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giving you a front row seat to democracy. >> democratic representative raja krishnamoorthi says it's possible that the house could take action against tik tok, including a potential ban, he spoke about relations with china during an event hosted by semafor news and discusses taiwan's security, china's dominance in the electric vehicle supply chain industry and the u.s.-china to address the fentanyl crisis. [inaudible conversations]

[inaudible conversations] >> everyone, this is great. a full house. so i'm morgan, the deputy washington bureau chief at semafor and joined by raja krishna morethi. and i'll jump in and question him. and i just want to start first and ask you about taiwan, but in the context of the conversation that's happening on capitol hill right now which is on the national security supplemental. it feels like congress is struggling to fund ukraine aid, fund israel aid and there's obviously some money to counter china in that national security supplemental as well. are you concerned that taiwan can't view the u.s. as a

reliable ally because of the struggle on capitol hill over this funding? >> well, thank you so much for having me. and on the-- i guess the one year anniversary of the spy balloon, i don't know if anybody is celebrating, we're, you know, going to talk about a very timely topic of china and taiwan and so forth. i think that with regard to the supplemental, i am concerned how our friends and partners and allies would view us if we don't pass the supplemental, but i'm also equally concerned about how our potential adversaries would view us and actually, in a hearing last week, secretary pompeo and panetta both testified that they believe that xi jinping in particular is paying very close attention to this particular supplemental package and would view it as a sign of weakness if we didn't pass this, making war over taiwan more likely.

>> and do you think that congressional gridlock like this risks pushing taiwan into china's arms? >> not necessarily, i think there's a consensus within china, even among the three major political parties that they want to maintain their awe ton-- autonomy, their democracy. it creates instability. when you have instability you're not able to plan properly and at this point it's incredibly important that they and we plan together how do we make sure that we deter aggression by the ccp. >> and how worried are you about the prospect of a chinese invasion or something short of that, like a blockade of taiwan in the next several years? >> i'm concerned. xi jinping has instructed the people's liberation army, pla, to be ready to successfully invade taiwan and reunify, quote, unquote, the two lands

by 2027 and so we have to take that very seriously and that's c we have to move very quickly to pass this supplemental, but also do other things to make sure taiwan has what it needs upped the taiwan relations act to defend itself, and to deter and to discourage any kind of military incursion. >> do you think that the administration is doing enough to prepare for those possibilities? >> yes, i think the biden administration has moved very expeditiously during its time to help porcupine taiwan, but of course, we need to do more and i'm pleased through our committee under chairman gallagher's leadership, on a bipartisan basis, we were able to make various recommendations that made their way into the national defense authorization act, ndaa, with regard to taiwan and with regard to our military industrial base generally in order to deter

aggression. >> now, i know there have been a few congressional trips to taiwan recently, last year, and i know that you were a member of the group that went with speaker pelosi. >> little noted. >> do you have any plans to visit the island anytime soon? >> yes, we plan to visit. we just have to kind of time the visit properly. as you know, a new president has been elected and so, i think it's only appropriate that we meet with the new president and we talk about, you know, how do we -- how do we move forward under his administration. >> and bill bishop, who i'm sure most, if not all of the people in this room read, recently suggested that tie one-- taiwan should have taken out a super bowl ad to talk about why americans should care about the island and what do you make of taiwan needing to make its case

more in the public. >> here is what you see in the polling. in the polling the majority of american people believe that the chinese communist party and the government of china are a potential threat. also, majority feel that there's a better than 50-50 chance that the u.s. and china may go to war in the next 10 years, but the vast majority of americans, republicans, democrats, independents, want us to avert war, want us to do everything in our power to tamp down the possibility of war and to that, you know, on that particular note that means making sure that we deter aggression against taiwan because that's likely to be the biggest flash point between the two powers in the indo-pacific region. >> and i want to talk a little about the committee and bipartisan on china. you know, the committee is

really pretty bipartisan, there's a lot of agreement, not a lot of fighting about joe biden or donald trump, it's a lot of deeper policy discussions. how do you achieve that in today's very polarized washington. >> i think a lot of credit goes to former speaker mccarthy as well as leader hakeem jeffries for kind of setting the tone very early in how the committee was supposed to operate. i remember the first day that we met, we actually met in then kevin mccarthy's big conference room in his speaker's suite and it was me and gallagher and then it was mccarthy and jeffries was sitting just to his left. and you know, mccarthy at that point said very clearly, he said look, we need this committee to succeed and if you want to engage in partisanship, i've got committees for that, but if you want to get something done, this is that committee and so, i think they set the right tone, they also

