot more about the Middle East than we had before.  I’m wondering, in terms of biggest surprises, is it how much the Israelis have established, reestablished escalation dominance?  Is it Iran and the Axis of Resistance looking like a big deal and then imploding?  Is it what just happened with Assad and the rollout in Syria?  Where would you stack the “this is the thing that we probably least expected”?
 
MR. SULLIVAN:  Yes.  (Laughter.) 
 
I mean, not to be — every one of those pieces has been maybe not surprising directionally, in the sense that, you know, one could see the ways in which Israel — frankly, backed by the United States in terms of much of what it has accomplished — was taking the fight to its enemies.  One could see the weakening and the fracturing of the Axis of Resistance and the weakening of Iran.  And one could see the pressure on Assad, particularly because his two main patrons, Iran and Russia, were distracted and weakened.
 
But the speed, the scope, and the scale of the remaking of the Middle East in this short amount of time, I think you’d find very few people who could have predicted all of that and that we would be sitting here in December of 2024 with the picture looking the way that it looks.
 
MR. BREMMER:  Does the picture today look at least modestly more stable than it did a year ago, or does it look worse?
 
MR. SULLIVAN:  You know, I’ve been reflecting on this question, because the thing about foreign policy and geopolitics is that when good things happen, often bad things follow.  When bad things happen, often good things follow.  And nothing is ever fixed in time.  There’s always something around the corner.
 
So is there a huge opportunity right now?  Absolutely.  In that sense, the possibility of a more stable, integrated Middle East, where our friends are stronger, our enemies are weaker — that is real.  And in fact, Iran is at its weakest point in —
 
MR. BREMMER:  Decades.
 
MR. SULLIVAN:  — in modern memory.
 
On the other hand, there are huge risk factors, and you can see them maybe most in living color in Syria, where the Syrian people have the chance to build a better future in a post-Assad world, but where there are very evil people who are looking to take advantage of this current moment, starting with ISIS, but other terrorist and jihadist groups as well.  And it will take collective resolve, wisdom, and willingness to act in order to ensure that we don’t see in Syria what we had previously seen in Libya, but on a larger scale where the geography is actually even more dangerous for not just our interests, but the interests of our friends and allies.
 
So I think we’re at a moment of profound opportunity but also a moment of profound risk, and that means that we have to handle this situation with clarity and effectiveness.  And the interesting thing is this comes in the middle of a presidential transition in the United States.
 
MR. BREMMER:  Which makes it harder for you.
 
MR. SULLIVAN:  It makes it harder because —
 
MR. BREMMER:  I’m thinking specifically Syria, for example.  Right?
 
MR. SULLIVAN:  Yeah, I mean, it makes it harder because — you know, and this is something that my successor, Mike Waltz, has actually said — other countries, other actors, particularly our enemies and adversaries, look at transitions as moments of opportunity, because you have this seam between an outgoing administration and incoming administration.
 
And so, the imperative on us, both the outgoing Biden administration and the incoming Trump administration, has to be to lash up more tightly than is typical, to spend more time together than is typical, and to try to ensure we are sending a common, clear message to both friends and adversaries in the Middle East, and we have endeavored to do that over the last few weeks. 
 
Obviously, we disagree on a lot of things under the sun, including perhaps on certain aspects of long-term strategy in the Middle East or elsewhere, but where we agree is on many of the fundamentals here and especially on the point that we should not let anyone take advantage of the United States during this time of transition.  And so that has meant that Congressman Waltz and me and other people on each of our teams have tried to work so closely together.
 
MR. BREMMER:  Because I’m going to dig in more on Iran and the Middle East than other pieces.  But before I do, I want to beat on this, which is that, you know, I think some people were surprised that when Trump won, that Biden and President-elect Trump had a very civil sit-down discussion in the White House, despite what they had both said about each other over the previous months.  And more recently, you’ve had several very constructive meetings with the incoming National Security Advisor.  And frankly, my sense is that the alignment in how both of you see the world is a lot more similar on a bunch of policies than most people in the public would presume.  Is that a fair thing to say?
 
MR. SULLIVAN:  I think it’s fair at an elemental level of each of us being totally committed to the American national interest, each of us recognizing that we have real adversaries in the world, one of them being Iran, and we have friends and allies who we need to stand up and defend and back, one of them being Israel.  And so, that gives you a basis to work on.
 
Now, you know, I have been myself, President Biden has, the rest of our national security team has been subject to lots of criticism from President Trump’s team over the course of the past years.  We’ve criticized President Trump’s statements and record on foreign policy.  So it’s not like we see everything the same way.
 
But at this moment, on big-ticket items, when we need some degree of smoothness and continuity in the handoff from one administration to the next, I think both the outgoing and incoming administrations see the bigger picture.  And that’s really important. 
 
We will get back to the debates on hard issues and real disagreements, and there will be things that the next administration does that I won’t like.  I will tell you, I’ll be a lot less vocal about that probably.  Having sat in this seat for four years and listened to people criticize what we do, one thing I’ve realized is unless you’re sitting in this seat —
 
MR. BREMMER:  It’s hard.
 
MR. SULLIVAN:  — it’s hard. 
 
But for this moment, what we are trying to do on behalf of the national interest of the United States I think is extremely important, despite, you know, the deep differences that do exist in terms of the outgoing and incoming president and outgoing and incoming administration.
 
MR. BREMMER:  Now, I mean, the Iran story — which, of course, is America’s biggest adversary in the Middle East — I would argue we’ve managed — you’ve managed quite well over the last year.  I mean, there were many moments, at least a couple of moments, where people were very concerned that this could lead into a direct kinetic war between Iran and Israel that the Americans would have to get involved in.  And a lot of proactive diplomacy thus far has prevented that from happening.  Now, in part, that’s because Iran is in such an abysmal strategic position, and they’ve lost so much. 
 
If you’re Iran right now, how much are you trying to just do anything possible to stabilize relations with other countries around the world?  How much are you thinking, “Oh, my God, if I don’t, like, get nukes at some point, I’m in serious trouble”?  Is it all of the above?  I mean, what do you think their strategic calculus is?
 
MR. SULLIVAN:  Well, I think their strategic calculus has a couple of levels.  One level is: Can we turn to other significant countries in the world to provide us capabilities that right now have been badly weakened and degraded.  Take their air defenses, for example.  So, they look to the Russians, but the Russians have their hands full —
 
MR. BREMMER:  They’re busy.
 
MR. SULLIVAN:  — with Ukraine.  Can’t help.  Perhaps they look to Beijing.  But two years ago, you and I would have sat and talked about how China is on the come in the Middle East, they’re going to become a major player, they’re going to be a mover and shaker.  Where have they been in the last year?  Completely absent.
 
MR. BREMMER:  Almost radio silence.
 
MR. SULLIVAN:  So Iran, in this kind of alignment of autocracies — Iran, Russia, China, North Korea — which is a real factor that we have to look at — in practice, it’s not exactly a solution here to Iran’s problems.
 
So, then there’s this question: What about Iran’s nuclear program?  And here, you can look at the public statements of Iranian officials, which have changed in the last few months as they have been dealt these strategic blows, to raise the question: Do we have to change our doctrine at some point?
 
MR. BREMMER:  Members of Iranian parliament (inaudible).
 
MR. SULLIVAN:  And the fact that that’s coming out publicly is something that has to be looked at extremely carefully.  We have to consult closely with Israel on that, with our Gulf partners, with our European allies, and with others as we go forward.
 
And I will tell you that, you know, when I was answering your earlier question about how, you know, positive things happen and then bad things follow, an adversary that has suffered blows that weaken it is — you know, obviously presents — we could say that’s a good-news story.  But it also generates choices for that adversary that can be quite dangerous, and that’s something we have to remain extremely vigilant about as we go forward. 
 
And here again, this point of making sure that vigilance crosses that threshold of January 20th into the next administration is very important.  So we’ve been bringing the incoming administration into the intelligence picture, the consultations with allies and partners on this so that we’re all basically reading off the same song sheet.  They may choose a different course, a different strategy, but I want to make sure we are starting from a common base of what we are facing with respect to the threat posed by Iran’s nuclear program.
 
MR. BREMMER:  Now, on the war with Israel, at this point, you feel pretty confident that the Hezbollah ceasefire is going to stick, is going to become permanent?  Does that feel like it’s on the right trajectory?
 
MR. SULLIVAN:  I have learned the hard way not to use the word “confident” and “Middle East” in the same sentence.  (Laughter.)  So, I won’t quite go that far.  But I will say that there are incentives for this deal to stick.  There is also the fact that Israel has demonstrated that it is prepared to ensure that it is not going to tolerate violations.  The United States and France, as two outside players actively working to ensure the deal is enforced, we are making it known that we’re not going to let this be 2006 all over again.  I think the Lebanese people do not want to turn the clock back now.  They would like to see a better future for Lebanon.
 
So I think that the pieces are in place for this not to be temporary, for it to be durable.  But it is also subject to risk itself — risk of overreach by Hezbollah trying to rebuild its terrorist infrastructure, risk of potential spillovers from Syria that could complicate the picture. 
 
But in the main, I think we have got something in place that was a feat of Israeli military capacity and a feat of American diplomacy that can endure.
 
MR. BREMMER:  Now, Israel has been very engaged with the United States, and constructively, on Lebanon, Hezbollah; very engaged with the United States, and constructively, on Iran; very engaged with the United States, I would argue somewhat less constructively, on Gaza over the course of the last year.  Has been harder to get the Israeli government to align with a lot of what President Biden publicly has been saying. 
 
Talk a little bit, to the extent that you can, about challenges when a close ally, the most important ally of the United States in the region, is also creating that kind of tension for day-to-day management of foreign policy.
 
MR. SULLIVAN:  Well, first, just taking a step back, the challenge posed by an entrenched terrorist enemy with hundreds of miles of tunnels beneath a densely populated area, determined to keep fighting month after month, is a real challenge.
 
So we believe Israel has a responsibility — as a democracy, as a country committed to the basic principle of the value of innocent life, and as a member of the international community that has obligations under international humanitarian law — that it do the utmost to protect and minimize harm to civilians and that it do the utmost to facilitate humanitarian assistance so that people don’t starve or lack for water or medicine or sanitation.
 
And we believe too many civilians have died in Gaza over the course of this conflict.  And at too many moments, you know, we’ve felt we’ve had to step up privately and publicly and push on the humanitarian front to get more trucks, more aid, more lifesaving assistance in to the people of Gaza.
 
MR. BREMMER:  And you were doing a lot more privately on this front than people have seen publicly.
 
MR. SULLIVAN:  Look, I think there is not a conflict in the world, in modern history, where as many people in the U.S. government, up to and including the National Security Advisor, could count for you the daily number of trucks, the crossings, the road blocks, the obstacles, as in this case.  It is under the most intense microscope, understandably, because people are suffering and great harm has come to a lot of innocent people who are caught in a circumstance where Hamas is using schools and mosques and civilian infrastructure to hide and use to attack Israel and Israeli forces, but also where Israel has been constantly and persistently attacking across the entirety of the Gaza Strip.
 
So it’s understandable that the microscope is there, but it means that, every single day, I personally am getting a report on the humanitarian situation, I’m getting a list of the things that we need to ask of Israel to try to alleviate it.  And working that day in, day out, and never being satisfied — because at the end of the day, in a war zone like this, you always want to be pushing for more, and then publicly, we have to also speak to our values and say, yes, we want to see more humanitarian aid get into Gaza — there’s nothing inconsistent with that, in my view. 
 
And standing up strongly and resolutely for the security of the State of Israel and for Israel’s right, indeed its duty, to get after the terrorists who attacked it and caused the greatest massacre of the Jewish people since the Holocaust, and who say they want to do that again and again if given the opportunity, we should be absolutely resolute in our moral authority on that point while also being resolute in our moral authority that we can do that and also ensure that innocent people in Gaza have access to basic sustenance and lifesaving necessities.
 
MR. BREMMER:  Well, not only are those two things not in conflict, but I think you would argue that ensuring that humanitarian aid to a much greater degree is actually incumbent on ensuring Israeli security long term.
 
MR. SULLIVAN:  I agree with that.  I think — you know, one of the things that Israeli leaders are grappling with right now is how do you take tactical gains against Hamas, and they have been significant: smashed Hamas military formations; the elimination of the top leadership, including Yahya Sinwar; the decimation of their rocket capability.  Those tactical gains are real. 
 
How do you convert that into a long-term strategic endgame where Israel is secure on a durable basis and where Gaza emerges where Hamas is not in power?  And the best way to do that, in my judgment, is to have a political solution, a political track alongside the military track.  And that starts with the basic concept of essentially trying to make sure that the ordinary civilians of Gaza, the innocent people of Gaza are not being put in a position where things are so bad that they all become radicalized and you have nothing to work with going forward.
 
MR. BREMMER:  Which is kind of the direction of travel, right?
 
MR. SULLIVAN:  I think that there still remains an opportunity to build a better future, to drive towards what President Biden has called for since long before he was President: a Palestinian state living alongside a secure, democratic, and Jewish state, meeting all of the necessary conditions so that Israelis can be confident that they are secure.  And I think that is still a possibility, that we have not given up on that as a long-term goal, and we need to be taking steps towards that, and that begins with simple steps like dealing with this humanitarian situation.
 
MR. BREMMER:  But I will not ask you if you are confident that that can happen, as you know.  You’ve been through that already on the Middle East.
 
So one more bit on the Middle East before we move on — there’s a lot to cover — and that is Syria.
 
Now, here’s one where, I mean, I can see the incoming Trump administration causing you a bit of heartburn by, you know, publicly saying, “Hey, stay out of this, no matter what, militarily.  It’s up to Turkey to decide kind of what to do.  They’re critical.”  And meanwhile, we’ve got significant questions on the ground as to how to ensure that this new regime that’s taken over can ensure a level of stability and inclusion for everyone on the ground and not allow the Turks, not allow others to take advantage.  How can we manage this?
 
MR. SULLIVAN:  Well, first of all, we have to recognize that the minute Damascus fell, ISIS began to look for any opportunity it could take to reconstitute, grow, spread, and ultimately recreate a platform from which to threaten the United States and Americans around the world.
 
And so, within hours of Assad falling and HTS rolling into Damascus, the President ordered the U.S. military to take military action against ISIS personnel and ISIS facilities in the central Syrian Desert, the Badiya, and we’re going to have to continue to do that.
 
So, point one is we need the capacity to go after ISIS in the east, and that’s something that, you know, we have advised the incoming administration.
 
The second major issue is how to ensure that we are standing up for and standing with our best and closest partners in that ISIS fight.  That’s the Syrian Democratic Forces, Kurdish-led forces, but also with a lot of Arabs fighting alongside them.  We need to stand up for them and ensure that they are secure enough in their position that they can continue to be the good partners they’ve been, including with respect to the administration of these very large prisons and prison camps where you have thousands of ISIS fighters and tens of thousands of family members, wives and children of ISIS fighters, who, if they were all to get out, would represent a really quite considerable threat to the region and ultimately to the United States.
 
So we need to stand with the Kurds, and President Biden intends to do that.  We need to stand up against ISIS.  And we need to maintain our capacity in the region to be able to do these things effectively so that we don’t end up with a repeat of what happened in 2014, 2015, where ISIS came sweeping across eastern Syria and western Iraq, and we ultimately had to deploy a considerable amount of American force to beat them back. 
 
