On Tuesday’s broadcast of the Fox News Channel’s “America’s Newsroom,” Sen. Tom Cotton (R-AR) argued that the United States should start punishing China for the coronavirus pandemic now and suggested revoking China’s permanent most-favored-nation status, hurting the financing terms they get from international financial institutions, and revoking visas from CCP members and their children so they can’t educate their children at American schools.
Cotton stated, “China’s chances of ever conceding that they’re responsible for this virus is zero. But that new report from the Lawrence Livermore Lab just confirms what I’ve been saying from the very beginning, just use your common sense. This virus emerged in a city larger than New York, just a few blocks down the road from the lab where they research these viruses. Every bit of evidence we have points to those labs. And it’s past time to hold China accountable for their negligence and their deceitfulness in unleashing this plague on the world. There [are] lots of things we could do. We could revoke their permanent most-favored-nation status, a bad mistake that we made twenty years ago. We could team up with our allies and take back the very favorable financing terms they get from international financial institutions like the World Bank. We could take away visas from Chinese Communist Party members and their kids so they can’t send their kids to American schools anymore. There’s no end to the things we can do to make China pay for unleashing this plague and we should start right now.”
He later added, “Why should we be subsidizing America’s higher education institutions when they turn around and accept the princeling kids of all these Chinese communists?”
Follow Ian Hanchett on Twitter @IanHanchett