Speaker Johnson to Push Legislative Package to Combat Chinese Regime

House Speaker Rep. Mike Johnson (R-La.) speaks at the Hudson Institute in Washington on July 8, 2024. (Madalina Vasiliu/The Epoch Times)

House Speaker Mike Johnson (R-La.) said he wanted Congress to pass a significant package of legislation to target the Chinese communist regime before the year’s end.

“China poses the greatest threat to global peace. Congress must keep our focus on countering China with every tool at our disposal,” Mr. Johnson said in his first major foreign policy speech at the Hudson Institute on July 8.

Mr. Johnson promised that the House would vote on these bills to help lay the groundwork for the next administration to target U.S. adversaries’ economies when it takes office in January next year.

“The House will be voting on a series of bills to empower the next administration to hit our enemies’ economies on day one. We’ll build our sanctions package, punish the Chinese military firms that provide material support to Russia and Iran,” the Louisiana Republican said. “We’re working on a piece of legislation to move this fall to do that very thing.”

During his speech, Mr. Johnson listed priority legislation that he would push the House to pass, including restrictions on outbound investment to China, the BIOSECURE Act to protect Americans’ healthcare data, and measures to end the exploitation of trade loopholes by Chinese firms.

“I’m very hopeful that much of this can be bipartisan,” Mr. Johnson noted.

The BIOSECURE Act was introduced by Rep. John Moolenaar (R-Mich.) in May to prohibit the federal government from contracting and financing Chinese biotechnology firms and foreign adversaries’ biotech companies of concern. The legislation targets several top Chinese biotech firms, including genetics company Beijing Genomics Institute (BGI Group), MGI, Complete Genomics, WuXi AppTec, and WuXi Biologics.

Lawmakers have repeatedly raised concerns over Chinese fast fashion retailers, particularly Shein and Temu, exploiting a trade loophole called the “de minimis.” This U.S. trade exemption permits online retailers to ship small packages valued at $800 or less directly to customers without paying tariffs. This loophole enables these Chinese retailers to sell inexpensive Chinese products to avoid millions of dollars in taxes and fees, as well as regulations banning forced labor in the consumer product supply chain.

In April, the Ways and Means Committee advanced the End China’s De Minimis Abuse Act. The committee found that more than 60 percent of de minimis shipments to the United States come from China.

Mr. Johnson said the House would “rein in the de minimis privilege” that “will help stymie China’s attempts to exploit American trade.”

He also said he would renew the House Select Committee on the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) in the next Congress to continue exposing CCP threats. The committee was established in January 2023 in the 118th Congress to “investigate and submit policy recommendations on the status of the Chinese Communist Party’s economic, technological, and security progress and its competition with the United States.”

Lawmakers, from both chambers, have introduced multiple legislation targeting the Chinese communist regime as part of Washington’s efforts to counter CCP influence and malice act. However, most of these bills are still awaiting a vote in the Senate and the House before advancing to the next stages of the legislative process.

In February, “the largest and most comprehensive legislation” to address the CCP threat, the Countering Communist China Act, was introduced by Rep. Kevin Hern (R-Okla.). The legislation, supported by 45 original cosponsors, covers various critical areas of U.S. national security, including defense, intellectual property, investment, trade, supply chain, fentanyl, and education, among others.

‘China-Led Axis’

Mr. Johnson said that there is a growing and “interconnected web of threats” that is “openly aligned against the United States” and needs to be stopped.

“I refer to it as a China-led axis, composed of partner regimes in Russia, Iran, North Korea, Venezuela, [and] even Cuba,” Mr. Johnson said.

“They’re increasingly using their collective military, technological, and financial resources to empower one another and other various efforts to cut off our trade routes and steal our technology and harm our troops and bend our economy.”

Mr. Johnson also condemned the axis’s expansionist efforts, including what he described as Russia’s attempt to restore the Russian Empire, Iran’s attempt to resurrect an Islamic caliphate, and the Chinese regime’s ambition to conquer Taiwan.

To that end, he described the CCP as the United States’s “number one foreign threat,” but also said that a failure to stop Russian conquests in Ukraine would eventually lead to war between the United States and this new axis.

“In the lead up to World War Two, we understood the primary threat to come from a tyrant in Europe, but we were attacked by a tyrant in Asia, and we were forced into war in two theaters,” Mr. Johnson said.

“If we don’t stop it there, it will come here.”