And that was a campaign that began under Obama that ultimately came to fruition under Trump — President Trump’s first term.  So, he has the experience of actually fighting ISIS in eastern Syria, in Raqqa, to ultimately rid the world of that caliphate that posed such a grave threat to Europe, the United States, and beyond.
 
MR. BREMMER:  But there is a real and extant risk right now that Syria could become not quite Afghanistan, but, I mean, a — not just a civil war, but could actually become a primary hotbed of radical Islamic terrorism. 
 
MR. SULLIVAN:  There is a real and extant risk of that, and I don’t think we should sugarcoat that fact.  But let’s keep in mind that it’s my job as National Security Advisor to frequently see the risk in a given situation.  I would be remiss if I didn’t say there isn’t also a real opportunity. 
 
Assad was a butcher, a brutally murderous dictator of his own people.  Assad, you could say — you know, you could kind of take the measure of that man by his friends — Iran, Russia, Hezbollah.  Him being gone is not a bad thing; we should shed no tears about that.  And it presents this opportunity for the Syrian people to actually build a better future, an inclusive future that is consistent with what I think not just all of the various communities of Syria want, but which these guys who’ve rolled into Damascus are actually saying.
 
Now, converting words to deeds is another matter.  It’s something we will be watching closely.  But Syria, to me, to understand it, you have to see both the real risk — and it’s as you described — and see the opportunity and try to push things in the direction of opportunity while minimizing the risk.
 
MR. BREMMER:  No, look, I’m asking not because I think HTS is automatically a problem to be dealt with.  I agree the opportunity.  I’m asking mostly because if the United States, in a short period of time, says, “Not my problem.  Vacuum.  Have at it,” what the potential implications of that are.
 
MR. SULLIVAN:  And I think you put that very well. The potential implications of us precipitously creating a vacuum are highly determined, highly experienced jihadists, starting with ISIS, will look to exploit that; take territory, particularly in eastern Syria; and as we have seen before, use that territory to plan, to inspire, to direct, and to enable attacks, including in the American homeland.
 
MR. BREMMER:  And in some ways, some of the biggest geopolitical challenges that have emerged over the course of the last decade has been a proliferation of vacuums, a proliferation of space where bad actors can act asymmetrically, some of them virtual, some of them physical and territorial, some of them sectoral.  But the implications of that being for stable democracies to pick it up or wither.
 
MR. SULLIVAN:  That’s right.  And also for us — I said earlier — I used this phrase about moving fast and moving decisively.  Part of that is about being prepared to engage early with the new players on the scene in Damascus, with HTS.
 
And Secretary Blinken, you know, let it be known a couple of days ago that we’ve actually begun to have direct engagement with HTS.  And we are — Secretary Blinken sat with all the Arab states, with Turkey, with France, a couple of days ago in Aqaba, Jordan, to try to get everybody on the same page.  Because the other lesson of the potential for vacuums to come in is that if you’ve got one group of strong countries on one side backing one group of folks, and you have another group of strong countries on another side backing a different group of folks, you’re more likely to have those vacuums emerge because the major responsible countries of a given region are not all pulling in the same direction.  We saw that in Libya in spades.  We can’t see that in Syria, which means trying to get everyone aligned around a common picture for how we go forward.  That is no easy task.
 
But if we end up with a proxy war in Syria, I think it is only going to exacerbate the risks you’ve just described, with the possible expansion of this vacuum.  And America being a part of that, being present, being engaged, not just with our physical presence but with our diplomatic initiative, is going to be vital over the coming months.
 
MR. BREMMER:  Okay, so let’s move on.  I spent — we spent a lot of time on the Middle East.  Not a surprise.
 
I want to move to China.  When you first became National Security Advisor, conventional wisdom on China is: huge powerhouse, going to become the largest economy in the world in relatively short order.  That is not what we are looking at today.  Their economy is in the worst shape since the ‘90s, maybe the ‘70s.  You and I have talked about a meaningful possibility that they’d never become the largest economy in the world.
 
So, clearly, it feels like they’re on the back foot. They’re not taking the kinds of decisions that would be required to get them out of this structural economic decline for now.
 
How different is it dealing with a China that feels like it’s playing defense than it is in Anchorage, in the first meeting, when we’ve got a much more robust, confident China saying we got the world in our hands?
 
MR. SULLIVAN:  You know, it’s interes- — it’s a good question, but I’m not sure that if you pushed the top echelon of leadership in China on the question, one, “is America in secular decline,” and two, “is China inexorably going to become the leading power in the world, economically, technologically, diplomatically and so forth,” they wouldn’t say yes and yes.
 
Still to this day, I think they’re totally wrong, and a bet against America is a very bad bet.  And the engines of American power are humming right now.  And I think the trajectory of China, this inexorable juggernaut, the objective evidence does not point in that direction. 
 
But I don’t think it has actually fundamentally yet shifted entirely their mindset of statecraft about the world.  What it has done —

MR. BREMMER:  The timeframes have certainly shifted.
 
MR. SULLIVAN:  The timeframes have shifted, but the basic logic of “the East is rising, the West is declining” I think remains present to this day.
 
MR. BREMMER:  So it’s a tactical move.
 
MR. SULLIVAN:  And so — exactly. 
 
So I think what we’re seeing instead is just we have storms, we have to weather them, we need to manage this, but fundamentally, the long-term strategic outlook I do not perceive has altered in a significant way.  And I believe that, basically, that means that U.S. policy should not move dramatically because of these developments with respect to the Chinese economy. 
 
And it has to be built on two basic premises.  One is what I just said, which is China does seek to become the world’s leading power.  I do not believe that is in the interest of the United States.  And the second is: No matter what the trajectory, the United States and China are going to have to learn to live alongside one another as major powers in the world for the foreseeable future.  And we need terms upon which we can do that, even as we compete vigorously in all of these different domains.
 
That has been the basic thrust of the diplomacy that we have engaged in.  It has been to create a effective management of a highly competitive relationship without for an instant taking away from the actions that we need to take to protect our technology, to enhance our deterrence, to deepen the strength of our economy, and to support our friends.
 
And so, we’ve tried to do both of those at once.  And I think we are handing off a relationship with China where America is in a very strong, competitive position, but also where we have the ability to engage diplomatically with China in ways that help ensure the competition does not veer into conflict.  That is not an easy feat.  It is not a task that is ever complete.  That is going to have to be an ongoing aspect of U.S.-China relations into the future.
 
But the hand that we were dealt was one thing; the hand that we are passing off when it comes to U.S.-China, I believe we have significantly enhanced America’s position.
 
MR. BREMMER:  Look, I mean, I think it’s pretty clear.  One, you’ve got general bipartisan agreement on what a U.S.-China relationship should look like, which is not true of a lot of areas of foreign policy.  And two, the relationship has been stabilized, even potentially strengthened, without the Americans giving up any fundamental equities.  So, I mean, those two things definitely help.
 
But I want to press a little bit on the tactical shift, because I accept that China still thinks long term, you know, the world is their oyster.  But, I mean, clearly, the last year has gone a lot worse for them than they expected.  Zero-COVID went a lot worse for them than they expected.  We see from Chinese leadership now them talking about concerns, even on social instability and dissent, that this can’t be tolerated.
 
So it’s clearly getting up to the top leadership, and they’re saying, “What are you guys doing?”  We see, like, all of these ministers of defense, minister of for- — other — U.S. ambassador, right, getting done up for corruption.  So it’s not been the best few years.  It’s been a rough ride for them. 
 
And you have spent — I’m not sure if the audience here knows — but you have spent an extraordinary amount of personal time with Wang Yi over the months, right, since the APEC Summit. 
 
Talk about, tactically, how you have perceived a shift in China’s negotiating stance, position; how engaging they’re willing to be; how, if at all, they’re seeing the United States right now. 
 
And I’m specifically asking this as we all are thinking about 60 percent tariffs coming from Trump, thinking about a much more potentially assertive out-of-the-box position that China — that they’re going to be facing.
 
MR. SULLIVAN:  So, you know, I think one feature of my conversations with Wang Yi — and we tend to get together every few months for two days, and have somewhere between 12 and 15 hours of conversation — but we don’t cover every issue under the sun in the U.S.-China relationship.  We focus on a few key subjects.
 
And what makes that conversation different in 2024 than it was in 2022 is that it is much more about each of us kind of asking questions of the other — what our limits are, what our boundaries are, where are we taking things, what’s this all about.  There’s a much more inquisitive dynamic to the dialogue than there used to be.
 
And I’ll give you an example.  We’ve taken a series of measures to protect American advanced technology so that it can’t be used by the Chinese military to threaten us or our allies, including advanced semiconductors and semiconductor manufacturing equipment.  Obviously, the PRC did not like this.
 
MR. BREMMER:  And we’ve done that with allies.
 
MR. SULLIVAN:  And we’ve done it with key allies who —
 
MR. BREMMER:  The Netherlands, Japan, South Korea.
 
MR. SULLIVAN:  — are part of that semiconductor ecosystem so that, collectively, we can ensure that Western technology, built on an American backbone, doesn’t end up being used by the PRC.
 
MR. BREMMER:  Which they really don’t like.
 
MR. SULLIVAN:  They don’t like it.
 
So it used to be that it would just be what, in diplomatic terms, is called a demarche, but, you know, which in layman’s terms is just like basically a screed against, you know, “You have done these terrible, evil things.  You are very bad.”  And that would be the nature of the conversation. 
 
Now the conversation is them asking us or us asking them, “What do you see as being the boundary between economics, on the one hand, and national security on the other?  Define that for me.  How do you think about it?”
 
And I’m not naïve enough to think that this is just some Socratic seminar.  You know, they’ve got a purpose behind it.  So do I.  But it creates the opportunity to have a strategic conversation to try to clarify intentions, to try to look for opportunities where we can come to better understanding. 
 
And frequently it’s going to lead, at the end, to deep disagreement.  They strongly disagree with what we are doing, just as when we talk about the relationship between Russia and China, or their support for Russia’s defense industrial base in the war in Ukraine, I’m pushing them with a series of questions, and at the end, I’m not satisfied with all the answers, which is why we take certain actions that include PRC entities.
 
But that, to me, the aspect of the relationship that has evolved is the ability for the two of us to engage in a dialogue that is less about the exchange of demarches and more about trying to feel one another out what we’re up to and, you know, what the actual right and left limits are of the kinds of actions each of us are taking. 
 
Then there’s one other aspect of the relationship that has evolved over time, which is: We had a big debate early on between us, which is, our view was: You can compete and you can also work together in areas of mutual interest.  The PRC’s view was: If you are intent on competition, then why should we cooperate with you?
 
I think we have evolved that to a point where we both see managed competition as involving elements of relentless and intense competition, on the one hand, but also areas where we can, in fact, work together where our interests align and where, frankly, we have to work together. 
 
Just one very simple example.  For the first time in decades, President Biden and President Xi actually put out a statement about nuclear risk reduction.  It was a very simple statement.  It said that humans, not artificial intelligence, should be —
 
MR. BREMMER:  Have a hand on the switch at all times.
 
MR. SULLIVAN:  — what determines —
 
MR. BREMMER:  Absolutely.
 
MR. SULLIVAN:  — use of nuclear weapons.
 
MR. BREMMER:  And that was just a few months ago.
 
MR. SULLIVAN:  That should be apparent to everyone.  That took months, maybe years, to negotiate.
 
But we are there.  We are finally there.  Even at the same time that they’re placing export controls on certain critical minerals, we’re updating our export controls on semiconductors. 
 
All of this is happening at once because there is a recognition that managed competition requires being able to have some areas where we can work together and see if you can expand those areas, even as you’re competing vigorously in technology, in economics, in the military domain, and in others.
 
MR. BREMMER:  Well, and part of that is just understanding and being able to articulate that the intention of U.S. strategy in the long term is not regime change in China.  It’s a recognition that we’re going to be living together in some way.
 
MR. SULLIVAN:  Well, it’s interesting because there is a school of thought that is fairly prominent in Washington that says, in fact, the position that we, the Biden administration, have taken — which is we would like to put ourselves in the best possible position to compete effectively on behalf of ourselves and our allies, that we will take actions to do that, but we also are going to have to live alongside China as a major power — that that second part is wrong; that, in fact, we should be driving towards a defeat or capitulation.
 
And, you know, there was an op-ed written by Mike Gallagher, a person I respect enormously —
 
MR. BREMMER:  Smart guy.
 
MR. SULLIVAN:  — but disagree with him on this particular point —
 
MR. BREMMER:  On that issue.  Absolutely.
 
MR. SULLIVAN:  — precisely making this argument.
 
So I do think there will be a debate in the years ahead in Washington between those who say we’re going to compete and we’re going to be clear-eyed and relentless in the competition, and those who say but that there’s got — there’s not an end state, it’s a steady state of competition, and those who say, “No, no, no, you’ve got to bring down the CCP.”
 
MR. BREMMER:  But I want to be clear what I’m saying.  I believe the reason that there has been movement between the U.S. and China in recognizing that we can do managed competition and also have cooperation is because the perspective of the United States government today is that the U.S. is not trying to ultimately engage in regime change in China.  And if that were to change, I suspect the Chinese position on this would be quite different.
 
MR. SULLIVAN:  Right.  Action would cause reaction in a quite dramatic way, and I think you would have considerable destabilization.
 
MR. BREMMER:  So I want to ask you an intellectually challenging question around this.  Given that the Chinese are now willing to engage with you and vice versa, in not just demarches, what have you learned from China that you didn’t know before, a year ago?
 
MR. SULLIVAN:  Oh, man.  That’s a hard question.  It’s like — it’s sort of like being asked what’s your biggest weakness.  And you say, “I try too hard,” you know, kind of thing.
 
MR. BREMMER:  Yeah, don’t do that, because — (laughter) —
 
MR. SULLIVAN:  (Laughs.)  What have I learned from China?
 
MR. BREMMER:  That’s why I warned you it was going to be intellectually challenging.  I wanted to give you a second, you know?  Because (inaudible) live, so we can take out all of the hum and —
 
MR. SULLIVAN:  I mean, at some level I’ve learned a lot — just, you are going to learn a lot talking to someone on issues of substance for 15 hours — about their perspective, their calculus, their logic, their strategy, and including kind of what they say and what’s behind what they say.
 
But in terms of, like, larger lessons, it’s a good question.  I’d have to think about it, and I worry that any answer I give you today is just going to get me in trouble.  (Laughter.)  So, I’ll —
 
MR. BREMMER:  Well, and you only got a few weeks to get in trouble.  So from that perspective — (laughter) —
 
MR. SULLIVAN:  Yeah, come back to me on January 21st.  I’ll give you a full laydown.
 
MR. BREMMER:  Well, I’ll ask you over dinner.  It makes it easier.
 
So, okay.  How about big picture, China and macro-geopolitics, which is — actually, another difficult question.  I remember when the Secretary of State put out a recent piece in Foreign Affairs talking about kind of an axis of Russia, North Korea, Iran, and China.  NATO Allies have also talked about that a fair bit.  My perspective is three of those countries would be very happy with different government.  Three of those countries, we don’t feel the need that we have to live side by side with them long term.  One of them, we do, as we just discussed.
 
