Democratic Congressman Jared Golden (ME-02) on Wednesday introduced a bill alongside a bipartisan group of his House colleagues that would impose sanctions on any Chinese military firm that provide material support to Russia.
[RELATED: Jared Golden Signs Letter Urging Biden Admin to Send More Weapons to Ukraine…]
The legislation comes amid ongoing concerns among Biden administration officials over Beijing helping Russia build up its defense industrial base to bolster their war effort against Ukraine.
The bill, called the “NO LIMITS Act,” would give People’s Republic of China (PRC) military firms identified by the U.S. government 180 days to withdraw from the Russian market or face “full, blocking sanctions.”
“Russia’s aggressive push for territorial expansion is a direct threat not only to the sovereignty of Ukraine, but to the American-led security framework established after World War II,” Rep. Golden said Wednesday. “Vladimir Putin is testing boundaries in a way we haven’t seen since Hitler invaded Poland.”
Joining the bill as cosponsors are Reps. Mike Gallagher (R-Wis.), Jimmy Panetta (D-Calif.), and John Moolenaar (R-Mich.).
Rep. Gallagher, the outgoing chairman of the House Select Committee on Competition with the Chinese Communist Party (CCP), said Wednesday that “any company aiding and abetting the horrors in Ukraine- as the Chinese defense industrial complex has done- deserves to experience the full force of American sanctions.
“It’s time to put a financial cost on the CCP’s ‘no limits’ partnership with Russia,” Gallagher added.
Golden said he is “proud to work with Rep. Gallagher to ensure there are consequences for the PRC enabling Russia’s dangerous behavior.”
In addition to pushing Chinese firms to divest from the Russian market, the NO LIMITS Act would grant the president discretionary authority to sanction any PRC firm involved in military modernization, and would direct the Department of Defense to implement stricter controls on exported technology most at risk of diversion through the PRC.
State Department spokesperson Matthew Miller told reporters this week that Secretary of State Antony Blinken is expected to raise the issue of China’s material aid to Moscow’s war effort in an upcoming visit to China.
“What we have seen over the past months is that there have been materials moving from China to Russia that Russia has used to rebuild that industrial base and produce arms that are showing up on the battlefield in Ukraine,” Miller said. “And we are incredibly concerned about that.”
Russian President Vladimir Putin visited Beijing just days before launching his “special military operation” into Ukraine in February 2022, a visit during which was declared a “no limits” partnership between the two countries.
In a phone call with Chinese President Xi Jinping earlier this month, President Joe Biden “raised concerns over the PRC’s support for Russia’s defense industrial base and its impact on European and transatlantic security.”
The U.S. House of Representatives is expected to vote on three separate foreign aid packages for Ukraine, Israel and Taiwan this weekend following a proposal from Republican House Speaker Mike Johnson roughly matching the $95 billion compromise legislation already approved by the Senate.
Jared, how about we keep the money here and maybe give the billions we are pissing away in a country half way around the world as a tax break for Americans(legal ones of course), or shouldn’t we pay reparations to Russia for blowing up their Nordstream pipeline? Use some of the billions we’d save from the Ukraine debacle to right that wrong. Sanctions, sanctions, sanctions; is that all you neocons think about. Let Russia and Ukraine solve their own problems. It’s none of our business. The hedgmons constant meddling is old and tiresome. We should just mind our own business.
Yet not a word from little Jared about how the Chinese are getting those funds from illegal marijuana operations being run right in the district he allegedly represents. Does everyone understand now, how “ranked choice voting” works ?