Florida Senator Marco Rubio is calling on President Joe Biden to oust US climate envoy John Kerry on Friday after reports emerged that Kerry holds a $1 million stake in a Chinese company that's funneling money into a business blacklisted for its abuses against Uighur Muslims.
In a searing op-ed the Republican lawmaker said Biden has a 'choice' to either 'stand by the man profiting from slave labor or fire him.'
'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,' he wrote.
Kerry and his wife Teresa Heinz have an investment of at least $1 million in China-based investment firm Hillhouse China Value Fund L.P., according to financial documents obtained by the Washington Free Beacon.
Rubio believes his partial ownership in a Chinese business venture should alone disqualify him from negotiating climate change with Beijing.
But the company owns a significant share of YITU Technology - a company that in 2019 was added to the US Department of Commerce's trade blacklist for its role in 'implementation of China's campaign of repression, mass arbitrary detention, and high-technology surveillance against Uyghurs, Kazakhs, and other members of Muslim minority groups.'
Marco Rubio has accused John Kerry of actively working against legislation aimed at punishing China's reported human rights abuses
The Trump administration had accused the tech company of enabling human rights abuses.
'In other words, Kerry appears to be profiting from slave labor,' Rubio wrote.
'Biden needs to decide where he stands and who he is fighting for. Right now, his silence is deafening, and it is giving cover to the Marxists in both America and in China. Meanwhile, American workers and families continue to suffer.'
Rubio accused Kerry of 'actively working against' passage of his Uyghur Forced Labor Act, which would ban goods made with slave labor in China's Xinjiang Uyghur Autonomous Region from entering the US.
He and Rep. Chris Smith of New Jersey said as much to Biden in late September, expressing concern over reports that his administration quietly lobbied against the measure.
'The reporting claims that Mr. Kerry had a “forceful debate” with other administration
