Sen. Marco Rubio, R-Fla., called on climate czar John Kerry to resign following revelations that his family has invested millions of dollars into Chinese firms, including one that allegedly profits from Chinese slave labor.
A new report shows Kerry and his wife, Teresa Heinz, heiress of Heinz Ketchup, have at least $1 million invested in a Chinese investment group called Hillhouse China Value Fund L.P.
The report says Hilltop is a “top shareholder” in a Chinese technology company called YITU Technology, which was blacklisted by the federal government in 2019 for being complicit in the surveillance, detention and repression of Uyghur Muslims.
“In other words, Kerry appears to be profiting from slave labor,” Rubio wrote in an op-ed for Fox News. “That fact alone raises questions as to whether Kerry can negotiate in good faith with Beijing on climate change.”
This explains why Kerry opposes the Uyghur Forced Labor Act, which would “make it impossible for products made with slave labor in Xinjiang, China to be imported into the U.S.,” Rubio added.
“President Biden now has a choice: stand by the man profiting from slave labor or fire him,” Rubio wrote. “It should be an easy choice, but the Biden administration and some Democrats are so desperate for a climate deal with the Chinese Communist Party that they are willing to ignore the regime’s use of slave labor.”
Former chief White House ethics lawyer Richard Painter also recently raised concerns with Kerry’s investments in China, saying they posed a serious conflict of interest, since he must regularly work with the Chinese government.
“As soon as anyone even hinted that the Chinese government would try to do anything to pull the rug from those companies if he didn’t do what they wanted, at that point it would create a problem for him under US code 208 [a conflict of interest law for government officials],” Painter explained.
