U.S. pension funds underwrite slave labor in China via investment in Chinese companies, Rick Manning, president of Americans for Limited Government, said on Thursday’s edition of SiriusXM’s Breitbart News Tonight with host Rebecca Mansour and special guest host John Hayward.
Manning said the Trump administration is contemplating an end to the Thrift Savings Plan’s (TSP) investment in Chinese firms. The TSP is administered by the Federal Retirement Thrift Investment Board (FRTIB), a federal agency, and is a defined contribution plan for employees of and retirees from the federal government and armed services
Manning stated, “[The] Department of Labor publishes a child enslaved labor report every single year citing countries and the industries — the products — that are made with child slave labor, and China is cited for not one, not two, but twelve different industries that use childhood slave labor to make the products that they then sell to America, and what’s really despicable about it is our pension funds are being invested in those companies that are doing that.”
“We are effectively the slave owners,” added Manning. “Our pension funds are the slave owners of those poor minorities in China, religious and other persecuted minorities in China are enslaved, the children who are enslaved. We are the slave owners through our pension funds. That has to end.”
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Varying political factions within the Trump administration have competing views of restricting the TSP’s investment in Chinese companies, Manning shared.
“There’s been a battle going on for the last six to eight weeks between various factions in the White House about what to do with investments by public employee pension funds, particularly the 401k known as the TSP,” Manning remarked. “The Wall Street boys were trying to get the TSP money invested into China, and eventually, President Trump stepped up and said, ‘No, that isn’t going to happen.’ Labor Secretary Scalia agreed, and he wrote a letter that was pretty informative. He said [investments in China] were too risky, and … they also pose a national security threat.”
Secretary of Labor Eugene Scalia has authority to block the private retirement funds from investing in Chinese companies, stated Manning.
Manning explained, “The Department of Labor has direct control through something called ERISA, which is the Employee Retirement Income Security Act. It essentially makes sure that private retirement funds are invested only in suitable investments, meaning those investments which are not so risky so as to put the retirement of people at risk. That is directly in the law, so the labor secretary determines what is a suitable investment.”
Manning issued a statement on Wednesday calling on Scalia to block private retirement funds from investing in Chinese companies. He asked, “If China is our greatest information and IP threat, why are U.S. private pensions still investing in it?”
“The very Christmas ornaments we put on our trees, the toys [and] clothing under that tree — including the latest Colin Kaepernick shoe and the phone or other Chinese-made electronics are likely the products of the blood and toil of children and slaves,” Manning maintained.
In May, President Donald Trump directed FRTIB not to go forward with a plan to invest federal employees’ and military servicepersons’ retirement savings in an index including Chinese firms.
Rep. Mike Waltz (R-FL), a retired Green Beret, warned in April that members of the U.S. military are inadvertently funding China’s military apparatus through their retirement savings.
Manning remarked, “The goal here is deep to decapitalize China in such a way that we eliminate their ability to access our markets to get the funds necessary to float their economy, which is, by many accounts, nothing more than a Ponzi scheme that’s being held up by the capital provided by Wall Street.”
Manning concluded, “This is an issue that affects trillions of dollars. This is not a low-level issue. This is trillions of dollars of investment, and it is going to be a complete fistfight with the Wall Street boys. Quite honestly, they’re going to lose.”
Breitbart News Tonight broadcasts live on SiriusXM Patriot channel 125 weeknights from 9:00 p.m. to midnight Eastern or 6:00 p.m. to 9:00 p.m. Pacific.
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