WASHINGTON—Sen. Marco Rubio (R-Fla.) and Rep. Mike Waltz (R-Fla.) are set to have a singular alternative to depart their footprint on President-elect Donald Trump’s China coverage within the subsequent 4 years. Trump chosen Rubio as his Secretary of State and Waltz as his nationwide safety adviser.
Each generally known as China hawks, Rubio and Waltz have been vocal critics of the Chinese language Communist Celebration (CCP). Right here’s what we find out about their views on China.
General Framework
It’s straightforward to sound powerful on China in entrance of the press, however the Washington consensus to discourage Beijing’s aggression “wants much more framework,” Rubio mentioned in his March 2023 keynote speech after The Heritage Basis, a Washington-based conservative assume tank, launched a report titled “Profitable the New Chilly Struggle with China.”
Throughout his remarks, which systematically laid out his views, the senior member of the Senate International Relations Committee mentioned that the U.S.–China battle spans geopolitical, diplomatic, societal, technological, and business fronts, in addition to competitors in navy capabilities.
“And we’re in a battle with a nation-state that doesn’t simply search to exchange us, that doesn’t simply search to be essentially the most highly effective nation on the earth, they search to reorient the world,” Rubio mentioned.
The senator’s China framework—mirrored in his 14-year legislative file—contains enhancing human rights in China, defending American industrial energy by limiting the CCP’s entry to U.S. know-how, capital, and federal tax credit, and countering the CCP’s affect and espionage in the USA.
Following Rubio’s nomination as Secretary of State, his colleague on the international relations committee, Sen. Todd Younger (R-Ind.), mentioned on social media platform X: “Senator Rubio possesses the acumen and judgment we’d like throughout this harmful time.”
Sen. John Fetterman (D-Pa.), a fellow member of the Particular Committee on Ageing, voiced his help for Rubio as a “robust alternative.”
Waltz’s legislative file since 2018 present him taking an analogous method to China, albeit with fewer payments launched and an extra maritime focus.
The congressman has advocated for a maritime coverage czar within the White Home and a lift to U.S. delivery infrastructure. He has additionally voiced concern over the downsizing of the U.S. Navy.
Waltz’s post-appointment assertion provided a glimpse of his method to the CCP risk.
“America will hold its allies shut, we is not going to be afraid to confront our adversaries, and we are going to spend money on the applied sciences that hold our nation robust,” he mentioned in an X publish on Nov. 12.
“America’s best energy is its booming economic system and our power dominance, and people instruments will hold us out of wars and permit us to as soon as once more lead from a place of energy.”
In contrast to Waltz’s nationwide safety adviser function within the White Home, Rubio’s nomination wants Senate affirmation, which is anticipated, given the Republicans’ upcoming majority within the chamber.
In a press release the senator’s workplace emailed to The Epoch Instances, Rubio mentioned, “Below the management of President Trump, we are going to ship peace via energy and all the time put the pursuits of People and America above all else.”
Human Rights
Rubio’s work has resulted in important U.S. legal guidelines associated to human rights abuses in China, together with the CCP’s genocide of the Uyghur individuals in Xinjiang and the erosion of Hong Kong’s democracy and its rule of legislation.
After the U.S. Treasury Division imposed human rights sanctions on Xinjiang and Hong Kong officers in 2021, Rubio was focused by Beijing twice with retaliatory sanctions. If Beijing doesn’t take away Rubio from its listing, he would be the first sitting U.S. Secretary of State sanctioned by the CCP.
This reality “in and of itself is a fairly powerful message to China,” based on Victoria Coates, former deputy nationwide safety adviser in the course of the first Trump administration and present vp at The Heritage Basis.
Coates mentioned the nomination of Rubio as prime diplomat and the appointment of Waltz present the president-elect “could be very severe about confronting the CCP and their malign conduct,” and the second Trump administration will in all probability be “extra aggressive in opposition to China than they had been within the first time period.”
In June, Rubio launched new payments to reauthorize the Hong Kong Human Rights and Democracy Act of 2019 and the Uyghur Human Rights Coverage Act of 2020, below which sanctions on Chinese language officers liable for human rights abuses expire in 2024 and 2025, respectively.
