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and russia. >> this is just over one hour.ho >> i was in a security conference when ms. navalny's mother got news that her husband had been killed, , and i've nevr seen a woman stronger, with more grace, more dignity up against the world stage than ms. navalny was that day and in the days and weeks after that. [applause]e] >> she humbled me because it's of course, those of us who have suffered loss understand what that means, but to suffer lost in the way that they did is extremely impactful, and so i just want you to know your mother is a real inspiration to me because she was strong, dedicated, and watched her move

those few days in munich like nothing else. she's amazing. she really is. so my job is to welcome all of you today. i'm very glad to be here. as you know i have an incredibly new job that i been on a year and it feels like ten years now, but i'm so grateful because as mentioned earlier today, it's given me more wisdom, more pride, more dignity in what i do and how we face the world indignity resume people suffer from. the thing about john mccain was is that he and compass of many of the ideals that were just mentioned. he did suffer from the war. he did present his ideals. he make sure that as the prisoner and beyond he represented what was good, not but about america himself and about being a human being. he was tough, and that tough this gave us so much with regard to legislation, government,

being a good father, a good husband, a good man. that's a great deal of what we knew in him. but so much of that ended as we know not long ago, five years ago. as my good friend grant wood said at the time, john mccain taught us now to live, he taught us now to live well, how to be dignified and fight for what you wanted and to remind people that you need to be brave in how you operate around the world. you need to be brave, stand up for those who cannot help themselves. that's what john mccain was about. but he also taught us how to die, how to die with dignity, with great respect, and with the honor of having been an american citizen who served his country. so i'm grateful all of you are here tonight. i'm so grateful that we can celebratee together, we can brek bread together, amongst all we can do from so many people that make great effect on this world and on this globe and sorted

within the united states of america. i'm grateful to be here and it's a happy to be home. thank you. [applause] >> ambassador mccain is hard act to follow and a hard act to follow and all the other speakers from the sydney. a massive mccain, i had to say a few words about what she's done because when i started this job two years ago, of course people would say john mccain,, we miss john mccain.we he made such a difference in the world and we need him today. and over time increasingly, what a rented to people unless i wore at the mig institution, they say cindy mccain, oh, my god, she's doing amazing work. [applause] >> she seeing the world, she's fighting for people here we heard her speak at our board

dinner last night giving us an inside look at the life that she leads. us that only gaza and try to get food into the palestinian people there, but it's also sudan and it are even know all the, you know, i'm going, i can't them all but she's actively involved in trying to get food to people and then tryingo to help people in places like pacific islands s try to feed themselves so we can avert food crises. eventually service about self and was lucky to have her provided an examplele for all of us in making america look good on the world stage. [applause] and speaking of making america look good on the world stage, the next two channel channel and have done exactly that up to this very moment. in a few minutes we'll hear from the 71st secretary of state antony blinken. he has served as deputy secretary secretary of state, as prince will deputy national security

adviser, as a senate foreign relations committee staff richter committee of the position in u.s. government. he will be joined by the distinguished unicenter mitt romney representing utah. senator romney is a former governor from massachusetts, the founder of the bane company. he was a presidential candidate in 2012, famously pointed out that russia was a threat that we need to prioritize as number one threat to america. these are two statesmen who are fighting a leading the fight to protect the united states today. they're protecting our interest, our security and our democracy both at home and abroad. secretary blinken as many of you know just return from china and the middle east so we have the privilege of hearing firsthand i told him -- hearing about his work and the challenges and perhaps some progress. but we also need to consider today how to support frontline democracies like ukraine and the

republic of georgia, which is very much in the headlines today. senator mccain amos he said today we are all georgians when the russian military invaded georgia for the first time in 2008. today he would be remind us we're all georgians, george's really in a sensitive situation right now, sort of like ukraine was in 2014 when russia invaded. that's a lot hanging in the balance there. so senator mccain would have told allca of us the only thing necessary for the tribe of evil is that good men do nothing. we heard that earlier today. it bears repetition. these two men example five that spirit i working together every day for a better, safer world. please join me in welcoming the 71st secretary of state and use senator mitt romney. [applause]el ♪d ♪

♪ >> i don't know who gets to go off first, but i'm going to do that, because i get to ask the questions. i'm not the questioner, usually. usually i'm the person trying to give answers, all right? have you ever watched mr. roger's neighborhood? there's a little train and there's the little king, and he, the king is always right, right as usual, king friday. my kids say, right as usual, king romney. [laughing] i mean, because i'm, i'm alwayss out there with the answers. so tonight i'm supposed to ask the questions, which i will do. but i want to begin by saying thank you to cindy mccain forwa hosting us and bringing this extraordinary group together. thank you to the navalny family and for your beautiful words, extraordinary. thank you so very much for your inspiration. it is touching and powerful. thank you to the mccain institute.it thank you to david axelrod. i have mixed emotions about david axelrod.

