Foreign Investment Guardrails to Help Thwart (FIGHT) China Act
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Rep. Barr, Andy [R-KY-6]
ID: B001282
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Bill Summary
Another masterclass in legislative theater, courtesy of the esteemed members of Congress. Let's dissect this farce, shall we?
**Main Purpose & Objectives:** The Foreign Investment Guardrails to Help Thwart (FIGHT) China Act is a laughable attempt to appear tough on China while actually doing nothing substantial. The bill's primary objective is to impose sanctions on certain Chinese individuals and entities, supposedly to protect national security. In reality, it's just a thinly veiled excuse for politicians to grandstand and pretend they're doing something about the "China threat."
**Key Provisions & Changes to Existing Law:** The bill introduces a few token measures:
1. Sanctions on Chinese persons deemed a threat to national security (because that's not already being done). 2. Notification requirements for US investments in China (a minor inconvenience for corporations with deep pockets). 3. A new list of "covered foreign persons" (read: Chinese individuals and entities we don't like).
These provisions are mere window dressing, designed to create the illusion of action without actually affecting the status quo.
**Affected Parties & Stakeholders:** The usual suspects:
1. Chinese government officials and state-owned enterprises (who will likely just laugh at these toothless sanctions). 2. US corporations with investments in China (who will find ways to circumvent or exploit the notification requirements). 3. Politicians seeking to score points with their constituents by appearing tough on China.
**Potential Impact & Implications:** This bill is a joke, and its impact will be negligible. The sanctions will likely be ineffective, as they can be easily evaded or mitigated through various means (e.g., shell companies, third-party transactions). The notification requirements will create some minor administrative headaches for US corporations but won't deter them from investing in China.
The real implications of this bill are:
1. More hot air and empty rhetoric from politicians. 2. A further erosion of trust between the US and China. 3. A continued lack of meaningful action to address actual national security concerns related to China.
In conclusion, the FIGHT China Act is a prime example of legislative malpractice â a shallow attempt to appear tough on China while accomplishing nothing substantial. It's a waste of time, resources, and taxpayer money. But hey, at least it makes for good theater.
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Project 2025 Policy Matches
This bill shows semantic similarity to the following sections of the Project 2025 policy document. Higher similarity scores indicate stronger thematic connections.
Introduction
â 703 â Department of the Treasury l The U.S. should also examine increasing or decreasing its ownership levels in these institutions in order to achieve maximum leverage. CHINA AND OTHER GEOPOLITICAL THREATS Committee on Foreign Investment in the United States. The interagency Committee on Foreign Investment in the United States should realign its priorities to meet the United Statesâ current foreign policy threats, especially from China. On October 20, 2022, the Treasury Department, which chairs CFIUS, adopted the first-ever CFIUS Enforcement and Penalty Guidelines50 on the committeeâs national security risk mitigation requirements. However, there are no clear rules that guide CFIUS on mitigation monitoring, nor is there a published penalty sched- ule to standardize accountability when CFIUS pursues a civil money penalty for violators. In addition, Treasuryâas chair of the committeeâruns an opaque pro- cess that biases committee procedure toward corporate interests and away from national security interests. Finally, the committeeâs jurisdiction does not extend over greenfield investments that Chinese state-owned enterprises have historically pursued in the United States, which leaves America vulnerable to an instrument of Chinese economic statecraft. Given these issues, the next steps for CFIUS should be to develop a more coherentâand transparentâmitigation monitoring program to complement the enforcement guidelines, give CFIUS agencies in charge of national security con- cerns an equal voice at the table, and petition Congress to amend the law to cover Chinese greenfield investments. CFIUS should publish a penalty schedule for violations of CFIUS reporting and mitigation requirements. Publishing a penalty schedule for CFIUS violations will reduce the discretion of the committee to waive penalties or impose mere âwrist slapâ costs on violators of the law. Additionally, a standardized penalty schedule would likely increase the deterrence of CFIUS enforcement by reducing the per- ception among parties to covered transactions that they can avoid enforcement by the committee or secure special exceptions based on appeals to the commit- teeâs discretion. As a legal matterâand in application by CFIUSâmitigation monitoring has developed as the Wild West. There are no clear rules that guide the entire com- mittee on mitigation monitoring, nor is there the same level of oversight or accountability within and among the agencies as applies when CFIUS reviews a transaction or when it pursues a civil money penalty. Indeed, it is a credit to transaction parties and the professionalism of the governmental officials and con- tractors who conduct mitigation monitoring on behalf of the government that, by and large, mitigation monitoring has worked adequately during the last several decades. But dependency on the personality and capabilities of individuals creates unnecessary risk both for CFIUS and for transaction parties. â 704 â Mandate for Leadership: The Conservative Promise Congress should make the Department of Defense (DOD) a CFIUS