U.S. President Joe Biden speaks during a rally for gubernatorial candidate Wes Moore and the Democratic Party on the eve of the midterm elections, at Bowie State University in Bowie, Md., on Nov. 7, 2022. (Mandel Ngan/AFP via Getty Images)
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President Joe Biden is extending a Trump-era national emergency this week, which prohibits U.S. companies or individuals from investing in companies linked to China’s military.
Then-President Donald Trump issued Executive Order 13959 in November 2020, citing threats to national security. The order declared a national emergency in order to allow for a halt to investments in companies with ties to China’s military.
Biden later expanded on the order in June 2021 with Executive Order 14032, which prohibited U.S. investments in companies affiliated with China’s military or surveillance industries.
Biden’s latest order will extend the national emergency regarding investment in China’s military and surveillance companies by one year beyond its previously scheduled end date of Nov. 12.
“The PRC is increasingly exploiting United States capital to resource and to enable the development and modernization of its military, intelligence, and other security apparatuses, which continues to allow the PRC to directly threaten the United States homeland and United States forces overseas,” Biden said in a statement, using an acronym for communist China’s official name, the People’s Republic of China.
“The PRC military-industrial complex … continues to constitute an unusual and extraordinary threat, which has its source in whole or substantial part outside the United States, to the national security, foreign policy, and economy of the United States.”
In his statement, Biden said that the Chinese Communist Party’s (CCP) national strategy of “military-civil fusion” was to blame, as it requires civilian companies in China to directly contribute to the regime’s military and intelligence activities.
Because of this, Biden said, those companies must be treated as though they were part of China’s military and intelligence apparatus, and their ability to interact with U.S. markets must be limited.
“Those companies, though remaining ostensibly private and civilian, directly support the PRC’s military, intelligence, and security apparatuses,” Biden said.
“At the same time, those companies raise capital by selling securities to United States investors that trade on public exchanges both here and abroad, lobbying United States index providers and funds to include these securities in market offerings, and engaging in other acts to ensure access to United States capital.”