As an American citizen and a Michigan resident opposed to communist China’s subnational incursions into our country, specifically, and the People’s Republic of China (PRC), generally, I was both heartened and saddened by Steve Cortes’s May 22nd American Greatness article, “Don’t Fund Chinese Companies in the Tax Bill.”
I was heartened because a strong proponent of American workers and religious freedom once more warned against the suicidal insanity of corporate and political elites economically empowering a genocidal communist regime engaged in unrestricted warfare against our nation with the express intent of destroying the “hegemon” and, further, the rules-based international order. So, too, Mr. Cortes did his part to help pierce the corporate media’s muted coverage of how my home state of Michigan is a regrettable example of American elites’ prioritizing corporate and government revenues over America’s national security.
Mr. Cortes begins by citing the strategic threats posed by the PRC’s access to our economy and government:
“First, it compromises our industrial base because threats of espionage and sabotage follow those acquisitions and capital flows… Second, granting access to U.S. markets grants legitimacy and financial power to one of the most brutal and repressive regimes on earth, one that grows increasingly blunt in its anti-American posture. America should not be in the business of financing an enemy.”
His logic is eminently sound, as is his analysis of both the pending tax bill:
“Now, the new reconciliation bill, deemed the “Big Beautiful Bill,” just passed in the House—and it fails to fix loopholes created by the Biden administration’s Inflation Reduction Act (IRA). As this legislation moves to the Senate, it leaves the window open for Chinese companies to benefit from massive U.S. tax credits, specifically the 45x Advanced Manufacturing Production Credit, an uncapped incentive program for certain manufacturing projects.”
His solution is eminently sensible:
As a first step, the Senate must mandate no U.S. tax credits to any PRC-affiliated companies. None. Moving further, they should stop PRC companies from further infiltrating America’s industrial base and block U.S. companies from working domestically with any company listed by the Department of Defense as a Chinese Military Company or that is considered a foreign entity of concern.
Yet, implicit within Mr. Cortes’s heartening article was the heartbreaking reality that he was compelled to write it at all. For, as he baldly asks, “So, will the Senate protect America? Will the Senate stop China’s malicious efforts to dominate America’s critical technologies?” Or, as he warns, will “the American taxpayer [stay] on the hook for funding our foremost adversary?”
Hence, the heartbreak—and heartburn—that such questions should even need to be asked.
Almost a year to the day Mr. Cortes’s article was published, I had written about how Detroit and the entire state of Michigan—America’s “Arsenal of Democracy”—had been gutted and infiltrated by the PRC’s subnational incursions and predatory trade practices, including industrial espionage.
But that was during the Biden administration, shortly after the then-Democrat-controlled Congress passed the misleadingly named “Inflation Reduction Act.” Among its many harmful provisions, it enabled states like Michigan to allow U.S. companies to partner with PRC entities, including taxpayer funding and tax exemptions for that purpose. It was no accident that two of the most aggressive states in pursuing such partnerships—Michigan and Illinois—were under full Democratic control at the time. But, make no mistake, there were also Republican governors and legislatures that were eyeing that poisonous cookie jar.
As I noted at the time, the rationale for the corporate and political elite was short-sighted venality: the corporations received profits, and the government received revenues and the ability to claim they were “creating jobs.”
Mr. Cortes’s piece reminded everyone that corporations will continue to do business with the PRC regardless of the national security consequences unless and until the politicians stop them. Now, even with President Trump’s re-election and the appointment of staunch anti-Communist Marco Rubio as Secretary of State and National Security Advisor, Congress still has not gotten the message about the PRC. They have only gotten sneakier in how they cater to corporate America’s heedless collusion with one of our nation’s most dangerous, avowed enemies.
According to Mr. Cortes’s analysis:
“While Chinese companies cannot receive tax credits on their own, they can easily bypass these restrictions by establishing joint ventures or taking advantage of projects that license Chinese technology to receive tax credits for at least two more years… Under the House-passed bill, U.S. companies that receive ‘material assistance’ from prohibited foreign entities like CATL will remain eligible to receive 45X tax credits for at least two years.”
