Jacob Helberg, Under Secretary for Economic Affairs (E)
The Brussels Hub
MODERATOR: All right, so greetings from the Brussels Hub here. Today is January 5th, and we have a briefing with the Under Secretary of State for Economic Affairs, Jacob Helberg. So good afternoon from here at the Brussels Hub, and thank you for joining us.
Finally, a reminder that today’s briefing is on the record. With that, let’s get started. Under Secretary Helberg, thank you so much for joining us today. I’ll turn it over to you for your opening remarks.
UNDER SECRETARY HELBERG: Thank you so much, Ian, and it’s great to be joining everyone today for a quick overview and a discussion about – that is going to focus on a recap of what the Economic Secretariat at the State Department accomplished in 2025, and maybe provide a little bit of color on what we’re planning for 2026 as we plot out the year ahead.
Late last year, in December, we signed a historic economic security declaration known as Pax Silica that brought together Japan, South Korea, Singapore, Israel, Australia, the UK, and obviously the United States, with the participation of the Netherlands, the UAE, and Taiwan. And these are a group of high-performing countries covering critical nodes of the AI economy. Japan, as you know, is home to advanced manufacturing. South Korea is a global semiconductor fabrication – Singapore is the world’s preeminent logistics hub. Israel has been at the top of – the tip of the spear in cybersecurity and frontier technologies as well as chip design. Australia is a critical, essential partner for critical minerals, and a country with which the U.S. has signed a bilateral critical minerals deal. And the UK has been home to world-leading AI research and is the birthplace of companies like DeepMind.
Ultimately, this matters because we are seeing a global realignment of economic policy to reflect more accurately national security realities. And this declaration reflects a new growing consensus between the United States and its closest partners that economic security is national security and national security is economic security. And so our governments can no longer afford to develop economic policy in a manner that is untethered from national security.
So we are setting the stage for 2026 in order to hit the ground running with cooperation across minerals, fabrication, and compute clusters to bring a full-stack approach to AI power. We are planning to develop investment pipelines for mineral projects, expanded fab capacity, and next-generation computing centers, and to ultimately develop a coordinated framework that reduces single points of failure and prevents coercive dependencies in strategic supply chains.
Ultimately, we are hoping to work with our partners to build a vision defined by technological leadership and economic opportunity, not bottlenecks or strategic vulnerabilities. And so we’re incredibly excited to be – to spend more time this year engaging with our European partners to discuss areas of convergence, especially on economic security.
As the National Security Strategy made clear, there are some real material policy and philosophical differences between the United States and the European Union on how to approach cutting-edge technologies, particularly software and artificial intelligence. We hope to address and bridge some of those differences in 2026. Ultimately, as real and significant these differences are, we also see notable areas of convergence on economic security and the need to deepen our collaboration on the de-risking of supply chains, on mitigating coercive dependencies and promoting economic sovereignty for our continents. And so we hope to make a great deal of progress through our discussions with the Netherlands as well as the European Union, Greece – which was the first country to sign an economic security declaration with the U.S. – as well as other partners who are key on the European continent.
So with that, I’d like to – I would welcome the opportunity to answer any questions.
MODERATOR: All right, thank you so much, Under Secretary. So we’ll go to a few of the pre-submitted questions now, but for people who are listening, if they want to add other questions to the chat, we will try and get to those as well.
So starting with a question from Lisa O’Carroll from The Guardian: “Would you like any further changes to the EU’s AI” – oh, sorry, rough Monday morning – “to the EU’s AI Act? If so, can you explain why?”
UNDER SECRETARY HELBERG: So thank you for that question. The view of the United States is that the European Union is far too regulated, which has been primarily at the detriment of European companies and European workers. We have seen a growing and accelerating economic divergence in the economic performance between the European Union and the U.S. for over a decade. We’re very – we – America wants a strong Europe and we want strong allies. We want Europe, Europe’s economy, to be as dynamic and live up to its full potential.
And ultimately, we believe there are two ways to approach AI governance. You can approach it through a sector-based end-use approach, or you can approach it by regulating the technology as a whole. We believe the AI Act is an approach that corresponds to the latter. We believe that regulating the technology as a whole, coming up with a law to rule them all, will ultimately lead to a massive overregulation of the AI industry, which will favor incumbents at the detriment of startups and new entrants in this market, which will actually be incredibly detrimental to European startups and companies. We want Europe to have a seat at the AI table. And we believe Europe – we see Europe as being home to some of the world’s leading companies – leading universities, I mean – and home to extraordinary talent.
