根据特朗普支持的众议员候选人汤姆·巴雷特的说法，密歇根州面临的中国影响力扩大问题已成为该关键战场州选民的重大关注点。“这是国家安全和经济安全角度的大规模担忧。”在Fox News Digital进行的一次Zoom采访中，他表示，“在这里，在民主党人领导下，密歇根州向由中共支持的公司提供了近200万美元的州税资金来建设电池厂。他们已经购买了大量农村农田以建立位于军事设施附近的中国共产党支持的电池工厂。而我在军旅生涯中曾在陆军接受过无数次训练。”
巴雷特是一名陆军退伍军人，曾经在密歇根州众议院和参议院担任议员，此次他竞选美国众议院第7选区的席位。今年早些时候，特朗普对其代表众议院的职位给出了“完全和彻底的认可”。巴雷特向Fox News Digital强调了竞选活动中突出的一些关键问题：通胀螺旋上升、边境政策、芬太尼过量致死以及中国在该州不断扩大的影响力。
“当密歇根的家庭为支付食物账单和家庭供暖费用而挣扎时，我们的政府，背后是对手的支持者，将近200万美元的州税资金送给中国的共产党公司，以便他们在这里监视我们。”巴雷特说。“这真是腐败到了核心。”
在2022年，密歇根州民主党籍州长格蕾琴·惠特默宣布来自中国的制造商Gotion将在该州一个农村地区建设价值24亿美元的电动汽车电池厂。这一举动引起了当地居民和地方领导人的愤怒，他们正在努力撤销一项可能阻碍工厂建设的水资源供应协议。Gotion起诉了该镇绿章会，并在本月获得了联邦法官支持的初步禁令，允许继续施工。
巴雷特的对手库尔特斯·赫特尔在2015年至2023年间担任惠特默的立法事务负责人，随后进入州参议院任职。他说：“我的对手与州政府签订了非披露协议，谈判将资金送至中国公司，而在他担任参议员之后为惠特默工作的首席说客，并在外国代理人登记文件中有秘密与这家中国公司的会面记录。”
惠特默的“为战斗而战”政治行动委员会的一名发言人告诉Fox News Digital，巴雷特的观点是“误导性的”。他表示：“这是Tom Barrett试图将视线从他在反对为中密歇根地区创造5000个工作机会的立法上分散开的又一无根据和误导性尝试。”
巴雷特提到了前奥巴马政府中央情报局局长利昂·帕内塔的看法，他警告说中国可能利用该工厂进行间谍活动。“我毫不怀疑他们会充分利用这一情况，”他在1月的一次众议院中国共产党特别委员会听证会上警告说。“我们必须对发生的事情保持警惕。这就是他们的方式。”
他说这项交易不仅威胁国家安全，还危及美国就业岗位：“这一切都是为了乔·拜登和卡玛拉·哈里斯的电动汽车指令，该指令将有条不紊地取代并淘汰密歇根州构成经济核心的传统制造业岗位。因此，中国公司正在用拜登政府推动的电动汽车指令来取代美国工作岗位，这引发了国家安全担忧。这项交易有着太多的问题，简直是糟糕至极。”
巴雷特指出特朗普在最近一次竞选活动中与农民讨论时提到了美国的土地和贸易问题：“我将会给习近平总统打电话，并说：‘你必须遵守承诺，我们要买500亿美元的美国农产品’，我可以保证他会购买。100%他会购买。”特朗普还表示，“第二件事我要做的是，在中国对贩运致死量级芬太尼的毒犯判处死刑，因为他们有这样的法律。”
他说：“我们国家的每一座城市、每一个小镇都遭受了非法移民和松散边境政策的打击，涌入了大量的芬太尼。现在美国人中年龄层最大的死因正是芬太尼过量。”他呼吁加强边境设施建设，并重新实施墨西哥滞留政策，以及确保边境巡逻队回到边境，而不是整天处理难民申请。
作为美军退伍军人，巴雷特提到自己的军事经历：“我在古巴关塔那摩湾度过了我的一年，在那里我们关押着试图进入美国杀戮美国人的人。我确信他们的说法。我们需要阻止他们进入我们的国家。”他表示在拜登政府任内已经知道有数百名恐怖分子嫌疑人进入美国。
尽管巴雷特在他的竞选中领先对手，但并未掉以轻心。“我认为特朗普总统非常有望赢得密歇根州。我们知道这将是一场非常接近的选举，没有任何事情是我们可以理所当然的。我竞选所在的第7国会区也是激烈的竞争领域，并且我们在密歇根也有一个非常激烈的参议院竞选。”
他表示：“这一切都关乎塑造我们的国家方向。我们或将继续走向更高的生活成本和不可负担的食物费用、房贷利率不合理的道路，或者我们应该扭转局面：加强边境安全，控制物价与犯罪率，将外国对手恢复到应有的位置，并为美国开辟一条新路径。”
新闻来源：www.foxnews.com
原文地址：Trump-endorsed House candidate sounds alarm on China’s growing influence in battleground state
新闻日期：2024-09-27
原文摘要：
China’s growing influence in Michigan has brewed into a "huge issue of concern" for voters in the key battleground state, according to a Trump-backed House candidate sounding the alarm on "failed Democratic" policies in the Great Lakes State. "This is a huge issue of concern both from national security and economic security standpoint," Republican House candidate to represent Michigan's Tom Barrett told Fox News Digital in a Zoom interview this week. "Here in Michigan, the Democrats are giving nearly $200 million of state tax money to a Chinese-backed, Communist Party affiliated company that's going to come to Michigan to build a battery plant. They've already purchased a bunch of rural farmland to go out and build a Chinese Communist Party-backed battery plant in Michigan, not far from a military installation where I trained for countless hours during my career in the Army." Barrett is an Army veteran who previously served in Michigan’s state House and state Senate before launching his race to represent the 7th District in the U.S. House. Barrett earned Trump’s "complete and total endorsement" for the House seat earlier this year, and spoke to Fox News Digital about the top issues he’s highlighting from the campaign trail, including spiraling inflation, border policies, fentanyl overdose deaths, as well as China’s growing influence in the state. "While families are struggling in Michigan to make ends meet and just buy groceries, pay for their home heating costs, our state government, backed by my opponent, is sending nearly $200 million of their state tax money to a Chinese communist company just so they can come here and spy on us. This is rotten to the core," Barrett said. MICHIGAN REPUBLICANS CONTINUE TO SPAR WITH DEMS OVER DEAL WITH CHINESE EV COMPANY IN KEY HOUSE RACE In 2022, Democratic Gov. Gretchen Whitmer announced Gotion, a China-based