[laughing] [applause] i appreciate the secretary of state and his leadership very much. and we're fortunate to have a secretary of state who's a thoughtful, perceptive, intellectually curious, devoted person, dedicated, determined, indefatigable, who has traveled the world time and time again,n, not a person of bombast, but a person who listens and is soft-spoken. we are very fortunate to have a man of the kind of quality, experience, and character as our current secretary of state, secretary antony blinken. thank you. [applause] so because i'm not noted for my questions and frankly, my answers aren't much better but i'm going to ask a few questions, but if there's a little time, i might turn to you to ask, if there are questions.

i'm going to just sort of goe topic area by topic area. i'm going to start with the secretary's most recent trip to the middle east and then turn to ukraine, and then finally to china. and so if there's someone who has a question on one of those topics, or i'll take a breath, and you can, and please ask questions that are interesting to you, but also, you might think, to the entire audience. first, i'm going to say up top, with regards to the trip to the middle east, give us the lowdown, give us the rundown. what is happening there? what's happening among the israeli people?ow what is bibi netanyahu thinking? what's happening with hamas? what kind of a deal has been put on the table? what's, what is, the people and the leadership in qatar. see, i can get all my questions out. i mean, give us a full lay of the land, and then we can sort

of probe areas of interest. >> mitt, thank you. and before trying to tackle that multi-part question, actually, it sounds like -- >> it's just the lay of the land. >> it sounds like the reporters in my pool, who manage to get in five questions for one. first, let me say how wonderful it is to be here and to be with a truly remarkable group of people. i think there's a common denominator in this room, and it's epitomized by john mccain, it's epitomized by mitt romney, but everyone in this room is for an engaged america. everyone in this room believes that our engagement, our leadership matters, makes a difference. and that commitment is more important than it's ever been. that's what i'm seeing and feeling around the world. now, it may be that years from now people come back here and look at this group, and it's the la brea tar pits of

internationalists and institutionalists. but we're fighting to make sure that's not the case, and no one has fought harder than the gentleman sitting to my right. now, mitt, i was going to say thank you for reading the lines that i wrote, appreciate that. but i think you all know, the country all knows, mitt romney is a man of extraordinary principle, married to extraordinary pragmatism. it's a rare combination, and i've gotten to see that up close these last few years since you've been in the senate. but for me, it's an honor to share the stage with you. so thank you. [applause] >> thank you. >> and to the entire mccain family, starting with cindy, following in the footsteps of john mccain, there too i have gotten to work with cindy these last few years.n you are doing what is maybe the

greatest calling anyone could have, which is trying to makeay sure that parents can put food on the table for their kids. and when it comes down to it, nothing matters more than that. so to you, to the entire family that remains so engaged, it's wonderful to be here and to share this evening with you. now, i have to tell you, and maybe the middle east is actually it's a perfect segue to the middle east. but let me just say quickly, before we were coming out here, we were listening, dasha, we were listening to you, and the senator and i had the same reaction, let's go in the other direction, because we don't want to follow dasha. thank you for your extraordinary profile in dignity and in courage. and i can only imagine how proud your dad would be of you. [applause] so when i'm asked how it's going, and the middle east is usually the first thing i'm asked about, i actually tend to

quote john mccain. john mccain used to say, it's always darkest before it goes completely black. [laughing] and i thank you, cindy, for letting me borrow that. but now to get serious for a minute, so in this moment, the best thing that can happen woul, be for the agreement that's on the table that's being considered by hamas, to have a ceasefire, the release ofen hostages, the possibility of really surging humanitarian assistance to people who so, desperately need it, that's what we're focused on. and as i was talking to various colleagues this morning, and i see one of my closest colleagues, john finer, the deputy national security advisor, here, we await a response from hamas. we await to see whether, in effect, they can take yes for an answer on the ceasefire and w release of hostages.

and the reality in this moment is the only thing standing between the people of gaza and a ceasefire is hamas. so we look to see what they will do. g in the meantime, even as we're doing that, we are working every single day, the president's working every single day, to make sure that we are doing what we can so that the people in gaza who are caught in a crossfire of hamas's making get the help, the assistance, the support they need. and we're doing that with partners like the world foodd program, and of course, we're working with many other governments, we're working with israel. i was just there, as you said, and i got to see firsthand some of the progress that's been made in recent weeks in actually getting assistance to people who need it. progress is real, it's still not enough. and we are trying to make surere that in everything we do, we're supporting those efforts.