So we think Europe has the talent. We think Europe has the financial institutions to provide the kind of risk capital needed. The difference is energy is very expensive in Europe and the regulations are far too onerous for European companies. So for Europe’s own good, we believe that Europe should work – we hope to work with Europe on an AI opportunity agenda and a pro-innovation agenda that actually promotes the startup ecosystem, that promotes new entrants on this market and actually helps European builders.
And we were very pleased to include the OECD and the Netherlands in Pax Silica discussion and welcome their cooperation in Pax Silica in 2026 as a good mechanism to align on technology policy.
MODERATOR: All right, thank you for that. So we’ll go to one of the other pre-submitted questions before going to other questions in the chat. So this one is from Phillip Inman of The Guardian: “Has the EU/UK done enough to limit the use of Chinese tech? Will the U.S. respect separate and distinct regulations by the EU/UK of AI and other tech-related activities, including search and so on?”
UNDER SECRETARY HELBERG: So as I noted in my opening remarks, economic security is a notable area of convergence where the U.S. and Europe are actually on the same page. The EU has, to its credit, undertaken a great deal of effort to adjust its views on the need for serious and robust economic security practices in – for the purpose of defending its own sovereignty, its economic sovereignty, as well as defending its market against coercive and predatory economic practices. We welcome that. We think it’s a line of effort that is going to make for very fruitful work between the EU and the U.S. in 2026 and applaud the work that’s being done on economic security.
Before – before we move to the next question, I just want to dial back to the previous question with one more point that I’d like to highlight. I know that the National Security Strategy, the language around Europe and around civilizational erasure, drew a lot of attention in Europe. What I’d like to highlight is that that language is a warning. It’s not an insult. And – because there is a growing sense of concern and alarm in the United States about the fact that Europe’s economic – relative economic decline as a share of the global GDP is a crisis. Its share – the fact that its growth rate is under 1 percent per year while the rest of the world grows at over 3 percent and Europe’s share of GDP keeps shrinking every single year, which is a contraction that compounds over time – we view that as a crisis because we want a strong Europe and we want strong allies.
And so yes, there is a degree of alarm in Washington about the need for serious reforms in order to jolt the European economy back to life. We think it’s possible with the right reforms. We welcome – we think that the simplification effort that is currently under discussion and review by the European Commission is an effort – is – that offers a historic opportunity for the European Commission to drastically simplify and reduce the regulatory burden in Europe and actually frees up talent and capital on the European continent. We really hope that the EU seizes this opportunity and rises to the plate, and ultimately, we stand ready to be productive partners to support any discussions as needed on that effort.
MODERATOR: All right, thank you for that. Now apologies are in order, I guess, for Phillip; we have a colleague pointing out that he is from Reuters, so sorry about that.
We’ll go to another question from the chat. This one is from Martin Sandbu, and the question is: “How will you react to EU policies aimed at achieving the end of European strategic dependencies on the U.S.?”
UNDER SECRETARY HELBERG: Sorry, do you mind repeating the question again?
MODERATOR: Of course. So the question I think is trying to look at it from the other end and is saying: How will you or the U.S. react to EU policies aimed at achieving the end of European strategic dependence on the U.S.?
UNDER SECRETARY HELBERG: Look, as I mentioned earlier, our biggest concern is we want Europe to be strong and to – and to be vibrant. So ultimately, we feel very good about our – we feel very good about the state of the American economy. The American economy, as you know, it grew at 4.3 percent in December, far outpacing all expectations. We want Europe to be strong. In order to – a condition for European strength is for Europe to really accelerate the need to deregulate and reduce its reliance on powers that are outwardly adversarial to Europe. Whether Europe chooses to partner with the U.S. to deepen supply chains or other powers, we want to make sure that Europe doesn’t partner with countries that will coerce it and blackmail Europe every single day of that partnership. Ultimately, we do have basic expectations that Europe lives up to the commitments it made in the bilateral U.S.-EU trade deal, which does include provisions on energy security. We believe that the U.S. has demonstrated it is a more than reliable partner on matters of economic security and energy security.