And there you have it. The congressional politicians will claim victory in ending tax credits for the PRC, all the while leaving in place—in fact, incentivizing—their ability to partner with American companies. Claiming to eliminate a problem while actually exacerbating it was the fundamental problem with the fraudulent “Inflation Reduction Act.” How bitterly ironic that the GOP Congress is poised to do the same in purporting to fix it.
When I first came to Congress, neither party was particularly concerned about how communist China had become a strategic threat and rival model of governance to the United States. Indeed, the uni-party’s “smart set” talked of how the U.S. had the duty to usher the PRC onto the world stage. My position was and remains that it is the job of the U.S. to usher the PRC into history’s dustbin.
While the public has long recognized the danger posed by the PRC—starting with those of us, Republican and Democrat, living in “deindustrialized” communities and states—it seems the insular political class still does not care about protecting Americans from that genocidal regime but only about how to duplicitously posture for the next election. Thus, whatever the tax bill’s outcome, political chicanery will likely continue to transcend party lines. President Trump and Secretary Rubio have their work cut out for them—starting within their own party.
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An American Greatness contributor, the Hon. Thaddeus G. McCotter (M.C., Ret.) served Michigan’s 11th Congressional District from 2003-2012. He served as Chair of the Republican House Policy Committee; and as a member of the Financial Services, Joint Economic, Budget, Small Business, and International Relations Committees. Not a lobbyist, he is also a contributor to Chronicles, frequent public speaker and moderator for public policy seminars, and a co-host of “John Batchelor: Eye on the World” on CBS radio, among sundry media appearances.
The Mullahs told us what they think of Israel and America. We are the Big Satan and Israel is the Little Satan. We all understand that and we also understand what they can be expected to do with nuclear weapons but what the MSM and our elected politicians don’t want us to hear and understand is what DOGE made obvious. The CCP has, similarly, actually said what the Mullahs have said (which rebounds in echo chambers) but what they, the CCP, say dies in the investment portfolios of those who were elected to be the “Watchers”. When the CCP can be so bold as to say that “they have bought powerful people in America” and our politicians become bashful, sullen and quiet you don’t need a psychiatrist and a lie detector to ascertain their guilt.
America has been sold out and the deepest traitors are our own. They make Benedict Arnold seem like Thomas Jefferson. The Biden family enterprises get wealthy in plain sight and brag about it and the water carrying mainstream media, protected by the First Amendment, label those, with facts and proof of illegality, conspiracists. Is this any way to run a country? What are the real excuses?
Perhaps the hatred for Donald Trump (TDS) is so great that selling out America to genocidal enemies is deemed worth it? Or is the naivety so great that those who look the other way, as certain Germans and Jews once did, feel ok because eventually everything will be alright? After all life is generally good, relatively speaking, and certainly the CCP would not want to do what Paul Revere right wing alarmists are shouting about… or would they? Never mind the fact that the world is facing a far more loudly heralded climate crisis and that China is profiting heavily off of easily stolen American technology while partnering with huge and powerful American investors. Certainly we should not be looking at Diane Feinstein’s investment portfolio or Nancy Pelosi’s capital gains tract record that outdistances the best portfolio managers attempt to attract investors… or should we?
We hear a lot of late regarding the massive four plus year coverup of Joe Biden’s dementia. It is likely a story bigger than watergate. It is, however, not the biggest story. The stolen election was bigger and even bigger than that was the J6 authored and choreographed Fedsurrection. And even bigger than all of those stories is the yet to be told story about the CCP. That story explains everything from Bidenomics, the open border invasion, the trade deficits, inflation, the pandemic, and every other nefarious and mendacious event that America was damaged by. And at the root of all the stories will be found the unclean hands of the CCP along with those of American politicians and vast numbers of employees within Federal bureaucracies and a well infiltrated judiciary. What McCarthy warned about in the 1950s has become a reality. Nothing was untrue except for one thing. It was not the USSR that did the infiltration. It was the CCP.
Besides removing parts of the BBB that help China in any way, the administration and Congress should ban all Chinese nationals from the US, allowing in only its diplomatic personnel (who are bad enough). This move would seriously crimp the PRC’s criminal operations here, more so in many ways than ‘unintentionally’ helping it scam US taxpayers.