13 November 2024

‘America First’ and Threading the Needle on Tech Sovereignty

Corey Lee Bell and Elena Collinson

Donald Trump’s return to the White House is expected to usher in a raft of changes to the United States’ foreign policy posture. But there is at least one area in which the Republican president-elect is in agreement with the Democratic incumbent, Joe Biden: Both believe that China constitutes the nation’s primary great power rival.

For both the Biden administration and the first Trump administration (2017-2021), one of the pivotal tasks for meeting this challenge has been to retain or extend U.S. supremacy in relation to the design and production of certain critical technologies including, but not limited to, those that have dual military and non-military applications. However, how the United States should go about this has been the subject of markedly differing strategies.

Key among them, and the subject of considerable attention, has been the two leaders’ respective approaches to green energy technologies.


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