Rep. Mike Gallagher, R-Wis., a leading congressional voice on placing further restrictions on China, said Friday that President Joe Biden's recent executive order blocking and regulating high-tech U.S.-based investments into China is a good first step but ultimately falls short of addressing the real problem.
Gallagher, chair of the House Select Committee on the Strategic Competition Between the United States and the Chinese Communist Party (CCP), told CNBC's "Squawk Box" "the bulk of the national security threat and the vast majority of American investment into China remain untouched by the executive order."
The executive order, issued Aug. 9, authorizes the Treasury Department to prohibit and restrict U.S. investments into Chinese entities that produce advanced computer chips, microelectronics, quantum information technologies and artificial intelligence. Also, U.S. investors must notify the Treasury Department about transactions involving technologies that could pose a threat to the U.S.
On Aug. 1, Gallagher's committee revealed investment firms Black Rock and MSCI invested or enabled the investment of Americans' savings into dozens of blacklisted Chinese companies that threaten U.S. national security or support the CCP's human rights abuses.
"The executive order does take an important step in the right direction, but if we want to stop fueling our own destruction, I don't think it can be the last step," Gallagher said. "Americans, usually unwittingly, are funding the People's Liberation Army, paying for things like aircraft carriers, stealth fighter jets, artillery shells, and facilitating a mass surveillance and oppression of the Chinese people.
"I don't think any honest analysis of the executive order suggests it would stop that. It gives the Treasury Department the lead, it gives Treasury more off ramps than the New Jersey Turnpike. If you listen to what Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen has said, I'm confident she will take every single one of those off ramps."
Gallagher said he considers the CCP an adversary to the United States, "and you don't defeat an adversary or deter an adversary by shoveling billions of dollars into their military or technology program."
"We have to ask ourselves if we want the pension fund, the overall retirement health of millions of Americans to be dependent on the success of investing in things like aircraft carriers, artillery shells and fighter jets," he said. "I hope we tackle this from a congressional perspective.
"I hope we legislate a solution that endures across different administrations, and also provide certainty to the financial business community."
Michael Katz ✉
Michael Katz is a Newsmax reporter with more than 30 years of experience reporting and editing on news, culture, and politics.
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