How would you describe the working relationships on the Select Committee on China?
It's been a pleasure to see the member engagement. Both sides of the aisle have committed leadership. Hakeem Jeffries has been a constant supporter. Speaker Johnson has been very engaged and supportive also. The members on the committee are very serious-minded. You don't have a lot of effort to score political points. You have people asking very good questions on the changing nature of our relationship with China, and how U.S. policy should address this.
My goal on the committee is to continue to build on the excellent work that former Rep. Mike Gallagher (R-WI) and the team started. It's been very bipartisan, very meaningful across the spectrum of a variety of issues.
One priority for the committee has been addressing the fentanyl crisis. What is your thinking on this issue?
It is a tragedy that has affected many families in the United States–over 100,000 deaths last year from fentanyl poisoning. There's always been a suspicion that China had a role in this. You always want to hope for the best when you think, “Well, maybe they have organized crime and the authorities just aren't able to keep up with it and track it.”
Then you realize, well, China's a surveillance state. They pretty much know everything that's going on. But the groundbreaking report our committee presented on the evidence shows China is offering tax rebates to chemical companies to manufacture and export the chemical precursors for fentanyl. Not the fentanyl that's used in hospitals for medical purposes, but the fentanyl that's used to poison people.
We want to dig deeper to understand the financial and trafficking relationships between China and Mexico, and how we can prevent this from continuing. But it's a horrific situation. Fortunately, we now have evidence of China's involvement, and they're complicit in this. We need to take action on it going forward.
How should the U.S. hold China accountable for the fentanyl crisis and other issues where it is undermining U.S. interests?
President Biden met with President Xi back in November and talked about fentanyl. The message we got from President Xi was, “America has a drug problem, and we'll try and help every way we can.” That's very different from the reality of their involvement.
We're going to form some working groups so that we can answer these questions. On the economic issues, there were over 150 bipartisan recommendations in our economic report. When you think of how rare it is to get any kind of bipartisanship on 3-5 different recommendations in most areas, to get 150, to me that is really positive.
Can the recommendations get implemented?
Our committee can illuminate the issues that are long term in nature. Because it's a select committee, we can have a focus that goes across many different authorizing committees. For example, we have Reps. Blaylock and Barr, two leaders on the Financial Services Committee on our select committee who are knowledgeable about the CFIUS process and some of these issues where Treasury is involved. Rep. Rob Whitman has a very strategic understanding of critical minerals.
Each member is bringing committee experience to this committee to shine a spotlight on where we're vulnerable and where we're increasing our dependance on China rather than decreasing it. My goal is for the committee to be a force multiplier.
Sometimes in Congress, committees of jurisdiction can be threatened by other committees. In this case, my hope is that every committee of jurisdiction would be working with us to say, “Okay, you have the focus on China, thanks for the help distilling some of these issues.”
Is the select committee looking into possible Chinese collaboration with drug cartels?
One of the things that's been really eye opening is after the report that we did on fentanyl, I sat down with Reps. Dan Crenshaw and Jake Ackerman. Jake is a Democrat from Massachusetts, Dan is a former Navy Seal from Texas. Both of them are involved with looking at the cartels, what's happening at our southern border, and the impact on the United States. I think this was the first time we'd had the opportunity to talk about China's role in this.
We learned that China is supplying the equipment to make the pills that so many people are being poisoned by. The cartels keep their hands involved in the lives of these people who are vulnerable. When people are abused coming across the southern border, when families are threatened and intimidated by the cartels, and then those relationships continue in this country, you can see the danger that that presents.
Our goal is to develop a working group around that issue. Then, with whomever the next Administration is, to work across agencies to collaborate in addressing this problem. It's becoming a more and more threatening problem in our homeland.
Rep. John Moolenaar (R-MI) is Chairman of the House Select Committee on Strategic Competition Between the United States and the Chinese Communist Party, and a member of the House Committee on Appropriations.
