China! China! China!

The Administration, Congress and the US business community remain sharply focused on China, as Beijing takes the first tentative steps towards reopening dialogue with Washington.

The first high-level contact between the two sides since China cut off direct communications with Washington following the shooting down of Chinese spy balloons, took place yesterday with a meeting between National Security Advisor Jake Sullivan and Chinese Communist Party Politburo member and Director of the Office of the Foreign Affairs Commission Wang Yi [more].

Secretary of State Antony Blinken told reporters the Administration is concerned about recent reports from US businesses about receiving unfair treatment in China. “I mean, one of our general concerns – and it’s a concern shared by many allies and partners – is the way some of our enterprises are treated in China, certainly treated in a way that’s not reciprocal to the way that many Chinese enterprises are treated, businesses are treated, around the world,” he said during a press availability with Spanish Foreign Minister Jose Manuel Albares.

“To the extent, of course, that China wants to have a positive business environment that attracts foreign investment, that attracts foreign businesses, the actions that it takes with regard to those businesses will have a big impact,” he said.

US Chamber of Commerce President and CEO Suzanne Clark emphasized the US business community’s rising concerns over China’s intensifying security policies and practices that are undermining China’s stated policy of openness and desire to attract new foreign investment and exports from the United States and other western countries at the Chamber’s annual China conference.

“We must safeguard our national security and values,” she told participants. “We support targeted and responsible steps to restrict Chinese access to sensitive technologies that could be used to undermine America’s national security, including export controls, technology restrictions, and scrutiny of outbound investment.”

On Capitol Hill

The House Foreign Affairs Subcommittee on Indo-Pacific announced yesterday it will hold a hearing May 18 on China’s economic aggression and predatory practices.

In addition, the House Select Committee on China said it has scheduled a May 17 hearing on how to counter the Chinese Communist Party’s economic aggression. Robert Lighthizer, who was former President Trump’s US Trade Representative, is among the witnesses.

The House Rules Committee on Wednesday held a hearing on China’s economic coercion.

House Rules Chairman Tom Cole (R-Okla) said he hoped the hearing would highlight the need for House action on the bipartisan Countering Economic Coercion Act of 2023 (HR 1135). “This bipartisan bill will extend new tools to the Administration to counter foreign adversaries using economic coercion to pressure, punish, and influence US allies and partners,” he said.

The bill would provide targeted relief to US allies subjected to economic coercion through decreased duties on goods, export financing and loan guarantees, while increasing duties on imports from countries engaging in economic coercion.

Meanwhile, Senate Republican Leader Mitch McConnell (Ky) told to the Senate floor, criticizing Democrats for not focusing on reauthorization of the National Defense Authorization Act, saying that the bill would help the United States compete against China.

“Our Democratic friends like to invoke America’s competition with China whenever they’re seeking to justify huge outlays of domestic spending. But they push the nuts and bolts of actually defending America to the back burner,” he charged.

On Wednesday, Sen. Josh Hawley (R-Mo) introduced legislation to raise tariffs on imports from China until the United States’ bilateral trade deficit comes into balance.  

The bill would:

• direct the President to calculate and publish every year the total value of imports into the United States from China and the total value of exports from the United States to China;

• require the President to impose an additional duty of 25 percent on all goods imported from China if a bilateral deficit is recorded during the preceding calendar year and

• permit the President to remove the duties if, during the preceding calendar year, the United States records a bilateral surplus with China.  

Now if only he could find a cosponsor named Smoot...