Except for the Uygher inhabitants, the senator doesn’t draw back from the difficulty of Falun Gong—a non secular observe primarily based on the tenets of truthfulness, compassion, and tolerance—which the CCP has persecuted for greater than 20 years. Falun Gong was practiced by greater than 70 million individuals in China in 1999, based on official estimates, inflicting the regime to understand its reputation as an existential risk.
Beijing’s sweeping persecution has transcended its borders, going as far as to goal Falun Gong practitioners in the USA and elsewhere.
In July, Rubio launched the Falun Gong Safety Act within the Senate, which targets these liable for China’s state-sanctioned harvesting of organs from prisoners of conscience. The Home handed a companion model earlier in June.
An impartial individuals’s tribunal present in 2019 that the Chinese language regime had been killing detained Falun Gong practitioners for his or her organs on a “important scale.”
Moreover payments that sanction human rights perpetrators, Rubio additionally led within the passage of the Uyghur Compelled Labor Prevention Act that grew to become legislation in December 2021 and bans all imported items from Xinjiang until it may be confirmed that they weren’t produced utilizing pressured labor.
Waltz, a member of the Home International Affairs Committee, can be an outspoken critic of China’s human rights file.
In 2021, he referred to as for the boycott of the 2022 Winter Olympics in Beijing, equating it to the 1936 Olympics in Nazi Germany. He launched payments searching for to ban enterprise companions of the Beijing Video games from profitable U.S. authorities contracts for 4 years and to strip the Worldwide Olympic Committee of its tax-exempt standing.
In March 2022, Waltz co-wrote a letter criticizing the Nationwide Basketball Affiliation (NBA) a month after participant Enes Kanter Freedom was dropped from his crew following Freedom’s public condemnation of the CCP’s human rights abuses.
After Freedom’s ouster, the NBA denied involvement within the resolution, telling media retailers, “We proceed to help Enes Kanter Freedom expressing his views on issues which might be vital to him as we do for all members of the NBA household.”
Securing the US Provide Chain
Through the years, Rubio has grown more and more cautious of the CCP’s industrial ambitions and has labored to shore up American industrial energy to make sure the USA maintains its benefit over China.
In a report his workplace printed in September, the senator wrote that China “now leads in most of the industries that may decide geopolitical supremacy within the twenty first century, from shipbuilding to electrical automobiles,” due to the regime’s management of the world’s largest industrial base and its “market-distorting subsidies and rampant theft.”
“This implies Beijing may have higher sway over which set of values defines the twenty first century: liberty and consultant authorities, or authoritarianism and oppression,” he added, calling for a “whole-of-society” response.
An instance of Rubio’s method to China is the motion he took in opposition to Ford’s $3.5 billion electrical automobile battery plant in Michigan in partnership with China’s Modern Amperex Know-how Co., Ltd. (CATL), the world’s largest battery maker.
The senator was among the many first lawmakers to sound the alarm about CATL, writing to the secretaries of the Treasury, Vitality, and Transportation departments after the partnership was introduced in February 2023.
He questioned the departments about whether or not CATL had obtained U.S. know-how illicitly, the corporate’s potential ties to the Chinese language navy, and any involvement it might have had with pressured labor. He additionally launched laws to make sure the Ford–CATL deal wouldn’t obtain federal tax incentives below the Inflation Discount Act.
On account of strain from the senator and different lawmakers, in addition to the Home Choose Committee on the CCP and a grassroots marketing campaign launched by involved locals, Ford suspended the challenge six months later.
Rubio later advised The Epoch Instances that CATL “shouldn’t be allowed to function within the U.S. or profit from American taxpayer subsidies” as a result of they’re “not simply financial rivals however instruments of the Chinese language Communist Celebration.”
Nick Iacovella, senior vp on the Coalition for a Affluent America (CPA), an advocacy group solely representing producers which have manufacturing amenities in the USA, has labored with the senator and his workplace for years.
He referred to as Rubio “one of many best international coverage minds of our time.”
“His international coverage experience—mixed with a deep understanding of financial, industrial, and commerce points—make him uniquely certified to be the subsequent Secretary of State,” Iacovella advised The Epoch Instances.
“Senator Rubio has led Congress in addressing China’s makes an attempt to undermine U.S. financial and nationwide safety … His notable home coverage accomplishments and advocacy for industrial coverage will make him a robust champion for a affluent future for American producers, staff, and households.”
Waltz’s efforts on U.S. provide chain independence has centered on important minerals, an important part of the protection trade.
