March 10 (Reuters) – U.S. Energy Secretary Jennifer Granholm said the United States and the European Union were in talks about a free trade-style deal around clean technology, the Financial Times reported on Friday.
“We don’t want to see any trade rivalry. And we’re in discussion with our EU counterparts about how to make sure we can do this in a way that lifts all,” Granholm told FT in an interview.
The U.S. was seeking to build a “backbone” of manufacturing to reverse decades of deindustrialization and break dependence on China, the FT reported Granholm as saying.
The report comes after the European Commission on Thursday announced that EU businesses can get as much government funding as from a U.S. green energy subsidy package.
Reporting by Anirudh Saligrama in Bengaluru; Editing by Christian Schmollinger and Tom Hogue
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