In response to Trump allowing taxpayer money for small businesses to go to Chinese corporations, DNC War Room senior spokesperson and advisor Lily Adams released the following statement: 

“Instead of holding China accountable, Trump allowed Chinese corporations and their subsidiaries to receive millions of dollars of taxpayer money while thousands of U.S. small businesses still struggle and more than 100,000 have been forced to close for good. Trump has repeatedly left American small businesses high and dry, making this crisis far worse than it needed to be for small businesses and their workers.”

New York Times: U.S. Small Business Bailout Money Flowed to Chinese-Owned Companies

By Alan Rappeport

President Trump has blamed China for the coronavirus pandemic and the ensuing economic crisis, but as the White House looks to stabilize small businesses in the United States, the rescue effort has had an unintended beneficiary: Chinese companies.

Millions of dollars of American taxpayer money have flowed to China from the $660 billion Paycheck Protection Program that was created in March to be a lifeline for struggling small businesses in the United States. But because the economic relief legislation allowed American subsidiaries of foreign firms to receive the loans, a substantial chunk of the money went to America’s biggest economic rival, a new analysis shows.

According to a review of publicly available loan data by the strategy consulting firm Horizon Advisory, $192 million to $419 million has gone to more than 125 companies that Chinese entities own or invest in. Many of the loans were quite sizable; at least 32 Chinese companies received loans worth more than $1 million, with those totaling as much as $180 million.

“The extent and nature of P.R.C.-owned, -invested and -connected entities among the P.P.P. loan recipients indicate that without appropriate policy guardrails, U.S. tax dollars intended for relief, recovery and growth of the U.S. economy — and small businesses in particular — risk supporting foreign competitors, namely China,” wrote Emily de La Bruyère and Nathan Picarsic, the co-founders of Horizon Advisory, referring to the People’s Republic of China.

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Among the companies highlighted in the report were Continental Aerospace Technologies, which received a loan of up to $10 million, and Aviage Systems, which received a loan of up to $350,000. The companies are owned by Aviation Industry Corporation of China, a state-owned conglomerate that the Department of Defense classified this year as a Chinese military company.

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Larger loans went to businesses that spanned critical sectors such as pharmaceuticals, defense, advanced manufacturing, electric cars and information technology. In each case, the United States was indirectly funding the kinds of corporations whose owners the Trump administration regularly accuses of intellectual property theft.

For example, Dendreon Pharmaceuticals, a California-based biotech company, received a loan worth $5 million to $10 million. It is owned by Nanjing Xinbai, a Chinese state-invested company whose controlling shareholder has close ties to the Communist Party.

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