Menendez participates in Senate Banking Committee hearing on the importance of outpacing China in emerging technologies
WASHINGTON, D.C. – U.S. Senator Bob Menendez (D-N.J.), a senior member of the U.S. Senate Committee on Banking, Housing, and Urban Affairs, participated in a hearing entitled “National Security Challenges: Outpacing China in Emerging Technology.”
The Senator asked Emily Kilcrease, a Senior Fellow and Director of the Energy, Economics, and Security Program at the Center for a New American Security, about the economic tools available to the United States to better compete with China. During his question, he highlighted his work to create and promote a set of comprehensive economic statecraft tools that would bolster America’s efforts to confront the growing geostrategic challenges posed by China.
“Last Congress, I introduced the Economic Statecraft for the Twenty-First Century Act – a bill that provides a comprehensive plan to confront the anti-competitive and predatory nature of China’s international economic policies,” said Sen. Menendez. “This bill would allow us to lead through our values by strengthening our supply chains with re-shoring and nearshoring strategies, by achieving our energy-related sustainability goals, by fostering cooperation in multilateral institutions, and by building global resiliency.”
The Senator also focused on the importance of having more robust oversight of outbound investments to ensure we protect critical U.S. industries. He asked Lindsay Gorman, Senior Fellow for Emerging Technologies at The Alliance for Securing Democracy at the German Marshall Fund of the United States, if President Biden’s Executive Order from last year to prevent U.S. capital and expertise from financing Chinese firms involved in certain sectors and undermining U.S. national security was broad enough to meet these challenges.
“Our lack of outbound investment oversight in sensitive industries has the potential to harm our national security and hamper the competitiveness of U.S. industry because of the technical prowess, capital, and the unique know-how that access to the U.S. capital markets provides. President Biden’s Executive Order in August is a good start but I fear it may be too limited,” added Sen. Menendez. “We all [also] know that intellectual property theft remains an acute challenge in China, and the theft of intellectual property related cutting-edge technologies could seriously degrade our national security and economic competitiveness.”
Sen. Menendez has an extensive record of working to bolster U.S. leadership in the global economy and at international financial institutions to advance global economic security, particularly as it relates to China’s coercive economic tactics, supply chains, global infrastructure, economic resilience, and artificial intelligence and other emerging technologies. Last Congress, the Senator played a critical role in advancing legislation such as the CHIPS and Science Act to bolster America’s strategic ability to compete with China, and also led the efforts to pass a more comprehensive strategic China competition bill in the Senate.
