WASHINGTON
President Donald Trump, after early praise for China’s response to the coronavirus pandemic, blamed the “malfeasance” of the government of the world’s most populous nation for the worldwide deaths and economic hardship from the deadly virus.
North Carolina Republican U.S. Sen. Thom Tillis has backed that view, releasing his own 18-point plan in May “to hold China accountable” for what he says is its role in the coronavirus pandemic and thrusting the issue to the fore in his Senate re-election campaign against Democratic challenger Cal Cunningham.
“They got caught red-handed,” Tillis said in telephone interview last month, accusing the Chinese government of covering up and enabling the global pandemic.
The virus, which first found in humans in Wuhan, China, has now killed more than 110,000 people in the United States and more than 1,000 North Carolina residents. Efforts to combat the spread of the virus have led to record unemployment.
Tillis said his plan includes three major points of emphasis: dealing with the public-health response, becoming less reliant on imports from China for essential products, and combating China’s military aspirations. He said the public-health response is the most urgent.
Cunningham, in one of the sharpest attacks of the campaign thus far, called Tillis’ plan “election-year chest-thumping” and dismissed some points as “bumper stickers.” The Tillis campaign is selling “China Lied” bumper stickers.
“This is once again Thom Tillis trying to have it both ways and save the campaign. Mitch McConnell told him to put this plan out and that’s exactly what he’s doing,” Cunningham said in a phone interview with McClatchy.
“My question is, When is Thom Tillis going to follow the advice not to defend Donald Trump? That was in the memo, too.”
Trump, at various times, has praised and now criticizes China’s response to the virus. He said the U.S. is cutting ties and no longer funding the World Health Organization over its COVID-19 response.
Recent polls show Tillis and Cunningham in a statistical tie. The race, considered a toss-up, could determine which party controls the Senate chamber in January. Libertarian Party nominee Shannon Bray and Constitution Party nominee Kevin E. Hayes also will be on the November ballot in the Senate race.
Republican memo
A 57-page memo written by a GOP strategist and distributed to Senate campaigns by the National Republican Senatorial Committee this spring advised candidates to attack China over the coronavirus, including accusing the Chinese of covering it up and pushing for sanctions, Politico reported.
The memo lays out talking points for blaming China and the World Health Organization and for positioning Democrats as soft on China.
It also encouraged candidates not to defend the president’s handling of the coronavirus pandemic, except his travel ban on China. Early in the year, before the pandemic took hold, Trump claimed the U.S. would soon have zero cases and that it would go away.
New polling shows 43% of people approve of Trump’s handling of the virus and more voters trust presumptive Democratic nominee Joe Biden over Trump when it comes to the virus.
“Two things can be true. There is and should be bipartisan interest in investigating and holding accountable China’s behavior. And there’s a highly partisan motivation on the part of Republicans to distract from the president’s failings,” said Asher Hildebrand, a politics professor at Duke University and former chief of staff for Rep. David Price, a Chapel Hill Democrat.
On March 10, two weeks before most states began shutting down and long before the memo was released, Tillis applauded Trump’s travel ban, saying it “bought us some time” and blamed China for the virus.
“I fault China for not giving us a few extra months by not being forthcoming in terms of the disease. We could be maybe two months further ahead if we just had better cooperation from China,” Tillis told McClatchy at the Capitol.
Tillis said voters in both parties want China to be held accountable. More than 70% of Americans blame the Chinese government for Americans’ deaths from coronavirus, according to a Morning Consult poll conducted last month. More than 70% of Republicans and more than 60% of Democrats have a negative view of China, according to Pew polls.
“It happens to be something the American people want,” Tillis said, while acknowledging, “there is a political dimension to it.”
Tillis spent his time during Tuesday’s Senate Judiciary Committee hearing asking law enforcement officials about the threat of counterfeit goods from China, related to personal protective equipment and medicines.
Tillis’ plan and Cunningham’s response
Tillis’ plan includes longstanding American goals for its relationship with China, including moving manufacturing back to the United States, stopping Chinese theft of American technology and sanctioning China for its human rights violations.
It also includes newer ones like encouraging Japan to rebuild its military and accept offensive military equipment and seeking to get the 2022 Winter Olympics withdrawn from Beijing.
It seeks restitution from the Chinese government for lying about the virus and calls for investigations into the any cover-up about the spread of COVID-19.
“A lot of people are perceiving these investigations are purely punitive. I do believe China has to be held accountable. But we need to know everything that we can possibly know about this disease to be better prepared to deal with another wave,” Tillis said. “We’ve got to get to the bottom of the virus, the source of the virus.”
Tillis said action is required now, particularly as it relates to moving supply chains for personal protective equipment and drugs, processes that can take months and years. The U.S. faced shortages of some medical supplies at the beginning of the crisis.
“In a worst-case scenario, they can literally end commerce if we got into an escalated confrontation with them,” Tillis said.
