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**MAY 14, 2021**

Kuttner on TAP

Bipartisanship Lives! The Amazing Convergence on China Policy

****

In today's poisoned partisan atmosphere, where Republicans are laying
systematic plans to steal the 2022 election and using the filibuster to
block much of the Biden program, one remarkable island of bipartisanship
stands out-China policy.

Next week, Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer is likely to bring to
the Senate floor a stunningly tough China bill, with wide Republican
support. The bill is expected to pass overwhelmingly.

The bill combines strategic industrial and technology policy with
restraints on China's abuse of the trading system and of human rights.
It reverses the globalist consensus of recent Democratic
administrations.

The heart of the bill is Schumer's own Endless Frontier Act, which was
reported out of the Commerce Committee on May 11, by a bipartisan vote
of 24-4. Schumer's lead co-sponsor is the committee's ranking
Republican, Todd Young of Indiana.

The bill creates a comprehensive industrial and technology policy,
targeting ten key technologies for public development, including
artificial intelligence, robotics, advanced semiconductors, biotech,
cybersecurity, and advanced energy. It creates ten regional technology
hubs as well as a "Supply Chain Resiliency and Crisis Response Program,"
and contains measures to crack down on China's predatory trade
practices.

Other bills are likely to be folded into this one. The Strategic
Competition Act, co-sponsored by Foreign Relations Committee Chair Bob
Menendez and ranking Republican Jim Risch of Idaho, toughens policies to
block Chinese theft of intellectual property and counter state subsidies
of industry, as well as stronger enforcement of export controls,
sanctions for human rights violations, and much more.

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Still another measure proposed by Ohio Democrat Sherrod Brown and
Republican Rob Portman would add new teeth to trade law. And Florida's
Marco Rubio wants to toughen a Trump executive order that bars U.S.
stock exchanges from listing Chinese companies that are deemed threats
to U.S. national security, and prohibits U.S. individuals from investing
in them as well. Rubio's American Financial Markets Integrity and
Security Act would lock these and stronger prohibitions into law.

All this is a stunning harmonic convergence. It reflects Republican
hawkishness on China as a security menace coupled with the GOP's
desire to actually deliver to workers some of what Trump merely
proffered at the level of rhetoric. More remarkably, it is a complete
reversal of the Clinton-Obama-Rubin-Summers embrace of China's Wall
Street alliance, and Wall Street Democrats' disdain for industrial
policy.

In this case, Republicans don't mind letting Democrats lead, if they
can share the credit. While the White House would have preferred to
define its own China policy, Schumer's leadership has such momentum
that Biden's people have settled for fine-tuning the details rather
than trying to derail it.

There is constructive overlap between this legislation and Biden's own
program. And just maybe, the bipartisanship on China can even spill over
into other Republican support that Biden urgently needs.

~ ROBERT KUTTNER

Follow Robert Kuttner on Twitter

Robert Kuttner's latest book is
The Stakes: 2020 and the Survival of American Democracy
.

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