Mark Schiefelbein/AP Photo
Chinese staffers adjust the U.S. and Chinese flags before the opening session of trade negotiations between U.S. and Chinese trade representatives at the Diaoyutai State Guesthouse in Beijing, February 2019.
In today’s poisoned partisan atmosphere, where Republicans are laying systematic plans to steal the 2022 election and using the filibuster to block much of the Biden program, one remarkable island of bipartisanship stands out—China policy.
Next week, Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer is likely to bring to the Senate floor a stunningly tough China bill, with wide Republican support. The bill is expected to pass overwhelmingly.
The bill combines strategic industrial and technology policy with restraints on China’s abuse of the trading system and of human rights. It reverses the globalist consensus of recent Democratic administrations.
The heart of the bill is Schumer’s own Endless Frontier Act, which was reported out of the Commerce Committee on May 11, by a bipartisan vote of 24-4. Schumer’s lead co-sponsor is the committee’s ranking Republican, Todd Young of Indiana.
The bill creates a comprehensive industrial and technology policy, targeting ten key technologies for public development, including artificial intelligence, robotics, advanced semiconductors, biotech, cybersecurity, and advanced energy. It creates ten regional technology hubs as well as a “Supply Chain Resiliency and Crisis Response Program,” and contains measures to crack down on China’s predatory trade practices.
Other bills are likely to be folded into this one. The Strategic Competition Act, co-sponsored by Foreign Relations Committee Chair Bob Menendez and ranking Republican Jim Risch of Idaho, toughens policies to block Chinese theft of intellectual property and counter state subsidies of industry, as well as stronger enforcement of export controls, sanctions for human rights violations, and much more.
Still another measure proposed by Ohio Democrat Sherrod Brown and Republican Rob Portman would add new teeth to trade law. And Florida’s Marco Rubio wants to toughen a Trump executive order that bars U.S. stock exchanges from listing Chinese companies that are deemed threats to U.S. national security, and prohibits U.S. individuals from investing in them as well. Rubio’s American Financial Markets Integrity and Security Act would lock these and stronger prohibitions into law.
All this is a stunning harmonic convergence. It reflects Republican hawkishness on China as a security menace coupled with the GOP’s desire to actually deliver to workers some of what Trump merely proffered at the level of rhetoric. More remarkably, it is a complete reversal of the Clinton-Obama-Rubin-Summers embrace of China’s Wall Street alliance, and Wall Street Democrats’ disdain for industrial policy.
In this case, Republicans don’t mind letting Democrats lead, if they can share the credit. While the White House would have preferred to define its own China policy, Schumer’s leadership has such momentum that Biden’s people have settled for fine-tuning the details rather than trying to derail it.
There is constructive overlap between this legislation and Biden’s own program. And just maybe, the bipartisanship on China can even spill over into other Republican support that Biden urgently needs.
