Gina Raimondo on email hack before China visit: ‘Didn’t pull any punches’

Commerce Secretary Gina Raimondo says she challenged Chinese officials over her hacked email before last month’s visit there, stressing “no commerce secretary has been tougher than I on China.”

Just over a month before Raimondo jetted off for an Aug. 27–30 visit to Beijing and Shanghai, Microsoft disclosed a “China-based actor” infiltrated email accounts across 25 organizations — including the US Commerce and State departments.

“They did hack me, which was unappreciated to say the least. I brought it up,” Raimondo said Sunday on NBC’s “Meet the Press.”

“I brought up many of our grievances on behalf of our national security concerns, concerns of US labor, concerns of US business. I didn’t pull any punches.”

Raimondo’s visit to China marked the first time a US commerce secretary visited the rival power in nearly five years.

“It’s a complicated relationship. There’s no doubt about it. We are in a fierce competition with China at every level, and anyone who tells you differently is naive,” she added. “We have to manage this competition. Conflict is in no one’s interest.”

Republicans such as Sen. Joni Ernst (R-Ia.) slammed Raimondo for the China visit in the wake of the email hack as Beijing grapples with a sputtering economy.

“The Biden administration must stop taking the bait,” Ernst said, Fox News reported. “Make no mistake, the (Chinese Communist Party) is still seeking to undermine the United States at every turn. No one should realize this hostility more than Secretary Raimondo, who was hacked by the CCP but still traveled to our greatest adversary’s own turf to negotiate.”

Raimondo, a former two-term governor of Rhode Island, countered that she “didn’t sugarcoat anything” during her trip and insisted “no one is more realistic than I am about the challenges” with China.

During her trip, Raimondo stressed to her counterparts the US is not seeking to decouple its economy with the rival power in Asia.

Still, she underscored that she was firm with China.

“No commerce secretary has been tougher than I on China,” Raimondo told CNN’s “State of the Union” Sunday. “Almost a third of the companies from China on the Entity List have been put there under President Biden’s administration and my leadership at Commerce.” .

The Entity List details foreign companies that the US requires special licenses for the transfer of technologies.

Raimondo also asserted a stable commercial relationship between the US and China could serve as a “ballast” for geopolitical and military strife between the two superpowers.

One key area where commercial and national security concerns overlap is semiconductors, which has drawn heavy attention from the Biden administration.

“No one ever said we want to decouple from China as it relates to semiconductors,” Raimondo said on CNN. “We ship billions of dollars of semiconductors every year to China that is good for the American economy and American businesses. And we will continue to do that.”

“What we are going to do and we will not compromise on is preventing the sale of our most sophisticated, most powerful semiconductors to China, which China wants for its military.”

Raimondo’s visit marked the Biden administration’s latest overture to China in a bid to thaw the icy relationship between Washington and Beijing.

Secretary of State Antony Blinken visited China in June and Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen went in July.