Lawmakers on Monday introduced bipartisan legislation that would prohibit the use of federal funds to purchase airport equipment made in countries that may pose a national security threat to the United States, such as China.<\/p>\n
The Airport Infrastructure Resources Security Act would apply to purchases of passenger boarding bridges and other infrastructure from countries deemed by federal officials to pose a national security threat, and those involved in stealing U.S. intellectual property (IP).<\/p>\n
U.S.-China tensions:\u00a0<\/em><\/strong>Rep.\u00a0Ron Wright<\/a>\u00a0(R-Texas), who introduced the bill alongside Rep.\u00a0Marc Veasey<\/a>\u00a0(D-Texas), pointed to China as a major threat, particularly amid increased tensions over the Chinese Communist Party\u2019s (CCP) response to the COVID-19 outbreak.<\/p>\n “Make no mistake, the CCP will stop at nothing to gain power and control,\u201d Wright said in a statement. \u201cWe cannot afford to give them inroads to our most critical systems.”<\/p>\n Veasey said in a separate statement that he hoped the legislation would lead to an influx of jobs through the exclusion of foreign companies from countries involved in IP theft.<\/p>\n \u201cAs we emerge from the tragedy of the COVID-19 pandemic, one way to help rebuild the economy and get Americans back to work is by rebuilding our infrastructure,\u201d Veasey said. \u201cHowever, it is important that as we make these investments we are not rewarding foreign state-owned enterprises who have a history of IP violations.\u201d<\/p>\n Other House sponsors of the bill include GOP Reps.\u00a0Michael Waltz<\/a>\u00a0(Fla.),\u00a0Ross Spano<\/a>\u00a0(Fla.),\u00a0Mario Diaz-Balart<\/a>\u00a0(Fla.) and\u00a0Lance Gooden<\/a>\u00a0(Texas).<\/p>\n The supporters pointed to specific concerns over Chinese-owned company CIMC-Tianda, which manufactures passenger boarding bridges.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Lawmakers on Monday introduced bipartisan legislation...<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[11,8,7],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-24907","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-business","category-china","category-u-s-a"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/lapost.us\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/24907","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/lapost.us\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/lapost.us\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lapost.us\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lapost.us\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=24907"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/lapost.us\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/24907\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":24908,"href":"https:\/\/lapost.us\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/24907\/revisions\/24908"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/lapost.us\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=24907"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lapost.us\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=24907"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lapost.us\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=24907"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}