Rubio Praises Halt to Investing in Chinese Firms

As states across the U.S. are moving forward with measures on how to reopen their economies, lawmakers like Sen. Marco Rubio (R) are questioning how the United States should respond to China.

 Republican lawmakers have introduced legislation calling for the United States to halt payments of debt to China, penalizing companies for censoring their films for a Chinese audience, and now Sen.Rubio is applauding reports from the White House that it will block federal pension fund from expanding any investments to China.

Specifically, it’s reported that President Trump has directed his administration to quickly prevent the Federal Retirement Thrift Investment Board (FRTIB) from any future decision to invest billions of dollars from the Thrift Savings Plan (TSP) to Chinese firms that are engaged in human rights abuses and other military-related activities. The TSP is the retirement assets of federal government employees, and it includes members of the U.S. Armed Forces.

In a statement, the Florida Senator argued that “it’s outrageous that five unelected bureaucrats appointed by the previous Administration have ignored bipartisan calls from Congress to reverse this short-sighted decision, and I applaud President Trump for directing his Administration to take swift action preventing this from going forward.”

Moreover, the Florida lawmaker added that “America’s investors should never be a source of wealth funding the Chinese Communist Party’s rise at the expense of our nation’s future prosperity, and the TSP Board should not force U.S. service members and federal employees to unwittingly undermine the American national security interests that they work hard every day to protect.”

The Florida Senator has been a long-time critic of the threat that China poses, and he joined Senator Jeanne Shaheen (D) last year to lead a group of lawmakers in introducing the bipartisan Taxpayers and Savers Protection (TSP) Act, which aimed to prevent the FRTIB from sending any federal retirement savings to China.