U.S. REBUTS REPORTS ON INVESTMENT RESTRICTIONS
Statement will be out not specific to China but to all countries, says treasury secretary
UNITED States Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin yesterday denounced media reports detailing plans to impose restrictions on Chinese investment in US firms and on tech exports to China.
The reports were widely cited on Monday as helping to spark a global stocks selloff, with investors increasingly gloomy about the prospects of de-escalation in the emerging US-China trade war.
The White House in May announced plans to impose steep tariffs on Chinese goods, and follow up by June 30 with “specific investment restrictions and enhanced export controls for Chinese persons and entities related to the acquisition of industrially significant technology”.
The Wall Street Journal and Bloomberg News cited several sources saying the heightened US scrutiny of Chinese investment would fall under emergency national security powers.
The law in question, the International Emergency Economic Powers Act, allows the president to regulate trade in response to foreign threats and has frequently been used to respond to armed conflict, weapons and narcotics trafficking and political instability.
The Wall Street Journal also said the investment restrictions would apply to companies with 25 per cent Chinese ownership.
But Mnuchin said yesterday the news reports were “false, fake news. The leaker either doesn’t exist or know the subject very well,” he said on Twitter.
“Statement will be out not specific to China but to all countries that are trying to steal our technology,” said Mnuchin.