‘What we want to do is make sure we don’t prop up the military of the Chinese, nor their political and religious persecution. This legislation pretty much says this is a message that sends zero tolerance to the Chinese, to block their aggression towards the United States, and the rest of the world.’
WASHINGTON – U.S. Senator Tommy Tuberville (R-AL) joined “Mornings with Maria” on Fox Business to discuss his bill, the Prohibiting TSP Investment in China Act, to prohibit federal Thrift Savings Plan investment in Chinese companies. Sen. Tuberville has been outspoken on the need to confront Chinese aggression on the world stage. Excerpts from the interview are below, and the video can be found here.
“There is a board of five people that controls the pension fund. Now this pension fund is government workers, federal workers, such as Congress, and myself and all of our military – 700 billion dollars – and we don’t want to invest in Chinese companies…”
“And so, what we want to do is put this legislation through to tell this five member board, ‘Hey, invest money, make money for our military and our government workers, but do not invest in China.’ They don’t go by rules. They break corporate espionage rules every day, you know they don’t go by the sanctions that we put on, as the United States, and they never go by their balance sheets.”
“What we want to do is make sure we don’t prop up the military of the Chinese, nor their political and religious persecution. This legislation pretty much says this is a message that sends zero tolerance to the Chinese, to block their aggression towards the United States, and the rest of the world.”
“The Chinese have gotten very aggressive doing things all around China, Hong Kong, threatening Taiwan threatening fishing boats all up and down the Taiwan Straights. They’re getting very aggressive towards this country. Their military is growing leaps and bounds. Their economy is shooting above ours, and they want to be top dog in the world. They’re headed in that direction.”
“There’s other companies we can get involved in, in this country, [where] we could grow the portfolio with our savings plan, our pension plan, and do the right thing. But we do not need to invest in the Chinese government.”
“I am on the Armed Services Committee, as you said earlier. We bring in our commanders from all over the world, the combatant commanders, and the Indo-Pacific commander that’s over Asia and the Taiwan Straits basically said, ‘In four or five, six years we look and probably expect [CCP] confrontation with Taiwan.’ We can’t afford to that to happen. Taiwan’s a democracy. They’ve stood with us, we need to stand with Taiwan. This will be interesting stairstep of going through a progression in the next few years to see where China goes.”
“The Uighurs over in China are absolutely treated atrociously, and we’ve got companies in this country overlooking that. That’s wrong.”
“If we don’t hold them accountable it’s going to get worse and worse. And they’re going to keep building up that portfolio for their military and we are going to have huge problems.”
Senator Tommy Tuberville represents Alabama in the United States Senate and is a member of the Senate Armed Services, Agriculture, Veterans’ Affairs, and HELP Committees.
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