With that being said, if Europe wants to pursue partnerships with other countries, we are comfortable with that. We want to make sure that our closest allies are making smart decisions about their security, about their economic policy that reflects our national – our shared national security policy. As you know, the U.S. and Europe are bound by a historic 70-plus-year Alliance – transatlantic Alliance – through NATO. And so while we have this common security architecture, we want to make sure that that security architecture is not untethered from our shared economic security posture. And for that, we want to make sure that we are aligned on basic principles of economic security, and that’s what we hope to discuss with Europe at greater depth throughout the year.
MODERATOR: All right. Thank you for that. So we have a follow-up question to a question earlier, but I think it also applies to that, and it’s trying to look at one, I guess, specific recent event. This is also from Lisa O’Carroll. And the question is: “You just mentioned the importance of the UK aligning with the U.S. on AI. Why then did the U.S. pause negotiations on AI before Christmas?”
UNDER SECRETARY HELBERG: So there are ongoing negotiations between the U.S. and the UK on the Tech Prosperity Deal, which is what you’re referring to. I’m not going to comment on negotiations that are still ongoing and in flux. But ultimately, we were grateful that the UK joined the Pax Silica Initiative, which we view as being slightly different given its focus on supply chain security. We feel optimistic that the current negotiations on the Tech Prosperity Deal will land in the right place and will get resolved quickly.
MODERATOR: And I’ll ask one more general question based on some of the things you were saying. It sounds like you see this moment as a pivotal one for adjusting strategies and for realigning. Is that true? And if so, what makes this moment so critical?
UNDER SECRETARY HELBERG: So I think the world is really awakening to a new reality that the geography of the global supply chain is no longer – is no longer appropriate, and it’s starting to crumble under the weight of overconcentration, and it’s far too brittle. Economies around the world are realizing that a new geography for the technology supply chain is needed, and with that new geography needs to come incentives as well as economic security practices.
This is why the reorganization of the global supply chain is also happening at the same time that we are living through a technological revolution in artificial intelligence. And so the juxtaposition of these two major historic trends really provide a unique opportunity that will likely shift and shape the global patterns of trade for several decades to come.
Pax Silica marked a major milestone in the U.S. Government shaping a proactive approach to leading a new positive vision for what the architecture of the AI century is going to look like. It is the first time that countries are organizing around compute, silicon, and energy. And we believe this will be an accurate reflection of where the economic dynamism will derive from in the 21st century.
The last point that I’d note is we also believe that a lot of economic value will flow through and across the supply chain, which is partly why we’ve seen different countries who contribute at different layers of the supply chain – whether it’s minerals, energy, or manufacturing – be incredibly excited to participate in Pax Silica, because economic growth will not just flow at the very top through the development of large language models; it’s going to flow through the manufacturing of semiconductors, it’s going to flow through the production of energy, through the mining of rare earth minerals, the processing of those rare earth minerals. We’re seeing that the explosion in AI is leading to record demand for minerals, record demand for infrastructure and CapEx investments, record demand for manufacturing. All of that is an extraordinary engine of growth.
And so we need to have a very diverse pallet of partners who bring unique attributes to the table. We were very grateful for the Netherlands to participate. The Netherlands isn’t just home to ASML, it’s also home to the port of Rotterdam, which is a global node and hub in logistics. And so we want to use that as a springboard to expand our conversations with other partners on the European continent in 2026 to leverage real areas of convergence on economic security. And ultimately, we hope that in doing so we will bridge some of the real differences that we have on software and AI policy.
MODERATOR: All right. Unfortunately, that’s all the time we have for today. But thank you so much for all of your questions, and also to you, Under Secretary Helberg, for joining us. I just want to give a little bit more information to everyone about where things go from here. So shortly we will send the audio recording of the briefing to all the participating journalists and provide a transcript as soon as it’s available. We’d also love to hear your feedback, and you can contact us at any time at thebrusselshub@state.gov.
Thank you again for your participation, and we hope that you can join us for another Brussels Hub press briefing soon. This ends today’s press briefing. Have a good day, everyone.
UNDER SECRETARY HELBERG: Thank you.
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