WASHINGTON — U.S. President Joe Biden will meet with European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen at the White House on Friday to discuss possible sanctions against China as Beijing prepares to send weapons to Russia.
Biden and von der Leyen will also discuss coordinating US and European efforts to tackle the climate crisis through investments in clean technologies based on secure supply chains, the White House press secretary said, Karine Jean-Pierre.
This will be the latest in a series of high-level diplomatic engagements with European leaders to coordinate support for Ukraine in its fight against the Russian invasion that began more than a year ago.
Last week, Biden met with German Chancellor Olaf Scholz in Washington.
In February he traveled to Kiev, where he met Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy , after which he traveled to Warsaw for talks with Polish President Andrzej Duda and the leaders of the Bucharest Nine.
With the war in Ukraine, Europe is trying to end dependence on Russian fossil fuel supplies by increasing domestic renewable energy production.
To do this, it must increase access to essential minerals such as lithium, cobalt and rare earth metals, most of which are produced by China.
“China produces 98% of Europe’s rare earth supply. Europe must reduce the risks associated with this dependency,” von der Leyen said at a joint press conference with Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau in Kingston, Canada, earlier this week.
Von der Leyen, however, was more cautious when commenting on the Biden administration’s warnings to China not to supply arms to Moscow in its war effort.
In a press conference with Scholz earlier this month, she said there was “no evidence yet” that China was supplying arms and that the question of sanctions against Beijing was “a hypothetical question”. .
Another important topic of the meeting between Biden and von der Leyen will be the US administration’s plan to provide green grants and tax credits to US companies aimed at halving carbon emissions by 2030. The EU considers this policy to be discriminatory.
To address these concerns and avoid a transatlantic subsidy race, a special task force was created in October.