if you step back, i think we've seen a few things in the last few weeks, some incredibly promising, others incredibly daunting. and to start with the daunting, we now have the israelis and palestinians, two absolutely traumatized societies, and when this conflict ends, building back from that trauma is going to be an extraordinary task. we also see in all directions, and i think we're seeing this not only in the region, we're seeing it around the world, to some extent we're seeing it in our own country, maybe thend biggest poison that we have to fight constantly, and that is dehumanization, the inability to see the humanity in the other. and when that happens, hearts get hardened, and everything becomes so much more difficult.

so the other great task that i think we're going to have when we get through this is to build back that sense of common humanity. and i hope we can do that amongst ourselves as well. but there's also some promise. there's promise in that one of the things we've been working oi for a long time, with thee president's leadership over many months, is seeking to normalize relations between saudi arabia and israel. and for israel, this would be the realization of something that it's sought from day one of its existence, normal relations with other countries in the region. this is something we were working on before october 7th. in fact, i was due to go to israel and saudi arabia on october 10th to work on this, and in particular to work on the palestinian piece of the puzzle, because for us, for the saudis, if we're able to move forward on normalization, it has to include also moving forward on the

aspirations of the palestinian people. so i think there's an equation that you can see, a different path that countries in the region can be on and really want to be on, which is a path of integration, a path where israel's relations with its neighbors are normalized, a path where israel's security is actually looked out for, including by its neighbors, a path where palestinians achieve their political rights, and a path in which the biggest threat to israel, to most of the countries in the region, and a threat that we share, iran, is actually isolated. now, whether we can move from the moment that we're in to actually start to travel down that path, that's going to be a big challenge. but you can see it, and it's something that the president is determined to try to pursue if we have the opportunity to do

it. one other thing on this. we saw something related thatr was quite extraordinary about two weeks ago. iran engaged in an unprecedented attack on israel, the first direct attack from iran to israel. and some people said, well, it was designed so it wouldn't do much damage, carefully calibrated. nothing of the sort. more than 300 projectiles launched at israel, including more than a hundred ballistic missiles.er john and i were in the situation room watching this unfold. it's because israel had very effective defenses, but also because the president, the united states, managed to rally on short notice a collection of countries to help, that damage was not done. and that also shows something in embryonic form, the possibilities that israel has for, again, being integrated, a

regional security architecture that can actually, i think, keep the peace effectively for years to come. so that's where we want to go. but getting from here to there, of course, requires that the war in gaza come to an end. and right now the quickest path to that happening would be through this ceasefire and hostage deal. >> i think a number of folks, myself included, have wondered why hamas has not agreed to other proposals with regards to a ceasefire. what are we misunderstanding? what is their calculation? what are they, why are they hesitating? i mean, we read about what's y being proposed. it sounds like a no-brainer. but they must have a different calculation. what is going through their head? what, i mean, they want to be just martyrs? is that, i mean, what is it that they hope to carry out, and why have they not just jumped on this, saying, oh, yeah, this is

fantastic? >> one of the challenges we s have, of course, is that the: leaders of hamas that we're indirectly engaged with through the qataris, through the egyptians, are of course living outside of gaza, living in qatar or living in türkiye, otherer places, and the ultimate decision makers are the folks who are actually in gaza itself with none of us have direct contact. so trying to understand what they're thinking is a challenge. now, we have some sense of it, but it's not, it's far from perfect. and there are different theories about what's actually motivating their decisions in this time. it's something we're constantly trying to get at.we but i can't give you aee definitive answer, and i think we'll see, depending on what they actually do in this moment, whether in fact the palestinian

people whom they purport to represent, if that's actually true, because if it is true, then taking the ceasefire should be a no-brainer, as you said. but maybe something else is going on, and we'll have a better picture of that in the coming days. >> tell us about bibi netanyahu and what his position of power is, how he's seen among the israeli people, what the level of commitment is in israel foron them to go into rafah, to continue this effort. where is he? if this, well, i'm not, i'm going to take the if out. i was going to go back to the ceasefire. but what's his political posture now in israel? >> well, i think, as everyone knows, this is a complicated government.c. it's a balancing act when you have a coalition. and if you're just looking at the politics of it, that's something that he has to factor in. but here's what i'd say generally about this.