I’m wondering to what extent you believe that some of the areas that we can work with China, should work with China in the long term, have to do with stabilization of the global environment.  I mean, they’re the largest creditor to the Global South.  The United States is also really interested in the Global South not falling apart.  Very different than Russia’s perspective with the former Wagner Group in the Sahel, for example, right?
 
At the end of the day, as you said, the Chinese aren’t doing very much in the Middle East, but in principle, the Chinese want stability in the Middle East, because they get a lot of energy from the Middle East; they want to invest in and through the Middle East.
 
Russia invading Ukraine was supposed to be over in a couple weeks, from China’s perspective.  Now it’s screwed up their relations with the Europeans.  That’s a problem for them.
 
So how much can, how much should the United States be trying to treat China as a country that should want to have a more stable environment geopolitically?
 
MR. SULLIVAN:  Well, what I say to my Chinese interlocutors is that part of their public messaging, and in their private messaging to us, is we don’t want a new Cold War and we don’t like what they call bloc confrontation.  This is their asserted position.
 
And so, the point I make to them is: Putin does want a new Cold War, does want bloc confrontation, and North Korea is happy to go along with that, as to your point, probably as Iran.  I think Iran has, you know, kind of got just a different agenda that’s more regionally focused, but nonetheless sort of along that line.
 
MR. BREMMER:  They’re also in a lot more trouble.
 
MR. SULLIVAN:  Yeah, exactly.
 
China has a choice to make.  China has a choice to make.  And it can either continue to tighten those links militarily, diplomatically, and otherwise, and end up in a circumstance where it is really part of an axis, or it could do what I think is much more natural from the point of view of China’s perspective, interest, and opportunity, which is to be a huge competitor to the United States; let’s make no bones about that.  And we are going to compete vigorously for shaping the future.  And I believe that if we fall well behind in that competition, it will be to our tremendous detriment. 
 
But on climate, on macroeconomic stability, on questions related to ensuring that the risks associated with things like artificial intelligence do not spin out of control, even on issues like the Iranian nuclear program, we ought to be able to find a way where our interests and China’s interests sufficiently align, that having a constructive agenda to go alongside the intense competition serves the American people and serves the people of the world, for that matter.
 
But that comes — a lot of — you know, most of the time, people ask that series of questions from the point of view of, “What are you going to do, America, to help make that happen?  How are you going to be nicer to China so that China, you know, is willing to do these things?” 
 
And I think we’ve reached a point in this relationship where, really, actually, it’s China’s choice to make more than it is ours.  They have to decide is Xi going to, you know — going to make the Xi-Putin kind of personal relationship the dominant issue, or is the PRC going to think of itself as a distinct kind of actor that is not part of this axis.
 
I personally don’t think they fully made that decision one way or the other.
 
MR. BREMMER:  Which is a good reason to press them on it.
 
MR. SULLIVAN:  Exactly.  The risk is really there that they will go down a darker path.  I think it’s our job to engage in statecraft and diplomacy, backed by the types of competitive actions we’ve taken and backed by strong allies who are all aligned around a common vision to try to get them to make the right choice that would serve our interests better for them to tack differently from the way these other countries are tacked.
 
MR. BREMMER:  So is it fair to say that labeling them part of an axis with Russia, North Korea, and Iran is not necessarily the most helpful way to accomplish that?
 
MR. SULLIVAN:  Well, that’s an interesting question.
 
What I would say — I would just put it differently myself.  I would say that there is greater alignment today, including China, among these countries, and we’re seeing it in ways that are quite worrying.  But it is not preordained that China ends up foursquare in this axis.  And we can do things to shape the environment, and China then has choices to make.  And I think the world should put the onus on China to make the right choice.
 
MR. BREMMER:  See, this is why he’s National Security Advisor.  That was a tough question to answer, definitely.
 
Okay, so to pivot to Russia, but use the China thing — I wasn’t planning on pulling out a Trump tweet, but I’m going to for the hell of it, which is — you know, he came out the other day talking about Ukraine, and at the end threw in this “and China can help.”  I was a little surprised by that.  Were you a little surprised by that?
 
MR. SULLIVAN:  Yes.  That stood out to me.
 
MR. BREMMER:  Why?
 
MR. SULLIVAN:  Because it’s something I’ve grappled with, actually, personally — is, you know, having had long conversations, not just with China but with Europeans and with the Ukrainians, about what kind of role could China play in all of this.  And, you know, the Ukrainians have made no secret about the fact that they want to engage and talk to China about, you know, how we get, ultimately, to a just peace in Ukraine.  And, you know, Ukraine has been concerned about some of the initiatives that China has put forward, but has wanted to really engage them.  They have a relationship with Russia. 
 
And so, you know, the idea that China could in some way be a part of the conversation about generating a just peace in Ukraine is not — that’s not a crazy idea.  Now, on the other hand, you don’t want China dictating terms in Ukraine, and you don’t want them becoming the dominant broker in the European theater. 
 
So it’s a question of figuring out what is the appropriate way for them to be engaged as a permanent member of the Security Council, as a significant player on the world stage, and as one of the few countries that Russia would have to listen to if China really spoke up. 
 
I think that President Trump putting that on the table is logical, because I’ve kind of worked through the same thought in my own head.
 
MR. BREMMER:  Yeah, and because, look, we hadn’t been in a position where we were talking about imminent negotiations; we now appear to be moving in that direction.
 
If you were national security advisor in that environment, and talking to Wang Yi, my expectation is that would end up being one of the major topics that you would discuss.
 
MR. SULLIVAN:  Well, it would be to say, you know, what is the shape of the table going to be, who’s going to be at it.  Obviously, Ukraine and Russia have to be there, but who else. And what could China bring to that in the way we ask that question about what China has brought to the P5+1 negotiations on Iran —
 
MR. BREMMER:  With the JCPOA —
 
MR. SULLIVAN:  — or anything else.  Yeah, that would be a question.
 
Now, I don’t know exactly what the answer would be.  I see pitfalls in all of that, but I think it’s an interesting thing that needs to be explored as we go forward.
 
MR. BREMMER:  So let’s move to Russia before I take a couple questions from the audience, and maybe a little technology, because we haven’t discussed that really.
 
On the Russia front: Clearly, I mean, we’ve had three years where the Ukrainians weren’t much interested in talking about negotiations; now they appear to be much more.  Some of that is Trump.  Some of that is the situation on the ground becoming more challenging for them.  Where do you think an eventual — what does the shape of a settlement look like, in your view?
 
MR. SULLIVAN:  I’m going to disappoint you with my answer to this, because I’ve given the same answer for three years, which is, at the end of the day —
 
MR. BREMMER:  It’s up to the Ukrainians.
 
MR. SULLIVAN:  It’s up to the Ukrainians.
 
MR. BREMMER:  I knew you were going to say that.  Yeah, I know.  But the Ukrainian position is changing, right?  By definition.  I mean, they’re now saying maybe they need to give up land.  They didn’t say that before.  I mean, NATO looks like it’s getting kicked down the road more and more.  Trump probably wouldn’t accept it.
 
I mean, if you’re Trump, is it useful for you to be leaning into Ukraine just to get more space to say that we can get a negotiation?  Is that a good way to start it?
 
MR. SULLIVAN:  Well, I think one of the most critical things that the United States — the current administration, the next administration — need to show is a willingness to stand behind Ukraine and ensure that they have what they need to defend themselves, because that is going to be the leverage necessary to get a good outcome at the table.
 
So I would like to see a continuation of the basic proposition that the United States will continue to provide Ukraine with the defensive capacity, the military capacity necessary to withstand the Russian onslaught, to pressure Russia militarily as we pressure them economically so that Ukraine is in the best possible position on the battlefield, which will put them in a better position at the negotiating table.
 
I think just coming out and saying we’re going to do a deal, without that extra piece, is not going to put Ukraine in the best position at the negotiating table.
 
MR. BREMMER:  Is it fair to say that the United States was counting more on economic sanctions early on than they should have, and less on military support for Ukraine than they should have?  And those positions have balanced out?
 
MR. SULLIVAN:  I think it is fair to say that the predictions about the impact of the sanctions on the Russian economy have not borne out, certainly not on the timeline that was anticipated back in 2022.
 
I think it’s equally fair to say that Russia’s economy is in real trouble right now, and that trouble is going to mount in 2025. 
 
MR. BREMMER:  How will it manifest?
 
MR. SULLIVAN:  So, first, you have significant and growing inflation.  You have interest rates above 20 percent, which is putting a huge dent in the ability to invest.  You have Russia having to stretch further and further to recruit soldiers, paying more and more to do so, expending more and more of its budget, spending down its sovereign wealth fund so that it’s depleting its cash reserves.
 
And all of that has a compounding effect over time.  And when you add that to the fact that the casualty rates among Russians are just eye popping, and even more so in the last couple of months, I believe that these costs over time are going to grow.
 
Now, could I pick a month where they all come together to put real pressure on the Russians to come to the table?  I couldn’t.  But I think the conventional wisdom from a few months ago, which is Russia has got it made in the shade economically, they’re going to be okay, they can do this indefinitely — I don’t think the economic signals we’re seeing right now bear that out.
 
And I would make one more point that I think is really important for people to take into account.  We tend, I think, as democracies, to think, “Oh, we’re not doing so great, and those dictators are so strategic and they’re doing so well.”  If I had told you three years ago that Joe Biden was going to announce a special military operation to take Ottawa in a week, and three years later, he was in the wheat fields of Manitoba losing thousands of soldiers a month, with inflation over 10 percent and interest rates in America over 20 percent, 600,000 Americans either dead or wounded, and we’re inching out little Canadian town by little Canadian town —
 
MR. BREMMER:  Because this is the Trump plan, by the way.  I don’t know if you know this.  (Laughter.)
 
MR. SULLIVAN:  (Laughs.)  Yeah.  
 
I mean, you would have said — you wouldn’t sit here saying, “Wow, America is really winning that war in a big way.  That’s great for America.”  You would never say that.  But somehow we’re saying, “Oh, the Russians, they’re doing great.”  They are not doing great.  They set out on a strategic objective of taking the capital Kyiv; wiping Ukraine, as we know it, off the map — maybe not literally wiping the country off the map but —
 
MR. BREMMER:  The regime.
 
MR. SULLIVAN:  — (inaudible) democratic, independent —
 
MR. BREMMER:  Taking the regime out.
 
MR. SULLIVAN:  — Western-oriented Ukraine, gone.  It would be a vassal state to Russia.  And they have failed in that, and they will fail in that.
 
They are now fighting and imposing huge costs, and I don’t want to discount those costs.  But let’s not forget that Kyiv stands, Ukraine stands.  Ukraine will stand at the end of this.  And the thing we can most do is create circumstances for a negotiation where they have some strength and capacity behind them and it is not imposed upon them.  And that’s what I would like to see in the months ahead.
 
And, frankly, I believe that whether it was President Trump, which it will be, or it were President Harris, had she won, this turn to negotiations is something that Zelenskyy was looking to do.
 
MR. BREMMER:  It was necessary.  Yeah.
 
MR. SULLIVAN:  Now we have an opportunity, but that opportunity should rest on the proposition that Ukraine is in the driver’s seat and is not going to have an outcome imposed
upon them.
 
MR. BREMMER:  And NATO is stronger, and people are spending more money and more committed to it, and there are two additional members.  And, I mean, you know, Assad just fell. 
 
I mean, there are a lot of ways that any one objective can say the Russians are not winning.  I think there are lots of ways objectively to say the Ukrainians are not winning too, to be fair.
 
MR. SULLIVAN:  That is fair, and it’s important actually to pause on that point for a moment, because my account really kind of only speaks to one side of it. 
 
I mean, what has been visited upon the Ukrainians, on the brave soldiers on the front lines, on people — innocent people in towns and cities having missiles and bombs rained down on them; on Putin attempting to plunge the country into cold and darkness in the heart of winter and so much else — I mean, I’m not trying to be cavalier about any of that.  That is real.
 
Now, at the same time that that is happening, the Ukrainian people want to make sure that they are not just stopping the war for the sake of it.  They want a just peace, and we should support them in wanting a just peace.
 
MR. BREMMER:  I’m glad you said that.  Not that I’m surprised by it, but it’s useful to mention.
 
Okay, we’ve got questions here, and fortunately, there are also a couple aligned with technology.  And you and I talk about technology a lot.  The technology space is moving a lot faster than the national security government space.  AI is an area that previous administrations haven’t had to deal with.  You have.
 
Tell me — on the one hand, the United States has a strong geopolitical position with so many of the world-changing companies based in the U.S.  On the other, increasingly, this is a group of people, a group of companies that aren’t necessarily fully aligned with U.S. national security interests.  Tell me where you see those tensions and what you’re most concerned about for the next couple of years.
 
MR. SULLIVAN:  Well, first, I think the big American technology companies have done a quite remarkable job in driving innovation forward in artificial intelligence.  You see it with Google, you see it with Microsoft, you see it with Meta.  Like, having major American technology companies with capital to deploy and ambition to deploy has pushed the edge of artificial intelligence in ways that have given the United States a competitive edge and a real lead.  That is a national asset.  It is.
 
Now, on the other hand, America’s technological edge has always rested on not just having big tech companies, on having startups and a very competitive, very mixed ecosystem.  And so, one of the risk factors I see is making sure that we are continuing to nurture and ensure that these companies can come forward, the little guys, to produce new innovations and new technological solutions.  So, that’s one issue.
 
Second issue is that we need to, on the one hand, balance between ensuring that the most advanced AI at the frontier continues to be generated, produced, so to speak, in the United States so that we’re not outsourcing it to other countries and we’re not trading one form of dependence for another, but on the other hand, we’re allowing this technology to be diffused globally so that America maintains its technological leadership elsewhere.  How you strike that balance, I think, is extremely challenging.  It’s something we’re focused on right now and the next administration is going to have to focus on as well.
 
MR. BREMMER:  I got a question on TikTok as a risk.  Do you think that it is a security risk to the United States?
 
MR. SULLIVAN:  Our intelligence professionals, our national security professionals — not the politicians, the professionals — have looked at this and have seen the national security risks.  That’s why you have this legislation from the Congress for divestment. 
 
And I will be — not say much more than that, because there’s a whole legal process associated with it that I shouldn’t speak to, but there are both data risks and algorithm risks associated with TikTok under current ownership, and that has been laid out not by me, sitting here, but by the intelligence community and those who sit and kind of look at and try to size up these risks.  And it has led to a circumstance in which we have this impending deadline.
 
MR. BREMMER:  When you look at the principal actors in artificial intelligence in the United States, how much do you think of them as geopolitical actors that have degrees of real independence from what the U.S. government might or might not want?
 
MR. SULLIVAN:  I think of them as geopolitical actors in that they have a big impact on geopolitics.  I’m less convinced that the leadership of these companies sit around and think, “I’m going to shape the world with my image, or I want to play as a geopolitical actor alongside a nation-state.”
 
So I think of it more as the result of their existence than as the object of their existence.  But we have to take that — seriously, that is part of the firmament in geopolitics now.  And we have to consider the fact that, yes, as you said, these are American companies, but they’re not like Chinese state-owned enterprises.  They have their own incentives.  They have their own strategies and objectives.  And much of that is very much aligned with the values and the direction that the United States wants to go.  But they are independent actors, and we have to take that into account.
 
