“The words of a president matter.”
That is what Joe Biden told the American people when he was running for president. While that is true, words must also be backed by action. When it comes to the Chinese Communist Party’s use of slave labor, President Joe Biden is failing on both counts.
Last week, the White House said, “We don’t have a position at this point in time,” when asked about my Uyghur Forced Labor Prevention Act, which passed the Senate unanimously this July. It was a shocking admission considering Biden called Beijing’s abuse of Uyghur Muslims a “genocide.” Secretary of State Antony Blinken did the same during his confirmation hearing in January and promised to Sen. Jeff Merkley, an Oregon Democrat, to review our legislation “quickly, if confirmed” because there was an “urgency of engaging on this issue.”
What happened?
It is tempting to suggest that the Biden administration is merely distracted by multiple foreign policy crises, including chaos on the border, the collapse of Afghanistan, and emboldened authoritarian regimes in Russia, Iran, North Korea, Venezuela, and China.
But the truth is actually worse. By nearly all accounts, the Biden administration is choosing to ignore the Chinese Communist Party’s egregious human rights abuses to strike a deal on climate. In other words, it is willing to accept Beijing’s use of arbitrary detention on an unimaginable scale, slave labor, systematic rape, coercive abortion, forced sterilization, organ harvesting, and more because, in Nancy Pelosi’s words, “climate is an overriding issue.”
Not only is such a position immoral, but it also willfully ignores that Beijing has no desire to reduce its reliance on fossil fuels. In fact, despite making climate-related pledges in the past, the Chinese Communist Party is building coal-fired power plants at a stunning rate. In 2020, it brought online three times more coal-fired capacity than the rest of the world combined. It also granted approval to construction projects aimed at tripling its current coal-fired capacity in the decades to come.
The only thing certain when it comes to negotiations with President Xi Jinping and the Chinese Communist Party is that commitments will be broken. Beijing continues its economic espionage despite signing more than 10 international conventions and bilateral agreements with the United States since 1980 that obligate it to cease such illicit activity. It is committing genocide, blocking an international investigation into the true origins of COVID-19, and crushing freedom in Hong Kong. Even if Xi were to honor a new climate agreement, he would demand Western nations send tens of billions of taxpayers’ dollars to “developing nations” such as China.
But for some reason, in an administration staffed with alleged foreign policy experts, there is apparently the belief that Xi and his Communist Party will operate in good faith. Based on reporting, it appears that former secretary of state and current climate czar John Kerry is the individual responsible for the administration’s absurd position.
The Associated Press suggested Kerry had “a forceful debate” on prioritizing climate above human rights earlier this year. “That’s not my lane,” he told Rep. Chris Smith this year when asked about human rights in China.
A month ago, Kerry suggested the Chinese Communist Party sees human rights and climate “as a contradiction.”
“On the one hand, we’re saying to them, ‘You have to do more to help deal with the climate,’” he explained. “And on the other hand, their solar panels are being sanctioned, which makes it harder for them to sell them.”
Of course, the sanctions, which some Democrats are lobbying to remove, are in place because the Chinese solar industry is dependent on slave labor. This explains the quiet opposition to my Uyghur Forced Labor Prevention Act, which would make importing solar panels and solar components from China even more difficult. The Biden administration believes it cannot meet its climate goals without cheap solar components made with slave labor in Xinjiang.
Instead of relying on a genocidal regime that hates America, the Biden administration should focus on building up domestic production to create good jobs in America. Unfortunately, Biden is not very different from the nationless corporations that supported his campaign. Companies including Nike, Apple, and Amazon benefit from slave labor or sourcing from suppliers that do. It is how they do business — and in their view, business is always more important than ending slave labor. It is why they previously fought against the Uyghur Forced Labor Prevention Act.
Biden needs to decide where he stands. Words matter. Actions matter more. Just ask those whose mothers, fathers, daughters, and sons are withering in concentration camps in Xinjiang.
Marco Rubio is the senior U.S. senator from Florida.