irrespective of what you think of the prime minister, the government, what's important to understand is that much of what he's doing is not simply a reflection of his politics or his policies, it's actually a reflection of where a large majority of israelis are in this moment. i and i think it's important to understand that if we're really going to be able to meet this challenge. that's at least my observation. i've now been there seven times since october 7th, and you get a chance to get a feel for what's going on in the society itself. and as i said at the start, you have a traumatized society, just as you have traumatized palestinians. and breaking through that trauma in real time is an extraordinary challenge.

but it's i think very important that we, as the united states, as israel's friend, try to share what we think is not only in our interest but also what's in their interest. and when it comes to rafah, mitt, you mentioned that a moment ago.nt look, our position is clear. the president's been clear on this. absent a credible plan to genuinely protect civilians who are in harm's way, and keep in mind there are now 1.4 million or so people in rafah, many of them displaced from the north, absent such a plan, we can't support a major military operation going into rafah because the damage it would do is beyond what's acceptable. so we haven't seen such a plan yet, but right now, as i said, the focus is intensely on seeing if we can't get this agreement because that would be a way of, i think, moving things in a different direction. >> you may not want to answer

this question, but that is, the president sort of dipped his toe into the criticism of israel and the way they've conducted the war so far, saying we're not entirely happy with how this has been carried out. what would our administration have done differently? what is our specific criticism, and what guidance will that provide for what they do going forward?sm >> well, let's start with the, in a sense, the obvious that seems to have been forgotten, or almost erased from the conversation, which is october 7th itself. and it's extraordinary how quickly the world moved on from that. it's also extraordinary the extent to which hamas isn't even part of the conversation. and i think that's worth a moment of reflection, too. and so we've said from the start, and the president has

been committed from the start, to the proposition that israelfr not only has a right to defend itself, not only has a right to try to make sure october 7th never happens again, it has an obligation. and so that's something that wei have supported from day one. but we've also said, also from day one, how it does it matters. and here, the damage that's been done to so many innocent children, women, and men, again, in this crossfire of hamas's making, has to be something that we focus on, as it has been from day one, trying to make sure that the assistance gets to those who need it, trying to make sure that civilians are protected to the greatest extent possible. now, everyone here knows that this is almost a unique challenge because when you have

an enemy, a terrorist group like hamas that embeds itself with the civilian population in ways that we really haven't seen before, and that is hiding in and under mosques, schools, apartment buildings, it's an incredibly tall order. but even so, even so, i think where we've been pushing our friends, again, from the very start, is to do as much as possible, and to do more, to look out for civilians, and to make sure that those who need the help get it. >> why has the pure been so awful? i know that such a area of expertise but you have to have some thoughts on that, which is, i mean, as you said why has hamas disappeared in terms of public perception? and offers on the table. have a ceasefire and yet the world is screaming about israel. it's like why are not screaming

about hamas? a except the ceasefire and bring home the hostages. instead us all the other way around. typically the israelis are good at pr. what's happened here? how have they and we been so an effective at a communicating the realities of their and our point of view? >> look, i mean, there are two things. one,e, look, is an inescapable reality and that is at the inescapable reality of the people who have had and continue to suffer grievously in gaza. that's a real and we have to be focused on that and attentive to that. at the same time how this narrative has evolved, it's a great question. i don't have a good answer to that. one can speculate about what some of the causes might be. i don't know. i can tell you this. when we were taught by this little over debtor, with cindy.

i think in my time in washington which is little over 30 years, the single biggest change has been in the information environment. when i i started out in the early 1990s, everyone did the same thing. you woke up in the morning, you open the door of your apartment for your house, he picked up a hardcopy of the "new york times", the "washington post", the "wall street journal." and if you had a television in your office you turned on it 6:30 orng 7:00 and watch the national network news. now of course we are on an intravenous feed of information with new impulses, inputs every millisecond. of course the way this is played out on social media has dominated the narrative. you have a social media ecosystem environment in which context, history, facts get lost, and the emotion, the impact of images dominates.