co-chair with the Department of Treasury. Making DOD an official CFIUS co-chair along with Treasury will establish a balanced committee process by elevating national security interests to an equal stature. The committee is currently imbalanced toward the interests of corporate America because Treasury is the sole chair of CFIUS and, in practice, runs a process that is not fully transparent and which biases it from the national security interests represented by DOD and the Intelligence Community (IC). For example, Treasury representatives will consult with the Commerce Depart- ment and the United States Trade Representativeâwhich tend to favor permitting covered transactions to occur with little to no mitigation requirementsâand these representatives will then obscure the results and purposes of such sidebar meet- ings from DOD and IC representatives. This hampers DOD, IC, and sometimes even State Department representatives from full participation in the process or from advocating national security interests as well as they should. Greenfield Investments. Congress should close the loophole on greenfield investments and require CFIUS review of investments in U.S.-based greenfield assets by Chinese-controlled entities to assess any potential harm to U.S. national and economic security. In the 2018 Foreign Risk and Review Modernization Act (FIRRMA),51 one important category of foreign transactions left out of the bill was greenfield investments, particularly by Chinese state-owned enterprises (SOEs). Greenfield investments by Chinese SOEs pose a unique threat, and they should be met with the highest scrutiny by all levels of government. Greenfield investments result in the control of newly built facilities in the U.S., and they were not addressed in FIRRMA primarily because governors and state governments embrace them. That is understandable; they typically bring the promise of creating American jobs. However, the goal of such Chinese SOEs is to siphon assets, technological innovation, and influence away from U.S. businesses in order to expand the global presence of the Chinese Communist Party. While the Chinese government keeps its domestic markets largely insulated from foreign influence, it regularly invests in the U.S. and other countries under the âgreen- fieldâ model. Firms fully owned by Chinaâs Communist regime are increasingly buying land, building factories, and taking advantage of state and local tax breaks on American soil. Treasury should examine creating a school of financial warfare jointly with DOD. If the U.S. is to rely on financial weapons, tools, and strategies to prosecute international defensive and offensive objectives, it must create a specially trained group of experts dedicated to the study, training, testing, and preparedness of these deterrents. Recent experience has demonstrated that the U.S. cannot depend on the rapid development and deployment of untested, academically developed finan- cial actions, stratagems, and weapons on an ad hoc basis.
Introduction
â 703 â Department of the Treasury l The U.S. should also examine increasing or decreasing its ownership levels in these institutions in order to achieve maximum leverage. CHINA AND OTHER GEOPOLITICAL THREATS Committee on Foreign Investment in the United States. The interagency Committee on Foreign Investment in the United States should realign its priorities to meet the United Statesâ current foreign policy threats, especially from China. On October 20, 2022, the Treasury Department, which chairs CFIUS, adopted the first-ever CFIUS Enforcement and Penalty Guidelines50 on the committeeâs national security risk mitigation requirements. However, there are no clear rules that guide CFIUS on mitigation monitoring, nor is there a published penalty sched- ule to standardize accountability when CFIUS pursues a civil money penalty for violators. In addition, Treasuryâas chair of the committeeâruns an opaque pro- cess that biases committee procedure toward corporate interests and away from national security interests. Finally, the committeeâs jurisdiction does not extend over greenfield investments that Chinese state-owned enterprises have historically pursued in the United States, which leaves America vulnerable to an instrument of Chinese economic statecraft. Given these issues, the next steps for CFIUS should be to develop a more coherentâand transparentâmitigation monitoring program to complement the enforcement guidelines, give CFIUS agencies in charge of national security con- cerns an equal voice at the table, and petition Congress to amend the law to cover Chinese greenfield investments. CFIUS should publish a penalty schedule for violations of CFIUS reporting and mitigation requirements. Publishing a penalty schedule for CFIUS violations will reduce the discretion of the committee to waive penalties or impose mere âwrist slapâ costs on violators of the law. Additionally, a standardized penalty schedule would likely increase the deterrence of CFIUS enforcement by reducing the per- ception among parties to covered transactions that they can avoid enforcement by the committee or secure special exceptions based on appeals to the commit- teeâs discretion. As a legal matterâand in application by CFIUSâmitigation monitoring has developed as the Wild West. There are no clear rules that guide the entire com- mittee on mitigation monitoring, nor is there the same level of oversight or accountability within and among the agencies as applies when CFIUS reviews a transaction or when it pursues a civil money penalty. Indeed, it is a credit to transaction parties and the professionalism of the governmental officials and con- tractors who conduct mitigation monitoring on behalf of the government that, by and large, mitigation monitoring has worked adequately during the last several decades. But dependency on the personality and capabilities of individuals creates unnecessary risk both for CFIUS and for transaction parties.
