Biden enables, emboldens and enriches China — with your tax dollars
The world watched in disbelief and many Americans watched in disgust as President Joe Biden allowed a Chinese spy balloon to hover over our country for nearly a week.
Biden’s “old friend” Xi Jinping is reportedly soon headed to Moscow to strengthen his relationship with war criminal Vladimir Putin.
And the Department of Energy just concluded COVID likely came from a Chinese lab leak, but the White House pushed back, claiming there’s no “consensus.”
China continues to challenge our country, and Biden continues to back down.
Joe Biden has been enriching and enabling China at the expense of America for two years straight.
He has been weak and wrong about China for decades. It’s only getting worse.
Democrats’ obsession with electric vehicles has turned into a cash cow for China. Biden signed into law tasty tax breaks for EV makers and EV owners last year.
Most EVs use lithium-ion batteries. Three-quarters of these batteries are made in China. Biden’s dream of driving up EV sales would mean an enormous windfall for China.
China also makes money off American solar power. Right now, we have a shortage of US-made solar panels. Solar panels require a key raw material called polysilicon. Nearly half of the world’s supply is scavenged by Uyghur forced labor in China.
Democratic sun worshippers have sent a golden goose to Communist China.
As if all this were not enough, Biden is even giving our tax dollars directly to companies under Chinese control.
Biden’s Department of Energy announced a $200 million grant to battery manufacturer Microvast. This company has close ties to the Communist Chinese government.
The company’s filings with the Securities and Exchange Commission concede that China “exerts substantial influence over the manner in which we must conduct our business activities and may intervene, at any time and with no notice.”
In other words, the company admits it is dictated to by the Chinese Communist Party.
In December, as the ranking Republican on the Senate Energy and Natural Resources Committee, I wrote to the Department of Energy about its review process for this grant.
At the end of January, the department responded that it’s now conducting a “due diligence review.”
It’s doing the review only after the $200 million grant was decided and announced. The deputy energy secretary told the Energy Committee that the grant money has not yet gone out the door.
Team Biden announced this grant with much fanfare and continues to defend it.
The administration has consistently failed to do its homework, and it’s failing the American people.
There is also a Democratic revolving door from working for the administration to working for China and then back again.
One of the Biden team’s top lawyers worked in the Obama White House. After his time in the US government, he represented the Chinese Ministry of Commerce as well as tech giant Huawei, which the Chinese government controls.
Now he’s back on the payroll of a Democratic administration.
In February, I introduced legislation to stop administration officials from cashing in with China after their time in office.
Let’s not forget that in the run-up to the midterm elections, Biden released massive amounts of oil from our nation’s Strategic Petroleum Reserve. He sold nearly 1 million of those barrels of oil to Unipec, a subsidiary of China’s state energy company.
I’ve introduced legislation to ensure we never sell oil from our reserve to China again.
America’s energy policy is supposed to be for us and not our enemies.
Yet Biden has consistently forced Americans to pay higher prices and higher taxes while sending more and more of our money to our biggest rival.
China is going to continue to try to spy on us and challenge us on the world stage.
We should be ready for it, and we should respond to it.
We shouldn’t be forced to foot the bill.
John Barrasso of Wyoming is chairman of the Senate Republican Conference and the top Republican on the Senate Energy and Natural Resources Committee.
