During congressional debates about China trade legislation, it always used to be that doubters' complaints -- about China's horrific human rights record, for example -- were soothingly dismissed as side issues. We're only doing trade right now, the Chinophiles insisted. Wanna do something about our "disagreement" with China on some other subject? We'll be happy to take that up separately.
Only, no surprise, it turns out they really won't be happy to do that at all. Earlier this month came reports that U.S. intelligence agencies believe China has continued to assist Pakistan in the development of a long-range -- and potentially nuclear -- missile capability. So Senate majority leader Trent Lott attempted to secure his chamber's unanimous consent for a vote this week on a valuable piece of legislation sponsored by Republican Fred Thompson of Tennessee and Democrat Bob Torricelli of New Jersey.
The China Nonproliferation Act would set up an annual review of China's proliferation activities -- and a system for penalizing companies that aid such proliferation. The bill has nothing to do with trade. Indeed, Lott and Thompson wanted a separate vote on the bill precisely because they didn't want concerns about China's military exports to threaten a Senate vote on normalizing trade with Beijing.
No matter. Beijing won't like this legislation. So the U.S.-China business lobby has lined up to kill it -- and their leading front man on Capitol Hill, Senator Max Baucus of Montana, has kept it off the Senate floor. Baucus formally objected to a vote on the Thompson-Torricelli bill June 30. So it isn't "just about trade." China owns the business lobby. And the business lobby owns Congress. And U.S. foreign policy is distorted across the board.