manufacturer, would construct a $2.4 billion electric vehicle battery plant in a rural area of the state near Big Rapids. The announcement was met with outrage from residents, including local leaders working to reverse a water supply agreement that would have crippled the plant’s construction. Gotion sued the township, Green Charter, and notched a legal victory last month when a federal judge upheld a preliminary injunction allowing construction to continue. Barrett's competitor this cycle, Curtis Hertel, worked as Whitmer's director of legislative affairs from 2015 to 2023, before serving in the state Senate. "My opponent signed a nondisclosure agreement to negotiate sending this money to this Chinese company while he was a member of the state Senate and then later went to work as Gov. Gretchen Whitmer's chief lobbyist. He's listed in the Foreign Agents Registries Act filings with having secret conversations with this Chinese company about maneuvering through the legislature to get their funding approved," Barrett said of his competitor and Democrats in the state. Hertell's campaign did not respond to Fox News Digital's request for contact. A spokesperson for Whitmer's Fight Like Hell PAC told Fox News Digital that Barrett's comments were "misleading." "This is yet another desperate and misleading attempt by Tom Barrett to distract from his record of voting against 5,000 good paying Mid-Michigan jobs because he’d rather them be overseas," the spokesperson said. Barrett pointed to remarks from former Obama administration CIA director Leon Panetta, who warned earlier this year that China would likely use the battery plant for espionage purposes. "I don't think there's any question that they're going to take advantage of that situation," Panetta warned in January when asked about the plant during a House Select Committee on the Chinese Communist Party hearing. "And I think we have to be very vigilant about what the hell is going on. That's just the way they operate. They'll establish a manufacturing unit, they'll establish whatever they can, and then they will use that for their own intelligence purposes. They will use that for their own economic purposes." Barrett said the deal is not only a national security threat, but also risks American jobs. MICHIGAN REPUBLICAN TOM BARRETT LEAPS BACK INTO CRUCIAL HOUSE RACE AFTER SLOTKIN EXIT "It is all in the pursuit of Joe Biden and Kamala Harris's electric vehicle mandate that will systematically replace and eliminate existing manufacturing jobs in Michigan that make up the very fabric of our economy here. So we have a Chinese company threatening with national security concerns to replace American jobs in traditional manufacturing with electric vehicle mandates that are borne by the Biden administration. So this has so many problems. It's an absolutely horrible deal," he said. "Michiganders are stepping up. They're aware of this. It is terribly unpopular here. And we need to take this fight to the ballot box to make sure that we don't let this go forward." Trump joined farmers during a panel earlier this week in another battleground state, Pennsylvania, where they discussed China’s recent purchases of American farmland and again enforcing a trade deal against China that benefits American farmers. "My first call, I'm going to call up President Xi. I'm going to say, 'You have to honor the deal you made. We made a deal. You'd buy $50 billion worth of American farm product.' And I guarantee you he will buy it. 100% he will buy it," Trump said Monday during a campaign event in Smithton, Pennsylvania. SENATE GOP UNLEASHES CAMPAIGN BLASTING DEM CANDIDATE FOR HUSH AGREEMENT INVOLVING CCP-TIED COMPANY Trump struck a trade deal with China in 2020 that included Beijing's commitment to halt intellectual property theft, refrain