US committee offers 2024 legislative ‘blueprint’ for countering China

WASHINGTON, Dec 12 (Reuters) – A U.S. congressional committee issued an in depth record of bipartisan suggestions on Tuesday to reset America’s financial ties with China, setting out legislative objectives for 2024 that it stated would stop the U.S. from turning into the “financial vassal” of its chief geopolitical rival.

The proposals drew on a 12 months of hearings and investigations by the Home of Representatives’ choose committee on China, and vary from what could be dramatic shifts in U.S. regulatory approaches, together with including restrictions on outbound funding to China, to extra technical authorized revisions, corresponding to lowering a threshold for duty-free shipments from China into the U.S.

Implementing the measures would “require arduous trade-offs and won’t be with out price,” the committee, led by Republican chair Mike Gallagher and Democratic rating member Raja Krishnamoorthi, stated in a report.

“America now has a selection: settle for Beijing’s imaginative and prescient of America as its financial vassal or rise up for our safety, values, and prosperity,” the committee stated.

Gallagher and Krishnamoorthi informed reporters on a name that the November assembly between President Joe Biden and Chinese language chief Xi Jinping in San Francisco, meant to clean rocky relations, did little to alter their 150 suggestions.

Amongst them: forcing a ban or Chinese language divestment of social media platform TikTok, directing the Commerce Division to impose import duties on legacy Chinese language semiconductors, requiring the Federal Reserve to stress-test U.S. banks’ potential to face up to a possible lack of market entry to China, and limiting U.S. federal businesses from shopping for Chinese language-made drones.

“I believe that is actually a blueprint for some bipartisan laws that we’re hoping to maneuver within the subsequent 12 months,” Krishnamoorthi stated.

The committee was arrange earlier this 12 months in an effort to persuade Individuals why they need to care about competing with China, and has promoted the selective decoupling of the U.S. and Chinese language economies.

Gallagher stated Republicans had been having a “sturdy dialogue” on tips on how to transfer ahead with laws limiting U.S. outbound funding to China, a model of which was dropped from an annual protection authorization invoice. He added that he was hopeful these discussions would result in “accountable legislative exercise” within the first quarter of 2024.

“Even these main asset managers or bankers with whom we have engaged which might be skeptical of any restrictions on funding in China, even in navy and important technological areas, I believe would welcome the predictability that legislating the difficulty would supply,” Gallagher stated.

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