Saul Loeb/Pool via AP
Republican Sen. Marco Rubio has sponsored a bill that would prohibit U.S. stock exchanges from listing Chinese companies considered to pose a national-security threat.
If you want to get a sense of what a politically effective Trumpism might look like, stripped of the authoritarianism, the racism, the policy incoherence, the faux populism, and the Big Lies, consider the case of Marco Rubio. The Florida senator is trying to define a pro-worker economic nationalism that even includes anti–Wall Street positions to the left of many Democrats.
The latest expression of this posture is a Rubio bill that would put in statutory form an order that Trump issued prohibiting U.S. stock exchanges from listing Chinese companies considered menacing to U.S. national security, as identified by the Pentagon. Americans are also barred from investing in these companies directly.
Rubio’s bill goes well beyond the Trump order, and could well be included in omnibus China legislation soon to reach the Senate floor.
This May 11 Rubio Senate floor speech is startling in the way it connects national security and industrial policy concerns with a no-holds-barred attack on Wall Street. He declared: “Allowing Wall Street and Big Finance to enrich themselves by hurting Americans, they make a lot of money in the short term, for those individuals, but it is hurting America in the long run. In the long run, it is national economic suicide.”
Rubio is one of several Republicans, including Tom Cotton of Arkansas and Josh Hawley of Missouri, who also believe in a government industrial policy far more explicit than anything that most Democrats supported until Joe Biden came along. Now, thanks to the leadership of Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer, there is a startling bipartisan convergence on the need for aggressive, government-led industrial-technology policies.
The catalyst for this alliance is the common awareness of China as a geo-economic rival and threat, and a nation that simply doesn’t play by the same rules of capitalism. The expression of this convergence is the omnibus China bill, which includes several far-reaching legislative measures, all with bipartisan co-sponsors. The bill could reach the Senate floor this week, and is expected to pass overwhelmingly.
The catalyst for this alliance is the common awareness of China as a geo-economic rival and threat.
As I wrote in my Friday On Tap post, the bill includes Schumer’s own Endless Frontier Act, which the Commerce Committee approved by a bipartisan vote of 24-4. Todd Young of Indiana, the Commerce Committee’s ranking Republican, is Schumer’s prime co-sponsor. The bill targets ten key advanced technologies for public support, and creates ten regional technology hubs and a Supply Chain Resiliency and Crisis Response Program.
A companion measure, which will also become part of the omnibus China bill, is called the Strategic Competition Act. This one, out of the Foreign Relations Committee, is co-sponsored by Democratic Chair Bob Menendez and ranking Republican Jim Risch of Idaho, and was reported out almost unanimously.
The convergence on China policy, with spillovers onto technology, industrial, and human rights policy, raises several intriguing questions. One is whether this unity on China might pave the way to other arenas of bipartisanship.
As foreign-policy strategists have long recognized, partial steps that build confidence can reduce conflict and lead incrementally to greater trust and collaboration. This was the case with the gradual progress that led to the Good Friday Agreement that ended the Troubles in Northern Ireland, and has long been the hope of peace activists on Israel-Palestine.
But even though Republicans seem willing to work with Democrats when it comes to China, the likelihood of trust spilling over into other areas seems a lot more reminiscent of Israel-Palestine than Northern Ireland. Republicans are evidently willing to check their guns at the door and collaborate when it comes to China, while gleefully blocking the rest of the Biden program and passing state measures to destroy democracy itself.
That doesn’t mean we should oppose this anomalous set of alliances on China. It just means we should have no illusions about where it might lead.
Seemingly, there is substantive overlap between several of the bipartisan China provisions and Biden’s proposals for jobs and infrastructure. Yet as the China legislation moves forward in its own bubble, McConnell and company are opposing the rest of the Biden program as ferociously as ever.
A related question is whether this collaboration on China policy might lead some Republicans to tone down their alliance with the Trumpists who are bent on destroying democracy. Not a chance. None of the Republican co-sponsors of these bipartisan China measures has said word one to distance themselves from the Big Lie of the stolen election or the ploys by several states to depress or rig voting.
And why should they? If working with Democrats on a common China policy is good, displacing Democrats by hook or by crook would be even better.
There is more to progressive populism than a tougher line on China or domestic technology policies.
A third question is whether the anti–Wall Street populism articulated by Rubio and others is real, and offers some leverage to shift the stance of Democrats who have been far too cozy with big finance. Here, one can be guardedly hopeful.
My sources say that the Biden administration has been under great pressure from its Wall Street allies and funders to lift the Trump executive order banning the listing of Chinese companies deemed security threats. So far, Biden has held the line. The fact that Republicans such as Rubio are working to lock this ban into law is useful pressure on Wall Street Democrats.
But is there a risk that Trump’s successors will steal the Democrats’ clothes as faux economic populists more effectively than Trump did? Yes, there is—but only if Democrats let them.
There is more to progressive populism than a tougher line on China or domestic technology policies. Where are these pro–working class Republicans when it comes to labor rights, or tax justice, or support of working families, or much deeper containment of predatory financial capitalism?
And for that matter, where are the Democrats? Chuck Schumer has been superb in pulling together the China coalition. But as a longtime senator from Wall Street, where will he be when it comes to re-regulating finance?
If Democrats do their jobs as champions of working people, there is no way for Republicans to out-populist them. But this is the key point: For the past several decades, Democrats stopped doing their jobs.
They were rewarded with the election of Donald Trump. And if they don’t do their jobs now as progressive populists, there will be more competent versions of Trump.
