Congress Keeps the Drumbeat Going on the CCP

This month, the Defense Intelligence Agency (DIA) at the U.S. Department of Defense delivered its Worldwide Threat Assessment to the House Armed Services Subcommittee on Intelligence and Special Operations. Central to DIA’s assessment of China was that the nation “continues to advance its global capabilities to confront the United States and its allies across the diplomatic, information, military, and economic domains” and that it continues to undertake “focused efforts to undermine popular and political support for U.S. military alliances and security partnerships,” all with the goal of presenting itself as the preeminent and undisputed world power.   

This sobering appraisal of China and its ruling government – the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) – should serve as a stark reminder to policymakers that they must not become complacent in continuing to confront the threat posed by the CCP. To that end, the Protecting America Initiative is proud to highlight recent legislation introduced by lawmakers to take a stand against the CCP. 

STOP China Act 
Introduced by Senator John Cornyn of Texas and cosponsored by a bipartisan slate of senators, the Safeguarding Transit Operations to Prohibit (STOP) China Act would prevent any funds appropriated to the Department of Transportation from being awarded for the purchase of Chinese buses or rail cars. Although Section 7613 of the FY 2020 National Defense Authorization Act generally prohibits Chinese companies from receiving contracts from the Federal Transit Administration to build buses and rail cars, the STOP China Act would close a loophole that still allows other government funds to be awarded to those same companies. 

As the bill makes clear, the CCP “uses a deliberately intricate web of industrial policies to distort market behavior to achieve dominance in global markets and increase the dependence of the United States on imports from the PRC,” and stopping taxpayer money from being spent on ingratiating Chinese-made products from being integrated into our domestic supply chain is key to combatting that dependency. 

Confronting Chinese Forced Labor 
Two recently introduced bills aim to confront the CCP practice of relying on forced labor in its supply chains, a priority that the Protecting America Initiative has highlighted in our federal policy solutions. The Transaction and Sourcing Knowledge (TASK) Act introduced by Senator Rick Scott of Florida would direct the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) to require disclosure of: sourcing and due diligence activities of imported products that are directly linked to forced labor in Xinjiang, China; transactions with companies that are on the Commerce Department’s Entity List or designated by the Department of Treasury as a Chinese military company; and for publicly-traded U.S. companies with facilities in China, whether there is a CCP committee involved in the operations of the company and a summary of any related actions and corporate decisions. 

The China’s Odious and Brutally Atrocious Labor Trafficking (COBALT) Supply Chain Act shares similarities with the Uyghur Forced Labor Prevention Act but is specific to goods using or containing cobalt refined in China. Cobalt is essential advanced lithium-ion batteries found in electronics, and China’s involvement in the Democratic Republic of the Congo’s cobalt operations rely heavily on forced or child labor. The COBALT Act would prevent such goods from being imported to the U.S.  

PROTECT Act 
The Providing Rigorous Oversight Through Evaluation of Concerning Transactions (PROTECT) Act of 2025 introduced by Senators Bernie Moreno, Elissa Slotkin, and Tim Sheehy would grant the Committee on Foreign Investment in the United States (CFIUS) additional power to stop new investments in the U.S. by “foreign countries of concern” like China. The legislation also follows the “America First Investment Policy” memorandum released by President Trump earlier in his term in which he sought to strengthen CFIUS authority to restrict investments by foreign adversaries.  

Congress Can’t Afford to Slow Down 
While the introduction of these bills is a good step in combatting the influence of the Chinese Communist Party, the Protecting America Initiative urges Congress to actually bring these bills for the floor for debate and passage. The threat from the CCP only continues to increase, and our policymakers must make measurable, concrete progress in order to keep up. In the meantime, we will continue to champion these bills as well as other federal policy solutions to keep the drumbeat going on the CCP.