Incoming Senate Foreign Relations Chair Views China as Top Challenge
Senate Foreign Relations Committee ranking member Jim Risch, R-Idaho, who is expected to ascend to the committee’s chairmanship when Republicans take control of the Senate in January (see 2411120060), said he views China as the panel’s biggest challenge.
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“There are a number of things we need to do with China,” Risch told Export Compliance Daily late Nov. 13. “One of the first things that has to happen is the American people need to get a real clear understanding of what a challenge China is for us militarily, economically and culturally. Those of us that deal in the national security lane every day [have] a full, clear understanding of the challenge that’s ahead of us. There are a number of things we can do to mitigate that [challenge], and we’re going to work at that.”
A wide-ranging bill that Risch and 10 other Republican senators introduced in September to help the U.S. “compete” with China contains several export control, sanctions and foreign investment provisions, including “modifying the Missile Technology Control Regime” to increase cooperation under the Australia-U.K.-U.S. (AUKUS) security partnership; creating a State Department/Treasury Department “tiger team” to start identifying targets for sanctions, export controls and other economic measures “well before China takes military action” against Taiwan; and expanding the Committee on Foreign Investment in the U.S. “to cover agricultural investments with national security risks” (see 2409190064).
Although Risch and the committee’s current chairman, Sen. Ben Cardin, D-Md., have tried to advance a major China bill this year (see 2406130071), they have been unsuccessful so far, and Risch said they might not fare better during the lame-duck session. “Particularly when you get a change like this [in party control], things have a real tendency to slow down during the lame duck,” said Risch, who chaired the committee from 2019 to 2021.
Cardin, who said in August that parts of a China bill could end up in the FY 2025 National Defense Authorization Act (see 2408200014, told us Nov. 13 that remains a possibility. “There may be some movement in the NDAA of some of the issues," he said. "But the majority of the issues are on discussion stages and we’re just looking to see whether there’s a vehicle or not. There’s a lot of agreement, but I’m not sure we can get a vehicle to get it done this year.”
With Cardin retiring from the Senate at year’s end, Sen. Jeanne Shaheen, D-N.H., is poised, based on seniority, to replace Risch as the committee’s ranking member in January.