Trump Can Reinforce Longstanding Leadership on China Policy to Advance National Security

Chairman John Moolenaar of the Select Committee on China has sent a letter to President Donald Trump ahead of his meeting next week with Chinese Communist Party General Secretary Xi Jinping. In the letter, Moolenaar credits Trump with leading a historic shift in U.S. policy toward China that has helped advance “the perspective of American national interests, rather than the perspectives of Wall Street, Davos, or Brussels.” Moolenaar also asks Trump to emphasize key national security priorities including accountability for China’s support for Iran, continued vigilance against and prohibition of Chinese automakers and vehicles in the U.S., rejection of CCP interference in arms deals and security between the U.S. and its partners in the Indo-Pacific, and the imperative of winning the AI race against China.

Moolenaar writes:

• The United States should make it crystal clear to the CCP that providing lethal support and enabling our adversaries to attack U.S. armed forces, including military targeting support, is tantamount to an act of war against the United States and will be met with the most severe consequences. Recent public reports that Chinese entities provided targeting for Iranian strikes that killed American warfighters mark a dramatic unilateral escalation. The United States does not help third parties kill Chinese soldiers, and we should expect the CCP to continue this murderous treachery unless consequences are imposed.

…

• The United States should prevent the PRC’s state-subsidized car companies from evading the guardrails your administration has established by setting up onshore assembly lines. Your recent comments reiterating your efforts to ward off an “avalanche of Chinese cars” were appropriately tough and clear-eyed, and I agree with your analysis that market access for subsidized Chinese automakers is destroying Europe’s auto industry. Across sectors, the PRC government seeks to use inbound investment into the United States as a means to maintain one-sided market access, frustrate U.S. efforts to stymie PRC overcapacity, weaken our homeland security, and suppress American reindustrialization. American states, cities, and towns understand this well, which is why PRC investments have been blocked by many localities, including in my district in Michigan. Any such projects should be subject to the highest scrutiny, and their negotiating value should be heavily discounted given the PRC’s longstanding refusal to honor its agreements.

• China’s attempts to interfere with your administration’s management of American arms exports and related security cooperation with allies and partners should be rejected out of hand. The CCP understands that its unprecedented buildup of nuclear and conventional forces and its escalating hostility towards its neighbors are the true causes of regional instability—not the longstanding practice of U.S. arms sales, or our decades-long allies including Japan and the Philippines hardening their defenses against CCP aggression. I commend the record-setting sales of American capabilities to Taiwan during both of your terms, and stand ready to support your continued efforts to deter the CCP from fomenting a military catastrophe that would devastate the global economy.

• As you have argued: it is imperative that the United States win the AI race against China. To that end, we should redouble our efforts to prevent PRC access to the crown jewels of American AI technology—especially given the increased offensive capabilities the latest frontier models have displayed in recent weeks. Recent reports and your administration’s public warnings that Chinese AI labs are illicitly distilling American models – and, in some cases, simply rerouting requests to American products – contrasted with the CCP’s refusal to buy American AI chips give us critical insight into the CCP’s plans. The PRC government is refusing to allow Chinese AI labs to legally purchase American technology that they desperately need, while allowing them to pursue illicit access to those same resources. The message is clear: The PRC is hell-bent on decoupling from the American AI stack. It will happily steal American technology to ease the pain of ending long-term dependency on U.S. innovation, but the PRC is not a long-term market opportunity for American AI. The correct response is to slow down PRC AI development as much as possible by strengthening controls on advanced AI products, cutting off cloud services loopholes that allow PRC companies to easily dodge these restrictions, and most importantly, stopping exports of American and allied semiconductor manufacturing technology that the PRC needs for its plan to work. 
  

Moolenaar’s full letter to Trump can be read here.