A group of Republicans led by Rep. Chip Roy (R-Texas) is set to introduce a bill aimed at bringing manufacturing back to the United States and restoring economic independence from China.
Despite rising political tensions between the world’s top two economic powers, U.S. trade with China has steadily grown, setting a new record last year.
At $690.6 billion, according to official U.S. data released on Feb. 9, the level of bilateral goods trade between the countries was a demonstration of how commercially intertwined the countries are, though unfair trade practices from Beijing have for years been an eyesore for the United States.
The Texas lawmaker said he wants to change that by proposing what he dubbed the “BEAT CHINA Act.” By modifying the tax code, the lawmaker aims to give tax advantages to manufacturers moving to the United States from abroad, cutting down U.S. overdependence on China, the global manufacturing hub that in 2021 made up nearly a third of the world’s manufacturing output in 2021.
“The Chinese Communist Party is the single greatest foreign threat to U.S. national security,” Roy told The Epoch Times ahead of the legislation’s release. “As long as we depend on China and the rest of the world to keep our shelves stocked, our economic prosperity, our political liberty, and our national security are all in grave danger.”
In 2020, the supply chain disruptions resulting from the COVID-19 pandemic put the world’s economic dependence on China under the spotlight. China’s dominance in the global production of medical supplies amplified shortages in the United States and around the world, prompting many experts to call it a “national security risk.” Since then, the severe lockdowns in China under the regime’s now-abandoned zero-tolerance virus policy frequently brought production to a standstill, intensifying supply chain woes for companies that source some of their components from China, such as Microsoft and Apple.
By Eva Fu