MR. BREMMER:  I remember talking a couple of years ago with you about the fact that you said, like, one of the biggest frustrations is it’s hard to have a trade policy.  And there are a lot of political constraints around that. 
 
It’s easier to have an industrial policy.  Do you think that the industrial policy the U.S. government has right now in the tech space is adequate, is up to speed for what it needs to be geopolitically?  And if it isn’t, what else needs to happen?
 
MR. SULLIVAN:  I think that we’ve taken great strides forward with respect to investment in the basic research and the innovation base of the United States, with respect to semiconductor manufacturing, clean energy manufacturing; the infrastructure that will get built out that can help propel economic and technological growth in all dimensions; steps we’ve taken on biotechnology and biomanufacturing. 
 
I’m extremely proud of the legacy we leave over the last four years.  And that’s not just a domestic economic story; that is a national security story.  It’s something that I personally have cared passionately about as National Security Advisor.
 
If I had to pick one thing that makes me nervous, it is the need for us to deploy clean energy really rapidly, to have sufficient clean energy to power the compute necessary to continue to stay at the cutting edge of artificial intelligence.  And that is going to require us to take steps to break down barriers, remove obstacles.  And we’re trying to figure out if there’s anything we can do just in our remaining time to be able to make that happen.  But it is also something that we will be communicating very vigorously to the next administration too.
 
We have got to be able to increase overall clean energy output so that we are increasing our overall capacity at a basic level of compute so that we maintain the lead in AI and in other technological areas.
 
MR. BREMMER:  Closer relationship with Canada, if and when they have a government, might be part of that.
 
MR. SULLIVAN:  Yes.  Not invading them, I guess, would probably help.
 
MR. BREMMER:  Yeah, yeah.  That’s probably right.  Well, if he’s already the 51st governor, you know, for now, it’s already taken care of.
 
So here’s an interesting question that I bet a lot of people are thinking about: Why did President Biden’s foreign policy for the middle class never gain traction with the broad American public?
 
MR. SULLIVAN:  It’s a good question.  I mean, first of all, I think that foreign policy in general tends to be more difficult to penetrate, unless it’s at a quite elemental level — the United States is directly at war, or you have a dramatic event like Russia’s invasion of Ukraine.
 
I think the way that I would answer that question is to say I think the tagline never penetrated, but I would posit to you that, over time, if many of the things that he did — the technology protections, the industrial policy, the supply chain diversification and resilience, the friend-shoring and building out of allied ecosystems — these are things that don’t happen in a year or two years; they happen over a decade or a generation.
 
And I would posit that we have now planted the seeds that will be harvested in the future in ways where people say, “I like that.  That is working for me.”  I feel like we have an industrial and innovation base here that can generate good jobs and economic growth.  I feel like we’ve got supply chains that are not going to get cracked because of a pandemic or because of China.  I feel like our technology is not being used against us in ways I don’t like. 
 
These are all things that I regard as part of foreign policy for the middle class, that if you’re sitting in 2023, 2024 in the U.S., you’re at the very early stage of that.  But we carry that forward over a generation, and I think you can build a new consensus around that.  People would say that is the kind of approach that I would like to see, not just as a matter of domestic policy, but as a matter of international economic policy. 
 
And frankly, one group of people who looked at what we have done in this regard and said “Hey, we should be doing that too” are all of our allies.  The Japanese the Koreans, the Europeans have all said, “We’ve got to do that.”  Draghi just put out a big report, basically describing —
 
MR. BREMMER:  Competitiveness report.
 
MR. SULLIVAN:  — this sort of theory.
 
MR. BREMMER:  Absolutely.
 
MR. SULLIVAN:  So —
 
MR. BREMMER:  It’s great in theory.  Yeah.
 
MR. SULLIVAN:  I think it will take longer for that to fully penetrate, but I think — I have conviction that if we stick with it as a country, I believe it will penetrate.
 
MR. BREMMER:  Interestingly, I mean, not only do allies recognize that this is a strategy they need to do more of, but, I mean, I would argue that this is an area of foreign policy that the Biden administration, the incoming Trump administration actually do have a lot of overlap on.  This is a place that I wouldn’t expect to see a great deal of difference.
 
MR. SULLIVAN:  I think that’s right.  I mean, it’s hard to know exactly, because there are a lot of different voices, and it’s possible to take the basic core of this strategy in an extremely aggressive direction, like the 60 percent tariffs you were talking about earlier.
 
MR. BREMMER:  Or 25 on Mexico.  Yeah, sure.
 
MR. SULLIVAN:  So, for me, that the essential insights I think are fairly common.  The manifestation or the implementation of those insights could look radically different and we’ll have to wait and see what actually happens.
 
MR. BREMMER:  Okay, before we close then, let me give you a completely random one.
 
South Korea.  What the hell, Jake?  (Laughter.) I mean, you know, good ally, solid ally.  We got the Japan-South Korea relationship stable and everything.  And then he just kind of completely lost the plot, in very short order.  Did you see that coming?
 
MR. SULLIVAN:  I cannot say that I saw the declaration of martial law, you know, on a night come and then have it reversed 24 hours later and everything.  No.
 
MR. BREMMER:  It was like six hours.
 
MR. SULLIVAN:  Did not see that coming.
 
But we had January 6th.
 
MR. BREMMER:  Yeah.
 
MR. SULLIVAN:  So, I think it’s important for us to recognize that dramatic events happen even in highly advanced, consolidated democracies.  And the real test is, can the democratic institutions hold at the end of the day, even if they bend. 
 
And if you look at those dramatic moments in South Korea, with protesters pushing aside the guns of the troops that were deployed to block the National Assembly so that the assembly couldn’t go in to repudiate the declaration of martial law; if you look at the fact that, actually, now the processes are working, they’re going through their paces — it was quite a moment and something that I think we’re not entirely out of the woods on because there’s still more, you know, chapters in this play until everything has worked through the courts and so forth.  But the institutions in South Korea are holding.
 
It’s a good reminder, though, that surprising things happen.  You know, if you had asked a lot of people around the world was January 6th going to happen, they would have said, “No, I was very surprised by that.”  We’re going to have more of these surprises in the future. 
 
I mean, one thing that we have to keep in mind is we are in a new era.  It is — the post-Cold War era is over.  There’s a competition underway for what comes next.  It is challenging.  It is at times turbulent.  And from my perspective, what the United States has to do is try to strengthen its fundamental hand so it can deal with whatever comes next, and there will be surprises.
 
So as National Security Advisor, what I ask myself is: Are our alliances stronger than when we found them?  And I think the answer is yes.  Are our adversaries and competitors weaker than when we found them?  And I would say yes.  Have we kept the country out of war?  Have we kept the homeland safe?  Have we protected our technology for being used against us?  And do we have the instruments of American power — our economy, our technological engine, our infrastructure, our defense industrial base — in a better position?  Yes.
 
So we should have confidence that we can deal with this challenging and turbulent world.  But it’s tough.  It is tough out there.  And it’s not just in places like the Middle East.  It can happen in the ROK.  It can happen in the United States of America.
 
The real key is do you have the basic elements of American power and capacity in a place where we can deal with our geopolitical competitors and also deal with the great trends of our time — the clean energy transition, AI, and so forth — and can you pass off a better hand than the hand that you were dealt despite all of the things happening in the world. 
 
That’s how we have to keep our eye on the prize.  And I think the United States should look at what we’ve got going for us and say, “Man, you know, it’s challenging out there, but yes, we are in a position to do very well for ourselves, for our friends, for our people, if we keep our wits about us.” 
 
And that’s what I would like, at the end of the day, the conclusion of my time in this seat — I guess, literally this seat, but also the National Security Advisor seat — that’s really what I walk away from.
 
And then, coming back to your question about China, maybe that’s part of an answer.  I think this is how they —
 
MR. BREMMER:  I knew you were going to get their eventually.
 
MR. SULLIVAN:  You know?  But honestly, as part of listening to Wang Yi, they tend to look at success, so to speak, in geopolitics and foreign policy as not about doctrine or about, sort of, a narrative.  They look at it on the basis of assets and liabilities: You know, do we have strong friends and less strong enemies?  Are we entangled in war?  Is our homeland under attack from terrorists or others?  You know, where do we stand on technology, on the economy, on supply chains, and so forth?
 
That is something I think that the PRC, over 30 years, what helped them move so rapidly is they had that kind of mindset.  I think in a challenging and turbulent world, the United States needs to be thinking about that as well, not just in the chess board of geopolitics, but in terms of us being up for the big challenges of the moment.
 
MR. BREMMER:  And in the strategic ledger.
 
MR. SULLIVAN:  Yeah.
 
MR. BREMMER:  Long term, who are the people that the Americans feel like we can count on around the world.  And there, the Chinese, if they took an honest-to-God strategic look, shouldn’t be thinking the United States is in decline.
 
MR. SULLIVAN:  Exactly.  And also should be saying, “Wow, I’d much rather have what the U.S. has, these powerful, capable democracies, even if they have weird moments like the martial law declaration, as opposed to when China looks around at who its really core group of friends are or could be.
 
So, yeah, we got — we have a lot going for us, without for a moment trying to whistle past huge — a huge plastic moment of turbulence and transition that’s going to be with us for quite some time.  We’ve just got to be prepared to say we have what it takes, alongside our friends, to navigate this moment in a way that will serve our people well.
 
MR. BREMMER:  Ladies and gentlemen, please join me in thanking National Security Advisor Jake Sullivan.  (Applause.)

The post Remarks by APNSA Jake Sullivan in a Conversation with Ian Bremmer on the State of National Security appeared first on The White House.

New York, New York

MR. BREMMER:  So, I mean, for a lot of us here, this is the coolest thing going on in New York City right now.  There’s a lot of self-selection in this crowd.  (Applause.)  So, a very warm welcome to my friend, Jake Sullivan. 
 
And also, just to say, we’re going to run this for, like, you know, 45 minutes, an hour, and then we’ll get some questions from the audience, which will be fun.  They’ll come in on cards, so please fill them out, make them interesting and hard and engaging, because we both like that.
 
And also, this is being livestreamed, and I don’t know if they have any capacity to send us questions, and I suspect we’ll ignore those.  But nonetheless, we’re delighted that there are people that are joining us.
 
So with all of that, Jake, welcome.
 
MR. SULLIVAN:  Thank you for having me.  It’s really good to be here.
 
MR. BREMMER:  Thank you for being here.  You just got back from the Middle East.
 
MR. SULLIVAN:  Yes.
 
MR. BREMMER:  We’re going to talk about the whole world, but maybe start there.
 
You know, in the last year, you and I have spoken a lot more about the Middle East than we had before.  I’m wondering, in terms of biggest surprises, is it how much the Israelis have established, reestablished escalation dominance?  Is it Iran and the Axis of Resistance looking like a big deal and then imploding?  Is it what just happened with Assad and the rollout in Syria?  Where would you stack the “this is the thing that we probably least expected”?
 
MR. SULLIVAN:  Yes.  (Laughter.) 
 
I mean, not to be — every one of those pieces has been maybe not surprising directionally, in the sense that, you know, one could see the ways in which Israel — frankly, backed by the United States in terms of much of what it has accomplished — was taking the fight to its enemies.  One could see the weakening and the fracturing of the Axis of Resistance and the weakening of Iran.  And one could see the pressure on Assad, particularly because his two main patrons, Iran and Russia, were distracted and weakened.
 
But the speed, the scope, and the scale of the remaking of the Middle East in this short amount of time, I think you’d find very few people who could have predicted all of that and that we would be sitting here in December of 2024 with the picture looking the way that it looks.
 
MR. BREMMER:  Does the picture today look at least modestly more stable than it did a year ago, or does it look worse?
 
MR. SULLIVAN:  You know, I’ve been reflecting on this question, because the thing about foreign policy and geopolitics is that when good things happen, often bad things follow.  When bad things happen, often good things follow.  And nothing is ever fixed in time.  There’s always something around the corner.
 
So is there a huge opportunity right now?  Absolutely.  In that sense, the possibility of a more stable, integrated Middle East, where our friends are stronger, our enemies are weaker — that is real.  And in fact, Iran is at its weakest point in —
 
MR. BREMMER:  Decades.
 
MR. SULLIVAN:  — in modern memory.
 
On the other hand, there are huge risk factors, and you can see them maybe most in living color in Syria, where the Syrian people have the chance to build a better future in a post-Assad world, but where there are very evil people who are looking to take advantage of this current moment, starting with ISIS, but other terrorist and jihadist groups as well.  And it will take collective resolve, wisdom, and willingness to act in order to ensure that we don’t see in Syria what we had previously seen in Libya, but on a larger scale where the geography is actually even more dangerous for not just our interests, but the interests of our friends and allies.
 
So I think we’re at a moment of profound opportunity but also a moment of profound risk, and that means that we have to handle this situation with clarity and effectiveness.  And the interesting thing is this comes in the middle of a presidential transition in the United States.
 
MR. BREMMER:  Which makes it harder for you.
 
MR. SULLIVAN:  It makes it harder because —
 
MR. BREMMER:  I’m thinking specifically Syria, for example.  Right?
 
MR. SULLIVAN:  Yeah, I mean, it makes it harder because — you know, and this is something that my successor, Mike Waltz, has actually said — other countries, other actors, particularly our enemies and adversaries, look at transitions as moments of opportunity, because you have this seam between an outgoing administration and incoming administration.
 
And so, the imperative on us, both the outgoing Biden administration and the incoming Trump administration, has to be to lash up more tightly than is typical, to spend more time together than is typical, and to try to ensure we are sending a common, clear message to both friends and adversaries in the Middle East, and we have endeavored to do that over the last few weeks. 
 
Obviously, we disagree on a lot of things under the sun, including perhaps on certain aspects of long-term strategy in the Middle East or elsewhere, but where we agree is on many of the fundamentals here and especially on the point that we should not let anyone take advantage of the United States during this time of transition.  And so that has meant that Congressman Waltz and me and other people on each of our teams have tried to work so closely together.
 
MR. BREMMER:  Because I’m going to dig in more on Iran and the Middle East than other pieces.  But before I do, I want to beat on this, which is that, you know, I think some people were surprised that when Trump won, that Biden and President-elect Trump had a very civil sit-down discussion in the White House, despite what they had both said about each other over the previous months.  And more recently, you’ve had several very constructive meetings with the incoming National Security Advisor.  And frankly, my sense is that the alignment in how both of you see the world is a lot more similar on a bunch of policies than most people in the public would presume.  Is that a fair thing to say?
 
MR. SULLIVAN:  I think it’s fair at an elemental level of each of us being totally committed to the American national interest, each of us recognizing that we have real adversaries in the world, one of them being Iran, and we have friends and allies who we need to stand up and defend and back, one of them being Israel.  And so, that gives you a basis to work on.
 
Now, you know, I have been myself, President Biden has, the rest of our national security team has been subject to lots of criticism from President Trump’s team over the course of the past years.  We’ve criticized President Trump’s statements and record on foreign policy.  So it’s not like we see everything the same way.
 
But at this moment, on big-ticket items, when we need some degree of smoothness and continuity in the handoff from one administration to the next, I think both the outgoing and incoming administrations see the bigger picture.  And that’s really important. 
 
