Tag: Lawmakers

US Lawmakers Say China Using Coercive Business Practices for Economic Advantage

U.S. lawmakers Thursday charged the Chinese Communist Party is using coercive economic practices to achieve worldwide dominance over the United States.

The accusations came at a hearing of the House Select Committee on Strategic Competition Between the United States and the Chinese Communist Party days after U.S. Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen met with Chinese officials in Beijing to discuss the nations’ economic relationship.

Yellen said that while the United States was taking targeted national security actions, “a decoupling of the world’s two largest economies would be disastrous for interests for both countries and destabilizing for the world, and it would be virtually impossible to undertake. We want a dynamic and healthy global economy that is open, free and fair.”

Diplomatic relations between the two countries have been tense since the U.S. downed a Chinese spy balloon earlier this year. Witnesses told the House panel Thursday U.S. companies are facing increasing threats operating inside China.

“There’s no such thing as a private company in China, a raft of legislation like the updated counterespionage law, the data security law, the anti-foreign sanctions law has codified what was always true. China reserves the right to swipe any data, to seize any assets and take IP that it wishes,” committee Chairman Mike Gallagher said.

According to committee members, China’s restrictive environment is resulting in a so-called “brain-drain” of its own business people, turning China into the top country in the world for the departure of wealthy individuals, fleeing what they fear is the Communist Party’s ability to arbitrarily seize assets.

Witnesses testified the environment in China is becoming increasingly restrictive for American companies and individuals.

“In the last few months, PRC authorities are now charging any domestic or foreign businessperson with espionage simply for providing any services using PRC information to grant

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CT lawmakers request regulation of smaller company finance vendors

In the ten years subsequent the Wonderful Economic downturn, traditional banking institutions slice back on little organization lending, and different loan companies — several of them on the internet — emerged to fill the void.

Connecticut lawmakers are now searching for to regulate people professional funding corporations, which advocates say tend to company more minority-owned modest organizations, charging them increased charges for less transparent financial loans or mortgage-like goods. 

The legislature’s Banking Committee passed Senate Bill 1032 before this month, which would have to have specified substitute loan companies to disclose an estimated annual proportion rate — the yearly fascination — charged on any financing they present to little business enterprise consumers. Violators would be matter to fines up to $10,000.

“There’s a great deal of evidence out there that these solutions really need to have to be controlled, or have additional sufficient disclosures, so individuals realize what they are having them selves into,” explained Rep. Jason Doucette, D-Glastonbury, a co-chair of the Banking Committee and a top force driving the laws. 

A federal bill that sought to utilize the customer protections incorporated in the Fact in Lending Act to smaller business enterprise funding — namely, the needed disclosure of APR — was launched in Congress in 2021 but never ever obtained a vote.

Since then, a handful of states, which includes California, New York, Virginia and Utah, have adopted similar regulation. The Virginia and Utah rules never simply call for financers to disclose an believed APR but do require several other disclosures. The California and New York rules lay out a approach to approximate APR on nontraditional funding products and solutions.

The U.S. Buyer Money Security Bureau identified this 7 days that federal laws does not preempt those point out guidelines.

Connecticut’s proposed legislation maintains the APR disclosure requirement,

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Senate Democratic Leader Saslaw Among the Retiring Lawmakers

RICHMOND, Va. (AP) — Dick Saslaw, the acerbic, influential, enterprise-welcoming Democratic majority chief of the Virginia Senate, on Thursday declared ideas to retire, expressing he is proud of the legacy he will leave guiding as his just about five many years in point out politics come to a shut.

“Sooner or later on, you know, you have bought to realize that you are going to have to go on. But it’s been a extremely fascinating and a excellent 48 many years,” the 83-calendar year-old Saslaw, whose expression will finish in January, reported in a flooring speech.

A businessman and Army veteran, Saslaw is the longest-serving member of the Senate, which he joined in 1980 immediately after serving 4 many years in the Residence of Delegates. Though representing a northern Virginia district, he has been a resolute defender of abortion rights and a sturdy ally of Dominion Electricity on regulatory issues. He assisted direct the drive for Medicaid expansion and at situations staked out extra centrist positions than quite a few fellow Democrats on legal justice challenges.

Saslaw’s announcement was adopted by an outpouring of bipartisan praise from his colleagues as his wife, Eleanor, looked on from the gallery, along with other admirers, like lobbyists who donned shirts sporting his photo. Numerous speakers seemed shut to tears as they heralded him as a legend in Virginia politics, as nicely as a hard-functioning, loyal and brutally sincere mate and colleague.

“He is the epitome of a Virginia gentleman,” said Republican Sen. Ryan McDougle.

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An additional Republican, Jill Vogel, stated she was to begin with leery of Saslaw’s hard popularity when she very first joined the Common Assembly and recalled a “terrifying” initially experience with him. But it took just a 7 days or two to be charmed, she claimed.

“He

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