Introduction
â 216 â Mandate for Leadership: The Conservative Promise l Stiffer penalties and mandatory investigations when intelligence leaks are aimed at domestic political targets, l Tighter controls on otherwise lawful intercepts that also collect the communications of domestic political figures, l An express prohibition on politically motivated use of intelligence authorities, and l Reforms to improve the accountability of the Justice Department and the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court. To keep intelligence credentials from being used for partisan purposes, former high-ranking intelligence officials who retain a clearance should remain subject to the Hatch Act after they leave government to deter them from tying their political stands or activism to their continuing privilege of access to classified government information. The IC should be prohibited from monitoring so-called domestic disinformation. Such activity can easily slip into suppression of an opposition partyâs speech, is corrosive of First Amendment protections, and raises questions about impartiality when the IC chooses not to act. CHINA-FOCUSED CHANGES, REFORMS, AND RESOURCES The term âwhole of governmentâ is all too frequently overused, but in responding to the generational threat posed by the Chinese Communist Party, that is exactly the approach that our national security apparatus should adopt. CIA Director William Burns has formally established a China Mission Center focused on these efforts, but it can be successful only if it is given the necessary personnel, cross-community collaboration, and resources. That is uncertain at this point, and just how seriously the organization is taking the staffing of the center is unclear. A critical strategic question for an incoming Administration and IC lead- ers will be: How, when, and with whom do we share our classified intelligence? Understanding when to pass things to liaisons and for what purpose will be vital to outmaneuvering China in the intelligence sphere. Questions for a President will include: l What is our overarching conception of the adversarial relationship and competition? l How does intelligence-sharing fit into that conception? â 217 â Intelligence Community Some Members of Congress have said that intelligence relationships such as the Five Eyes28 should be expanded to include other allies in the AsiaâPacific in, for example, a âNine Eyesâ framework. This fails to take into account the fact that any blanket expansion would necessarily involve protecting the sources and methods of a larger and quite possibly more diverse group of member countries that might or might not have congruent interests. That being said, however, a future conservative President should consider what resources and information-sharing relationships could be included in an ad hoc or quasi-formal intelligence expansion (for example, with the Quad) among nations trying to counter the threat from China. Significant technology, language skills, and financial intelligence resources are needed to counter Chinaâs capabilities.29 The IC was caught flat-footed by the recent discovery of Chinaâs successful test of a nuclear-capable hypersonic missile. No longer can Americaâs information and technological dominance be assumed. Chinaâs gains and intense focus on emerging technologies have taken it in some areas from being a near-peer competitor to probably being ahead of the United States. Chinaâs centralized government allocates endless resources (sometimes inefficiently) to its strategic âMade in China 2025â and military apparatuses, which combine government, military, and private-sector activities on quantum infor- mation sciences and technologies, artificial intelligence (AI), machine learning, biotechnologies, and advanced robotics. The IC must do more than understand these advancements: It must rally non- government and allied partners and inspire unified action to counter them. In addition, to combat Chinaâs economic espionage, authorities and loopholes in the Foreign Agents Registration Act (FARA)30 will have to be examined and addressed in conjunction with the Attorney General. Many issues within the broader government can be tied back to a more general congressional understanding of the threat due to the compartmentalization of committee jurisdictions and the responsibilities of executive agencies to brief on the nature of the threat. Broader committee jurisdictions should receive additional intelligence from IC agencies as necessary to inform Chinaâs unique and more com- prehensive threat across layers of the U.S. government bureaucracy and economy. Former DNI John Ratcliffe increased the intelligence budget as it related to China by 20 percent. âWhen people ask me why I did that,â he explained in an interview, âI say, âBecause no one would let me increase it by 40%.â I had an $85 billion combined annual budget for both the national intelligence program and military intelligence program. My perspective was, âWhatever weâre spending on countering China, it isnât enough.ââ31 From an intelligence standpoint, the need to understand Chinese motivations, capabilities, and intent will be of paramount importance to a future conservative President. It is therefore also of paramount importance that the âwhole of governmentâ be rowing together.
About These Correlations
Policy matches are calculated using semantic similarity between bill summaries and Project 2025 policy text. A score of 60% or higher indicates meaningful thematic overlap. This does not imply direct causation or intent, but highlights areas where legislation aligns with Project 2025 policy objectives.