The president‘s apparent change in strategy comes even after Treasury officials had already teed up an executive order for Trump to sign Friday.
Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin appears to have won the battle against White House hard-liners who were pushing for President Donald Trump to target only Beijing with investment restrictions, as the president announced Tuesday that he’ll also target other countries.
„It’s not just Chinese [investment],“ Trump told reporters at the White House.
The president‘s apparent change in strategy comes even after Treasury officials had already teed up an executive order for Trump to sign Friday that outlines new investment restrictions focused on China‘s efforts to obtain sensitive U. S. technology by acquiring or merging with U. S. firms.
That order detailed that companies that have at least 25 percent Chinese ownership would be automatically banned from investments involving U. S. companies. It would also restrict investments from companies with an even lower threshold of Chinese ownership, between 10 percent and 25 percent, if the transaction involved gaining a board seat on the U. S. company or obtaining access to certain technology, said a source familiar with the document.
The executive order would have also listed a number of sectors using the North American Industry Classification System that would be restricted from investments by any companies with Chinese ownership, the source said.
Instead, Trump said Tuesday the administration could impose the restrictions using the Committee on Foreign Investment in the U. S., a decades-old government panel that has the power to block acquisitions by foreign companies if they are determined to jeopardize national security. But the president added that „we have a lot of things that we can do it through, and we’re working that out.
