May 20 (Reuters) – Leaders of the Group of Seven (G7) agreed on Saturday to set up an initiative to counter economic “coercion”, pledging to take steps to ensure that any actors attempting to “arm” economic dependency will fail and face consequences.
The initiative, dubbed the Coordinating Platform on Economic Coercion, will use early warning and rapid information sharing on economic coercion with members meeting regularly for consultation, G7 leaders said at a meeting in Hiroshima, Japan.
Below are excerpts from the statement.
“Today, we are taking additional steps to strengthen our ongoing strategic coordination on economic resilience and security by reducing vulnerabilities and countering the malicious practices that exploit and enhance them.
“We underscore the importance of working both within the G7 and with all our partners to increase global economic resilience, including by supporting a more prominent role for low- and middle-income countries in supply chains… We will address non-market issues of policies and practices to strengthen dependency and counter economic coercion We will continue to ensure that a clearly defined, narrow set of sensitive technologies that are critical to national security or may threaten international peace and security are adequately controlled without unduly affecting broader technology trade.”
RELAXED SUPPLY CHAINS
“We recognize that transparency, diversification, security, sustainability, and credibility and dependability are fundamental principles on which to build and strengthen resilient supply chain networks between trusted partner countries, both within the G7 and beyond. We encourage all nations to support these principles for resilient and reliable supply chains. We reaffirm our strong will to support the wider international community, in particular developing countries, in building their resilience, including by implementing the Global Infrastructure and Investment Partnership.
“We will strengthen resilient supply chains through partnerships around the world, especially for critical commodities such as critical minerals, semiconductors and batteries. We will intensify our efforts to strengthen communication channels to address supply disruptions and share insights and best practices, including from appropriate scenario-based stress tests.”
COORDINATION PLATFORM
“The world has seen a worrying increase in instances of economic coercion designed to exploit economic vulnerabilities and dependencies to undermine the foreign and domestic policies and standing of G7 members and partners around the world. We will work together to ensure that attempts to weaponize economic dependence by forcing G7 members and our partners, including small economies, to comply and that adjustment fails and suffers consequences. We express serious concern about economic coercion and call on all countries to refrain from its use, which not only undermines the functioning and trust in the multilateral trading system, but also undermines the international order based on respect for sovereignty and the rule of law, and ultimately undermines global security and stability.
“Recognizing the importance of existing collective efforts, including within (the World Health Organization), we will strengthen cooperation by launching the Coordinating Platform on Economic Coercion to enhance our collective assessment, preparedness, deterrence and response to economic coercion and further promote cooperation with partners outside the G7. As part of this coordination platform, we will use early warning and rapid information exchange, consult with each other regularly, jointly assess situations, explore coordinated responses, deter and, where appropriate, counter economic coercion, in accordance with our respective legal systems. Where appropriate, we will also coordinate support to targeted countries, economies and actors as a demonstration of solidarity and determination to defend the rule of law.”
DIGITAL BALL
“We are concerned about laws that unreasonably require companies to localize data or allow governments to access data without proper safeguards and safeguards.
“Therefore, we will deepen our strategic dialogue to counter malicious practices in the digital sphere, to protect global value and supply chains from illicit influence, espionage, illegal knowledge leakage and sabotage.
“We will further strengthen our multilateral export control cooperation efforts to ensure that vulnerabilities in our dual-use technology protection ecosystem cannot be exploited. We have a shared interest in preventing a narrow set of technological advances that are judged to be critical to strengthening the military and intelligence capabilities of entities that can use those capabilities to undermine international peace and security from being fueled by the capital, expertise and expertise of our companies.”
Reporting by Chang-Ran Kim; Editing by William Mallard
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