WASHINGTON – Today during the Senate Finance Committee’s hearing on the nomination of Jamieson Greer to be United States Trade Representative (USTR) under the Trump administration, U.S. Senator John Cornyn (R-TX) discussed with him the importance of reciprocal trade relationships and his proposal to prohibit U.S. investment in certain technologies in China in order to restore American dominance on the world stage and safeguard our national security. Excerpts are below, and video can be found here.

CORNYN: “China cheats, China steals our intellectual property, and they don’t recognize a rules-based international order.”

“President Trump was the President who first raised this issue in a very dramatic sort of way, and I think he’s exactly right to insist upon reciprocity as a principle. Do you agree that reciprocity ought to be the basic principle that drives our trade policy?”

GREER: “You’ve been a leader on this issue, with respect to investment flows as well with China, and you watch this very closely, so I appreciate your insights here.”

“We do have to have a balanced relationship. I think the United States has always been willing to have a balanced relationship with China, but there’s Chinese agency in this matter, and they need to decide how open they want to be to us.”

CORNYN: “Your response reminds me of the conversation we had in my office, and thank you for coming by to visit. I talked to you a little bit about something that we’re working on in the Banking Committee—Senator Scott, Chairman of the Banking Committee, and others—on a bipartisan basis, working on an outbound investment transparency law.”

“Do you think it just makes sense that we should have transparency over investments being made in China that may well fuel the modernization of their military in a way that’s a threat to the peace in the Indo-Pacific and beyond?”

GREER: “Having this kind of transparency is very important. In fact, again, I keep referring back to the Trump administration’s policy memo on trade because it is so comprehensive and gives such a clear direction on these things.  One of the things it talks about is looking at current efforts around outbound investment to foreign countries of concern, and so I think consideration of this kind of control or data gathering information, I think that goes right along with exploring that.”