Why Is Pam Bondi Being Attacked for Standing Up to China?

For 30 years, Washington promised that cozying up to Beijing would make China a partner. Instead, it made China a predator. Cheap goods came at the cost of stolen American jobs, stolen American technology, and a Chinese military machine now rivaling our own. You would think policymakers of every stripe would have learned that lesson by now. 

But incredibly, some haven’t. Sen. Elizabeth Warren and Senate Democrats are attacking Attorney General Pam Bondi for approving the Hewlett Packard Enterprise—Juniper telecommunications merger, accusing her of sucking up to lobbyists.

They are parroting the same tired arguments that yesterday’s Republicans used for decades—arguments that enriched the Chinese Communist Party while hollowing out America’s industrial base. 

The reality is simple: Huawei, a Chinese tech behemoth, is one of the CCP’s most powerful weapons, is installing Chinese Communist Party-controlled technology that powers AI, 5G and the digital economy hum all across the globe. Today, Huawei company controls 30% of the global telecom market, dwarfing every U.S. competitor. 

The U.S. intelligence community explicitly called the HPE—Juniper merger “critical to countering Huawei and China.” Bondi listened. Apparently, the cohort of Democrat senators didn’t. 

Warren and anyone who thinks this merger wasn’t necessary—or that Huawei can continue operating unchallenged—hasn’t learned the lesson of being too soft on China over the last 30 years.

We all remember the oft-repeated scene from the Peanuts comics where Charlie Brown runs full tilt at a football, only to have Lucy snatch it away at the last moment, leaving him humiliated flat on his back. Charlie should have learned that he couldn’t trust Lucy, but she always managed to convince him that this time would be different. And every time, Charlie fell for it. 

For decades, America has been Charlie Brown. Washington decision-makers kept insisting that this time China would play fair—that this time Beijing would liberalize, open its markets, and maybe even become democratic. Instead, China played us for fools. 

In the 1990s and early 2000s, Presidents Bill Clinton and George W. Bush brought China into the WTO and granted permanent normal trade relations. The promise? Cheap goods for Americans, new markets for U.S. companies, and maybe a more democratic China. Instead, China’s GDP skyrocketed from $1.3 trillion in 2001 to nearly $20 trillion today. They’ve used our “free trade” relationship to steal hundreds of billions annually in intellectual property, flood our universities with students taking spots from Americans, and exploit our market for cyberespionage.

All of this has supercharged China’s rise, enabling the CCP to funnel resources into military modernization, cyber espionage, and state-backed tech giants like Huawei. Far from moderating, over the last 30 years, Beijing has grown more aggressive—using its economic strength to project global influence and to build tools that now directly threaten U.S. national security. 

Warren and others like her cling to the old Washington, D.C., mindset on China: cozy up to the country for cheap stuff, ignore the strategic consequences, and hope nothing blows up. But we’ve seen exactly what happens when that strategy fails. 

America doesn’t need more moral lectures. It needs strategy. Treating China as a hostile authoritarian regime rather than a “good-faith” trade partner could restore our defense-industrial base, protect intellectual property, incentivize R&D, and bring high-wage manufacturing jobs back to U.S. shores. The children of blue-collar workers wouldn’t have to compete with CCP princelings for spots at elite universities. 

Bondi was right: Hewlett Packard Enterprise’s Juniper acquisition was a national security imperative. Huawei is banned from the U.S. market, but its global dominance threatens American allies. Hewlett Packard Enterprise scaling up is one of the few ways to get the U.S. to start competing with China on 5G and AI, yet Warren’s moralizing ignores this reality. She insists on “principled opposition” while the CCP strengthens its grip on the global economy and critical technology. 

We don’t have to be Charlie Brown anymore. America can defend its economy, protect its intellectual property, and maintain a viable defense-industrial base. We just need to stop trusting Lucy. Stop running headlong at the football and start treating China for what it really is: a duplicitous authoritarian regime with global ambitions. 

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