selected members who quite frankly reflect the diversity of our caucuses, but most importantly are serious, they're serious about the issues, they're curious about, you know, how do you address some of the more kind of-- especially the technologically complicated questions and then how do we kind of come together on bipartisan recommendations. >> have you gotten any feedback from the current speaker, mike johnson, on the committee's work? >> yes, he's following very closely. he is very interested in kind of maintaining that same spirit, that his predecessors, you know, started and i think that, you know, we just have to continue throughout this congress because as you know, there's no shortage of work to do. >> do you ever feel like there's too much consensus in washington on china that you don't have enough dissent? >> we have a lot of dissent on

our committee, it's not necessarily partisan in nature. we have people kind of lined up with each other, republicans and democrats, lined up on a particular issue who may not be comfortable with a certain trade recommendation or a trade consensus that's emerging in washington. then we have others who are, you know, lined up together with regard to tik tok, or social media and so in that way, i think that we have a lively debate that happens. it's not necessarily partisan, but it's lively. the last they think i'd say is there is a consensus on one thing, and that is we need to speak with one voice with regard to making sure that the u.s. wins the strategic competition against the ccp. on that particular issue, i think everybody is of one accord. >> i'm glad you mentioned tik tok because i did want to ask about that. i noticed it came up a couple of times at your hearing with

director wray and other top intelligence officials last week. the committee has endorsed some kind of action on tik tok, a ban or a forced sale. what's the path forward for that in legislation. do you see that potentially happening this year? >> potentially, i think that we've seen is that there's kind of an interesting kind of interesting coming together of people on both sides on this particular issue, especially after october 7th and the hamas attacks in israel. people are even more concerned about the manipulation of the algorithm on tik tok by bite bytedance. and that forbes journalists have been is your veiled using american data by bytedanced, these are chinese-based employees even after project texas was launched. we've also learned that the ccp

actually inspected some of this data at bytedance. again, after project texas was launched and given these issues, given what the ceo of tik tok said on capitol hill and some of-- and how some of it doesn't seem to hold up, i think that there's increasing interest in this particular area. >> do you worry at all about the potential political blow back either from voters that use the platform or that you know, the ability to use the platform to connect with voters? >> sure, i don't want to see a ban. i think that, you know, tik tok plays an important role for different businesses, especially small businesses. i know there are a lot of people who love the dance videos, raise your hand if you're one of them. i see someone in the corner here. but the concern is that if it's

owned by a company that's beholden to the ccp then you have a new level of concern even beyond the typical social media companies. so what chris wray said in the hearing the other day is that, look, we all share the privacy concerns and especially about our data, with regard to facebook, instagram, x, you made the social media platform, however, where you have a social media company owned by a company beholden to the ccp then you have a new level of national security risk and there the biden administration has been emphatic about the need to address it and so i think as a committee we have to listen to the administration. >> and you mention project texas which is tik tok's look at through oracle.

why is that unsatisfactory? >> i think january 30th, the wall street journal went through the employees of project texas, concerns, bytedance employees were routinely changing the algorithm from china that they couldn't keep up with. b, the user data is still accessible to bytedance employees in china. and so having a firewall that is so porous don't make any sense. and so, you know, you've heard that saying, you know, don't mess with texas. well, project texas is a mess. and that's something that now we've heard repeatedly from witnesses and we're seeing in the media, we're seeing forbes routinely put out the articles how their journalists are surveilled. that's a problem. >> i wanted to ask you about the investment control, debate, the biden administration's obviously moving forward with this executive order,

regulating outbound u.s. investments in china. your committee endorsed expanding on that, but there is a debate in congress and actually that prevented provisions for getting attached to the ndaa. where are lawmakers on this? is there room for compromise here? >> absolutely. so just so all of you know, the biden administration put in place certain controls with regard to investments in quantum, ai and semiconductors and so what we have said is, those are-- that's a good start, but we need to do more. and what we need to do is we need to look at not just private equity and venture capital, but potentially passive investments. what we learn on, you know, through our hearing, our field hearing on wall street is that billions and billions of dollars in passive investments go into problematic entities that are involved not only in perpetrating human rights

abuses, but also in building up the pla's military modernization. because of that, by the way, tsp, in which i'm invested and most members in congress and two million government employees, including active military duty are invested, stop investing in these problematic entities. and so that's good. the other thing is we have to look at some of the other sectors that could be problematic, including biotech. we just learned that bgi, the bgi group operates very extensively in this country through various subsidiaries, and you know, those subsidiaries are charged with, you know, potentially collecting data, again, to funnel back to china and so we don't want to be investing in those types of companies in china or otherwise, so that's another area that we need to look at. actually, next week, we're going to be in boston for a

field hearing on biotech and i'm sure the topic is going to come up. >> do you think that there will be some kind of legislation though, just given some of the pushback that, you know, you've gotten from patrick mchenry, for example? >> i think so. i think that we're going to see some kind of compromise. you heard of the kc cornyn bill. obviously, mr. mchenry has his opinions as well, as do others, so we need to come together on this. >> and you've had investigations into black rock, other investment firms, are those still ongoing and you know, what are you looking to-- if they are, what are you looking to glean from them? >> yes, they're ongoing. i don't want to get into the specifics except that probably most of you who follow this know that blackrock and others have investments in some of these problematic entities. when i say problematic entities, they might be on one of those entity lists. they might be on the uyghur

force labor prevention act list or might be on one of the military sanctions lists, and so, you know, what we want to do is-- you know, finish the investigation, publish our findings and then go to legislation. >> and then the committees report last year laid out a number of economic recommendations. it called for an overhaul of the u.s. economic relationship with china, but stopped short of endorsing ending normal trade relations with china. why did you stop short of that? >> well, i think that here is the issue, which is that if the ccp decides to play by the rules of those wto, then i don't think that the counter measures that we have adopted, whether it's increased tariffs or otherwise, the urgency of having those goes away, okay? and we can kind of go back to potentially a regime that is

much more normal, so to speak. but if they're going to engage in economic aggression. if they're going to engage in dumping, for instance, and we had a conference in wisconsin, the can company was this close to bankruptcy, because of dumping of chinese trailer, under the cost of the metal, the steel in those trailers, then you have to have tariffs. with regard to reevaluating the relationship, we don't need to end ntpr, but we need to what does it look like to get the ccp back into compliance because right now they're not in most areas and that's not fair to our-- to our industry, or to our american businesses. >> donald trump actually

endorsed imposing tariffs of 60% or more on china recently. wondering what you think of some of his comments about, you know, what he would do if he was reelected. >> oh, gosh, i was scared you were going to say he endorsed our report. i don't know the context of our-- the comments. right now i'd like to see given the economic turmoil that's ongoing within china i'd like to see them reduce their economic aggression and doing so, it will help all of us. it will help them, it will calm their invests, both internally and externally, which they need to calm and then it will also help us with regard to, you know, giving us space to potentially look at, are these tariffs making sense. that's what i'd like to see.

we'll see if they go down that path, but i hope that we're able to discuss that, you know, in our ongoing dialog. >> do you think that that's possible given what you're hearing from the administration and the dialogs that's happening? >> i think anything is possible. the economic slide is much greater in china is greater than anything we're seeing. i believe their data is cooked. we can't believe anything coming out of china. massive youth unemployment, their official data is 22 to 25% before they stopped publishing that data. it might be higher than that. the biggest fear that the chinese people have right now or i should say the government of china has right now is deflation. they're entering a deflationary period where i think that there's a real crisis of confidence in the economic leadership of the country at the grass roots, okay?

after the zero covid policy which was an utter disaster, xi jinping changed course. i think it's time for him to change course again right now because right now he's seeing his economy kind of enter a stage where they've got to be concerned about the stability of their political regime and i don't know how he's going to react. >> what do you make of his trip to the u.s. last year and just the way that he, you know, met with --. >> it was all about this, morgan. it was all about calming nerves. i'm not -- i don't have illusions that they've suddenly changed their strategic goals with regard to taiwan or with regard to any of their ideological goals, but tactically they wanted to calm investors nerves. that's why this meeting with

joe biden was so important to them and he needed to look like he was stabilizing the relationship, okay? and i think that's also why they've entered into the mill military to military communications channel and why they're entering into the sentinel working group. that's why they are entering into that ai working group with regard to the military. i think it's all about calming investors nerves and calming the really roiled economy at this point. >> and the biden administration talks a lot about derisking. >> yeah. >> do you think that the u.s. is headed toward at least a partial decoupling with china, where are we going? >> i don't think it's decoupling, i think it's diversifying the portfolio. what i see, even before the u.s. government has done anything or said anything, what we've seen in the private sector over and over again, because members of the

committee including myself and chairman gallagher, we meet with, you know, members of various industries and what they tell us is we are already establishing a redundant supply chain in india, in some other country in the region. so regardless of what the u.s. g does, i'd like to see more of it brought home more of the redundancy, manufacturing in schaumburg, illinois, the district, and the main thing is that it's happening and it's going to continue to happen and i think it's a good thing, especially given what happened in the pandemic and the fact that, you know, everything from ppe, personal protective equipment, to active pharmaceutical ingredients were in short supply and it doesn't make sense to just have one sole source for any of that.

>> and speaking of that, one of the big sources of attention from the administration and from congress is the chips act and bringing back the semiconductor production. there have been a couple of reports recently about tsmc and intel delaying work on the plans or delaying the timelines, are you worried at all by that, about the delays and when they'd be up and running? >> i'm always concerned. but the reason for some of these delays, i mean, there's various reasons, some of them are very local, but some of it has to do with like work force issues. they just don't have the work force necessary to stand up operations. not just at tsmc or intel or i'm sorry, at some other company, but the eco system is also not standing up as quickly as they need. i am glad that the double taxation treaty is going to go

into effect, hopefully, with taiwan as a consequence of what we've passed in the house. hopefully the senate takes it up in short order, but i think stuff like that will really help to expedite, but this work force issue, we can talk about later, is a huge kind of rate determining step for how quickly they can establish their operations. >> and the financial times reported recently that the committee wanted to have chip ceo's from, i think, intel and some other companies testify. just curious if that's something we can expect to see and if that's what you're looking for out of the hearing like that. >> so, i think that the structure and format of the hearing are kind of-- it's in flux a little bit and we're trying to figure that out. i think what we want to learn is how are things going in terms of the competition between the u.s. and the ccp with regard to chip manufacturing.

as you know, the chinese have invested maybe tens, maybe hundreds of billions of dollars in standing up their own semiconductor companies. they've been successful with regard to, i guess, legacy chips, but with regard to the highest end semiconductor chips, they aren't necessarily exactly where they would like to be. that's why the export controls with regard to the chips bite the way that they do right now and so we want to learn more about that. >> and one of the meetings that stuck out to me last year is when you and chairman gallagher traveled to the west coast, met with apple, microsoft executives, disney executives and those are private and can you talk about what your approach was and will you ever call those kind of executives to testify publicly? >> i don't know. but the meetings were

illuminating because you get to hear from them, what are the challenges that they face? what are the opportunities? also, interestingly, a lot of these executives have had personal experiences with xi jinping and other senior leaders, whether when xi jinping was operating at the local level or otherwise, and so that was also, you know, very, very insightful. >> and i also wanted to know how worried you are about china's dominance in the ev supply chain. chairman gallagher has raised concerns about forbes partnership with the firm catl. wonder if you have concerns about that and what congress can do? >> it's a funny, it's cattle and the first time i heard that, a long time ago they said what do you think about the cattle deal? i was really confused.

so, but here is the -- all of you know this, but the chinese dominate in almost every segment of the ev supply chain, okay? from, you know, the anods and cathodes in the batteries in the cars and everything else, all that being said, i think the world sees, you know, ev as as being the future and i think even my colleagues on the other side know that, you know, electric vehicles are going to be very, very important for the american economy pan so how do we make sure that we bring that supply chain to the u.s. because i am concerned that we're going to end up being in a situation where they have coercion, they have the power of coercion over the certain components. the anods, or cathodes,

lithium, manganese or cobalt that we might need for these ev's. so we've got to figure out the redundant suppliers. >> and is that the solution there purely to bring them back or is it also kind of partnering with other countries? what's the best way forward? >> all of the above. i think what we see, for instance, let's take australia for a second. australia mines almost all of these critical elements and rare earths, but they don't process them. and the processing all gets done in china. so they mine all of this stuff, they send it to china and then china sends it back to the rest of the world. so the question is, how do we stand up, for instance, processing plants either in australia or elsewhere that could handle the processing of these elements so that we can then be able to have a second supply as opposed to just relying on china.

the same is true with regard to other parts of the supply chain. one very interesting thing, by the way, that i learned today is that aluminum or some of the ev's in china is coming from there, and we haven't talked about the uyghur, and i see us as well as other countries we don't want to import cars that are made from aluminum from slave labor. >> and you mentioned that and literally the next topic i was going to move into. and i know the committee had the investigation into forced labor and those supply chains. is that something you're still working on and are you expanding that at all to look at other companies and look at other industries? >> the short answer is we're

still working on this. we're trying to figure out what's the right way forward because the uyghur prevention labor act is not enforced. there's something called a din deminimus package that falls within the exception. the deminimus exception and they're not getting the scrutiny that they deserve from the uyghur labor prevention act standpoint so we have to kind of look at that as well. all that said, i think apparel, fast fashion is where we see this kind of being a -- the most critical issue. there might be others, but this is certainly a problem. >> and what do you want to see from the biden administration

when it comes to enforcing the uyghur labor enforcement act? >> one thing they feel they need more resources and i think that provide more resources for that and the border is probably a good idea. i think that we probably need to see some policy changes as well, but the biden administration is kind of-- it's not -- without the resources, it's very hard to kind of inspect the-- at this point hundreds of millions of packages that are coming in, if not billions and so this is a big problem. ... problem. >> in kind of more broadly looking at the biden administration's approach to china, is there one thing that stands out is your biggest criticism of the way they handled things? mr. krishnamoorthi: i think they have done a very good job. i think they have also dispensed with the rhetoric which i think

is unhelpful and overly unhelpful and overly provocative. i think they are at [inaudible conversations] [inaudible conversations]

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