Rep. Diana Harshbarger, who has been appointed to the House Republican’s China Accountability Task Force by Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy, told Newsmax Tuesday that "It's important to protect U.S. domestic supply chains against threats of interruption from Beijing and the Chinese Communist Party. "
"I was one of two freshmen assigned because of my expertise with supply chains and supplying domestic supply chains with pharmaceuticals and raw chemicals, and we know that we are absolutely dependent on foreign entities and adversarial entities, such as China, for 85% plus of those drugs," the Tennessee Republican told Newsmax's "American Agenda."
Harshbarger, who is also a pharmacist, said that her focus is on critical infrastructure.
"For example, there is a penicillin plant in my district and the first thing I did after I was sworn in was to extend the designation of critical infrastructure to that plant," said Harshbarger.
But that's just one of many drugs, "so what do you think happens when we can't get all the other things that we need for survival?" said Harshbarger, adding that it takes years for pharmaceutical plants to open and make medications and ingredients for them.
"That is eye-opening to some of those men and women in Congress," she added.
Meanwhile, China and Russia are forming strategic alliances, and they are doing that despite their hatred for each other because the United States is a common enemy for them, she noted.
"Why wouldn't they form strategic alliances to take us down," Harshbarger said. "The Chinese Communist Party is celebrating its 100th anniversary and the message that their president sent to the world is that don't bully us, Don't subjugate us because we will retaliate."
As a result, she said she hopes the Biden administration "does not cower to that," because it is "time to get tough with these nations and not sit back and take what they're dishing out..we have to send a viable message that we're not going to stand for it. Look at what they did to Australia just because they asked the WHO to look at the origins of COVID, for God's sake. They stopped the importation of things like beef and wine and barley and coal. And they were a first-world economy. You think that they would not do that to the United States?"
The United States' biggest national security threat is China, she added.
"We can't take it lightly," said Harshbarger. "We better have a plan developed to go after them, and that's why Leader McCarthy is supporting me as one of two freshmen on this committee."
Sandy Fitzgerald ✉
Sandy Fitzgerald has more than three decades in journalism and serves as a general assignment writer for Newsmax covering news, media, and politics.
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