China is America’s foremost enemy. It’s a fact the Trump administration understands and acts upon. From the president’s tough trade actions to efforts to remove Chinese links from the Pentagon, the White House regularly demonstrates it takes the red threat seriously.
While President Trump has made America much stronger against China, there have been a few mistakes along the way. One of those is hiring Roger Alford and assigning him a powerful job in the Department of Justice. The lawyer, who was fired last month, defends China’s interests and loudly protests any efforts to counteract the Chinese Communist Party’s agenda. Alford may be gone, but his efforts live on at the DOJ’s Antitrust Division. The Trump administration must remove this influence and improve its vetting process to strengthen America’s national security.
Alford served in both the first and second Trump administrations as the Deputy Assistant Attorney General in the Antitrust Division. This was despite his frequent criticism of Trump and hawkish attitudes toward China.
Alford’s friendly attitude towards China has been apparent for well over a decade.
In 2011, he wrote a paper that provided intellectual support for unrestricted trade with China. In 2016, he delivered a speech—at a Chinese university, no less—about the immense danger Trump posed to China’s trade relationship with the U.S. He obviously considered that a bad thing, telling his audience that Trump’s demands for fair trade were “ludicrous and uninformed.” He made sure his Chinese address conveyed his devotion to the apparent “tenets of free trade” that allowed the communist state to do as it pleased. Fittingly, the event the lawyer spoke at was sponsored by a law school affiliated with the CCP.
Even while serving in the first Trump administration, Alford continued to extol the virtues of China’s economic progress and technological advancement.
In his latest stint at the DOJ, Alford prioritized blocking the merger of HPE and Juniper, a move national security experts warned would harm America’s defense capabilities and benefit Chinese interests. Over the summer, the Trump administration agreed to a settlement with the two tech companies that would allow the merger to go through after consulting with U.S. intelligence agencies on the matter. “In light of significant national security concerns, a settlement … serves the interests of the United States by strengthening domestic capabilities and is critical to countering Huawei and China,” a senior government official told Axios in June.
This decision rankled Alford, who relishes Chinese growth and doesn’t seem to worry about the harmful implications of it. He clashed with his superiors at the DOJ over the settlement and refused to abide by it. That disobedience cost him his job, but he’s still on the outside railing against the HPE-Juniper merger and the administration.
America must do everything it can to strengthen itself against the Chinese menace and build up important infrastructure to retain its global power. Unrestricted free trade with China has proven to be a disaster. It allowed the communist state to challenge America on the world stage—all while America lost jobs, its tech advantage, and much classified information.
The new administration is doing tremendous work to prepare the nation for a long struggle with Chinese communism. However, the Alford hire shows that there needs to be an even greater attention to ensuring White House personnel share the administration’s commitment to countering China.
The days of Business First Republicanism are over. We no longer put profits over the American people and our national security. We need to do everything we can to contain China, regardless of whether it goes against the “free trade tenets” propounded by discredited experts.