we can't discount that but i think it also b has a very, ver, very challenging effect on the narrative. >> a small parenthetical point, which is some wonder why there was such overwhelming support for us to shut down potentially tiktok or of entities of thatrt nature. if youou look at the postings on tiktok and the number of mentions of palestinians relative to other social media sites, it's overwhelmingly so among tiktokk broadcasts. so i note that of real interest, and the president will get the chance to make action in that regard. the president had also spoke about our commitment to a two-state solution, and a number of people at said to me that's impossible. bibi netanyahu has basically said that's impossible. is it possible to have a

two-state solution? i mean, i know that's far from where we are right now. it's like a whole different realm. is that essential to beginning normalization relations with saudi arabia and with hoses to say, -- with others to say, hey, here's a vision, or some steps were lucky to? is a possible, and what with that look like? >> so for me and the president the answer is yes. you can say, especially in this moment, naïve, impossible. but i think that it is an imperative. let me put it this way. first, we were talking about normalization with saudi arabia. i've sat with mbs multiple times, the crown prince, and is made clear that he wants to pursue normalization and he would like to do it as soon as possible, equally concluded the agreements were trying to reach between the united states and

saudi arabia. but then two requirements. one, calm in gaza. two, a credible credible pathway to a palestinian state. this is what people in the region need tos see if they're going to fully get behind normalized relations between remaining arabic countries and israel. and it's also the right thing for the palestinians. so there's that. i think the of the more fundamental question is this.s. you've got 5 million palestinians livingg between the west bank and gaza. you've got about 7 million jews. the palestinians are not going anywhere. the jews are not going anywhere. there has to be an accommodation. now, i think some believe the status quo that prevailed before october 7, fine, let's leave that way. and that worked brilliantly in telesales catastrophically. -- until it failed -- some point lead has to be a step back.

everyone is going have to ask themselves questions about what we want to future to be. and the future that a talked about a few minutes ago, where israel finally realizes what it is sought from day one, to be accepted in the region, to be part of the neighborhood, that's achievable. it's in there but also requires resolution to the palestinian question. i believe there can be a palestinian state with the necessary security guarantees for israel. and to some extent i think you israelis who would like to get to real separation. well, that is one way to do it. and then who knows what happens in the following years. but, of course, as we say this we are absolutely committed to israel's security. and israel cannot and will not

accept a hamas stand come together next door. but i'm convinced that there are ways to put the postings on a pathway to a state that demonstrate state will not be israelis might fear, and i think can lead to a much better future than we have. look, everyone in this room knows there's a long story here. we were taught that tiktok you're not a store you had tiktok. to oversimplify, after the creation of the scene of israel you have decades of basically arab rejection. that went away with egypt and jordan making peace, and others following. then you had some decades, in effect, a palestinian rejection because deals were put on the table, camp david, ehud olmert, others, that would have given

palestinians 95, 96, 97% of what they sought but there thet able to get to yes. but i think the last decade or so has been one in which may be israelis became comfortable with that status quo. and as i say, i just don't think it's sustainable. >> yeah, yeah. anyone else, topic? visual, middle east? yes, sir. [inaudible] >> you've got to be real loud. i'm going to repeat it but it's got to be short, too. >> the chocolate israel and palestine, saudi arabia being such a key u.s. ally. what do you see with china, taiwan, india, japan kind doing the same? what efforts -- [inaudible] what are the implications you running into trying to overcome the china threat and the russian threat to europeanse ally? >> that's a great segue. >> there you go. go ahead. >> just a few things to say

here. first, with china, just before we were in the middle east wefo were in china. about a little less than a year ago i took a trip at a time when we had been very disengaged. i think that one of the things that president biden believes is that we have an obligation to try to manage this relationship responsibly. we are in an intense competition with china and, ofco course, for americans is nothing well with competition as long as it is fair. hopefully it actually brings the best -- rings at the best in us. but it is real competition. we also have a profound interest in making sure that competition doesn't fear into conflict, and that actually starts with engagement. we begin a process of re-engagement with her eyes wide open, and a number of my colleagues followed. and then of course most important president biden and president xi met at the end of the year in san francisco on the margins of the apec meeting.

and what we tried to do first and foremost is to reestablish regular dialogue at all levels. one of the most important pieces of this was reestablishing military to military communications, because the quickest way to get into an understated conflict is not to have those conversations happen. that's been fully restored. we look for areas where we might actually cooperate what happens to be in our mutual interest to do that, and a come back to this in a second because we found a couple. but mostly it's so important because you want to be able to be extremely clear, extremely direct, extremely explicit about your differences and your intentions. and we have a world of difference is, but it's better to be talking about them directly and it is to remain disengaged. what i found, colluding in this most recent trip, was that we

were able to engage on those differences in a very clear way. it's not that we resolve them, but at least we might have a good understanding of each other's intentions, and that's important. second, something else has changed, and this is something we've talked about a lot and that the senator has been an extremely later on in the senate. the relationship with china as i said, for us is arguably the most consequential, maybe the most complex. i think it's very hard to put it on a bumper sticker. i said competition a moment ago, that's probably the closest we have to a defining word, but there's also contestation. anderson areas where we cooperate because again its inner mutual interest to do so. in each of those areas what makes the mostat sense for us is to be able to approach china from a position of strength, and that's the biggest difference i

