WASHINGTON—The United States lacks an effective tool to adequately combat widespread espionage and intellectual property theft being perpetrated by China’s communist regime, according to a U.S. Treasury Department official.
Despite years of competition and ongoing IP theft, the United States has not developed the tools required to target and prevent the continued transfer of sensitive U.S. technologies to China, according to Assistant Secretary of the Treasury Paul Rosen.
“We currently assess we don’t have an effective tool to target the money and sophistication with know-how that goes into these sensitive and most critical technologies into countries of concern,” Rosen said during a May 31 hearing of the Senate Committee on Banking, Housing, and Urban Affairs.
“We risk leaving a gap in terms of some of our national security concerns,” he said.
Rosen added that the Biden administration was committed to “zealously” defending U.S. security interests, and would prioritize those interests over economic development if necessary, but required more tools to do so.
“The United States will secure our interests and those of our allies and partners,” Rosen said.
“We will not compromise on national security concerns, even when they force trade-offs with economic interests.”
Rosen’s remarks confirm expert testimony delivered to Congress last year, which stated that the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) is engaged in anti-competitive and anti-free market practices on a global scale, and that the United States lacks adequate non-security tools to defend its interests.
Policies That Benefited Corporate Profits
Sen. Sherrod Brown (D-Ohio), the committee chair, said that the United States had fostered a system of policies over the course of several decades that had strengthened China at the expense of the American people. The nation’s current struggles to counter China, he said, are owed to policies that benefited corporate profits instead of American well-being.
“For far too long, our policy around China catered to multinational corporations and failed working families. It destroyed local communities, it eroded our manufacturing base and international competitiveness,” Brown said.
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