The United States must "firmly push back" against the People's Republic of China (PRC)'s "economic coercion" after the recent ban on a U.S.-based semiconductor company, two House committee chairs said in a joint statement.
In a June 2 news release Rep. Mike Gallagher, R-Wis., chairman of the House Select Committee on the Chinese Communist Party, and Rep. Michael McCaul, R-Texas, chairman of the House Foreign Affairs Committee, called on the Commerce Department to act, in the form of a letter sent to Secretary of Commerce Gina Raimondo.
"We believe that the time has come for the United States — alongside our allies — to firmly push back on the PRC's economic coercion," McCaul and Gallagher said in the release. "The U.S. government can no longer sit on the sidelines as the PRC selectively targets U.S. and allied entities with the goal of intimidating our businesses and harming our economic security. Congress overwhelmingly passed the Export Control Reform Act of 2018 to address these issues; nonetheless, the Department of Commerce refuses to fully implement the law and take necessary action against the PRC."
A Micron Technology employee working at the company's headquarters in Boise, Idaho
| nsf.gov/-Micron Technology
The letter to Raimondo urged her to work with Japan and South Korea to be sure those nations "do not take market share lost to the ban and undercut Micron." The committee chairs also recommended Commerce explore using the Anti-Boycott law in response to China's ban "in tandem with aggressive export controls, against bad actors," the release said.
"The Anti-Boycott Act of 2018 provides a useful framework to examine PRC economic coercion — which often has the practical effect of a boycott," Gallagher and McCaul said in the release.
The Anti-Boycott Act makes it the policy of the U.S. to "oppose restrictive trade practices or boycotts fostered or imposed by any foreign country" against a U.S. citizen, the release reported. Additionally, it provides U.S. residents may be prohibited from exporting goods or technology which may support restrictive trade practices.
"While it appears that the Anti-Boycott Act of 2018 has not been used in cases of PRC economic coercion against a U.S. or foreign company, it sets forth a useful, guiding principle that the United States should not be fueling adversaries’ restrictive trade policies," the release said.
Last month, the Cyberspace Administration of China issued a ban on the usage of chips produced by the American company Micron, citing unsubstantiated national security concerns. The imposed ban specifically focuses on prohibiting the use of Micron chips in computers involved in handling sensitive information, according to Forbes.
