Letter Urges President: Stop Thrift Savings Plan from Funding Our Enemy

On April 14, eleven flag, influential general and non-commissioned veteran officers of the US armed forces issued a warning on China to the Joint Chiefs of Staff. These military leaders urged the Joint Chiefs to advise President Donald Trump to block the federal pension funds in the Federal Retirement Thrift Investment Board’s (FRTIB) Thrift Savings Plan (TSP) from being used to enrich the PRC Communist regime. You can find out more in my April 23 article.

US Military & Government Pensions to Invest in China?

Less than two weeks later, another 134 influencers repeated this urgent call in an open letter to President Trump. Thankfully, President Trump now is looking at options “to stop the investment of TSP funds in Chinese equities.” But time is short and some are working to undermine the President’s intentions, so your voice urgently is needed!

The April 25 letter to President Trump, sponsored by the Committee on the Present Danger: China (CPDC), came from government, military, business, public policy, and human rights leaders. Most of the military leaders who signed the letter to the Joint Chiefs of Staff also signed this letter. These included General James L. Jones, US Marine Corps (Ret.), former Commandant of the US Marine Corps and former Supreme Allied Commander Europe, and Vice Admiral John M. Poindexter, US Navy (Ret.), both former National Security Advisors to the President.

The Institute on Religion and Democracy’s International Religious Liberty Program was pleased that three of our great bishops in the Anglican Church in North America responded to our invitation to sign. The Rt. Reverends Bill Atwood, David John Bena, and Derek L. S. Jones – all combat veteran fighter pilots, two Air Force (Atwood and Jones) and one Marines (Bena)! – signed the letter.

All who were invited to sign are extremely alarmed, as we all should be, that the FRTIB has slated US military and government pension funds to be invested in Chinese companies including those building advanced weapons systems designed to kill our troops. Breathtakingly, other companies into which the $50 billion in retirement monies would be transferred include those against whom the United States has imposed sanctions for both national security and human rights violations.

Invest in CCP Industry Already Sanctioned by the US Government?

Just one example of where US military and government pension plans will be invested through the TSP, unless President Trump intervenes, is a company that has achieved notoriety across the globe.

Hikvision Digital Technology manufactures the video cameras and other security technology used by the CCP to monitor and track its citizens. The company’s security apparatus is used for the Party’s “social credit” system, for the terrifying “facial recognition” technology, and for coordinating a network of concentration camps incarcerating millions of Uyghur, Christians, Falun Gong practitioners, and other prisoners of conscience.

Hikvision was sanctioned by the US for human rights abuses last October 2019. But that doesn’t seem to faze the FRTIB’s administrators! The other egregious Chinese industries, including another company that repeatedly has been sanctioned, AviChina Industry & Technology, Ltd., are all described in the letter.

Reports Say President Trump Says “NO!”

According to Sinclair investigative reporter James Rosen in a national story on April 30, “President Trump has instructed top aides to move quickly to rein in a federal pension fund before it expands its investment portfolio, later this year, to include Chinese-held entities that U.S. officials believe to be tied directly to the Chinese military and to the country’s global intelligence apparatus, sources said.”

Rosen continued to say that the President was “incredulous over the looming prospect of US service members seeing their paychecks deducted for the purpose of funding the Chinese military.” Rosen’s source at The White House said that Trump declared, “We can’t allow this to move forward. This needs to stop.”

President Trump needs to add this information to the Chinese Communist government’s culpability for the global pandemic and to the lesser known CCP’s broader objective for global hegemony. Any unwitting (or witting) assistance we are giving to the CCP needs to end. And according to journalist John Gizzi in a May 1 Newsmax report,  senior officials at The White House have indicated that Trump intends to issue an executive order very soon to stop the transfer of these billions into industries to which TSP officials give the innocuous label “China’s emerging markets.”

What Still Needs to Happen to Stop TSP’s Huge Transfer of Funds to China

As much as we are concerned about our own national security threat from China, we are also thinking about the shame of investing in the “emerging markets” of a regime that persecutes, imprisons, and sometimes kills Christians; incarcerates millions of Uyghur from East Turkestan in concentration camps; perpetrates forced abortion and sterilization; and harvests organs from live prisoners – especially Falun Gong practitioners.

But reports have surfaced that that there are those with vested interests that may possibly be “arrayed against the President’s order.” I’m talking about Americans!

These opposers want to “gut the executive order” according to these reports. They propose that the President only block FRTIB from investing in Chinese industries that have been formally sanctioned by the US government. (That should be a no-brainer!)

Those that will possibly try to undermine President Trump’s intentions have no problem with FRTIB investing soldiers’, sailors’, Marines’, airmen’s, and others precious retirement dollars in industries that are:

• Developing and producing aircraft and airborne weapons for the People’s Liberation Army
• Producing guided missile destroyers, frigates, conventional submarines, nuclear-powered ballistic missile submarines, unmanned aerial vehicle (UAV) systems, and aircraft carriers
• Conducting dredging and other activity in support of Beijing’s illegal island-building activity in the South China Sea

What Can You Do?

If you share the concern about the retirement funds of American troops and veterans being invested in the Chinese Communist military-industrial complex and draconian security technology, you can join your voice in assuring President Trump that the American people expect him to prevent completely the Federal Retirement Thrift Investment Board from rewarding the Chinese Communist Party’s companies for its pandemic.

Find out more about this issue at the Committee on the Present Danger: China website. There you can sign the petition to President Trump: “Don’t Fund the Enemy” as well as utilize other actions such as emailing the President and sharing the CPDC press releases with others.

If you are on Twitter, you can download the PDF below that includes suggested tweets from the CPDC and make use of them frequently this week.

Finally, but more importantly, pray! Pray for President Trump to successfully block the plans of the TSP to invest in China, for Congress to respond to this crisis moment, for God to change the hearts of those who are putting profits above principles, and of course, for persecuted Christians and other victims of Chinese Communist Party.

Suggested Tweets CPDC TSP SAMPLE TWEETS 5120