think we've seenn in the last fw years because we came in with the proposition we needed to do two things in order to be able to engage china from the position of strength. one was to make investment in ourselves, and you've seen that with infrastructure, you've seen it with the chips and science act. by the way, we have an extruded partner in arizona state university for chips and science. that's been a remarkable thing to see. you see it with other work that we've done, including on a bipartisan basis with congress, which is also a nice thing to see theseon days. the flip side of the coin is a part i in part responsible for, and that's alignment with our allies and our partners. from where i sit right now we have a greater convergence with key partners in europe, in asia, and even beyond, and how to approach china. i can tell you it's something that our counterparts in beijing

know, , notice, don't take the appreciate, but it's a very powerful reality. a pretty with china on economic issues where you have a real difference as we do in so many areas, , if it's the united stas alone, we are what, 20, 25% of gdp. gdp. if we have alignment, convergence, with european partners, asian partners, it might be 50, 55, 60% of gdp. that's ap. that's a very heavyweight and much harder for china to ignore. so that's what i'm saying right now, and it's making a difference. last thing on this. i mentioned it makes sense where we can to cooperate if it advances and interest. so right now the biggest killer of americans aged 18-45, not guns, not car accidents, not cancer, it's fentanyl. every single community in this country has been affected by it.

40% of americans know someone who has died from opioid overdose. that's the impact. of course we know that a big part of the problem of course have to be solved here at home, as were doing by investing a lot in awareness, in treatment, and prevention, law enforcement. but the other big side of the equation is supply. how this works as a windows is just got the ingredients they going to maketh a synthetic opioid, chemicals that may be made halfway around the world, in this case in china, and made for perfectly legal reasons, but didn't get diverted into a criminal enterprise and into the synthesis of fentanyl, comes in his country, kills our friends and neighbors. so china is a critical factor in this. we have been putting a lot of pressure on china to take action against some of the enterprises in china that are engage in

producing these chemicals and then illicitly transferring them to use in making fentanyl. but usually you have a chance and giving even more done if you can find a way to do it cooperate. so the president spent hours with president xi on this and make clear our determination, one way or another, to get to the bottom of this, and also shared that what we're seeing around the world is a problem for which we have in the canary the coal mine is now manifesting itself in so many other places. the criminal enterprises that are saturated our market, their economy markets in europe, in asia, latin america. we said toto the chinese there's going to be a huge demand signal on you to lead on this, to act responsibly. one way or another they are the message and we now have, at least in its early days, cooperation that we didn't have

before with china putting out new regulations. china actually taking in some of the companies engaged in the illicit production of the precursors or transfer of the precursors, and establishing a working group together where we are working through this problem. now i can have their own reasons for doing this, and unless it is sustained and unless we see certain other actions taken, it will not produce the results we need but a' least it's a start. so i showed all of that, sorry for going on, just because it's important to see the relationship in 360 degrees, and all of that with eyes wide open, because this competition is not going anywhere for a long time. if we're approaching it from a position of strength, we will do very, very well. >> the secretary has been kind enough to listen to me on the topic of china, invited me to come by his office and spend some time.

and givento the fact that my rel career was in the world of business, i sort of look at china from a business standpoint and believe that if i were crafting a strategy for a country or a company, i would look at china and say, brilliant, what an extraordinary job. you don't have to live by our rules, our regulations, our antitrust laws, and you've done everything that a good robber baron would do in this country at the turn of the center, 1800s to the 1900s. and i wonder if we figured out kind of how to deal with this, how to confront it. because their ability to mount the military, theyen spend about as much on the military each year as we do, according to intelligence committee this penndot $800 billion a year, year, aei's is 810 billion but that's about close where we are, we are 850. they're buying of equipment and we are. their ability to spend that is a

function of an extraordinary economy. even though it's not as big as ours, to generate massive cash that allows in to make this kind of investment. then aroundth the world, belt ad road spent the 20 hours. we don't spend a ton dollars on ourselves. they spend it around the world. one of thero things they did, nt following the sherman antitrust act, they said were going to take over when anderson avenue together. they had 5% of the world still business, now that 54% of the world still business. they've taken of the aluminum business, the nickel business, over railcars, if taken over buses, just boom, boom, boom, boom, one after the other. they keep it going. by the way, monopolies can you make a lot of money with a monopoly and to drive the american businesses and thee western businesses out ofme business. i don't know how many years ago they saidth you know what, the world is going to go towards