from currency manipulation, cooperate in financial services and purchase an additional $200 billion of U.S. products over two years, including up to $50 billion of U.S. agriculture. "Second thing I'm going to do is, I'm going to say you have to give the death penalty to your fentanyl dealers who are sending fentanyl. You know, in China, they give the death penalty. They don't have a drug problem because they give the death penalty," Trump said. Fentanyl and overdose deaths are again one of the top concerns for Americans this election cycle, with Trump tying the fatal drug to the influx of illegal immigrants who have poured over the southern border under the Biden-Harris administration. Barrett said his area and district are among the communities across the nation that have been rocked by the influx of the synthetic opioid from across the border. TRUMP AND VANCE TO HOLD FIRST RALLY IN MICHIGAN "Every single community in America, in every town, not just in the district where I'm running, but every town in America has been touched and affected and devastated by the outcomes of illegal immigration and lax border policies that have flooded every community with fentanyl. And now the leading cause of death of Americans my age is fentanyl overdose. It's a crippling and devastating tragedy. And we have to fix the problem," he said. "We have to secure our border with more structures. We have to reinstate the remain in Mexico policy. We can't allow the exploitation of asylum claims to overwhelm our social welfare system, to overwhelm our border security. We need to put Border Patrol agents on the border instead of processing asylum claims all day as they're doing right now. And we need to get back to two policies that deter illegal border crossing," he continued. Barrett is an Army veteran who signed his contract over the Christmas break of his senior year in high school. He spent 22 years in the Army, serving in the Iraq War, Guantanamo Bay, Kuwait, and at the DMZ separating North and South Korea. Barrett pointed to his military career amid his calls to secure the border. EARLY VOTING BEGINS IN ILLINOIS, NORTH DAKOTA, FLORIDA AND MICHIGAN "I spent a year of my life deployed during Operation Enduring Freedom to Guantanomo Bay, Cuba, where there were terrorists that we were securing in that facility. And they told us straight to our face, that they wanted to come to America and kill Americans. I believe them. We need to keep them out of our country. We've had hundreds on the terror watch list that we already know have crossed into this country just during this administration. We need to remove them and we need to make sure that we don't allow any further terrorists into our country," he said. Barrett is in the lead in his race against Hertell, but underscored he’s not taking anything for granted while "I think President Trump is very well poised to win Michigan. We know this is going to be a very close race and absolutely nothing we can take for granted. The seventh Congressional District in Michigan, where I'm running, is also highly competitive. And we also have a very competitive United States Senate race in Michigan," he said. CLICK HERE TO GET THE FOX NEWS APP "This really is going to shape the direction of our country. And we can go down the same failed path we've been on already with the high cost of living and groceries that are unaffordable for families, and mortgage rates that don't allow a young couple to begin their own family. Or we can turn the corner. Secure our border. Get our costs of living under control, get crime under control, put our foreign adversaries back in check where they belong, and really forge a new path for America." Get the latest updates from the 2024 campaign trail, exclusive interviews and more at our Fox News Digital election hub.