Cunningham has been critical of the Trump administration’s response to the coronavirus, saying the lack of urgency and clear direction led private and religious organizations to donate supplies to China that were needed in the U.S.
While also wanting to look into the Trump administration’s response, Cunningham said the U.S. needs to investigate what China knew and when, consider sanctions, and look at supply chain issues and China’s expansionist military threat — many of the same things included in Tillis’ plan.
But Cunningham said he is better positioned to do it.
“Tillis has been weak on China since he got to Washington,” Cunningham said. “Make no mistake, China needs to be held accountable for both failing to contain this virus and for lying to the world about it. I’m going to do just that.”
The Cunningham campaign has consistently labeled Tillis as “weak” on a series of issues, most notably for not standing up to Trump.
He said trade, where Tillis has backed Trump’s approach to China, is one example of the senator’s anti-China rhetoric not matching his record.
In 2010, when he was unsuccessfully seeking the Democratic nomination to run for the U.S. Senate, Cunningham campaigned against trade deals that he said were hurting American businesses and workers, including those in North Carolina’s furniture industry around his hometown of Lexington.
Cunningham said one of the key underlying trade problems is China’s subsidizing of its industries and state-owned businesses — an issue, he said, that was not addressed in trade negotiations.
“To his credit, Donald Trump has appropriately identified that problem,” Cunningham said, but “we precipitated a trade conflict with China that never did anything to resolve this incredibly critical underlying problem.”
“North Carolina consumers and North Carolina farmers have paid dearly over the last couple of years for the manner in which we’ve been trying to solve the problems. We haven’t gotten any concessions. We have not solved the problem with China as it relates to the subsidizing of its industries.”
The U.S. and China signed Phase One of a trade agreement early this year. China committed to purchasing more goods, including agriculture products, and the U.S. agreed to cut tariffs on Chinese goods, according to reports.
One expert said the first part of the trade deal left a “giant hole,” Politico reported, around the issue of China subsidizing its industries, and The New York Times editorial board said that issue was not addressed.
Tillis — who has been endorsed by Trump and has been loathe to criticize the president — applauded Phase One of the trade agreement and said the hard line by the president was necessary to move China. But in light of the virus, he said the president “could be rethinking some of the provisions in Phase One.”
Multiple issues with China
U.S. frustrations with China certainly predate coronavirus and extend into issues well beyond the virus and trade. Thursday, for example, marked the 31st anniversary of the Tiananmen Square protests, in which China sent tanks and opened fire on pro-democracy protesters.
Human rights violations, military prowess, the theft of intellectual property, outsourcing, currency manipulation, technological advances and China’s aid to the developing world have all been sources of concern in recent years. Nearly all of them have come before Congress in one form or another.
Tillis is co-chair of the Senate Human Rights Caucus, along with Sen. Chris Coons, a Delaware Democrat. Tillis is also chairman of the Senate Judiciary Committee’s intellectual property subcommittee, where he has expressed concern about “rampant theft from state actors like China.”
“Senator Tillis has been fighting to hold China accountable for years on trade, military matters, human rights and intellectual property, and has a plan to ramp up those efforts in the wake of COVID-19,” said campaign spokesman Andrew Romeo.
In 2017, the U.S banned ZTE, a Chinese telecommunications company, from purchasing U.S. equipment as punishment for violating sanctions on Iran and North Korea. ZTE responded by loading up on lobbyists, according to financial disclosures and The New York Times. The ban was lifted by the Commerce Department at Trump’s request in 2018. The company agreed to a huge fine, among other penalties.
The company engaged in a huge lobbying effort of U.S. lawmakers in 2018 largely through the firm Hogan Lovells. Hogan Lovells PAC donated to Tillis in 2017 ($2,000) and 2019 ($2,500), according to FEC reports. One of the company’s lobbyists donated $1,000 to Tillis.
Tillis voted for a defense bill that would have reinstated the penalties on ZTE in 2018, which Trump threatened to veto. The language did not make it into the final defense bill agreed to by the House and Senate.
In recent weeks, Tillis has joined with other senators on letters about Chinese companies “exploiting the economic crisis by buying U.S. and foreign companies” and Chinese hacking attempts to steal a vaccine.
“A very transparent election-year effort,” Cunningham said of Tillis’ focus on China.
For more North Carolina government and politics news, listen to the Domecast politics podcast from The News & Observer and the NC Insider. You can find it on Megaphone, Apple Podcasts, iHeartRadio, Stitcher or wherever you get your podcasts.
Brian Murphy covers North Carolina’s congressional delegation and state issues from Washington, D.C., for The News & Observer, The Charlotte Observer and The Herald-Sun. He grew up in Cary and graduated from UNC-Chapel Hill. He previously worked for news organizations in Georgia, Idaho and Virginia. Reach him at 202.383.6089 or [email protected].
