Exclusive: Pennsylvania Republican Dave McCormick Lays Out Vision to ‘Confront China and Secure America’

Republican businessman David McCormick, who is considering a run for U.S. Senate in Pennsylvania in 2024, appeared on Sirius XM’s Breitbart News Saturday and laid out his vision to “confront China” and preserve America’s status as a superpower.

McCormick, who nearly beat out Dr. Mehmet Oz in the 2022 Republican nomination for the U.S. in Pennsylvania, published his book, Superpower in Peril: A Battle Plan to Save America, this week.

“I started writing the book a couple of years before I decided to run for office, but it was the same motivation,” he told host Matthew Boyle. “The country is headed in the wrong direction economically, from a national security perspective, spiritually, and we’re in decline. And decline is a choice, and so is renewal, and it really depends on what we do, and so the book Superpower in Peril is about what we do. It essentially lays out a battle plan to educate our people to confront China and to secure America.”

McCormick emphasized that it will “require great leaders” to bring about an American renewal and hopes that his book “will help set the course for how we can, as conservatives, win elections and be successful and saving the country.”

McCormick agreed with Boyle’s assessment that China has engaged in a decades-long plan to supplant the United States as the world’s lone superpower.

“China does have a plan and is exercising its plan, and we don’t have a plan, which is what this book is all about,” said McCormick. “And just to reinforce what you’re saying about China’s techno-authoritarian model, and its success, you know, a couple of weeks ago, there was an article in the Wall Street Journal that talked about an Australian think tank that did an evaluation of the 44 critical technologies for economic and national security in the world – satellites, and artificial intelligence, so forth – China was in the lead in 37 of the 44. And so that’s why we need a plan, Matt.”

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McCormick’s multi-tiered vision involves addressing a number of domestic issues, shedding economic independence from China, holding China to account for “human rights abuses,” and halting American businesses from investing in communist China.

“There’s a lot we need to do at home. We need to fix our education systems, fix our schools, get rid of the wokeness that’s permeating our institutions. We need to have a strategy for technological leadership; we need to rein in big tech; we need leadership to do that. So… we got to look at home as a big part of this because part of our weakness is we’ve let the American dream and our dynamic economy slip away at home. But the second thing we need to do is confront China abroad, and we talked about this during the campaign – we need to strategically decouple. It’s shocking, shocking to learn during COVID that our pharmaceutical supply chains are dependent on China, that 90% of the microchips that we need to make our economy run for our national security are manufactured 90 miles from mainland China.”

“We need to hold China accountable for human rights abuses, but things like COVID… the fact that we aren’t having an honest debate until recently about the fact that the COVID virus likely came out of the Wuhan lab, I mean, what was the possibility that it just came about in a wet market nearby?” he continued. “And the third thing we need to do, we need to stop investment from the United States that’s helping the Chinese PLA [People’s Liberation Army], the military or the Chinese Communist Party, and there are firms today, Matt, we talked about this during the campaign, venture capitalists in Silicon Valley that are investing in artificial intelligence companies that work with the Chinese military, totally unacceptable. There needs to be a review process that stops that.”

“And finally, we need to work with our allies,” McCormick added. “So everybody’s got an interest in the region of keeping China in check, Japan, Australia. There’s a lot we can do to have a combined strategy that offsets this expansionist, authoritarian model of China, and look what China is doing with Russia; they’re expanding their influence abroad. We need to do the same. So that’s the outline of the plan in Super Power in Peril.”

The United States must adopt a “whole-of-nation-strategy” in dealing with China in McCormick’s view, rather than just attempting to implement a number of “one-off” solutions. He also praised former President Donald Trump for sounding the alarm on China.

“But you know, President Trump, to his credit, did a great service of identifying China as an adversary and beginning to change how people thought about China. We were sleepwalking as a country,” he said.

McCormick was within 1,000 votes of being Pennsylvania’s nominee in 2022 instead of Oz, who had favorability issues and lost to radical progressive Sen. John Fetterman (D-PA). McCormick, formerly the CEO of Bridgewater Associates, told Boyle that he is mulling a run in 2024 when Sen. Bob Casey’s (D-PA) seat is up for election.

“Well, the reason I ran for the Senate in 2022 was I thought the country was heading in the wrong direction, and I wanted to  – I thought I had something to offer,” he said. “And so when you lose by 900 votes, it’s not like the motivation to serve goes away. So I’m definitely thinking about it; I haven’t made any decisions about what I’m going to do in 2024.”

Oz held the extremely impactful endorsement of former President Donald Trump, which helped him secure the win in such a close race. Boyle asked McCormick if he thinks he and the 45th president can “come to the same side of things.”

McCormick noted that Trump asked him to serve as the deputy defense secretary and added that he adopted the Trump policies he liked on the campaign trail. He also likened politics to boxing, asserting that one has to be willing to take some shots if he or she steps into the political arena.

“So, you know, you got to be getting in the mix. And, you know, it wasn’t helpful that President Trump endorsed the other guy, and it wasn’t helpful that he came after me, but I lost that race. I’m responsible… There’s a number of things I could’ve done that would have would have won the race, and if I decide to run again, I’m hoping that I can get support from across the whole Republican Party. I think the Republican Party in Pennsylvania, nationally, wants to find candidates who can win primaries, win generals, and have a vision to move forward. I’m hoping that if I go down this path that I would have support across our conservative movement and across the party.”