As a member of the Home Armed Companies Committee, Waltz launched a invoice to spice up home analysis and manufacturing of important minerals after disruptions of worldwide provide chains in the course of the COVID-19 pandemic highlighted nations’ over-dependence on China, which had offered round 80 p.c of the world’s uncommon earth minerals till a couple of years in the past. Provisions of the laws grew to become legislation as a part of an omnibus spending invoice in 2020.
The congressman additionally launched laws banning CCP-controlled corporations from mining minerals or petroleum in the USA.
He opposed the Biden administration’s climate-related power transition, saying the mandate to achieve zero carbon dioxide emissions at navy installations by 2030 would hurt the U.S. Military’s readiness, whereas China controls a lot of the important minerals wanted for batteries.
The Epoch Instances has reached out to the U.S. Military for remark.
Countering CCP Espionage
Because the vice chair of the Senate Choose Intelligence Committee, Rubio has additionally been instrumental in enacting the Intelligence Authorization Act annually. The act authorizes funding for the intelligence neighborhood to fight the espionage actions of international adversaries, together with China.
Individually, to forestall the CCP from accessing U.S. important infrastructure, Rubio launched the SPACE Act in Could 2023, searching for to ban Chinese language telecommunications and aerospace items and providers from the provision chains of the Commerce Division and NASA and limit international entities’ capacity to amass U.S. house corporations. The laws grew to become legislation as part of the annual protection invoice on the finish of final 12 months.
The CCP’s infiltration into U.S. telecommunications networks grew to become a focus in the course of the presidential election when the telephones of candidate Trump and his operating mate, Sen. JD Vance (R-Ohio), had been hacked by Chinese language entities.
To guard analysis from Chinese language espionage, Waltz launched laws in 2021 to ban federal funds from being awarded to researchers taking part in China’s Thousand Skills Program.
He additionally opposed the Justice Division’s resolution in 2022 to finish the China Initiative, a program designed to prioritize figuring out and prosecuting people engaged within the CCP’s financial espionage actions.
Indo–Pacific
Each Rubio and Waltz are staunch advocates for credible U.S. deterrence within the Indo–Pacific to counter the Chinese language regime’s enlargement within the area.
The senator’s provision of fast-tracking arms gross sales to Taiwan was included within the 2023 Nationwide Protection Authorization Act (NDAA). In Could 2023, he additionally launched a invoice requiring the Division of Protection to preemptively strengthen plane belongings within the occasion of the CCP’s forceful takeover of Taiwan. The invoice handed within the Senate however didn’t develop into a part of the NDAA for fiscal 12 months 2024.
In recent times, he has persistently launched extra payments to bolster U.S. help for the democratic self-ruled island because the CCP ramped up its financial and navy aggression.
Following Rubio’s nomination, Taiwan’s President Lai Ching-te congratulated the senator on X, thanking him for his “staunch help for Taiwan & tireless efforts to defend freedom & human rights globally.”
Waltz, a former protection coverage director for Protection Division secretaries below President George W. Bush, takes a particular curiosity within the Indo–Pacific area and has spent years constructing the U.S.–India partnership as a lawmaker.
Throughout a Home Armed Companies Committee listening to in April 2023, Waltz pressed the senior Pentagon Indo–Pacific leaders on securing the help of allies within the area and performing rapidly in a Taiwan contingency.
In 2021, when Waltz was vice co-chair of the Home India Caucus, he referred to as on the USA to formalize an alliance with India to achieve “an edge over China.” In 2023, Waltz and Rep. Ro Khanna (D-Calif.), co-chairs of the Indian Caucus, together with different caucus members, launched laws to fast-track U.S. weapon gross sales to India.
In a press release to The Epoch Instances, Khanna mentioned Waltz has been “a robust chief” in constructing U.S.–India relations.
“I’m assured that he’ll work to strengthen the U.S.–India protection partnership and deter aggression from China,” he mentioned.
Sen. Ted Cruz (R-Texas), Rubio’s colleague on the International Relations Committee, mentioned Rubio could be “a really efficient diplomat for America.”
“Marco is wise. He cares about international coverage. He cares about standing as much as communists, particularly in Cuba,” Cruz mentioned in his podcast “Verdict with Ted Cruz” on Nov. 13.
“He cares about standing as much as communists in China.”
