As U.S. forces escalate strikes against the Islamic Republic of Iran, President Donald Trump is advancing a policy of “peace through strength,” using American military and diplomatic leverage to prevent Tehran from crossing the nuclear threshold. However, despite the “sucking sound” in the Middle East dominating U.S. foreign policy discussions, it’s critically important that we do not delay the U.S. national security pivot to Asia.
China has supplied key military components to the Iranian regime, and the Chinese Communist Party continues to engage in a long-term campaign to dominate strategic supply chains, hollow out U.S. manufacturing, and export American jobs overseas.
While serving my country for over 33 years in uniform and during my tenure as director of the Defense Intelligence Agency, it became clear to me that we must fortify our national security by strengthening domestic supply chains and not becoming dependent on China’s import overreliance trap. We have seen this strategy time and again. China heavily subsidizes key industries, floods the U.S. market with low-cost products, and leaves American manufacturers and communities struggling to compete.
By the time any action is taken, American manufacturing capacity is often already wiped out, washing away our ability to withstand economic coercion and respond effectively to hostile communist and Islamist regimes during times of crisis.
China International Marine Containers is a clear example of China’s cheating. CIMC, a Chinese State-Owned Enterprise, is the heavily subsidized global shipping and container company at the tip of China’s industrial policy spear. CIMC sells chassis and van-type trailers in the United States through its importers, CIE Intermodal Equipment and Vanguard. However, the Chinese SOE was recently indicted by the Department of Justice for conspiring to fix prices during the COVID-19 pandemic. CIMC allegedly colluded with proxies of the CCP to kill off U.S. shipping container jobs, while the country struggled.
The CCP successfully pushed American companies out of the shipping container industry altogether, allowing just three Chinese companies to produce 96% to 100% of the world’s new containers. By driving competitors out of business and then jacking up the prices, China gained monopolistic control of the market, forcing Americans to rely on the CCP to transport the goods driving our economy.
CIMC and Communist China have now set their sights on van-type trailers that are regularly hauled across the country by semi-trucks, full of critical goods. The Department of Commerce took a major step in the right direction to stop the cheating in June, issuing preliminary duties on Communist Chinese van-type trailers after ruling that Chinese trailer producers are, in fact, cheating and seeking to do American producers harm.
Trailers are used in everything from shipping food to our stores and medicine to our hospitals, to serving as the backbone of our military logistics. Smart technology is already used in shipping containers to track international transit, effectively allowing the CCP to track global container shipments since it controls 100% of container production through CIMC.
If CIMC is allowed to dominate the U.S. trailers market, as it does with containers, the Chinese SOE will have a live feed of ground transportation in the U.S., giving the CCP unprecedented ability to track our inland freight and supply chain logistics in real time.
This is a clear and present danger to U.S. national security.
Without bold and decisive action, we face a future in which Communist China can track each movement of the food we eat, the pharmaceuticals that sustain our health, and critical materials that support infrastructure and national defense as they move across America.
CHINA HAS YOUR VOTER FILE. DEMOCRATS WON’T EVEN LET US CHECK IDS
Trump’s trade team and Commerce Department can stop Communist China’s efforts to control U.S. supply chains at each segment of the transportation industry by imposing strong national security tariffs. It’s not too late to save this American industry and the millions of jobs and communities it supports.
Millions of domestic manufacturing jobs and our national security all depend on stopping China’s plan for global supply chain dominance and the U.S. pivot to Asia, which will make our country great.
Gen. Michael Flynn is a retired U.S. Army officer and served as the 24th U.S. national security adviser in the first Trump administration.