A federal judge in Cape Girardeau has ordered Chinese plaintiffs to give Missouri over$ 24 billion after finding they hoarded personal protective equipment during the COVID-19 crisis.
Older U. S. District Judge Stephen Limbaugh Jr. said in a 32-page buy Friday that Missouri showed plaintiffs, including the People’s Republic of China and the Chinese Communist Party, hoarded PPE, violating federal laws against monopolies or attempted monopolies of business.
Limbaugh said the state’s evidence showed that accused “engaged in exploitative actions to stockpile PPE through both the privatisation of U. S. companies and the strong stockpiling of PPE manufactured or for sale in the United States”.
At the same time, the view said, China misled the earth about the dangers and reach of the COVID-19 crisis to promote and expand the stockpiling campaign.
Limbaugh entered a$ 24.5 billion default judgment in Missouri’s pursuit after no accused appeared at a trial last month in Cape Girardeau.
He said Missouri demonstrated it suffered significant damage in the form of lost internet general tax revenue that would’ve been collected but-for the stockpiling and showed heightened state spending on PPE caused by stockpiling totaling almost$ 123 million.
” Missouri has submitted large data … demonstrating that Locals were forced to both give higher rates for the minimal PPE accessible and suffer the effects of PPE shortfalls”, Limbaugh said.
A spokeswoman for China’s U. S. Embassy slammed the complaint in a statement Friday and threatened “reciprocal measures” if the government’s passions are harmed.
” The so-called petition has no basis in fact, law or foreign precedent. China does not and will not take it. If China’s pursuits are harmed, we will strongly consider mutual measures according to global law”, military spokesperson Liu Pengyu told the Post-Dispatch in a statement Friday.
China and the United States already are fighting over trade. The Trump administration has imposed flat tariffs of 20 % of all Chinese imports, while China has countered with additional 15 % duties on key U. S. imports.
Missouri’s lawsuit dates to April 2020, when then-Attorney General Eric Schmitt, a Republican, sued China over the COVID-19 pandemic. At the time, state officials warned of possible retaliation including potential cyberattacks, the Post-Dispatch reported.
In a statement Friday, current Missouri Attorney General Andrew Bailey, a Republican, called the decision a “landmark victory”.
” China refused to show up to court, but that doesn’t mean they get away with causing untold suffering and economic devastation”, he said. ” We intend to collect every penny by seizing Chinese-owned assets, including Missouri farmland”.
Chinese-owned Smithfield Foods, a leading pork processer, owns an estimated 40, 000 acres of Missouri farmland.
Bailey inherited the case when he was named attorney general, succeeding Schmitt who joined the U. S. Senate in 2023.
In a social media post Friday, Schmitt applauded the ruling. ” Just call us the Show Me ( the money ) state”, Schmitt wrote.
Limbaugh in 2022 tossed Missouri’s lawsuit, but an appeals panel ruled in 2024 that one of the state’s claims could proceed — that defendants hoarded personal protective equipment while knowing and suppressing the dangers of COVID-19.
Limbaugh said Missouri claimed$ 123 million in damages in the form of heightened PPE expenditures between April 22, 2020 and the end of 2020.
Missouri also claimed$ 8.04 billion in direct lost tax revenue due to the hoarding. Added together, Missouri’s damages exceeded$ 8.16 billion and is entitled to a judgment valued at three-times that amount, Limbaugh said.
He applied the$ 24.5 billion judgment” jointly and severally” to the nine defendants in the case, along with a 3.91 % post-judgment interest rate compounded annually.
In addition to the People’s Republic of China and the ruling Communist Party, the defendants are the National Health Commission of the People’s Republic of China, Ministry of Emergency Management of the People’s Republic of China, Ministry of Civil Affairs of the People’s Republic of China, People’s Government of Hubai Province, People’s Government of Wuhan City, Wuhan Institute of Virology and the Chinese Academy of Sciences.
Limbaugh, 73, a veteran jurist who also served on the Missouri Supreme Court, is a cousin of the late political commentator Rush Limbaugh. He became a federal judge in 2008 and assumed senior status in 2020.
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