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Miami, FL — U.S. Senator Marco Rubio (R-FL) released a statement after the Biden Administration announced changes to Trump-era rules that banned U.S. investment in certain companies linked to the Chinese Communist Party’s military. The change would also put the U.S. Department of Treasury in charge of creating and maintaining a list of companies that could face financial penalties. 
 
“We know for a fact that Wall Street is helping to finance the Chinese Communist Party’s effort to weaken and ultimately replace American leadership,” Rubio said. “The story of the past two decades has been America’s unwillingness to confront Beijing’s exploitation of our legal, political, and financial systems. While the administration updated the Trump-era policy in important ways, I am very concerned that President Biden’s Treasury Department is too closely aligned with Wall Street to take the actions necessary to prevent American savings from being used to fund the Chinese Communist Party.”
 
Last week, Rubio wrote in The American Prospect that “Wall Street must stop enabling Communist China,” and warned that “Many well-meaning Americans may inadvertently be propping up a genocidal regime because Wall Street does it for them.”
 
Last month, Rubio explained how the Senate’s Endless Frontiers Act (S. 1260) failed to protect America’s capital markets from Beijing’s exploitation. 
 
The fifth area a real “China Bill” must address is our capital markets. Our stock market is the most open, liquid, and profitable in the world. And it’s being used by the Chinese Communist Party to fund its military and their companies. 
 
Any meaningful China bill must cut off the tap and prohibit American money from being invested in Communist Chinese military companies.
 
We need to start requiring more transparency from Wall Street when it comes to investing in China and Chinese government controlled companies.
 
My American Financial Markets Integrity and Security Act needs to be part of the solution. How can we claim to be dealing with Chinese manipulation of our capital markets if we don’t ban Chinese companies exploiting our own stock market from continuing to hurt us? 
 
Beijing long ago figured out how to get rich and powerful Americans to use their influence in American politics. 
 
Allowing Wall Street and Big Finance to enrich themselves by hurting Americans, they make a lot of money in the short term, for those individuals, but it is hurting America in the long run. in the long run. It is national economic suicide.
 
Rubio filed dozens of amendments to address the shortcoming, including: 
 
#1754: Banning the TSP Board from steering federal retirement savings to China.  A bipartisan amendment, based on Rubio’s bipartisan, bicameral Taxpayers and Savers Protection (TSP) Act, first introduced in November 2019, and reintroduced May 2021, would prevent the Federal Retirement Thrift Investment Board (FRTIB) from steering federal retirement savings to China. Senators Shaheen (D-NH), Todd Young (R-IN), Rick Scott (R-FL), and Joni Ernst (R-IA) are cosponsors.
 
#1751: Introducing Index Provider transparency and accountability. An amendment to introduce transparency and accountability for changes to the composition of indexes that are tracked or benchmarked against by investment funds.
 
#1752: Preventing harmful Chinese companies from exploiting U.S. financial markets. An amendment, based on Rubio’s American Financial Markets Integrity and Security Act, reintroduced in March 2021, to prohibit malign Chinese companies — including the parent, subsidiary, affiliate, or a controlling entity — that are listed on the U.S. Department of Commerce Entity List or the U.S. Department of Defense list of Communist Chinese military companies from accessing U.S. capital markets. Senators Cotton (R-AR) and Rick Scott (R-FL) are cosponsors.
 
#1852: Strengthening American securities laws. An amendment to close a loophole in our securities laws by prohibiting companies that retain an auditor that U.S. regulators cannot oversee or are headquartered in a jurisdiction where U.S. regulators are prohibited from conducting inspections, to list on American exchanges. Senator Casey (D-PA) joined Rubio in introducing the No IPOs for Unaccountable Actors Act.
 
#1984: Increase certain 13-D disclosure to protect national security. An amendment, based on Rubio’s forthcoming Shareholder National Security Awareness Act of 2021, to require the disclosure by certain investors of any plans or proposals they seek for a company that would, if implemented, materially reduce the operation of a national security asset, including certain assets developed through grants made available by the Endless Frontier Act. Lowers the threshold at which such investors have to disclose from 5 to 2.5 percent of all shares outstanding.