Washington D.C. – This morning, Congressman Michael McCaul (R-TX), Republican Leader of the House Foreign Affairs Committee, joined Fox Business’ “Mornings with Maria” with Maria Bartiromo to discuss his new role as Chairman of the China Task Force. 

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On the China Task Force: “As Chairman of this new China Task Force, I’m going to be taking this issue head on as the origins of virus, what happened, what can we do to stop it, and then how can we decouple ourselves from the Chinese Communist Party. Let’s talk about supply chains, let’s talk about our military posture, lets talk about how they are involved in espionage in our academia, and how they have stolen so much intellectual property from the United States, I say it’s really time to bring these manufacturing jobs, like semiconductor [fabrication], back here to the United States.”

On decreasing U.S. dependence on China: “I think the one takeaway, the big eye-opener for the American people is that we’re so heavily reliant on the Chinese Communist Party for our medicines, for the protective equipment, for our medical supplies. So I think we do have to incentivize our private sector through tax incentives, to bring these supply chains out of China in more favorable countries, democracies in Asia, but also bring them back here to the United States. You know my district Maria, right down the street, I’ve got Samsung and Apple. Why aren’t we  manufacturing these semiconductor chips here in the United States, right here at home?”

On addressing supply chain issues: “Honestly Maria this should be a bipartisan issue– this is about bringing manufacturing jobs back home to the American worker.  I think this should be a bipartisan exercise in Phase Four, we want to help the working man and woman out, bring more manufacturing jobs back to the United States. We’re spending all this money, for God’s sake we ought to be investing in manufacturing here in the United States and getting off reliance on China which is a national security threat to the United States.”

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