SINGAPORE—Vice President Kamala Harris built the circumstance for the U.S. to improve its financial ties with Southeast Asia all through a two-day vacation to Singapore, where she stressed the have to have to perform with nations to simplicity offer-chain constraints as a surge of Covid-19 instances has strike factories in the location.
Ms. Harris claimed Tuesday she mentioned the offer-chain challenges thoroughly with Prime Minister Lee Hsien Loong all through their bilateral meetings. She also held a roundtable with company leaders in the place, which provided associates from chip maker GlobalFoundries Singapore Pte. Ltd., 3M Southeast Asia Pte. Ltd. and Procter & Gamble Co . , to go over ways to use the financial recovery from the Covid-19 pandemic as an chance to bolster offer-chain resiliency concerning the U.S. and the location.
“There’s so a lot in unique about the pandemic that highlighted the fractures, and the failures and the fissures in our system,” Ms. Harris claimed in the assembly. “And this moment provides us the chance then born out of disaster to basically resolve and find methods to extensive-phrase challenges that have challenged us.”
The Biden administration has been operating to address a world semiconductor shortage, which has triggered production slowdowns in solutions from appliances to computer systems and vehicles. A surge in Covid-19 instances in the mainly unvaccinated location has also led to lockdowns in nations including Vietnam, Thailand and Malaysia—major exporters of electronics and other goods—that forced factory closures and further disrupted world offer chains.
The vice president’s emphasis on partnering with nations in Southeast Asia on offer-chain challenges is also element of the administration’s attempts to reaffirm its engagement in the location, as China seeks to raise its impact and extend its statements in the South China Sea.
