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U.S. Senator Maria Cantwell (D-WA) speaks alongside National Foreign Trade Council President Demetrios Marantis at a Washington Council of International Trade Q&A session in Seattle on Monday. (Cantwell Office Photo)
Sen. Maria Cantwell (D-WA) said the Trump administration’s tariff policies will be especially harmful to Washington state and that innovation and alliances are the key to maintaining global competitiveness, not a trade war.
“The consequences to us in the Pacific Northwest is really a threat to our ethos,” Cantwell said at an event in Seattle on Monday.
Washington state is one of the most trade-dependent states in the country, Cantwell said in a Q&A session with the Washington Council of International Trade (WCIT).
“We believe that innovation matters more than the tariffs in a fight [on] who’s going to win in aerospace or agriculture or software or any of these issues,” she said. “It is like we are in this horse race, but the president wants to put 25 pounds on our horse and make it harder.”
Cantwell also pushed for a “technology NATO” as a more effective way to counter China.
The longtime lawmaker and former RealNetworks exec said the “five most sophisticated democracies and technology countries” — such as the U.S., India, and Japan — could agree to rules on enforcing privacy and eliminating government backdoors in products.
“No one in the world should buy technology from companies that do not meet those standards,” she said. “All of a sudden, there would be a very large world community countering China, instead of us spending taxpayer dollars to rip out Huawei.”
U.S. lawmakers in December approved $3 billion for U.S. telecom companies to replace equipment made by Chinese firms Huawei and ZTE.
“The biggest issue we have right now with China is on technology,” Cantwell said. “Not that we don’t want to open up their markets to some of our agricultural products — we do — but the biggest issue that we can counter them on, on a worldwide basis right now, is to say that people shouldn’t be buying their technology … not if it has a government back door.”
Cantwell helped spearhead bipartisan support for passage of the $280 billion CHIPS and Science Act in 2022. The bill included incentives for reinvigorating semiconductor manufacturing in the U.S., with investments in R&D for AI, robotics, clean energy, nuclear power, quantum and other areas.
In his address to Congress earlier this month, President Trump sparked panic among lawmakers with his call to scrap the CHIPS and Science Act, which he called a “horrible, horrible thing.”
On Monday, Cantwell warned against tariffs on semiconductor chips, arguing that they would hurt the U.S. tech industry at a critical time of investment in domestic chip manufacturing.
The WCIT Trade Summit also featured U.S. Reps. Suzan DelBene (D,WA-01), Rick Larsen (D, WA-02), Dan Newhouse (R, WA-04), Kim Schrier (D, WA-08), Adam Smith (D, WA-09), and Emily Randall (D, WA-06).
Cantwell was joined in the Q&A by Demetrios Marantis, former U.S. Trade Representative and current National Foreign Trade Council president.
Here are more key quotes from Cantwell’s appearance:
“What I don’t think the president understands is how fast change is happening, how much innovation really matters in driving what you’re going to do and how you’re going to be successful.”
“In an Information Age economy, it is more imperative than ever to build alliances.”
“We’ve been trading with China before Lewis and Clark showed up, and we’re not going to stop. The question is, how do we get a better upper hand?”
“Make no mistake about it — one of the states that could see the biggest economic impacts from this is ours. And we have to be very loud about how foregoing an alliance approach of building more opportunities is really what we should be doing, if we want to win in an economy that changes in the blink of an eye.”
Watch video of the event here.
