Por Renan Filho · 2026-09-23As Chinese President Xi Jinping finalizes arrangements for a state visit to the United States scheduled for late September 2026, a bipartisan coalition of lawmakers is escalating pressure on Congress and former President Donald Trump to keep China’s “atrocities” at the forefront of diplomatic discussions.
Representative Mike Gallagher (R-WI) and Senator Jeanne Shaheen (D-NH) jointly issued a letter addressed to House Speaker Mike Johnson, Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer, and the Trump campaign’s foreign policy team, obtained by FORTIS NEWS. The letter cites recent reports from the State Department and the Office of the U.S. Trade Representative documenting forced labor in Xinjiang, intellectual property theft, and the suppression of religious minorities in Tibet.
The two lawmakers argue that President Xi’s visit should not be treated as a routine diplomatic gesture. “We cannot normalize relations with a regime that continues to detain over a million Uyghurs in re-education camps, flood global markets with subsidized steel, and hack American hospitals and infrastructure,” the letter states, referencing the 2025 U.S. Department of Labor report on forced labor and the 2024 Joint Report on China’s Intellectual Property Violations from the U.S. Chamber of Commerce.
Gallagher, a former Marine and chairman of the House Select Committee on the Strategic Competition Between the United States and the Chinese Communist Party, has long argued that trade concessions to Beijing have hollowed out American manufacturing. He is expected to reintroduce legislation in October to restrict Chinese investment in critical U.S. infrastructure, including 5G networks and data centers.
Senator Shaheen, a senior member of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, has focused on human rights and cybersecurity. Last year, she co-sponsored the Uyghur Forced Labor Prevention Act, which passed with bipartisan support and enabled the seizure of $2.3 billion in goods suspected of being produced with forced labor, according to Customs and Border Protection data.
Why this matters: The timing of the visit is politically charged. Trump, who previously imposed tariffs of up to 25% on Chinese goods and engaged in a trade war that reshaped global supply chains, has signaled openness to a “new phase of negotiation” with Xi. The letter, delivered to Trump’s policy advisers on September 15, warns against any relaxation of pressure without verifiable commitments from Beijing.
The letter also cites a 2025 report from the Mary T. and James T. Lee Foundation documenting the expansion of the Chinese naval base at Djibouti and China’s use of dual-use goods — such as drones and surveillance equipment — in Uyghur regions.
FORTIS Analysis: The bipartisan push reflects a rare moment of convergence between neoconservative defense hawks and progressive human rights advocates. However, the cost of decoupling from Chinese supply chains remains significant. A 2025 study from the Peterson Institute for International Economics estimated that a full decoupling would reduce U.S. GDP by 1.8% and increase consumer prices by 3.2% over two years. Pragmatic free-market advocates within the Republican Party caution against conflating security concerns with protectionism that penalizes American consumers.
Counterpoint: Not all Republicans are on board. Senator Rand Paul (R-KY) and the libertarian-leaning Liberty Caucus have criticized the letter as “hysterical China bashing” that ignores the mutual benefits of trade. In a speech on the Senate floor, Paul noted that the United States exported $178 billion in goods to China in 2025, supporting over 900,000 American jobs. “Demonizing China is easy. Actually competing is hard,” Paul said.
Furthermore, China’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs dismissed the letter as “groundless interference in internal affairs,” stating that Xi’s visit is intended to “build bridges, not walls.”