The problem with Senator Joe McCarthy was not that he was an anti-communist (I’m also an anti-communist.) Instead, the problem with McCarthy was that he made all sorts of wild accusations that had no basis in fact. The same is true of the new McCarthyism. Here’s Bloomberg:
DeSantis, whose bid for the Republican nomination for president is struggling, has made getting tough on China part of his campaign to woo conservative voters. The Foreign Countries of Concern law, he says, blocks agents of China’s communist regime from buying property near US military bases to use for spying.
But that’s not the way the law is written:
Yet the law also bans most Chinese capital from being used to fund projects in Florida, choking off a relatively cheap source of financing for an engine of the state’s economy at a time of high interest rates and distress in commercial real estate. Firms with Chinese investors are barred from taking even small, non-controlling stakes in real estate deals under the statute.
There’s no explanation as to how this would prevent spying. Are Chinese banned from renting buildings near military bases? And what constitutes being near a military base? Bloomberg provides a map of the law’s impact:
Are we to believe that virtually all of the populated region in South Florida is near a military base? When you stay in a hotel in South Beach, do you feel close enough to spy on a US base? And if the answer is yes, what’s to stop a Chinese spy from doing so? It’s a ban on investment, not a law restricting the movement of spies.
In my view, even the federal government overstates the risks of Chinese spying. But at least there’s a certain logic to restricting technology transfers. These state level bans of Chinese investment in real estate make no sense at all:
More than two dozen states have either passed or proposed limits on Chinese property ownership, but Florida’s law is one of the most restrictive. The American Civil Liberties Union has challenged the law as discriminatory on behalf of a group of Chinese immigrants, and the US Department of Justice has said it’s unconstitutional. The law has complicated the buying and selling of homes by individuals, on top of its effects on investors and builders.
Hysterical overreaction to the threat posed by East Asians is a theme that runs throughout American history. In the late 1800s, laws were passed banning immigration from China, at a time when immigration from Europe and South America was completely open. In 1942, we put 80,000 American citizens of Japanese descent into concentration camps. (But not American citizens of German descent.) In the 1960s, we were told that a communist Vietnam was a threat to American national security. (Ironically, today we try to encourage firms to invest in Vietnam rather than in China.) Just this week, bipartisan opposition emerged to the proposed Nippon Steel takeover of US Steel. (Imagine how the reaction would have been different if the acquiring firm were located in Canada or the UK.) Chinese academics working in the US are being falsely accused of being spies. The US government falsely claimed it had evidence that Covid emerged from a Chinese lab.
And today, we are told that China is the biggest threat we face at a time when Putin’s Russia has launched the largest European war since Hitler and Stalin invaded Poland.
PS. I was saddened to see the recent deaths of Charlie Munger (age 99) and Henry Kissinger (age 100), both of whom opposed the new McCarthyism.
PPS. It’s not just politicians, influential think tanks are also engaging in these tactics. This is from a Heritage Foundation document entitled Mandate for Leadership:
The President should issue an executive order making the HUD Secretary a member of the Committee on Foreign Investment in the U.S., which will gain broader oversight authorities to address foreign threats, particularly from China with oversight of foreign ownership of real estate in both rental and ownership markets of single-family and multifamily housing,26 with trillions worth of real estate secured across HUD’s portfolio.
Remember when conservatives believed in the free market? The Heritage Foundation also seems to support residential zoning:
Localities rather than the federal government must have the final say in zoning laws and regulations, and a conservative Administration should oppose any efforts to weaken single-family zoning.
Back in 2017, Heritage was still a free market think tank:
States and Congress should develop stronger laws to prohibit economic-development takings, including identifying ways to ensure that blight laws are not used as an end run around any prohibition on such takings. . . . Removing rent controls in combination with removing zoning laws that limit the construction of new housing is imperative. If municipalities took this course of action, individuals and families, including the poor, would have more housing options to meet their needs.
The few remaining neoliberals are like those Irish monks that kept learning alive during the long European Dark Ages.
READER COMMENTS
Philo
Dec 23 2023 at 3:30pm
Preach it, my brother in Free Markets! (I even have a natural tonsure.)
