Former CIA official endorses ‘made in free world’ campaign to end reliance on Chinese manufacturing

Daniel Hoffman, the CIA’s former Moscow station chief, says he would support an American effort to lead a “made in the free world” campaign to shift global reliance away from the Chinese supply chain.

When asked whether the pandemic would encourage a realignment of the country's reliance on China for drugs, hospital supplies, and several other goods, Hoffman told Just the News on Tuesday:

“China's not a reliable supplier. They're going to supply you with what matters to you in return for something. We all know that they've practiced debt-trap diplomacy … where they get countries to sign on to infrastructure projects, get into debt, and then demand something in return.”

“The United States, I think, is entering potentially a global competition with China along the lines that we saw with the Soviet Union, where we have our way – freedom and democracy and capitalism. And they have theirs, you know, state run communism. We've been through this before, the supply chain is critical."

He said said the U.S. has an opportunity "to lead on a global stage," in getting allies and free world neighbors to end their supply chain reliance on China, whose government has proven itself to be a dishonest and unreliable partner.

Hoffman also called the coronavirus pandemic China’s Chernobyl.

“They (the Chinese government) never told their own citizens in Wuhan. They allowed them to go to banquets and celebrate the Chinese New Year. They didn't admit that the coronavirus was a national health emergency until January 20. That's roughly a month after it was discovered. And of course, they didn't tell anyone outside of China.”

Hoffman sees this latest episode as part of a larger, systemic suppression of information within the Chinese ruling class that led to the mishandling of the coronavirus catastrophe.

“They have bureaucrats who knew that if they gave bad news to (President) Xi they were going to be in a lot of trouble. And many of them were arrested, doctors who tried to ring the alarm bells were arrested and threatened,” Hoffman said.

He is, however, hopeful that, similarly to the Soviets following Chernobyl, the Chinese government will ultimately be forced to answer for its behavior at the outset of the pandemic.

“I think we will look back at this as a failure of the Chinese government," Hoffman said. "And I think their people will, in some way, somehow hold their government accountable for the number of people who were killed needlessly, because they never responded the way that they should have.”

Listen to Daniel Hoffman's full conversation with John Solomon here: