Washington lawmakers introduced a bill this week calling for TikTok to cut ties with its Chinese parent company or face a ban in the United States. When many users opened the popular app on Thursday, the company greeted them with a message to oppose the legislation, prompting a flood of phone calls to several Capitol Hill offices. “Stop a TikTok shutdown,” the message on the app read. It included a button for people to call their representatives, saying: “Let Congress know what TikTok means to you and tell them to…
Tag: Gallagher, Mike (1984- )
Delegation Led by Mike Gallagher Says U.S. Support for Taiwan Is Firm
Visiting U.S. lawmakers sought to assure Taiwan on Thursday that the United States would stand by it in the face of pressure from China, though a bill that includes support for the island has stalled in Congress, and divisions over aid for Ukraine have fanned wider questions about Washington’s commitment to its partners. “Today we’ve come as Democrats and Republicans to show bipartisan support for this partnership,” Representative Mike Gallagher, the Wisconsin Republican who is leading the congressional delegation to Taiwan, told President Tsai Ing-wen in Taipei, the capital. Journalists…
American Firms Invested $1 Billion in Chinese Chips, Lawmakers Find
A congressional investigation has determined that five American venture capital firms invested more than $1 billion in China’s semiconductor industry since 2001, fueling the growth of a sector that the United States government now regards as a national security threat. Funds supplied by the five firms — GGV Capital, GSR Ventures, Qualcomm Ventures, Sequoia Capital and Walden International — went to more than 150 Chinese companies, according to the report, which was released Thursday by both Republicans and Democrats on the House Select Committee on the Chinese Communist Party. The…
Lawmakers Call for Raising Tariffs and Severing Economic Ties With China
Bipartisan lawmakers on Tuesday called for severing more of America’s economic and financial ties with China, including revoking the low tariff rates that the United States granted Beijing after it joined the World Trade Organization more than two decades ago. The House Select Committee on the Chinese Communist Party released a wide-ranging set of recommendations for resetting America’s economic relationship with China. The report, which was signed by both House Democrats and Republicans, argued that China had carried out a “multidecade campaign of economic aggression” that had undercut American firms,…
What China Isn’t Telling the World About Its Economy
China’s answer to bad news: skip it China released more bad economic news on Tuesday, but it was the number that wasn’t included in the official data dump that stood out: Beijing said it would stop publishing figures for youth unemployment, weeks after it hit a record high of 21.3 percent in June. The decision may be temporary, but it will only make it harder for investors to know what’s happening in the country — and that may be the point. Shares in Hong Kong and Shanghai closed lower again,…
Lawmakers Challenge Ford and Chinese Battery Partner Over Forced Labor
A partnership between Ford Motor and a major Chinese battery maker is facing scrutiny by Republican lawmakers, who say it could make an American automaker reliant on a company with links to forced labor in China’s Xinjiang region. In a letter sent to Ford on Thursday, the chairs of the House Select Committee on the Chinese Communist Party and the House Ways and Means Committee demanded more information about the partnership, including what they said was a plan by Ford to employ several hundred workers from China at a new…
Lawmakers Return From Taiwan Clamoring to Speed Up Weapons Deliveries
WASHINGTON — House lawmakers, returning from a pair of official trips to Taiwan aimed at bolstering ties with the self-governing island, called on Wednesday for the U.S. government to speed up weapons deliveries to shore up the enclave’s defenses against China — and bemoaned that existing channels had not lived up to their potential. “We have to prove that we’re willing to deliver,” said Representative Mike Gallagher of Wisconsin, the Republican chairman of the House’s new select committee on China. He argued that Taiwan could not be expected to build…