Rand Paul: “It is a naive notion to think that we will yell and scream and gnash our teeth and tell China: Quit selling dual-use…”

“It is a naive notion to think that we will yell and scream and gnash our teeth and tell China: Quit selling dual-use materiel to Russia and that they will immediately have a sanguine face and say: Oh, of course. What were we thinking? We will quit doing it. That is what the logic of this legislation is. We are going to tell China to quit doing it. Now, there is another way diplomacy could work. We have hundreds and hundreds of sanctions on China. If you want China to do something, you could offer to China to remove some sanctions in exchange for them not selling weapons that have dual-use or parts that have dual-use to Russia. There are ways you can gain things through diplomacy, but they are transactional, and they include carrots and sticks. But just making sort of over-the-top statements about how evil China is and communist this, communist that, will not get you anything. If you want something from China, you have to offer them something in exchange. If you want them to quit selling dual-use parts to Russia that they are using in the war, offer them some relief from the hundreds and hundreds of sanctions we have put on them. Instead, what this body and the same people who are for this bill have advocated is, we are going to go one step further. Anybody who sells oil to Russia, we are going to put a 500-percent tariff on them. How do you think China will respond to a 500-percent tariff?”