EXCLUSIVE — Rep. Claudia Tenney (R-NY) dropped the Stop Funding Our Adversaries Act in an attempt to permanently shut out federal research funding to Chinese entities.
“Our nation’s foreign adversaries do not deserve a dime of our tax dollars,” Tenney said. “The Stop Funding Our Adversaries Act will end all American taxpayer-funded research in China and the Chinese Communist Party, ensuring we are not funding the technical, military, or economic advancement of our adversaries.”
A similar bill was introduced by former Rep. Brandon Williams (R-NY) during the last Congress, but this version may have a better chance of being passed now that Republicans control the Senate and presidency and billionaire Elon Musk is looking to slash federal programs through his Department of Government Efficiency.
“As a founding member of the DOGE Caucus, I am dedicated to promoting accountability and transparency in our government, and that starts with ensuring we know where every single cent of taxpayer funding is going,” said Tenney, who co-sponsored the bill with Rep. Randy Weber (R-TX).
The bill’s text is just four paragraphs long and instructs the secretaries of the departments of Defense, Veterans Affairs, Energy, the Environmental Protection Agency, Interior, Transportation, Health and Human Services, and any other federal agency not to directly or indirectly support Chinese entities via grants, subgrants, contractors, cooperative agreements, or other funding vehicles.
“Chinese entities” are defined as the government of the People’s Republic of China, “any agent or instrumentality” of the government, or “any entity owned by or controlled by” China. The document further adds that “any agent or instrumentality” of the CCP or “any entity owned by or controlled by” the CCP is also banned.
The Chinese Communist Party is famously intertwined with nearly all aspects of China’s economy, thus necessitating the proscriptive language.
Between fiscal 2015 and fiscal 2021, the United States provided $28.9 million directly to Chinese entities for research and development, according to the U.S. Government Accountability Office. Tenney’s legislation is designed to shut off that spigot.
Research at China’s Wuhan Institute of Virology is now believed by multiple U.S. agencies to have caused the outbreak of the COVID-19 pandemic, and much attention has focused on whether funding from the U.S. National Institutes of Health played a role in the virus’s development.
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The bill could also be seen as part of a wider effort to decouple the U.S. economy from China’s as the two adversaries compete for supremacy on the world stage. President Donald Trump placed tariffs on China during his first term and has already raised them again in his second term.
Another aspect of the battle is the legislation ordering Chinese divestiture of TikTok, though Trump has extended it a 75-day lifeline since taking office.