Pascrell Knocks China’s $200 Billion Broken Promise

The art of the failure: Chinese Communist Party hoodwinks U.S. on former Trump deal

WASHINGTON, DC – U.S. Rep. Bill Pascrell, Jr. (D-NJ-09) today hammered published reports that the Chinese government fell over $200 billion short of its promise to purchase American goods, pursuant to deal signed between Donald Trump and Chinese Communist Party leaders (CCP).

“Once again, the Chinese Communist Party regime lied through its teeth and Donald Trump was conned,” said Rep. Pascrell. “America abided by its end of the bargain. But after the Trump regime begged Beijing for an agreement, the CCP fell far short of its commitments – to the tune of over $200 Billion. This was a total failure by Trump and those he tasked with negotiating this toothless deal. I hope the Republicans that fawned over this agreement like it was written on tablets of stone realize that the agreement never had a real enforcement mechanism to discipline China and that the CCP is still cheating.”

Pascrell concluded, “More broadly, the CCP is pursuing a course of hostility to its neighbors, disdain to America, and genocide to its own people. Access to our markets without real reciprocity only empowers the hostility of a non-market economy that undermines American workers. It also underscores why trade agreements must not be negotiated in the dark and require robust consultation with and review by Congress. And last week, the House showed it was serious about confronting the threat posed by the CCP by passing the America COMPETES Act, which included my legislation to repair our supply chains and prevent our industrial might from being abused.”

Pascrell was a leading critic of the so-called China agreement when it was first announced in 2020. Under the deal negotiated by Donald Trump, the Chinese government committed to purchasing approximately $76.7 billion more in 2020 in certain goods and services and $123.3 billion more in 2021 above 2017 levels. The purchasing commitments expired at the end of last year. To reach those goals, according to independent analysis by the Peterson Institute for International Economics, the Chinese government would have had to purchase approximately  $227.9 billion worth of covered goods and services in 2020 and $274.5 billion worth of covered goods and services in 2021, for a total of $502.4 billion. However, the Chinese government only purchased $288.8 billion worth of goods and services.

The America COMPETES Act passed this week by the House includes Rep. Pascrell’s bipartisan National Critical Capabilities Defense Act, which is written to repair America’s frayed supply chains and stanch the bleeding of American industrial might to foreign adversaries. This Pascrell led provision would create a whole-of-government screening process for outbound investments and the offshoring of critical capacities and supply chains to ensure that the United States can quickly detect supply chain vulnerabilities.

On January 20, 2022, Chairmen Pascrell and Earl Blumenauer (D-OR-03), the Chairman of the Ways and Means Subcommittee on Trade, wrote to Tesla CEO Elon Musk, calling out the carmaker for opening a showroom in Xinjiang Province, the heart of the CCP’s atrocities against the Uyghur peoples. Their letter further implored Tesla to set a better example against the CCP’s crimes.

Chairman Pascrell is one of the leading critics in Congress of the Chinese Community Party and for decades has sounded the alarm of the offshoring of American jobs overseas. Pascrell is the sponsor of the bipartisan American PPE Supply Chain Integrity Act to help end America’s over-reliance on personal protective equipment (PPE) and medical supplies from China and other foreign nations.

###