Wall Street-Beijing Axis
Floor Speech
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Mr. SHERMAN. Madam Speaker, the Chinese Communist Party obviously believes that they can invade America's airspace deliberately, notoriously, and without serious consequences. They even believe--and this shows their hubris and their gall--that they can announce that they reserve the right to retaliate against America for shooting down their spy balloon.
Do you know what, Madam Speaker?
After 26 years in this House, I would say that the Chinese Communist Party is probably right. They did it. They hit us, and they can probably get away with it because the two parties will compete about who can scream the greatest invective toward Beijing, and then the two parties will attack each other saying: Well, what did President Trump do? And what did President Biden do?
In the end, we will have nothing but bruised, partisan vocal cords.
I have seen for 26 years the Beijing-Wall Street axis control our policy toward China.
Now this is just a balloon, but it is on top of two enormous problems with China. One is the lopsided trade relationship where they prohibit us from exporting to them and impose higher tariffs on us than we impose on them.
The second was the obfuscation and lack of cooperation of China when COVID arose on their territory.
But we probably will not have meaningful retaliation for those great harms and the most recent one because Wall Street has been in control of this House since the day in the year 2000 when we granted most- favored-nation status to Beijing and let them into the World Trade Organization. Before that, China was an annoyance and a slumbering giant. Since then, the Chinese Communist Party has done untold damage to our people, to their people, and, of course, to our economy and national security.
There are two things Wall Street will not let us do and two things China would actually try to avoid, and that is dealing with Taiwan and trade.
So I have three proposals. I will look forward to working with anyone on either side of the aisle to turn this into good legislation.
First, Congress should provide that we automatically allow Taiwan to buy certain defense items and that we act expeditiously at the congressional level without waiting for the administration to allow the Seahawk helicopters and other necessary defense items to go to Taiwan.
Second--and this arises from my years as chairman of the Investor Protection, Entrepreneurship, and Capital Markets Subcommittee--we need to require all major corporations to disclose, as a risk factor to their investors, how they would be affected by an end of the U.S.-China economic relationship or major impediment to it.
Investors deserve the information, and we need corporations to compete for capital by showing that they have made themselves more resilient. If our companies are more resilient, then our economy is more resilient.
Third, we need to provide that we immediately end most-favored-nation status to China if they blockade or invade Taiwan. This has to be immediate, certain, and known in Beijing before they launch their invasion, and it is not immediate and it is certain unless we provide no executive branch waiver.
Finally, a fourth proposal, and that is we need to provide an immediate 20 percent tariff on all Chinese goods if they retaliate against us for implementing any of those first three proposals. If they retaliate against that retaliation, then we have to be ready to go beyond that.
We can act. We can act with regard to Taiwan, we can act with regard to trade, and we can act with regard to a country that has built the most lopsided trading relationship in the history of international trade and whose actions have turned the industrial Midwest into what we now refer to as the Rust Belt which has led to a decline in real wages for those without a college education for over 25 years leading to fentanyl and a host of other problems.
So we can act.
The question is: Can we overcome the Wall Street-Beijing axis?
Can we deal with the partisanship here, or will this balloon just go over our heads and lead, once again, to partisan vituperation?
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