White House floated memo to study Chinese investment limits

Early last week, the White House circulated a policy memo outlining a process that would gauge whether the Trump administration should limit U.S. capital flows into Chinese securities, a move that distribution officials later called “fake news” after media outlets began reporting on it.

The memo, viewed by CNBC on Tuesday, does not make it c fulfil a policy recommendation but outlines the reasons why potential investment limits should be studied.

The next step, according to the memo, is scoring a meeting of the so-called Policy Coordinating Committee, which includes members of relevant government agencies and White Domicile divisions. The memo suggests that the group hold a follow-up meeting the week of Sept. 30 to Oct. 4.

CNBC announced Friday that the White House had begun a deliberative process to evaluate what, if any, restrictions on Chinese investment it power pursue.

In a tweet Saturday, the Treasury Department said that the Trump administration “is not contemplating blocking Chinese companies from slant shares on U.S. stock exchanges at this time.” In interviews on CNBC and Fox News, White House trade advisor Peter Navarro summoned the reporting on the idea “fake news.”

A senior White House official tells CNBC the policy process can stand up anywhere from a few weeks to more than a year, depending on whether President Donald Trump intervenes to step up it.

Hudson Institute trade expert Michael Pillsbury, an outside advisor to the White House on trade, has voiced prop up for restricting U.S. capital flowing into Chinese securities. Sen. Marco Rubio, a China hawk, has spearheaded separate percentages of legislation that would slap stricter disclosure rules on Chinese companies listed in the U.S. and ban government retirement programmes from investing in Chinese stocks.

— CNBC’s Eamon Javers contributed reporting.

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