OPINION:
Joe Biden, the presumptive Democratic nominee for the president of the United States, has long been part of the globalist Washington elite, the Wall Street types, who has pushed for closer ties with China for decades.
Now is not the time.
“I believed in 1979 and said so and I believe now that a rising China is a positive development, not only for the people of China but for the United States and the world as a whole,” Mr. Biden said, speaking in Chengdu, China, while serving as the vice president of the United States in August 2011.
One thing COVID-19 has taught us as a society is that the Chinese value themselves above all others — and decades of the international community trying to “democratize” them by bringing them into the World Trade Organization, the World Health Organization and other global institutions has not modified their behavior one bit.
China misled the world in its response to COVID-19, leading to the spread of a massive global pandemic. It withheld vital information regarding the virus’ human-to-human spread, and a U.S. intelligence community report concluded China has both underreported the deaths in the country and the total number of cases. Its doctors, trying to warn about the contagion of the disease, were suppressed — some have gone missing — and were ordered to destroy all samples of the virus, not to release their findings, and not to cooperate with the international organizations.
Globalists, supporting a “new world order,” as Mr. Biden put it addressing the Export-Import Bank’s Annual Conference in April 2013, believe that “so much of our success depends on the success of those of whom we compete.” Wrong. Mr. Biden has been telling the American people for years it would be great for Americans if we integrate our economy with China’s, if we send jobs overseas and become reliant on a global supply chain, because in the end, we’ll all prosper. None of this computes with today’s reality.
The Chinese view the coronavirus as a geostrategic opportunity to further their plan to be the dominant world power. All the while, its governance system is still very authoritarian — plagued with corruption, deceit, fraud, abuse, and massive human rights violations. The Chinese Communist Party expelled three American journalists after their critical coverage of the country’s ability to contain it.
With all the chaos in the world right now, Americans can also see this as an opportunity — to correct our globalist mistakes of the past and bring back American jobs and supply chains from countries that are our greatest competitors.
China alone produces a vast majority of the core chemicals needed to make raw materials for a range of generic medicines now used to treat people for COVID-19, according to Rosemary Gibson, a health care expert at the Hastings Center. This should alarm every American. China produces half of the world’s capacity of masks, however, when the virus was spreading like wildfire, it purchased more than 2 billion of them — hoarding the world’s supply.
“One of the things that this crisis has taught us … is that we are dangerously over-dependent on a global supply chain,” said Peter Navarro, the Trump administration’s director of Trade and Manufacturing Policy, on April 2 during a White House Coronavirus Task Briefing. “Never again should we depend on the rest of the world for essential medicines and countermeasures.”
Amen.
Mr. Navarro has pitched rules requiring federal agencies and Medicare and Medicaid to “buy American” for essential drugs, from antibiotics to anesthesia. He’s recommended the U.S. government offer tax incentives and government loans to make this happen.
The Trump administration has also implemented new FDA rules to give the agency greater ability to monitor foreign and domestic supplies — which is a good start. As part of the CARES Act that was passed into law this month, manufacturers need to disclose the sources of raw materials when there are shortages and maintain contingency plans available for government inspection. All of these are good countermeasures to ensure our national security.
In 2000, Mr. Biden voted for the U.S.-China Trade Relations Act that gave China normal trade status. Within three years of the bills passing, America lost its last penicillin plant, aspirin factory and vitamin C facility, according to Ms. Gibson. Politicians, like Mr. Biden at the time, were too naive to see the national security threat global supply chains imposed, and today still are.
“China is going to eat our lunch. Come on man. They’re not bad folks, folks. But guess what? They’re not competition for us,” Mr. Biden said cavalierly on the campaign trail last year.
Sadly, Mr. Biden has been wrong for decades when it comes to China. Americans need a president who will put them first and never overlook the costs of globalization, especially when it comes to our national security.
• Kelly Sadler is a former special assistant to President Donald J. Trump and communications director at America First Action PAC, the president’s official Super PAC.
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