Sen Hawley warns consulting firms against working with China to 'undermine America'

FIRST ON FOX: Sen. Josh Hawley, R-Mo., is urging global consulting firm McKinsey & Company to hand over "comprehensive documentation" showcasing its past or present contracts with the Chinese government or its affiliates.

"Your company alleges that its purpose is to ‘help create positive, enduring change in the world.’ You should know that helping totalitarian foreign powers undermine America does not meet that bar," Hawley wrote in the letter. "This ugly record can—and must—inform whether the American government, or anyone else, can safely trust your company’s services in the future."

During a hearing earlier this month, McKinsey global partner Robert Sternfels testified in response to Hawley's questioning that the company "never worked with the Chinese Communist Party or the central government in China, to the best of my knowledge."

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However, a Financial Times report last week found otherwise. The investigation found that the think tank Urban China Inititative, helmed by McKinsey, recommended strategies to the Chinese regime in 2015, urging closer collaboration between businesses and the military.

"To be clear, this was not just any consulting work. It was the creation of a detailed roadmap for the Chinese government’s long-term scientific and technical development, including plans to blur the lines between civilian and military technological applications," Hawley wrote. "Among other recommendations, the book also advocated undercutting non-Chinese companies through explicitly anticompetitive practices—such as subsidizing domestic internet companies’ bid to 'eventually take control of the industry from foreign firms.'"

McKinsey