China Select Committee Chair Calls for Tougher Stance on Trade, Investment
The chairman of the House Select Committee on China said Jan. 22 that the U.S. should take a harder line against China's aggressive policies on trade, investment and other matters.
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Despite earlier hopes that the two countries would merely be competitors, the Chinese Communist Party “approaches the United States as an enemy to be harmed rather than as a partner,” Rep. John Moolenaar, R-Mich., said in recorded remarks to the Wilson Center. “There’s nothing normal about the CCP’s state-led, mercantilist industrial policy that cripples American industry through illegal subsidies, [intellectual property] theft and the use of slave labor.”
Moolenaar said the U.S. should respond with “new tariff rates that target strategic sectors and boost supply chain resilience,” and by reducing “the flow of de minimis shipments into the United States, a loophole that this year alone will allow more than a billion shipments to enter the United States -- exempt from duties, taxes and strict scrutiny.”
He also called for stemming the flow of U.S. capital and technology “that is fueling the Chinese military modernization and human rights abuses. American dollars should not finance companies that are developing technology that could someday be used against American service members in a conflict, nor aiding the CCP’s genocide of Uyghur Muslims.” Moolenaar said he believes Howard Lutnick, President Donald Trump’s nominee for commerce secretary (see 2411200002), agrees this issue should be a priority.
Moolenaar defended a law Congress passed last year to require China’s ByteDance to divest TikTok or face a ban of the popular social media application in the U.S. (see 2404240043).
“We must recognize … that there is no such thing as a private company in China,” Moolenaar said. “There’s no better example than ByteDance … which is so closely tied to the CCP that the Chinese government directly appoints a member of the board.”
During a panel discussion at the Wilson Center event, Robert Daly, director of the Kissinger Institute on China and the United States, said he believes the new Trump administration might initially reach a trade agreement with China but that a trade war could follow if China is not seen as meeting its commitments. A key challenge in U.S.-China trade relations is that China is seen as unwilling to cut back on its state support of its companies.
"There isn't any lever, including tariffs, that is going to get China to cut back on its support for its public as well as its private industries," Daly said. "That doesn't exist."
Daly disagreed with Moolenaar that China views the U.S. as an enemy to be harmed. "I think China sees the United States as an obstacle to be overcome or worked around," Daly said. "If they could reach all of their goals while ignoring us entirely, they would prefer to do that. Now they can't do that and because in their pursuit of their goals, they do pose real challenges and real threats to us that have to be met. There are certain contests that I think we need to be committed to winning."