It’s time to stop Chinese theft

To start, Trump and Branstad should put a quick end to China’s economic espionage and outright theft. And make no mistake: China is stealing from the U.S. economy on a staggering scale.

Worse yet, much more of this theft is unreported and largely unknown to the authorities, let alone to the public, because embarrassed and victimized companies have little recourse and only see downsides to revealing that they were robbed by the Chinese.

The US government must act to protect American jobs, innovation and national security against these abuses. A good start would be to send a clear signal that there will be real consequences for any entity, state-backed or otherwise, that steals from American companies.

In Trump’s cybersecurity speech during the campaign, he outlined a plan to deter potential aggressors with just such a signal. The United States, Trump said, “must possess the unquestioned capacity to launch crippling counter-attacks.”

“America’s dominance in this arena must be unquestioned,” he continued. “Cybersecurity is not only a question of developing defensive technologies but offensive technologies as well.”

Degrading and disrupting our attackers’ offensive capabilities would show that there’s a cost to attacking American businesses.

We can respond to attacks by imposing serious consequences outside cyberspace as well. For instance, the US Treasury and the Department of Commerce should sanction recipients of stolen intellectual property. The International Trade Commission is considering such sanctions in the U.S. Steel case, but offenders should be banned from doing business with American companies and be prohibited from importing products to America until they can prove they have reformed.

Another smart proposal comes from the American Enterprise Institute’s recent report on cyberspace strategy, which suggests that we impose penalties when the Chinese blackmail American companies into turning over intellectual property.

Beijing must learn that the United States will defend American jobs and businesses from outright theft through cyberattack and industrial espionage, and Donald Trump appears committed to communicating that message as president.

The damage such crime does to the US economy is real, and Trump is right to focus on it. In a world where our second-largest trading partner is stealing from us more than it buys from us, we must be a lot tougher than scolding it for stepping out of line.