Chinese economy is 'tanking' right now, says Rep. Raja Krishnamoorthi

In a Newsweek op-ed, our next guest is warning America that an economically struggling China is trying to revert to a dangerous gambit of the past that would be exporting overproduced goods at artificially low prices, Illinois Democratic Congressman Raja Krishnamoorthy writes. We are at a pivotal moment in which China depends on the rest of the world capitulating to its predatory practices to avoid making long overdue reforms. The congressman joins us right now. He is the ranking member on the House Select Committee on the Chinese Communist Party. And Sir, let's talk a little bit about what you laid out in your op-ed. We've seen this before from China, but you say that this is unprecedented in both the the the scale and the scope of what they are undertaking this time around. You want to explain? Sure. And thank you so much for attention to this. Essentially, the Chinese economy is tanking right now. And Xi Jinping, the leader of the Chinese Communist Party, has decided that to reinvigorate the Chinese economy, he's going to double down in an old Chinese playbook for economic reform, so to speak, which is over producing goods far in excess of what internal demand requires, and then exporting the surplus to other countries at a price designed to undercut the competition and really destroy it. And so he's doing this across a range of goods, including goods and strategic sectors that they have decided that they want to dominate from everything from semiconductors to shipbuilding to drones and so forth. I, I think some of the numbers kind of jump out. I've, I've heard Janet Yellen has talked about this. The secretary of the Treasury has talked about how all of the money that was previously being spent on infrastructure on China has been funneled into this. And the numbers going to back that up. Four years ago, there was $83 billion that China spent on new lending for industry that skyrocketed, you say, to $670 billion. And those are numbers that are coming from the Bank of China. Yeah, these are astronomical numbers. Just take one example, which we highlighted in our hearing the other day, Shipbuilding, essentially China is building 359 new ships for everyone ship that the United States builds. And and that points out two problems. One is they are building far more ships than their internal demand requires. But secondly, the US has ceded leadership in global shipbuilding and that impacts our national security as well. So we have to fix both of those issues. You look at what we've allowed to happen in areas like semiconductors and even manufacturer of medical supplies and, and you understand how this could be a problem. We've run into some pretty serious issues recently with this. What's the way to solve this though? Are you talking about tariffs that you make on all of these products that are coming not just out of China, but if China transports these things to Mexico, they have an easy way to get in with NAFTA here. Part of it is is tariffs, and that is something that both the Trump and Biden administrations have pursued. But part of it also is, you know, working with our partners, friends and allies to boost our own capacity for manufacturing the items at issue. So just one example are semiconductor chips. You know, the United States used to be a leading power in manufacturing these chips, but we lost our edge in in in manufacturing them a long time ago. And ever since the pandemic, when we recognized that, you know, supply chain shortages were driven in part by these shortages of chips, we have enacted the CHIPS and Science Act thanks to President Biden and Congress on a bipartisan basis. And now we're seeing a renaissance in the in the announcement of chip factories throughout the country. And so that's going to be a real help going forward.