We will get back to the debates on hard issues and real disagreements, and there will be things that the next administration does that I won’t like.  I will tell you, I’ll be a lot less vocal about that probably.  Having sat in this seat for four years and listened to people criticize what we do, one thing I’ve realized is unless you’re sitting in this seat —
 
MR. BREMMER:  It’s hard.
 
MR. SULLIVAN:  — it’s hard. 
 
But for this moment, what we are trying to do on behalf of the national interest of the United States I think is extremely important, despite, you know, the deep differences that do exist in terms of the outgoing and incoming president and outgoing and incoming administration.
 
MR. BREMMER:  Now, I mean, the Iran story — which, of course, is America’s biggest adversary in the Middle East — I would argue we’ve managed — you’ve managed quite well over the last year.  I mean, there were many moments, at least a couple of moments, where people were very concerned that this could lead into a direct kinetic war between Iran and Israel that the Americans would have to get involved in.  And a lot of proactive diplomacy thus far has prevented that from happening.  Now, in part, that’s because Iran is in such an abysmal strategic position, and they’ve lost so much. 
 
If you’re Iran right now, how much are you trying to just do anything possible to stabilize relations with other countries around the world?  How much are you thinking, “Oh, my God, if I don’t, like, get nukes at some point, I’m in serious trouble”?  Is it all of the above?  I mean, what do you think their strategic calculus is?
 
MR. SULLIVAN:  Well, I think their strategic calculus has a couple of levels.  One level is: Can we turn to other significant countries in the world to provide us capabilities that right now have been badly weakened and degraded.  Take their air defenses, for example.  So, they look to the Russians, but the Russians have their hands full —
 
MR. BREMMER:  They’re busy.
 
MR. SULLIVAN:  — with Ukraine.  Can’t help.  Perhaps they look to Beijing.  But two years ago, you and I would have sat and talked about how China is on the come in the Middle East, they’re going to become a major player, they’re going to be a mover and shaker.  Where have they been in the last year?  Completely absent.
 
MR. BREMMER:  Almost radio silence.
 
MR. SULLIVAN:  So Iran, in this kind of alignment of autocracies — Iran, Russia, China, North Korea — which is a real factor that we have to look at — in practice, it’s not exactly a solution here to Iran’s problems.
 
So, then there’s this question: What about Iran’s nuclear program?  And here, you can look at the public statements of Iranian officials, which have changed in the last few months as they have been dealt these strategic blows, to raise the question: Do we have to change our doctrine at some point?
 
MR. BREMMER:  Members of Iranian parliament (inaudible).
 
MR. SULLIVAN:  And the fact that that’s coming out publicly is something that has to be looked at extremely carefully.  We have to consult closely with Israel on that, with our Gulf partners, with our European allies, and with others as we go forward.
 
And I will tell you that, you know, when I was answering your earlier question about how, you know, positive things happen and then bad things follow, an adversary that has suffered blows that weaken it is — you know, obviously presents — we could say that’s a good-news story.  But it also generates choices for that adversary that can be quite dangerous, and that’s something we have to remain extremely vigilant about as we go forward. 
 
And here again, this point of making sure that vigilance crosses that threshold of January 20th into the next administration is very important.  So we’ve been bringing the incoming administration into the intelligence picture, the consultations with allies and partners on this so that we’re all basically reading off the same song sheet.  They may choose a different course, a different strategy, but I want to make sure we are starting from a common base of what we are facing with respect to the threat posed by Iran’s nuclear program.
 
MR. BREMMER:  Now, on the war with Israel, at this point, you feel pretty confident that the Hezbollah ceasefire is going to stick, is going to become permanent?  Does that feel like it’s on the right trajectory?
 
MR. SULLIVAN:  I have learned the hard way not to use the word “confident” and “Middle East” in the same sentence.  (Laughter.)  So, I won’t quite go that far.  But I will say that there are incentives for this deal to stick.  There is also the fact that Israel has demonstrated that it is prepared to ensure that it is not going to tolerate violations.  The United States and France, as two outside players actively working to ensure the deal is enforced, we are making it known that we’re not going to let this be 2006 all over again.  I think the Lebanese people do not want to turn the clock back now.  They would like to see a better future for Lebanon.
 
So I think that the pieces are in place for this not to be temporary, for it to be durable.  But it is also subject to risk itself — risk of overreach by Hezbollah trying to rebuild its terrorist infrastructure, risk of potential spillovers from Syria that could complicate the picture. 
 
But in the main, I think we have got something in place that was a feat of Israeli military capacity and a feat of American diplomacy that can endure.
 
MR. BREMMER:  Now, Israel has been very engaged with the United States, and constructively, on Lebanon, Hezbollah; very engaged with the United States, and constructively, on Iran; very engaged with the United States, I would argue somewhat less constructively, on Gaza over the course of the last year.  Has been harder to get the Israeli government to align with a lot of what President Biden publicly has been saying. 
 
Talk a little bit, to the extent that you can, about challenges when a close ally, the most important ally of the United States in the region, is also creating that kind of tension for day-to-day management of foreign policy.
 
MR. SULLIVAN:  Well, first, just taking a step back, the challenge posed by an entrenched terrorist enemy with hundreds of miles of tunnels beneath a densely populated area, determined to keep fighting month after month, is a real challenge.
 
So we believe Israel has a responsibility — as a democracy, as a country committed to the basic principle of the value of innocent life, and as a member of the international community that has obligations under international humanitarian law — that it do the utmost to protect and minimize harm to civilians and that it do the utmost to facilitate humanitarian assistance so that people don’t starve or lack for water or medicine or sanitation.
 
And we believe too many civilians have died in Gaza over the course of this conflict.  And at too many moments, you know, we’ve felt we’ve had to step up privately and publicly and push on the humanitarian front to get more trucks, more aid, more lifesaving assistance in to the people of Gaza.
 
MR. BREMMER:  And you were doing a lot more privately on this front than people have seen publicly.
 
MR. SULLIVAN:  Look, I think there is not a conflict in the world, in modern history, where as many people in the U.S. government, up to and including the National Security Advisor, could count for you the daily number of trucks, the crossings, the road blocks, the obstacles, as in this case.  It is under the most intense microscope, understandably, because people are suffering and great harm has come to a lot of innocent people who are caught in a circumstance where Hamas is using schools and mosques and civilian infrastructure to hide and use to attack Israel and Israeli forces, but also where Israel has been constantly and persistently attacking across the entirety of the Gaza Strip.
 
So it’s understandable that the microscope is there, but it means that, every single day, I personally am getting a report on the humanitarian situation, I’m getting a list of the things that we need to ask of Israel to try to alleviate it.  And working that day in, day out, and never being satisfied — because at the end of the day, in a war zone like this, you always want to be pushing for more, and then publicly, we have to also speak to our values and say, yes, we want to see more humanitarian aid get into Gaza — there’s nothing inconsistent with that, in my view. 
 
And standing up strongly and resolutely for the security of the State of Israel and for Israel’s right, indeed its duty, to get after the terrorists who attacked it and caused the greatest massacre of the Jewish people since the Holocaust, and who say they want to do that again and again if given the opportunity, we should be absolutely resolute in our moral authority on that point while also being resolute in our moral authority that we can do that and also ensure that innocent people in Gaza have access to basic sustenance and lifesaving necessities.
 
MR. BREMMER:  Well, not only are those two things not in conflict, but I think you would argue that ensuring that humanitarian aid to a much greater degree is actually incumbent on ensuring Israeli security long term.
 
MR. SULLIVAN:  I agree with that.  I think — you know, one of the things that Israeli leaders are grappling with right now is how do you take tactical gains against Hamas, and they have been significant: smashed Hamas military formations; the elimination of the top leadership, including Yahya Sinwar; the decimation of their rocket capability.  Those tactical gains are real. 
 
How do you convert that into a long-term strategic endgame where Israel is secure on a durable basis and where Gaza emerges where Hamas is not in power?  And the best way to do that, in my judgment, is to have a political solution, a political track alongside the military track.  And that starts with the basic concept of essentially trying to make sure that the ordinary civilians of Gaza, the innocent people of Gaza are not being put in a position where things are so bad that they all become radicalized and you have nothing to work with going forward.
 
MR. BREMMER:  Which is kind of the direction of travel, right?
 
MR. SULLIVAN:  I think that there still remains an opportunity to build a better future, to drive towards what President Biden has called for since long before he was President: a Palestinian state living alongside a secure, democratic, and Jewish state, meeting all of the necessary conditions so that Israelis can be confident that they are secure.  And I think that is still a possibility, that we have not given up on that as a long-term goal, and we need to be taking steps towards that, and that begins with simple steps like dealing with this humanitarian situation.
 
MR. BREMMER:  But I will not ask you if you are confident that that can happen, as you know.  You’ve been through that already on the Middle East.
 
So one more bit on the Middle East before we move on — there’s a lot to cover — and that is Syria.
 
Now, here’s one where, I mean, I can see the incoming Trump administration causing you a bit of heartburn by, you know, publicly saying, “Hey, stay out of this, no matter what, militarily.  It’s up to Turkey to decide kind of what to do.  They’re critical.”  And meanwhile, we’ve got significant questions on the ground as to how to ensure that this new regime that’s taken over can ensure a level of stability and inclusion for everyone on the ground and not allow the Turks, not allow others to take advantage.  How can we manage this?
 
MR. SULLIVAN:  Well, first of all, we have to recognize that the minute Damascus fell, ISIS began to look for any opportunity it could take to reconstitute, grow, spread, and ultimately recreate a platform from which to threaten the United States and Americans around the world.
 
And so, within hours of Assad falling and HTS rolling into Damascus, the President ordered the U.S. military to take military action against ISIS personnel and ISIS facilities in the central Syrian Desert, the Badiya, and we’re going to have to continue to do that.
 
So, point one is we need the capacity to go after ISIS in the east, and that’s something that, you know, we have advised the incoming administration.
 
The second major issue is how to ensure that we are standing up for and standing with our best and closest partners in that ISIS fight.  That’s the Syrian Democratic Forces, Kurdish-led forces, but also with a lot of Arabs fighting alongside them.  We need to stand up for them and ensure that they are secure enough in their position that they can continue to be the good partners they’ve been, including with respect to the administration of these very large prisons and prison camps where you have thousands of ISIS fighters and tens of thousands of family members, wives and children of ISIS fighters, who, if they were all to get out, would represent a really quite considerable threat to the region and ultimately to the United States.
 
So we need to stand with the Kurds, and President Biden intends to do that.  We need to stand up against ISIS.  And we need to maintain our capacity in the region to be able to do these things effectively so that we don’t end up with a repeat of what happened in 2014, 2015, where ISIS came sweeping across eastern Syria and western Iraq, and we ultimately had to deploy a considerable amount of American force to beat them back. 
 
And that was a campaign that began under Obama that ultimately came to fruition under Trump — President Trump’s first term.  So, he has the experience of actually fighting ISIS in eastern Syria, in Raqqa, to ultimately rid the world of that caliphate that posed such a grave threat to Europe, the United States, and beyond.
 
MR. BREMMER:  But there is a real and extant risk right now that Syria could become not quite Afghanistan, but, I mean, a — not just a civil war, but could actually become a primary hotbed of radical Islamic terrorism. 
 
MR. SULLIVAN:  There is a real and extant risk of that, and I don’t think we should sugarcoat that fact.  But let’s keep in mind that it’s my job as National Security Advisor to frequently see the risk in a given situation.  I would be remiss if I didn’t say there isn’t also a real opportunity. 
 
Assad was a butcher, a brutally murderous dictator of his own people.  Assad, you could say — you know, you could kind of take the measure of that man by his friends — Iran, Russia, Hezbollah.  Him being gone is not a bad thing; we should shed no tears about that.  And it presents this opportunity for the Syrian people to actually build a better future, an inclusive future that is consistent with what I think not just all of the various communities of Syria want, but which these guys who’ve rolled into Damascus are actually saying.
 
Now, converting words to deeds is another matter.  It’s something we will be watching closely.  But Syria, to me, to understand it, you have to see both the real risk — and it’s as you described — and see the opportunity and try to push things in the direction of opportunity while minimizing the risk.
 
MR. BREMMER:  No, look, I’m asking not because I think HTS is automatically a problem to be dealt with.  I agree the opportunity.  I’m asking mostly because if the United States, in a short period of time, says, “Not my problem.  Vacuum.  Have at it,” what the potential implications of that are.
 
MR. SULLIVAN:  And I think you put that very well. The potential implications of us precipitously creating a vacuum are highly determined, highly experienced jihadists, starting with ISIS, will look to exploit that; take territory, particularly in eastern Syria; and as we have seen before, use that territory to plan, to inspire, to direct, and to enable attacks, including in the American homeland.
 
MR. BREMMER:  And in some ways, some of the biggest geopolitical challenges that have emerged over the course of the last decade has been a proliferation of vacuums, a proliferation of space where bad actors can act asymmetrically, some of them virtual, some of them physical and territorial, some of them sectoral.  But the implications of that being for stable democracies to pick it up or wither.
 
MR. SULLIVAN:  That’s right.  And also for us — I said earlier — I used this phrase about moving fast and moving decisively.  Part of that is about being prepared to engage early with the new players on the scene in Damascus, with HTS.
 
And Secretary Blinken, you know, let it be known a couple of days ago that we’ve actually begun to have direct engagement with HTS.  And we are — Secretary Blinken sat with all the Arab states, with Turkey, with France, a couple of days ago in Aqaba, Jordan, to try to get everybody on the same page.  Because the other lesson of the potential for vacuums to come in is that if you’ve got one group of strong countries on one side backing one group of folks, and you have another group of strong countries on another side backing a different group of folks, you’re more likely to have those vacuums emerge because the major responsible countries of a given region are not all pulling in the same direction.  We saw that in Libya in spades.  We can’t see that in Syria, which means trying to get everyone aligned around a common picture for how we go forward.  That is no easy task.
 
But if we end up with a proxy war in Syria, I think it is only going to exacerbate the risks you’ve just described, with the possible expansion of this vacuum.  And America being a part of that, being present, being engaged, not just with our physical presence but with our diplomatic initiative, is going to be vital over the coming months.
 
MR. BREMMER:  Okay, so let’s move on.  I spent — we spent a lot of time on the Middle East.  Not a surprise.
 
I want to move to China.  When you first became National Security Advisor, conventional wisdom on China is: huge powerhouse, going to become the largest economy in the world in relatively short order.  That is not what we are looking at today.  Their economy is in the worst shape since the ‘90s, maybe the ‘70s.  You and I have talked about a meaningful possibility that they’d never become the largest economy in the world.
 
So, clearly, it feels like they’re on the back foot. They’re not taking the kinds of decisions that would be required to get them out of this structural economic decline for now.
 
How different is it dealing with a China that feels like it’s playing defense than it is in Anchorage, in the first meeting, when we’ve got a much more robust, confident China saying we got the world in our hands?
 
MR. SULLIVAN:  You know, it’s interes- — it’s a good question, but I’m not sure that if you pushed the top echelon of leadership in China on the question, one, “is America in secular decline,” and two, “is China inexorably going to become the leading power in the world, economically, technologically, diplomatically and so forth,” they wouldn’t say yes and yes.
 
Still to this day, I think they’re totally wrong, and a bet against America is a very bad bet.  And the engines of American power are humming right now.  And I think the trajectory of China, this inexorable juggernaut, the objective evidence does not point in that direction. 
 