Jon Murphy
Dec 23 2023 at 4:24pm
Yup. Common protectonism and grift masqurading as national security concerns. No different then the absurd justification Rick Scott gave for demanding tariffs on garlic.
Peter
Dec 23 2023 at 4:46pm
And yet Chinese spies can still own more property in Florida that some 18 yo American HS girl who sexted her 17 yo classmate ten years ago. I mean she’d only be so lucky to be a Chinese spy with their residency restrictions. A bit of whataboutism there but on a scale of moral outrage, unfounded restrictions against foreign property ownership in the US are pretty low.
Plus in this particular a lack of reciprocity equally undermines it, I’m pretty positive US corporations and citizens can’t own real property in China either nor even open shop around sensitive Chinese military installations. I tend to discount, as do others, treatment of foreigners sans immigrants whose own countries don’t either provide them those same rights nor Americans in their country.
Also you’re wrong on the WW2 thing, we imprisoned both German and Italian Americans though acknowledged to a lesser extent but that was primarily do to voting power, not public will or fear, i.e. ethnic Germans and Italians had people in Congress, ethnic Japanese did not
Regardless have a merry Christmas Scott, looking forward to your posts on your blog in the upcoming year.
Thomas L Hutcheson
Dec 24 2023 at 4:32pm
Reciprocity has nothing to do with the harm we cause to ourselves by disallowing mutually beneficial transactions between US residents and foreigners. It’s just like the fact that a foreign country restricts imports from the US should not lead the US to restrict imports from said foreign country, Similarly, the fact that a foreign country makes it difficult for a US resident to get a visa to visit or to immigrate to a foreign country does not mean the US should make is difficult for the a person from that country to get a visa or to immigrate to the US. You seem to have fallen for the rocks in the harbor fallacy. 🙂
Matthias
Dec 25 2023 at 12:07am
Refusing to hit your head against the wall is optimal policy, even if the other side keeps insisting on continuing to hit their head against a wall.
Some with free trade and free movement of capital.
Allowing anyone to invest in real estate is best, even if China restricts investments in their markets.
B2
Dec 23 2023 at 5:44pm
I second Philo, preach it brother Summer – Neoliberals are the new dissidents
Thomas L Hutcheson
Dec 24 2023 at 7:33am
It was a huge historical tragedy that the political groups associated with “neoliberalism” a) supported the Iraq innovations and b) failed to effectively oppose the Reagan/Bush tax cuts for the rich and deficits increasing bills (and unpaid-for increase in Medicare), much less shift taxation toward a progressive tax on consumption that reduced deficits to near zero.
TMC
Dec 24 2023 at 9:48am
Not allowing Federal government involvement in zoning seems to be exactly a conservative issue. If the local populace voted to change zoning and the local government resisted, then yes, federal involvement. Otherwise…democracy.
Matthias
Dec 25 2023 at 12:09am
This isn’t so much about democracy: all the levels of government involved are democratically elected.
It’s more about subsidiarity.
Roger
Dec 25 2023 at 11:30am
Your McCarthy history is also wrong. He accused very few individuals, and was not reckless.
TGGP
Dec 26 2023 at 11:16am
There were Germans & Italians (even though neither country had the means to cross the English channel, much less attack the US) put in camps. Just a lot fewer. The bigger irony is that Japanese in Hawaii were NOT placed in camps, rather ones in California (which wasn’t attacked, or at least not like Hawaii was).
Michael Sandifer
Dec 27 2023 at 2:34pm
I agree with your points, but those of us here in Florida understand that DeSantis is more about political theatre and fundraising, rather than substance. The initial proposal to restrict Chinese investment in Florida was both a weather balloon and a solicit for campaign donations, to water down or kill the legislation.
Like so many Republican politicians today, and some Democratic ones, you can’t treat most of their policy proposals or actions seriously as policy. This is the age of performative politics. The disturbing thing is that they are feeding this xenophobia, which used to be fringe.
jack bane
Dec 28 2023 at 9:18am
McCarthy is not the issue. Non reciprocity with the Chinese is and even if they were on paper we all know what agreements with the CCP mean. Practicing free trade a against Mercantilist Communist state is naive and foolish.
Warren Platts
Dec 28 2023 at 11:47am
There is nothing “conservative” about free market economics. That is a new thing..
Comments are closed.