electric world. solar panels, batteries. so while were sitting about thinking about what kind of batteries we ought to have, they are going around the world buying at the minds and processing for nickel and cobalt and lithium. they basically have a dominant position in the major ingredients that go into batteries and solar panels. so as to go into an electric economy, guess who's going to lead? liquid avenue opec by the way but only one member of this opec, china. we sat and watched them do this. and then the cards come along. you knowme what a chinese electc car cost? $11,000. why is that? well, because they are getting the batteries for the country made the trillion dollar investment to dominate all of the raw materials in the creation of these batteries, so the companies are able to get batteries for fraction of the cost. by the way, the battery is a single biggest component and the cost of electric car, so of

course the cars cost half as much as ours, l or less. how do we do with this? the secretary has described a strategy which is three major principles, invest, align with our allies around the world, and compete. but do we need to online more to say to china you can't keep doing this? you can't keep taking over industry after industry and bankrupting our industry, dominating the raw materials we need, not telling them to us at the same price you're selling to your own people. you can't't have access. what do we do? how do we deal with this economic juggernaut that a think isis brilliant but they shouldnt be allowed to do it and have access to the market. i believe inss markets, but you can't have free market if one person is not playing by the rules of free markets. so how do we do with this? how do we say enough already? sorry about that. i know that was more of a speech

that was a question. [laughing] but i couldn't resist. >> well, you've been extraordinary eloquent about this for a long time, and i think it's exactly right. because what we have fundamentally in the economic relationship with china has not only with us but with countries around the world is a total lack of reciprocity. and that's unsustainable. its was one thing which i first got into theng wto, given what s in the public, okay, some allowances reasonably could be made. but we are now 20 plus years later and china is exactly as you described it and where it is. i think what we're hearing, again, not just here in the united states it from so many of our partners around the world, is no, enough. we can't do this anymore. we won't do this and more. and again when you bring all that together it is a lot harder for china to ignore. we spent a lot of time working

with allies and partners on taking this common approach and making sure that beijing is hearing in stereo what it's been hearing from us. and at least that this is the way to get change. now, we have the immediate problem, and i think secretary yellen was here p this morning,i don't know to talked about this, that xi is been intensely focus on this. xi was enchanted before i was picked by the way, xi is very famous in china. chopstick ability. [laughing] when i was in there, oh, you work with secretary yellen? >> they test you on the chopsticks. >> they do a little bit. janet has really got it down. but the president is intensely focus on overcapacity right now, because we've been through this before. we had what some called a china shop in years after he got into the wto and did exactly what you describe, flooded our mark with

certain products, pushed our companies out of business, devastated some committees, and we can't have that again. the president president will no have that again. part of my visit as well following secretary yellen was to help our counterparts in beijing understand we are making major investments in ourselves, including bringing good, strong manufacturing jobs back to the united states. and we're not going to allow our markets to be flooded with underprice products that would drive our folks out of business. vacations you .2fo in particula, solar panels, electric vehicle batteries, china right now is producing inn some cases double the entire global demand for the products, and it's trying to work itself out of its own economic challenges at this moment by exporting, but exporting in unfair ways. i had this conversation with my chinese counterpart, the foreign

minister, and he said wait a minute, capitalist economies, and work on comparative advantage. i said that's absolutely right. but there's onead thing to say comparative advantage, there's another thing to say unfair advantage, and that's what we're focused on changing. >> help me get a sense of how they're doing around the world geopolitically. i hear stories. i'm sure each of the people here have heard one or the other stories about china is all over africa, china is all over latin america, it's all over the caribbean, that everywhere you turn the chinese are, the chinese in there. and yet inn their own neighborhood they seem not to be doing so well with the philippines and the vietnamese and the south koreans and the japanese and the australians. i mean, they seem to have badly misjudged what's happening right baaround them. are they doing really well in africa and latin america and the caribbean?

i mean, sort of how are they doing geopolitically? >> i think there are few things going on. first of course as you mentioned earlier and as you mentioned a few minutes ago, the of engaged for a long time in the belt and road program making major investments in different parts of the world. it's ang real successes over tie in terms of positioning in economically and positioning them strategically. the two things are i think very much married. we've also seen two things. the way that these investments have been made in many cases, not allny cases but in many cas, piling countries with with, bringing workers in china to take on the jobs instead of having local workers take them on, building things to set standards, bringing, shall we say, a disregard for workers and the environment with it, that also begins to have an effect. i think countries appreciate the

