Rep. Claudia Tenney (R-NY ) removed the Stop Funding Our Adversaries Act in an effort to permanently obstruct Chinese entities from receiving federal research funding.
Former US Representative Brandon Williams (R-NY ) introduced a bill similar to this during the previous Congress, but this version has a better chance of passing now that Republicans control the Senate and presidency and billionaire Elon Musk is attempting to cut federal spending through his Department of Government Efficiency.
As a founding member of the DOGE Caucus, Tenney, who co-sponsored the bill with Texas’s Rep. Randy Weber (R-TX ), said,” I am dedicated to ensuring we know where every penny of taxpayer funding is going.”
The president’s language is just four paragraphs long and instructs the secretary of the departments of Defense, Veterans Affairs, Energy, the Environmental Protection Agency, Interior, Transportation, Health and Human Services, and any other federal company not to directly or indirectly assist Chinese entities via grants, subgrants, contractors, joint agreements, or other financing vehicles.
” Chinese entities” are defined as the government of the People’s Republic of China, “any agent or instrumentality” of the government, or “any entity owned by or controlled by” China. The document further adds that “any agent or instrumentality” of the CCP or “any entity owned by or controlled by” the CCP is also banned.
The proscriptive language is necessary because the Chinese Communist Party is well known for its interdependence with nearly all aspects of its economy.
Between fiscal 2015 and fiscal 2021, the United States provided$ 28.9 million directly to Chinese entities for research and development, according to the U. S. Government Accountability Office. Tenney’s legislation is designed to shut off that spigot.
Multiple U.S. organizations have now concluded that research at China’s Wuhan Institute of Virology contributed to the outbreak of the COVID-19 pandemic, and much attention has been paid to whether funding from the U.S. National Institutes of Health contributed to the virus ‘ development.
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In a wider effort to decouple the U.S. economy from China’s as the two rivals compete for supremacy on the global stage, the bill might also be viewed as a component of this larger effort. Donald Trump, president, raised tariffs on China in his first term and has since done so twice.
The legislation that mandates the Chinese divestiture of TikTok is another part of the conflict, even though Trump has given it a 75-day lifeline since taking office.