But I don’t think it has actually fundamentally yet shifted entirely their mindset of statecraft about the world.  What it has done —

MR. BREMMER:  The timeframes have certainly shifted.
 
MR. SULLIVAN:  The timeframes have shifted, but the basic logic of “the East is rising, the West is declining” I think remains present to this day.
 
MR. BREMMER:  So it’s a tactical move.
 
MR. SULLIVAN:  And so — exactly. 
 
So I think what we’re seeing instead is just we have storms, we have to weather them, we need to manage this, but fundamentally, the long-term strategic outlook I do not perceive has altered in a significant way.  And I believe that, basically, that means that U.S. policy should not move dramatically because of these developments with respect to the Chinese economy. 
 
And it has to be built on two basic premises.  One is what I just said, which is China does seek to become the world’s leading power.  I do not believe that is in the interest of the United States.  And the second is: No matter what the trajectory, the United States and China are going to have to learn to live alongside one another as major powers in the world for the foreseeable future.  And we need terms upon which we can do that, even as we compete vigorously in all of these different domains.
 
That has been the basic thrust of the diplomacy that we have engaged in.  It has been to create a effective management of a highly competitive relationship without for an instant taking away from the actions that we need to take to protect our technology, to enhance our deterrence, to deepen the strength of our economy, and to support our friends.
 
And so, we’ve tried to do both of those at once.  And I think we are handing off a relationship with China where America is in a very strong, competitive position, but also where we have the ability to engage diplomatically with China in ways that help ensure the competition does not veer into conflict.  That is not an easy feat.  It is not a task that is ever complete.  That is going to have to be an ongoing aspect of U.S.-China relations into the future.
 
But the hand that we were dealt was one thing; the hand that we are passing off when it comes to U.S.-China, I believe we have significantly enhanced America’s position.
 
MR. BREMMER:  Look, I mean, I think it’s pretty clear.  One, you’ve got general bipartisan agreement on what a U.S.-China relationship should look like, which is not true of a lot of areas of foreign policy.  And two, the relationship has been stabilized, even potentially strengthened, without the Americans giving up any fundamental equities.  So, I mean, those two things definitely help.
 
But I want to press a little bit on the tactical shift, because I accept that China still thinks long term, you know, the world is their oyster.  But, I mean, clearly, the last year has gone a lot worse for them than they expected.  Zero-COVID went a lot worse for them than they expected.  We see from Chinese leadership now them talking about concerns, even on social instability and dissent, that this can’t be tolerated.
 
So it’s clearly getting up to the top leadership, and they’re saying, “What are you guys doing?”  We see, like, all of these ministers of defense, minister of for- — other — U.S. ambassador, right, getting done up for corruption.  So it’s not been the best few years.  It’s been a rough ride for them. 
 
And you have spent — I’m not sure if the audience here knows — but you have spent an extraordinary amount of personal time with Wang Yi over the months, right, since the APEC Summit. 
 
Talk about, tactically, how you have perceived a shift in China’s negotiating stance, position; how engaging they’re willing to be; how, if at all, they’re seeing the United States right now. 
 
And I’m specifically asking this as we all are thinking about 60 percent tariffs coming from Trump, thinking about a much more potentially assertive out-of-the-box position that China — that they’re going to be facing.
 
MR. SULLIVAN:  So, you know, I think one feature of my conversations with Wang Yi — and we tend to get together every few months for two days, and have somewhere between 12 and 15 hours of conversation — but we don’t cover every issue under the sun in the U.S.-China relationship.  We focus on a few key subjects.
 
And what makes that conversation different in 2024 than it was in 2022 is that it is much more about each of us kind of asking questions of the other — what our limits are, what our boundaries are, where are we taking things, what’s this all about.  There’s a much more inquisitive dynamic to the dialogue than there used to be.
 
And I’ll give you an example.  We’ve taken a series of measures to protect American advanced technology so that it can’t be used by the Chinese military to threaten us or our allies, including advanced semiconductors and semiconductor manufacturing equipment.  Obviously, the PRC did not like this.
 
MR. BREMMER:  And we’ve done that with allies.
 
MR. SULLIVAN:  And we’ve done it with key allies who —
 
MR. BREMMER:  The Netherlands, Japan, South Korea.
 
MR. SULLIVAN:  — are part of that semiconductor ecosystem so that, collectively, we can ensure that Western technology, built on an American backbone, doesn’t end up being used by the PRC.
 
MR. BREMMER:  Which they really don’t like.
 
MR. SULLIVAN:  They don’t like it.
 
So it used to be that it would just be what, in diplomatic terms, is called a demarche, but, you know, which in layman’s terms is just like basically a screed against, you know, “You have done these terrible, evil things.  You are very bad.”  And that would be the nature of the conversation. 
 
Now the conversation is them asking us or us asking them, “What do you see as being the boundary between economics, on the one hand, and national security on the other?  Define that for me.  How do you think about it?”
 
And I’m not naïve enough to think that this is just some Socratic seminar.  You know, they’ve got a purpose behind it.  So do I.  But it creates the opportunity to have a strategic conversation to try to clarify intentions, to try to look for opportunities where we can come to better understanding. 
 
And frequently it’s going to lead, at the end, to deep disagreement.  They strongly disagree with what we are doing, just as when we talk about the relationship between Russia and China, or their support for Russia’s defense industrial base in the war in Ukraine, I’m pushing them with a series of questions, and at the end, I’m not satisfied with all the answers, which is why we take certain actions that include PRC entities.
 
But that, to me, the aspect of the relationship that has evolved is the ability for the two of us to engage in a dialogue that is less about the exchange of demarches and more about trying to feel one another out what we’re up to and, you know, what the actual right and left limits are of the kinds of actions each of us are taking. 
 
Then there’s one other aspect of the relationship that has evolved over time, which is: We had a big debate early on between us, which is, our view was: You can compete and you can also work together in areas of mutual interest.  The PRC’s view was: If you are intent on competition, then why should we cooperate with you?
 
I think we have evolved that to a point where we both see managed competition as involving elements of relentless and intense competition, on the one hand, but also areas where we can, in fact, work together where our interests align and where, frankly, we have to work together. 
 
Just one very simple example.  For the first time in decades, President Biden and President Xi actually put out a statement about nuclear risk reduction.  It was a very simple statement.  It said that humans, not artificial intelligence, should be —
 
MR. BREMMER:  Have a hand on the switch at all times.
 
MR. SULLIVAN:  — what determines —
 
MR. BREMMER:  Absolutely.
 
MR. SULLIVAN:  — use of nuclear weapons.
 
MR. BREMMER:  And that was just a few months ago.
 
MR. SULLIVAN:  That should be apparent to everyone.  That took months, maybe years, to negotiate.
 
But we are there.  We are finally there.  Even at the same time that they’re placing export controls on certain critical minerals, we’re updating our export controls on semiconductors. 
 
All of this is happening at once because there is a recognition that managed competition requires being able to have some areas where we can work together and see if you can expand those areas, even as you’re competing vigorously in technology, in economics, in the military domain, and in others.
 
MR. BREMMER:  Well, and part of that is just understanding and being able to articulate that the intention of U.S. strategy in the long term is not regime change in China.  It’s a recognition that we’re going to be living together in some way.
 
MR. SULLIVAN:  Well, it’s interesting because there is a school of thought that is fairly prominent in Washington that says, in fact, the position that we, the Biden administration, have taken — which is we would like to put ourselves in the best possible position to compete effectively on behalf of ourselves and our allies, that we will take actions to do that, but we also are going to have to live alongside China as a major power — that that second part is wrong; that, in fact, we should be driving towards a defeat or capitulation.
 
And, you know, there was an op-ed written by Mike Gallagher, a person I respect enormously —
 
MR. BREMMER:  Smart guy.
 
MR. SULLIVAN:  — but disagree with him on this particular point —
 
MR. BREMMER:  On that issue.  Absolutely.
 
MR. SULLIVAN:  — precisely making this argument.
 
So I do think there will be a debate in the years ahead in Washington between those who say we’re going to compete and we’re going to be clear-eyed and relentless in the competition, and those who say but that there’s got — there’s not an end state, it’s a steady state of competition, and those who say, “No, no, no, you’ve got to bring down the CCP.”
 
MR. BREMMER:  But I want to be clear what I’m saying.  I believe the reason that there has been movement between the U.S. and China in recognizing that we can do managed competition and also have cooperation is because the perspective of the United States government today is that the U.S. is not trying to ultimately engage in regime change in China.  And if that were to change, I suspect the Chinese position on this would be quite different.
 
MR. SULLIVAN:  Right.  Action would cause reaction in a quite dramatic way, and I think you would have considerable destabilization.
 
MR. BREMMER:  So I want to ask you an intellectually challenging question around this.  Given that the Chinese are now willing to engage with you and vice versa, in not just demarches, what have you learned from China that you didn’t know before, a year ago?
 
MR. SULLIVAN:  Oh, man.  That’s a hard question.  It’s like — it’s sort of like being asked what’s your biggest weakness.  And you say, “I try too hard,” you know, kind of thing.
 
MR. BREMMER:  Yeah, don’t do that, because — (laughter) —
 
MR. SULLIVAN:  (Laughs.)  What have I learned from China?
 
MR. BREMMER:  That’s why I warned you it was going to be intellectually challenging.  I wanted to give you a second, you know?  Because (inaudible) live, so we can take out all of the hum and —
 
MR. SULLIVAN:  I mean, at some level I’ve learned a lot — just, you are going to learn a lot talking to someone on issues of substance for 15 hours — about their perspective, their calculus, their logic, their strategy, and including kind of what they say and what’s behind what they say.
 
But in terms of, like, larger lessons, it’s a good question.  I’d have to think about it, and I worry that any answer I give you today is just going to get me in trouble.  (Laughter.)  So, I’ll —
 
MR. BREMMER:  Well, and you only got a few weeks to get in trouble.  So from that perspective — (laughter) —
 
MR. SULLIVAN:  Yeah, come back to me on January 21st.  I’ll give you a full laydown.
 
MR. BREMMER:  Well, I’ll ask you over dinner.  It makes it easier.
 
So, okay.  How about big picture, China and macro-geopolitics, which is — actually, another difficult question.  I remember when the Secretary of State put out a recent piece in Foreign Affairs talking about kind of an axis of Russia, North Korea, Iran, and China.  NATO Allies have also talked about that a fair bit.  My perspective is three of those countries would be very happy with different government.  Three of those countries, we don’t feel the need that we have to live side by side with them long term.  One of them, we do, as we just discussed.
 
I’m wondering to what extent you believe that some of the areas that we can work with China, should work with China in the long term, have to do with stabilization of the global environment.  I mean, they’re the largest creditor to the Global South.  The United States is also really interested in the Global South not falling apart.  Very different than Russia’s perspective with the former Wagner Group in the Sahel, for example, right?
 
At the end of the day, as you said, the Chinese aren’t doing very much in the Middle East, but in principle, the Chinese want stability in the Middle East, because they get a lot of energy from the Middle East; they want to invest in and through the Middle East.
 
Russia invading Ukraine was supposed to be over in a couple weeks, from China’s perspective.  Now it’s screwed up their relations with the Europeans.  That’s a problem for them.
 
So how much can, how much should the United States be trying to treat China as a country that should want to have a more stable environment geopolitically?
 
MR. SULLIVAN:  Well, what I say to my Chinese interlocutors is that part of their public messaging, and in their private messaging to us, is we don’t want a new Cold War and we don’t like what they call bloc confrontation.  This is their asserted position.
 
And so, the point I make to them is: Putin does want a new Cold War, does want bloc confrontation, and North Korea is happy to go along with that, as to your point, probably as Iran.  I think Iran has, you know, kind of got just a different agenda that’s more regionally focused, but nonetheless sort of along that line.
 
MR. BREMMER:  They’re also in a lot more trouble.
 
MR. SULLIVAN:  Yeah, exactly.
 
China has a choice to make.  China has a choice to make.  And it can either continue to tighten those links militarily, diplomatically, and otherwise, and end up in a circumstance where it is really part of an axis, or it could do what I think is much more natural from the point of view of China’s perspective, interest, and opportunity, which is to be a huge competitor to the United States; let’s make no bones about that.  And we are going to compete vigorously for shaping the future.  And I believe that if we fall well behind in that competition, it will be to our tremendous detriment. 
 
But on climate, on macroeconomic stability, on questions related to ensuring that the risks associated with things like artificial intelligence do not spin out of control, even on issues like the Iranian nuclear program, we ought to be able to find a way where our interests and China’s interests sufficiently align, that having a constructive agenda to go alongside the intense competition serves the American people and serves the people of the world, for that matter.
 
But that comes — a lot of — you know, most of the time, people ask that series of questions from the point of view of, “What are you going to do, America, to help make that happen?  How are you going to be nicer to China so that China, you know, is willing to do these things?” 
 
And I think we’ve reached a point in this relationship where, really, actually, it’s China’s choice to make more than it is ours.  They have to decide is Xi going to, you know — going to make the Xi-Putin kind of personal relationship the dominant issue, or is the PRC going to think of itself as a distinct kind of actor that is not part of this axis.
 
I personally don’t think they fully made that decision one way or the other.
 
MR. BREMMER:  Which is a good reason to press them on it.
 
MR. SULLIVAN:  Exactly.  The risk is really there that they will go down a darker path.  I think it’s our job to engage in statecraft and diplomacy, backed by the types of competitive actions we’ve taken and backed by strong allies who are all aligned around a common vision to try to get them to make the right choice that would serve our interests better for them to tack differently from the way these other countries are tacked.
 
MR. BREMMER:  So is it fair to say that labeling them part of an axis with Russia, North Korea, and Iran is not necessarily the most helpful way to accomplish that?
 
MR. SULLIVAN:  Well, that’s an interesting question.
 
What I would say — I would just put it differently myself.  I would say that there is greater alignment today, including China, among these countries, and we’re seeing it in ways that are quite worrying.  But it is not preordained that China ends up foursquare in this axis.  And we can do things to shape the environment, and China then has choices to make.  And I think the world should put the onus on China to make the right choice.
 
MR. BREMMER:  See, this is why he’s National Security Advisor.  That was a tough question to answer, definitely.
 
Okay, so to pivot to Russia, but use the China thing — I wasn’t planning on pulling out a Trump tweet, but I’m going to for the hell of it, which is — you know, he came out the other day talking about Ukraine, and at the end threw in this “and China can help.”  I was a little surprised by that.  Were you a little surprised by that?
 
MR. SULLIVAN:  Yes.  That stood out to me.
 
MR. BREMMER:  Why?
 
MR. SULLIVAN:  Because it’s something I’ve grappled with, actually, personally — is, you know, having had long conversations, not just with China but with Europeans and with the Ukrainians, about what kind of role could China play in all of this.  And, you know, the Ukrainians have made no secret about the fact that they want to engage and talk to China about, you know, how we get, ultimately, to a just peace in Ukraine.  And, you know, Ukraine has been concerned about some of the initiatives that China has put forward, but has wanted to really engage them.  They have a relationship with Russia. 
 
And so, you know, the idea that China could in some way be a part of the conversation about generating a just peace in Ukraine is not — that’s not a crazy idea.  Now, on the other hand, you don’t want China dictating terms in Ukraine, and you don’t want them becoming the dominant broker in the European theater. 
 
