Exclusive: Trump pressed to halt federal pension
investments in China's ZTE, Hikvision
Send a link to a friend
[April 21, 2020] By
Alexandra Alper
WASHINGTON (Reuters) - Lawmakers and former
officials are making a last ditch push to persuade the Trump
administration to halt plans to invest billions of federal employee
retirement dollars in Chinese companies that Washington suspects of
human rights abuses or threatening U.S. security, according to sources
and documents seen by Reuters.
The campaign, which includes letters and calls from Republicans and a
sharply worded memo shared with White House Chief of Staff Mark Meadows,
coincides with heightened U.S.-China tensions over the origins of the
coronavirus pandemic.
At issue is whether administrators of the Thrift Savings Plan (TSP), a
retirement savings fund similar to a 401(k) for federal employees and
members of the military, should allow its $50 billion international fund
to track an index that includes some China-based stocks of companies
under scrutiny in Washington.
Among the Chinese companies in the index that have drawn the ire of some
in Washington who see China as America's biggest economic and
geopolitical threat is surveillance firm Hangzhou Hikvision Digital
Technology, which was placed on a trade blacklist last year because its
technology is used in detention camps for China's Uigher Muslim
minorities.
The fund would also invest in telecoms equipment company ZTE , which was
penalized by the U.S. government for violating U.S. sanctions.
For China hardliners, the matter has taken on greater urgency because
administrators have begun opening custodial accounts abroad to make
investments due in the second half of 2020.
"Are we very soon going to witness ... federal employees ... being, in
effect, unwittingly compelled to fund with their retirement dollars a
number of Beijing's most egregious corporate national security and human
rights abusers?" asked Roger Robinson, a former White House official in
the Ronald Reagan administration who has tracked the issue closely.
The Federal Retirement Thrift Investment Board (FRTIB) which administers
the TSP, said all of its peers are making similar investments and that
it "would be a lagging outlier amongst retirement savings plans" if it
doesn't expand its investments, according to spokeswoman Kim Weaver.
The White House and the Department of Labor, which oversees the board,
did not respond to requests for comment.
Trillions of dollars worldwide passively track benchmarks which are
compiled by third party index providers based on a range of criteria,
including companies' market capitalization, as opposed to fund managers
picking the stocks themselves.
[to top of second column] |
U.S. President Donald Trump participates in the daily coronavirus
task force briefing at the White House in Washington, U.S., April
20, 2020. REUTERS/Jonathan Ernst
When a consultant cited higher returns were possible, the FRTIB decided in 2017
to switch the benchmark for its international stock fund in 2020 to the MSCI All
Country World ex-U.S.A. Investable Market Index, which represents 99% of world
equities, including Canada, China and other emerging markets.
The plan hit road bumps last year when Republican Senator Marco Rubio and Jean
Shaheen, a Senate Democrat, proposed legislation that would prevent investments
in China, flagging insufficient levels of accounting and financial disclosure at
Chinese firms, in addition to national security and human rights issues.
But the legislation languished, spurring a final campaign to prevent the change.
A person familiar with the matter said a handful of former government officials
provided to former congressman Meadows a memo dated March 7, the day after U.S.
President Donald Trump tapped him to be White House Chief of Staff.
The memo argued that if Trump did not act, by replacing FRTIB board members or
through an executive order, his critics would claim Trump took no action to
avoid "federal employees being compelled to invest in Chinese and Russian
companies that have undisclosed material risks due to their roles in threatening
our national security and abusing human rights."
Meadows, who had sponsored companion legislation to Rubio's bill in the House of
Representatives, did not respond to a request for comment through the White
House.
Top lawmakers have raised the issue directly with the administration, according
to people familiar with the matter. Rubio discussed the issue with Trump in the
last few months, a congressional aide said.
Republican congressmen Mike Gallagher and Jim Banks have addressed letters to
Department of Labor Secretary Eugene Scalia, two aides said.
In one dated April 6, Banks called on Scalia to explain how the agency plans to
inform investors of the risks of owning shares in companies that don't comply
with U.S. financial disclosure requirements and the implications of investing in
firms that are under U.S. sanctions.
"I urge you to do everything in your power to reverse the TSP Board's decision,"
Banks wrote.
(Reporting by Alexandra Alper; Additional Reporting by Michelle Price; Editing
by Chris Sanders and Grant McCool)
[© 2020 Thomson Reuters. All rights
reserved.] Copyright 2020 Reuters. All rights reserved. This material may not be published,
broadcast, rewritten or redistributed.
Thompson Reuters is solely responsible for this content. |