WASHINGTON – When Commerce Secretary Gina Raimondo looks at Donald Trump, she says she sees a president-elect who for all of his aggressive talk is afraid to let America compete with the rest of the world, responding instead with tariffs and curtailing immigration.
“What Trump is saying is I want to protect you from competition,” Raimondo said in a Wednesday interview. “I have a very different view. We’re going to compete. We’re going to outcompete, and we’re going to win. There’s no one better than American workers. No one more innovative American entrepreneurs. No one more creative than American companies.”
She might also be previewing a message she thinks Democrats need in the future. Raimondo’s four years in Washington have established her ability to cajole CEOs, work with labor unions and stare down foreign leaders. At 53, the former Rhode Island governor has already been considered for the vice presidency by both Joe Biden and Kamala Harris.
Over the past four years, she has been integral to efforts to reshape the future of the U.S. economy. She managed infrastructure money to eventually connect everyone to the internet, approved the funding of new factories and research sites for advanced computer chips, and set up the government’s ground rules for developing artificial intelligence.
The next four years are a test of whether her view or Trump’s will prevail in a rapidly changing economy. The global system is increasingly fractured by wars and trade issues. AI has the power to supercharge U.S. growth by increasing the economy’s productivity, but mishandled, it could lead to job losses and social disarray.
There is also the possibility that everyday tech made abroad could be used in an attack against Americans, a risk that led Raimondo to ban the internet-connected autos made by China.
“AI is by far the single biggest disruptive force in our economy now and for the decade to come, hands down,” Raimondo said. “Every company is scrambling to figure out how to integrate AI into everything they do: accounting, sales, innovation, science. And there’s a fear: If they don’t figure it out, they’ll be left behind.”
But her big bet has been that the trillions in income tax cuts favored by Trump will never be enough to revitalize America. Before entering politics, Raimondo worked as a venture capitalist and saw a lack of government investment in people and industries that would drive growth in the future.
So she helped deliver bipartisan support in 2022 for $52 billion to resurrect the manufacturing and development of advanced computer chips in the United States, with the goal of having 20% of the world’s most sophisticated semiconductors coming from American factories.
For his part, Trump has argued that simply taxing imports would be enough to help U.S. manufacturing, saying in a 2024 interview on “The Joe Rogan Experience”: “That chip deal is so bad.” Yet Trump has also surrounded himself with tech billionaires such as Elon Musk, Mark Zuckerberg, Jeff Bezos and others as he promises to cut back regulations.
Members of the Trump team have suggested that money contractually obligated for the computer chips needed for AI and other technologies should be clawed back, with Vivek Ramaswamy, who co-leads Trump’s Department of Government Efficiency, calling them “wasteful subsidies” on the social media site X.
“DOGE will review every one of these 11th-hour gambits & recommend that Inspectors General scrutinize these last-minute contracts,” Ramaswamy posted in November. “Political appointees who go on to work for beneficiaries of this midnight spending spree should be exposed unsparingly.”
Raimondo noted that the other group that dislikes the CHIPS and Science Act is China’s government.
“China hates the CHIPS Act because it’s working — it’s good for America,” she said, stressing that the government investment was needed because the markets didn’t price in issues such as national security or supply chain disruptions.
Her portfolio extended well beyond that of many traditional commerce secretaries. For formulating a response ahead of Russia’s invasion, Biden specifically tapped Raimondo to grind down Vladimir Putin’s access to military supplies.
A few weeks before the invasion, Raimondo was in a secure facility inside the Commerce Department when Biden got on a Zoom with his national security aides and assigned her to lead a coalition of 36 countries to restrict Russia’s economy.
“That was, for me, a real eureka moment,” she recalled. “Not only of how important the Commerce Department’s tools are in national security, but also how national security today more than ever, is technological security.”
She knew that Russia would ultimately struggle to fight if it lacked computer chips for its weapons, just as U.S. automakers had to cut production in 2021 when there was a global semiconductor shortage. The export controls imposed by the U.S. and its allies had the Russians ripping apart dishwashers, refrigerators and nursing pumps to find spare computer chips, she said, as well as becoming more dependent on trade with U.S. rivals.
She told the president that the impact would be gradual. And as she leaves office, Raimondo feels confident that Russia is struggling to keep its economy and war going. After Trump is inaugurated, she said she intends to stay in DC until June, when her son graduates from high school. But she also knows she just needs some time to think about what’s ahead.
“Saint Thomas Aquinas talks a lot about quieting your mind and quieting your soul,” Raimondo said. “And so that’s what I need to do.”
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