So it’s a question of figuring out what is the appropriate way for them to be engaged as a permanent member of the Security Council, as a significant player on the world stage, and as one of the few countries that Russia would have to listen to if China really spoke up. 
 
I think that President Trump putting that on the table is logical, because I’ve kind of worked through the same thought in my own head.
 
MR. BREMMER:  Yeah, and because, look, we hadn’t been in a position where we were talking about imminent negotiations; we now appear to be moving in that direction.
 
If you were national security advisor in that environment, and talking to Wang Yi, my expectation is that would end up being one of the major topics that you would discuss.
 
MR. SULLIVAN:  Well, it would be to say, you know, what is the shape of the table going to be, who’s going to be at it.  Obviously, Ukraine and Russia have to be there, but who else. And what could China bring to that in the way we ask that question about what China has brought to the P5+1 negotiations on Iran —
 
MR. BREMMER:  With the JCPOA —
 
MR. SULLIVAN:  — or anything else.  Yeah, that would be a question.
 
Now, I don’t know exactly what the answer would be.  I see pitfalls in all of that, but I think it’s an interesting thing that needs to be explored as we go forward.
 
MR. BREMMER:  So let’s move to Russia before I take a couple questions from the audience, and maybe a little technology, because we haven’t discussed that really.
 
On the Russia front: Clearly, I mean, we’ve had three years where the Ukrainians weren’t much interested in talking about negotiations; now they appear to be much more.  Some of that is Trump.  Some of that is the situation on the ground becoming more challenging for them.  Where do you think an eventual — what does the shape of a settlement look like, in your view?
 
MR. SULLIVAN:  I’m going to disappoint you with my answer to this, because I’ve given the same answer for three years, which is, at the end of the day —
 
MR. BREMMER:  It’s up to the Ukrainians.
 
MR. SULLIVAN:  It’s up to the Ukrainians.
 
MR. BREMMER:  I knew you were going to say that.  Yeah, I know.  But the Ukrainian position is changing, right?  By definition.  I mean, they’re now saying maybe they need to give up land.  They didn’t say that before.  I mean, NATO looks like it’s getting kicked down the road more and more.  Trump probably wouldn’t accept it.
 
I mean, if you’re Trump, is it useful for you to be leaning into Ukraine just to get more space to say that we can get a negotiation?  Is that a good way to start it?
 
MR. SULLIVAN:  Well, I think one of the most critical things that the United States — the current administration, the next administration — need to show is a willingness to stand behind Ukraine and ensure that they have what they need to defend themselves, because that is going to be the leverage necessary to get a good outcome at the table.
 
So I would like to see a continuation of the basic proposition that the United States will continue to provide Ukraine with the defensive capacity, the military capacity necessary to withstand the Russian onslaught, to pressure Russia militarily as we pressure them economically so that Ukraine is in the best possible position on the battlefield, which will put them in a better position at the negotiating table.
 
I think just coming out and saying we’re going to do a deal, without that extra piece, is not going to put Ukraine in the best position at the negotiating table.
 
MR. BREMMER:  Is it fair to say that the United States was counting more on economic sanctions early on than they should have, and less on military support for Ukraine than they should have?  And those positions have balanced out?
 
MR. SULLIVAN:  I think it is fair to say that the predictions about the impact of the sanctions on the Russian economy have not borne out, certainly not on the timeline that was anticipated back in 2022.
 
I think it’s equally fair to say that Russia’s economy is in real trouble right now, and that trouble is going to mount in 2025. 
 
MR. BREMMER:  How will it manifest?
 
MR. SULLIVAN:  So, first, you have significant and growing inflation.  You have interest rates above 20 percent, which is putting a huge dent in the ability to invest.  You have Russia having to stretch further and further to recruit soldiers, paying more and more to do so, expending more and more of its budget, spending down its sovereign wealth fund so that it’s depleting its cash reserves.
 
And all of that has a compounding effect over time.  And when you add that to the fact that the casualty rates among Russians are just eye popping, and even more so in the last couple of months, I believe that these costs over time are going to grow.
 
Now, could I pick a month where they all come together to put real pressure on the Russians to come to the table?  I couldn’t.  But I think the conventional wisdom from a few months ago, which is Russia has got it made in the shade economically, they’re going to be okay, they can do this indefinitely — I don’t think the economic signals we’re seeing right now bear that out.
 
And I would make one more point that I think is really important for people to take into account.  We tend, I think, as democracies, to think, “Oh, we’re not doing so great, and those dictators are so strategic and they’re doing so well.”  If I had told you three years ago that Joe Biden was going to announce a special military operation to take Ottawa in a week, and three years later, he was in the wheat fields of Manitoba losing thousands of soldiers a month, with inflation over 10 percent and interest rates in America over 20 percent, 600,000 Americans either dead or wounded, and we’re inching out little Canadian town by little Canadian town —
 
MR. BREMMER:  Because this is the Trump plan, by the way.  I don’t know if you know this.  (Laughter.)
 
MR. SULLIVAN:  (Laughs.)  Yeah.  
 
I mean, you would have said — you wouldn’t sit here saying, “Wow, America is really winning that war in a big way.  That’s great for America.”  You would never say that.  But somehow we’re saying, “Oh, the Russians, they’re doing great.”  They are not doing great.  They set out on a strategic objective of taking the capital Kyiv; wiping Ukraine, as we know it, off the map — maybe not literally wiping the country off the map but —
 
MR. BREMMER:  The regime.
 
MR. SULLIVAN:  — (inaudible) democratic, independent —
 
MR. BREMMER:  Taking the regime out.
 
MR. SULLIVAN:  — Western-oriented Ukraine, gone.  It would be a vassal state to Russia.  And they have failed in that, and they will fail in that.
 
They are now fighting and imposing huge costs, and I don’t want to discount those costs.  But let’s not forget that Kyiv stands, Ukraine stands.  Ukraine will stand at the end of this.  And the thing we can most do is create circumstances for a negotiation where they have some strength and capacity behind them and it is not imposed upon them.  And that’s what I would like to see in the months ahead.
 
And, frankly, I believe that whether it was President Trump, which it will be, or it were President Harris, had she won, this turn to negotiations is something that Zelenskyy was looking to do.
 
MR. BREMMER:  It was necessary.  Yeah.
 
MR. SULLIVAN:  Now we have an opportunity, but that opportunity should rest on the proposition that Ukraine is in the driver’s seat and is not going to have an outcome imposed
upon them.
 
MR. BREMMER:  And NATO is stronger, and people are spending more money and more committed to it, and there are two additional members.  And, I mean, you know, Assad just fell. 
 
I mean, there are a lot of ways that any one objective can say the Russians are not winning.  I think there are lots of ways objectively to say the Ukrainians are not winning too, to be fair.
 
MR. SULLIVAN:  That is fair, and it’s important actually to pause on that point for a moment, because my account really kind of only speaks to one side of it. 
 
I mean, what has been visited upon the Ukrainians, on the brave soldiers on the front lines, on people — innocent people in towns and cities having missiles and bombs rained down on them; on Putin attempting to plunge the country into cold and darkness in the heart of winter and so much else — I mean, I’m not trying to be cavalier about any of that.  That is real.
 
Now, at the same time that that is happening, the Ukrainian people want to make sure that they are not just stopping the war for the sake of it.  They want a just peace, and we should support them in wanting a just peace.
 
MR. BREMMER:  I’m glad you said that.  Not that I’m surprised by it, but it’s useful to mention.
 
Okay, we’ve got questions here, and fortunately, there are also a couple aligned with technology.  And you and I talk about technology a lot.  The technology space is moving a lot faster than the national security government space.  AI is an area that previous administrations haven’t had to deal with.  You have.
 
Tell me — on the one hand, the United States has a strong geopolitical position with so many of the world-changing companies based in the U.S.  On the other, increasingly, this is a group of people, a group of companies that aren’t necessarily fully aligned with U.S. national security interests.  Tell me where you see those tensions and what you’re most concerned about for the next couple of years.
 
MR. SULLIVAN:  Well, first, I think the big American technology companies have done a quite remarkable job in driving innovation forward in artificial intelligence.  You see it with Google, you see it with Microsoft, you see it with Meta.  Like, having major American technology companies with capital to deploy and ambition to deploy has pushed the edge of artificial intelligence in ways that have given the United States a competitive edge and a real lead.  That is a national asset.  It is.
 
Now, on the other hand, America’s technological edge has always rested on not just having big tech companies, on having startups and a very competitive, very mixed ecosystem.  And so, one of the risk factors I see is making sure that we are continuing to nurture and ensure that these companies can come forward, the little guys, to produce new innovations and new technological solutions.  So, that’s one issue.
 
Second issue is that we need to, on the one hand, balance between ensuring that the most advanced AI at the frontier continues to be generated, produced, so to speak, in the United States so that we’re not outsourcing it to other countries and we’re not trading one form of dependence for another, but on the other hand, we’re allowing this technology to be diffused globally so that America maintains its technological leadership elsewhere.  How you strike that balance, I think, is extremely challenging.  It’s something we’re focused on right now and the next administration is going to have to focus on as well.
 
MR. BREMMER:  I got a question on TikTok as a risk.  Do you think that it is a security risk to the United States?
 
MR. SULLIVAN:  Our intelligence professionals, our national security professionals — not the politicians, the professionals — have looked at this and have seen the national security risks.  That’s why you have this legislation from the Congress for divestment. 
 
And I will be — not say much more than that, because there’s a whole legal process associated with it that I shouldn’t speak to, but there are both data risks and algorithm risks associated with TikTok under current ownership, and that has been laid out not by me, sitting here, but by the intelligence community and those who sit and kind of look at and try to size up these risks.  And it has led to a circumstance in which we have this impending deadline.
 
MR. BREMMER:  When you look at the principal actors in artificial intelligence in the United States, how much do you think of them as geopolitical actors that have degrees of real independence from what the U.S. government might or might not want?
 
MR. SULLIVAN:  I think of them as geopolitical actors in that they have a big impact on geopolitics.  I’m less convinced that the leadership of these companies sit around and think, “I’m going to shape the world with my image, or I want to play as a geopolitical actor alongside a nation-state.”
 
So I think of it more as the result of their existence than as the object of their existence.  But we have to take that — seriously, that is part of the firmament in geopolitics now.  And we have to consider the fact that, yes, as you said, these are American companies, but they’re not like Chinese state-owned enterprises.  They have their own incentives.  They have their own strategies and objectives.  And much of that is very much aligned with the values and the direction that the United States wants to go.  But they are independent actors, and we have to take that into account.
 
MR. BREMMER:  I remember talking a couple of years ago with you about the fact that you said, like, one of the biggest frustrations is it’s hard to have a trade policy.  And there are a lot of political constraints around that. 
 
It’s easier to have an industrial policy.  Do you think that the industrial policy the U.S. government has right now in the tech space is adequate, is up to speed for what it needs to be geopolitically?  And if it isn’t, what else needs to happen?
 
MR. SULLIVAN:  I think that we’ve taken great strides forward with respect to investment in the basic research and the innovation base of the United States, with respect to semiconductor manufacturing, clean energy manufacturing; the infrastructure that will get built out that can help propel economic and technological growth in all dimensions; steps we’ve taken on biotechnology and biomanufacturing. 
 
I’m extremely proud of the legacy we leave over the last four years.  And that’s not just a domestic economic story; that is a national security story.  It’s something that I personally have cared passionately about as National Security Advisor.
 
If I had to pick one thing that makes me nervous, it is the need for us to deploy clean energy really rapidly, to have sufficient clean energy to power the compute necessary to continue to stay at the cutting edge of artificial intelligence.  And that is going to require us to take steps to break down barriers, remove obstacles.  And we’re trying to figure out if there’s anything we can do just in our remaining time to be able to make that happen.  But it is also something that we will be communicating very vigorously to the next administration too.
 
We have got to be able to increase overall clean energy output so that we are increasing our overall capacity at a basic level of compute so that we maintain the lead in AI and in other technological areas.
 
MR. BREMMER:  Closer relationship with Canada, if and when they have a government, might be part of that.
 
MR. SULLIVAN:  Yes.  Not invading them, I guess, would probably help.
 
MR. BREMMER:  Yeah, yeah.  That’s probably right.  Well, if he’s already the 51st governor, you know, for now, it’s already taken care of.
 
So here’s an interesting question that I bet a lot of people are thinking about: Why did President Biden’s foreign policy for the middle class never gain traction with the broad American public?
 
MR. SULLIVAN:  It’s a good question.  I mean, first of all, I think that foreign policy in general tends to be more difficult to penetrate, unless it’s at a quite elemental level — the United States is directly at war, or you have a dramatic event like Russia’s invasion of Ukraine.
 
I think the way that I would answer that question is to say I think the tagline never penetrated, but I would posit to you that, over time, if many of the things that he did — the technology protections, the industrial policy, the supply chain diversification and resilience, the friend-shoring and building out of allied ecosystems — these are things that don’t happen in a year or two years; they happen over a decade or a generation.
 
And I would posit that we have now planted the seeds that will be harvested in the future in ways where people say, “I like that.  That is working for me.”  I feel like we have an industrial and innovation base here that can generate good jobs and economic growth.  I feel like we’ve got supply chains that are not going to get cracked because of a pandemic or because of China.  I feel like our technology is not being used against us in ways I don’t like. 
 
These are all things that I regard as part of foreign policy for the middle class, that if you’re sitting in 2023, 2024 in the U.S., you’re at the very early stage of that.  But we carry that forward over a generation, and I think you can build a new consensus around that.  People would say that is the kind of approach that I would like to see, not just as a matter of domestic policy, but as a matter of international economic policy. 
 
And frankly, one group of people who looked at what we have done in this regard and said “Hey, we should be doing that too” are all of our allies.  The Japanese the Koreans, the Europeans have all said, “We’ve got to do that.”  Draghi just put out a big report, basically describing —
 
MR. BREMMER:  Competitiveness report.
 
MR. SULLIVAN:  — this sort of theory.
 
MR. BREMMER:  Absolutely.
 
MR. SULLIVAN:  So —
 
MR. BREMMER:  It’s great in theory.  Yeah.
 
MR. SULLIVAN:  I think it will take longer for that to fully penetrate, but I think — I have conviction that if we stick with it as a country, I believe it will penetrate.
 
MR. BREMMER:  Interestingly, I mean, not only do allies recognize that this is a strategy they need to do more of, but, I mean, I would argue that this is an area of foreign policy that the Biden administration, the incoming Trump administration actually do have a lot of overlap on.  This is a place that I wouldn’t expect to see a great deal of difference.
 
MR. SULLIVAN:  I think that’s right.  I mean, it’s hard to know exactly, because there are a lot of different voices, and it’s possible to take the basic core of this strategy in an extremely aggressive direction, like the 60 percent tariffs you were talking about earlier.
 
MR. BREMMER:  Or 25 on Mexico.  Yeah, sure.
 
MR. SULLIVAN:  So, for me, that the essential insights I think are fairly common.  The manifestation or the implementation of those insights could look radically different and we’ll have to wait and see what actually happens.
 
MR. BREMMER:  Okay, before we close then, let me give you a completely random one.
 
South Korea.  What the hell, Jake?  (Laughter.) I mean, you know, good ally, solid ally.  We got the Japan-South Korea relationship stable and everything.  And then he just kind of completely lost the plot, in very short order.  Did you see that coming?
 