magnitude of the investment. the appreciate the rapidity with which china is able to act,, something that is notch our for. i want to come back that to a second. but then there is often a price to be paid later. i think china is trying to adjust because it's gotten pushed back as people start to realize some of what these investments mean. the other challenge that it has is it actually has less money to invest in this moment because it has its own economic challenges. we're not also standing still, and you mention the imperative of critical minerals and the building blocks of the 21st century economy. we put together something called the mineral security partnership where we have gotten now more than 14 countries to work together, to look together, and potentially invest together around the world in project to make sure that we can build our

own resilient supply chains and not be dependent on any one part of the world, whether it's china or anyone else. we now have several dozen projects that are either movingg forward or we are actually looking at. ultimately our competitive advantage in this area is the private sector. we are never going to compete with china on a state to state level, dollar for dollar. that's not the nature of our system. narcissus making sure, i want my jobs, one of the state department's jobs, is to try to make sure we're helping open the terrain for american investment, american business. that's exactly what we've got the tools of government focus on now in ways that we have before. development finance corporation, of the part of the government, are focused on trying to be more effective, to serve as guarantors or as catalyst for the private sector.

but the critical difference is doing it with other countries. the president put together something with the g7 countries, the partnership for global investment and infrastructure,, and it's the same basic idea. any of us acting alone it's going to be hard to match what china is doing. when we can workd collectively, marshall our resources, or as necessary, have some of us active in one place, others in another, that's the way i think you get at the with some of these advantages china has shown in recent years. pacific islands are really good example of this. china covers a lot of ground in the pacific islands, maybe more ground that wee can cover ourselves come of the rebate and make investment do. the president has had to mix summit meetings with all the pacific islands leaders at the white house. but when we are working in cooperation and collaboration with australia, new zealand, korea, japan, india, we cover a lot of ground.

you were seeing that play out. you were seeing that play out with undersea cables. you were seeing that play out in our ability to help deliver some of the things that people in those countries want. and the last thing is of this, in diplomacy it is often more effective to say to a country, we are not asking you to choose. we want to give you a better choice, and then you make up your mind. so our responsibility is putting together the better choice. >> there's a clock appear that's telling me how long i get to go. >> it says zero, zero, zero on it. [laughing] >> from the very beginning, no, when we said that it said zero, zero, zero. summit to be the signal. i'm getting the signal. i'm going to ask one question. that's my chief of staff, liz. thank you. zero, what am i supposed to do with zero?

and that is helpless with ukraine, your perspective on ukraine, which i mean, in my parties are people, and a do not understand the argument, i've got to be honest, i do not understand how anyone can argue that we shouldn't provide weapons to ukraine. i can't. they change change the ar time from one, the europeans should do more. europeans are doing more. oh, well, we'll have enough resources. we go from argument to argument. more recently it is that there's no way for ukraine to win, that providing funding for weapons is going to lead to nothing but a continuation of the status quo. what's the pathway forward? what are the scenarios that you see in ukraine? and then please offer a last word. you get the finalth word here, . >> thank you. well first, thank you, because your leadership on this has been

instrumental. one of the things have to say is your recognition of the threat, the challenge that russia posed well before many others saw it in this country. well, i think we are finally caught up with you, and that was a very importantnt thing. unfortunately, , much of what yu talked about some years ago, we've seen come to fruition. but here's of the thing. first of all, i believe foully that in so many ways, despite the s incredible challenge that ukraine is facing, it's already succeeded and russia has already lost, because keep in mind what putin was trying to accomplish. he was trying to erase ukraine from the map. he was trying to subsume it into a greater russia. that has failed and they cannot succeed no matter what happens from here on. the reason that's fail the course is because first and

foremost the ukrainian people were determined and showed remarkable courage. but it also failed because, yes, the world did come together. i think american leadership was what made the difference. we brought 50 countries together in support of ukraine, and that continues to be the case today. we often talk about burden sharing, and americans complained about the lack of burden sharing. this is a one place where i can say without fear of contradiction that we have extraordinary burden sharing for everything that we've done, and it's a lot. collectively, our european partners and others in asia have actually done more, military, economic, humanitarian support for ukraine. so if you step back, that's an important thing to recognize. the other thing that's important to recognize is that, in so many ways, putin has precipitated everything he has sought to

prevent, what russia has invested in this horrible adventure. we see it in a country that, despite the massive efforts it's making, is going to be militarily, economically, and diplomatically weaker than it was. you have ukrainians who are united in ways they never were before against russia, and certainly before 2014 that was speeding we believe this and take your life to the y president biden will be speaking at the u.s. holocaust museum days of remembrance. live coverage here on c-span2. [inaudible conversations] ..