WASHINGTON — The Coalition for a Prosperous America (CPA) today released the following statement supporting the Biden administration’s changes to former President Donald Trump’s Executive Order 13959 that prohibited U.S. investments in Chinese firms listed on the U.S. Department of Defense list of companies supporting China’s military. The Biden administration’s changes to the Trump-era policy now widen these capital markets sanctions to include Chinese defense and related materiel sector companies, as well as Chinese companies that develop or use Chinese surveillance technology to facilitate repression or serious human rights abuses. However, the EO will now put the U.S. Treasury Department, rather than the Pentagon, in charge of creating and maintaining a list of “Chinese defense and surveillance technology firms” in which investment by U.S. persons is prohibited.
“Fifty nine of China’s biggest companies are impacted by this strong sanctions list, and there will be more in the future. Wall Street has long been helping the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) finance efforts to supplant America by exploiting U.S. capital markets and millions of unwitting American investors,” said Michael Stumo, CEO of CPA. “President Trump took action to prevent Communist Chinese Military Companies and their subsidiaries from raising money in U.S. capital markets—the first ever capital markets sanctions against China in U.S. history. We are pleased that the Biden administration has left the majority of these sanctions in place and strengthened them in some areas. However, the historically close relationship between Wall Street and the Treasury Department deserves serious scrutiny. It remains to be seen whether Treasury will take decisive action to add to this list in the future.”
Last month, CPA applauded the announcement by the New York Stock Exchange (NYSE) that it would follow the requirements of Trump’s EO 13959 and delist three Chinese telecom carriers: China Mobile Ltd., China Unicom Ltd., and China Telecom Corp. We expect to see more CCP companies added to the ongoing Pentagon list and the EO’s newly revised list for Treasury’s Office of Foreign Assets Control (OFAC) sanction purposes due to their involvement in surveillance and helping enhance the capabilities of the People’s Liberation Army.