MR. SULLIVAN:  I cannot say that I saw the declaration of martial law, you know, on a night come and then have it reversed 24 hours later and everything.  No.
 
MR. BREMMER:  It was like six hours.
 
MR. SULLIVAN:  Did not see that coming.
 
But we had January 6th.
 
MR. BREMMER:  Yeah.
 
MR. SULLIVAN:  So, I think it’s important for us to recognize that dramatic events happen even in highly advanced, consolidated democracies.  And the real test is, can the democratic institutions hold at the end of the day, even if they bend. 
 
And if you look at those dramatic moments in South Korea, with protesters pushing aside the guns of the troops that were deployed to block the National Assembly so that the assembly couldn’t go in to repudiate the declaration of martial law; if you look at the fact that, actually, now the processes are working, they’re going through their paces — it was quite a moment and something that I think we’re not entirely out of the woods on because there’s still more, you know, chapters in this play until everything has worked through the courts and so forth.  But the institutions in South Korea are holding.
 
It’s a good reminder, though, that surprising things happen.  You know, if you had asked a lot of people around the world was January 6th going to happen, they would have said, “No, I was very surprised by that.”  We’re going to have more of these surprises in the future. 
 
I mean, one thing that we have to keep in mind is we are in a new era.  It is — the post-Cold War era is over.  There’s a competition underway for what comes next.  It is challenging.  It is at times turbulent.  And from my perspective, what the United States has to do is try to strengthen its fundamental hand so it can deal with whatever comes next, and there will be surprises.
 
So as National Security Advisor, what I ask myself is: Are our alliances stronger than when we found them?  And I think the answer is yes.  Are our adversaries and competitors weaker than when we found them?  And I would say yes.  Have we kept the country out of war?  Have we kept the homeland safe?  Have we protected our technology for being used against us?  And do we have the instruments of American power — our economy, our technological engine, our infrastructure, our defense industrial base — in a better position?  Yes.
 
So we should have confidence that we can deal with this challenging and turbulent world.  But it’s tough.  It is tough out there.  And it’s not just in places like the Middle East.  It can happen in the ROK.  It can happen in the United States of America.
 
The real key is do you have the basic elements of American power and capacity in a place where we can deal with our geopolitical competitors and also deal with the great trends of our time — the clean energy transition, AI, and so forth — and can you pass off a better hand than the hand that you were dealt despite all of the things happening in the world. 
 
That’s how we have to keep our eye on the prize.  And I think the United States should look at what we’ve got going for us and say, “Man, you know, it’s challenging out there, but yes, we are in a position to do very well for ourselves, for our friends, for our people, if we keep our wits about us.” 
 
And that’s what I would like, at the end of the day, the conclusion of my time in this seat — I guess, literally this seat, but also the National Security Advisor seat — that’s really what I walk away from.
 
And then, coming back to your question about China, maybe that’s part of an answer.  I think this is how they —
 
MR. BREMMER:  I knew you were going to get their eventually.
 
MR. SULLIVAN:  You know?  But honestly, as part of listening to Wang Yi, they tend to look at success, so to speak, in geopolitics and foreign policy as not about doctrine or about, sort of, a narrative.  They look at it on the basis of assets and liabilities: You know, do we have strong friends and less strong enemies?  Are we entangled in war?  Is our homeland under attack from terrorists or others?  You know, where do we stand on technology, on the economy, on supply chains, and so forth?
 
That is something I think that the PRC, over 30 years, what helped them move so rapidly is they had that kind of mindset.  I think in a challenging and turbulent world, the United States needs to be thinking about that as well, not just in the chess board of geopolitics, but in terms of us being up for the big challenges of the moment.
 
MR. BREMMER:  And in the strategic ledger.
 
MR. SULLIVAN:  Yeah.
 
MR. BREMMER:  Long term, who are the people that the Americans feel like we can count on around the world.  And there, the Chinese, if they took an honest-to-God strategic look, shouldn’t be thinking the United States is in decline.
 
MR. SULLIVAN:  Exactly.  And also should be saying, “Wow, I’d much rather have what the U.S. has, these powerful, capable democracies, even if they have weird moments like the martial law declaration, as opposed to when China looks around at who its really core group of friends are or could be.
 
So, yeah, we got — we have a lot going for us, without for a moment trying to whistle past huge — a huge plastic moment of turbulence and transition that’s going to be with us for quite some time.  We’ve just got to be prepared to say we have what it takes, alongside our friends, to navigate this moment in a way that will serve our people well.
 
MR. BREMMER:  Ladies and gentlemen, please join me in thanking National Security Advisor Jake Sullivan.  (Applause.)

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Today, the Biden-Harris Administration will honor 14 Rural Innovators from across America who making a positive impact in their rural communities.

Earlier this year, the Biden-Harris Administration invited the public to nominate individuals who are taking action and ensuring their communities thrive for generations to come. White House Domestic Policy Advisor Neera Tanden, White House Office of Public Engagement Director Stephen Benjamin, and Agriculture Secretary Tom Vilsack headlined an event at the White House today to celebrate the extraordinary accomplishments of Rural Innovators and highlight the Biden-Harris Administration’s investments in rural communities. To learn more about the Rural Innovators, please visit Rural.gov.

The individuals being recognized as Rural Innovators include:

• Sylandi Brown, Board Member, Pulaski County Board of Education (Georgia)
• Kristina Cannon, President & CEO, Main Street Skowhegan (Maine)
• Jeremiah Clever, President, CWA Broadband Apprenticeship Lead-Idaho (FITECH) (Idaho)
• Jill Dunham, Broadband Project Manager, Allegan County Government (Michigan)
• Rick Erickson, Retired Teacher, Bayfield High School (Wisconsin)
• Luis Omar Garcia, Community Leader, Unidos por Arenas (Puerto Rico)
• Jennifer Gauthier, Director, College of Menominee Nation Sustainable Development Institute (Menominee Nation)
• Nick Hernandez, CEO & Founder, Makoce Agriculture Development (Pine Ridge Indian Reservation)
• Michael Jefferson, President & Founder, Cut One School One Youth Crime Intervention, Inc. (Mississippi)
• Erin Martin, Farmer & Owner, Footprints in the Garden (North Carolina)
• Ted Matthews, Administrator & CEO, Anson General Hospital (Texas)
• Sarah Meitner, Executive Director, Heartland Community Foundation (Kansas)
• Alexis Racelis, Houston Endowed Chair for Science and Technology and Professor in the School for Earth, Environmental and Marine Sciences, University of Texas Rio Grande Valley (Texas)
• Nancy X. Valentine, Artist and Executive Director of Kaddatz Galleries (Minnesota)

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TO THE SENATE OF THE UNITED STATES:
 
 
    With a view to receiving the advice and consent of the Senate to ratification, I transmit herewith the Agreement under the United Nations Convention on the Law of the Sea on the conservation and sustainable use of marine biological diversity of areas beyond national jurisdiction (the “Agreement”).  I also transmit, for the information of the Senate, the report of the Department of State with respect to the Agreement.

    The purpose of the Agreement is to ensure the conservation and sustainable use of marine biodiversity of areas beyond national jurisdiction (ABNJ), often referred to as the high seas, which are under threat from a multitude of stressors.  The high seas includes ocean areas beyond countries’ 200-mile exclusive economic zones and covers about two-thirds of the global ocean.

     The Agreement will create a mechanism to establish marine protected areas in ABNJ, a vital step in the global effort to conserve or protect at least 30 percent of the global ocean by 2030.  It will create a system for the fair and equitable sharing of benefits from the use of marine genetic resources from ABNJ.  The Agreement also includes provisions ensuring that Parties conduct rigorous environmental impact assessments for their activities in ABNJ and provisions on capacity-building and the transfer of marine technology related to the Agreement.  The Agreement is key to supporting the sustainable use of marine resources, maintaining the integrity of ocean ecosystems, and conserving marine biological diversity.  Implementation of the Agreement will respect the competences of and not undermine other international bodies and will require consultations with those organizations to enhance cooperation and coordination on the conservation and sustainable use of the marine resources of the high seas.

     I believe joining the Agreement to be fully in the interest of the United States.  I recommend that the Senate give early and favorable consideration to the Agreement and give its advice and consent to ratification.
 

                              JOSEPH R. BIDEN JR.
 
 

THE WHITE HOUSE,
    December 18, 2024.

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TO THE SENATE OF THE UNITED STATES:
 
 
    With a view to receiving the advice and consent of the Senate to ratification, I transmit herewith the Agreement under the United Nations Convention on the Law of the Sea on the conservation and sustainable use of marine biological diversity of areas beyond national jurisdiction (the “Agreement”).  I also transmit, for the information of the Senate, the report of the Department of State with respect to the Agreement.

    The purpose of the Agreement is to ensure the conservation and sustainable use of marine biodiversity of areas beyond national jurisdiction (ABNJ), often referred to as the high seas, which are under threat from a multitude of stressors.  The high seas includes ocean areas beyond countries’ 200-mile exclusive economic zones and covers about two-thirds of the global ocean.

     The Agreement will create a mechanism to establish marine protected areas in ABNJ, a vital step in the global effort to conserve or protect at least 30 percent of the global ocean by 2030.  It will create a system for the fair and equitable sharing of benefits from the use of marine genetic resources from ABNJ.  The Agreement also includes provisions ensuring that Parties conduct rigorous environmental impact assessments for their activities in ABNJ and provisions on capacity-building and the transfer of marine technology related to the Agreement.  The Agreement is key to supporting the sustainable use of marine resources, maintaining the integrity of ocean ecosystems, and conserving marine biological diversity.  Implementation of the Agreement will respect the competences of and not undermine other international bodies and will require consultations with those organizations to enhance cooperation and coordination on the conservation and sustainable use of the marine resources of the high seas.

     I believe joining the Agreement to be fully in the interest of the United States.  I recommend that the Senate give early and favorable consideration to the Agreement and give its advice and consent to ratification.
 

                              JOSEPH R. BIDEN JR.
 
 

THE WHITE HOUSE,
    December 18, 2024.

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On December 17, U.S. Principal Deputy National Security Advisor (PDNSA) Jon Finer, Deputy Secretary of State Kurt Campbell, and Indian Ambassador to the United States Vinay Kwatra traveled to the Johnson Space Center in Houston, Texas, to mark the significant progress the United States and India have made to strengthen space cooperation, including under the U.S.-India Initiative on Critical and Emerging Technology (iCET).  Following President Biden and Prime Minister Modi’s June 2023 commitment to work together to “reach new frontiers across all sectors of space cooperation” and India’s signing of the Artemis Accords, our two nations reached an inflection point on collaboration across civil, security, and commercial space sectors.  This includes human spaceflight, joint space exploration, and a commitment to facilitating commercial partnerships between U.S. and Indian space companies to advance our shared interests in the growing space economy.

As part of their visit to Houston, PDNSA Finer and Deputy Secretary Campbell met with representatives from the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA), Indian Space Research Organization (ISRO), and space industry leaders to identify new opportunities to further strengthen our burgeoning space partnership.  They also reflected on the accomplishments of the past few months and charted next steps to take our partnership to the next level, including:  

• Selecting two ISRO astronauts to train at NASA’s Johnson Space Center for the first-ever joint effort between American and Indian astronauts at the International Space Station, with Axiom Space serving as the provider of the mission; the launch of the Axiom-4 mission as soon as spring 2025 will mark a significant milestone in the U.S.-India space partnership and space exploration;

• Celebrating the completion of a Strategic Framework for Human Spaceflight Cooperation to deepen interoperability in space and working toward the conclusion of a new arrangement on advanced astronaut training;

• Noting continued progress toward the launch of the NASA-ISRO Synthetic Aperture Radar (NISAR) in early 2025 from the Satish Dhawan Space Center on India’s southeastern coast; the NISAR satellite integrates two radars – one from NASA and one from ISRO – which will together map the motion of the Earth’s surface twice every 12 days, as the United States and India work together to predict and respond to hazards, measure and quantify changes to infrastructure and resources, and address other global challenges;

• Exploring the creation of a new space innovation bridge to promote partnerships between U.S. and Indian startups focused on advancing space situational awareness, satellite technology, and space launch and exploration;

• Promoting defense space cooperation through the U.S.-India Advanced Domains Defense Dialogue, India’s participation in U.S. Space Command’s annual Global Sentinel exercise, and a recently launched space situational awareness joint challenge under the India-U.S. Defense Acceleration Ecosystem (INDUS-X);

• Advancing reviews of Missile Technology exports to generate new opportunities for bilateral industry partnerships on space launch technology, including for commercial satellite launches.

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The post FACT SHEET: The United States and India Advance Growing Space Partnership appeared first on The White House.

On December 17, U.S. Principal Deputy National Security Advisor (PDNSA) Jon Finer, Deputy Secretary of State Kurt Campbell, and Indian Ambassador to the United States Vinay Kwatra traveled to the Johnson Space Center in Houston, Texas, to mark the significant progress the United States and India have made to strengthen space cooperation, including under the U.S.-India Initiative on Critical and Emerging Technology (iCET).  Following President Biden and Prime Minister Modi’s June 2023 commitment to work together to “reach new frontiers across all sectors of space cooperation” and India’s signing of the Artemis Accords, our two nations reached an inflection point on collaboration across civil, security, and commercial space sectors.  This includes human spaceflight, joint space exploration, and a commitment to facilitating commercial partnerships between U.S. and Indian space companies to advance our shared interests in the growing space economy.

As part of their visit to Houston, PDNSA Finer and Deputy Secretary Campbell met with representatives from the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA), Indian Space Research Organization (ISRO), and space industry leaders to identify new opportunities to further strengthen our burgeoning space partnership.  They also reflected on the accomplishments of the past few months and charted next steps to take our partnership to the next level, including:  

• Selecting two ISRO astronauts to train at NASA’s Johnson Space Center for the first-ever joint effort between American and Indian astronauts at the International Space Station, with Axiom Space serving as the provider of the mission; the launch of the Axiom-4 mission as soon as spring 2025 will mark a significant milestone in the U.S.-India space partnership and space exploration;

• Celebrating the completion of a Strategic Framework for Human Spaceflight Cooperation to deepen interoperability in space and working toward the conclusion of a new arrangement on advanced astronaut training;

• Noting continued progress toward the launch of the NASA-ISRO Synthetic Aperture Radar (NISAR) in early 2025 from the Satish Dhawan Space Center on India’s southeastern coast; the NISAR satellite integrates two radars – one from NASA and one from ISRO – which will together map the motion of the Earth’s surface twice every 12 days, as the United States and India work together to predict and respond to hazards, measure and quantify changes to infrastructure and resources, and address other global challenges;

• Exploring the creation of a new space innovation bridge to promote partnerships between U.S. and Indian startups focused on advancing space situational awareness, satellite technology, and space launch and exploration;

• Promoting defense space cooperation through the U.S.-India Advanced Domains Defense Dialogue, India’s participation in U.S. Space Command’s annual Global Sentinel exercise, and a recently launched space situational awareness joint challenge under the India-U.S. Defense Acceleration Ecosystem (INDUS-X);

• Advancing reviews of Missile Technology exports to generate new opportunities for bilateral industry partnerships on space launch technology, including for commercial satellite launches.

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