Robert D'Angelo
There are many things both sides of the political spectrum can criticize Mitch McConnell for, but today, we’re going to focus on corruption. When we look at how members of Congress get rich in spite of a modest salary, we often find that they use their significant others to do their dirty work for them, and Mitch McConnell is no different. Many of McConnell’s corrupt activities can be directly traced back to his wife, Elaine Chao.
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Elaine Chao was born in Taipei, Taiwan, on March 26, 1953. She is the eldest of six daughters of Ruth Mulan Chu Chao, a historian from an Anhui family, and James S. C. Chao, whose mother was from the Chu family that built a shipping empire in Hong Kong.
Much of Chao’s early life reads like that of any American immigrant living the American dream, but when we take a closer look, it seems that a lot of it is performative.
James S. C. Chao may have begun his American journey as a penny-pinching immigrant, but he quickly built an empire on the shipping company he founded in 1964, Foremost Group. Foremost Group is a global leader in dry bulk shipping, the process of transporting a dry bulk commodity, which is a raw material that is shipped in large unpackaged parcels. Dry bulk consists of mostly unprocessed materials destined to be used in global manufacturing and production, like grain, metal, and energy. The materials are transported long distances in bulk by sea in large cargo vessels by Foremost Group.
Early in his career, James S. C. Chao landed its first big contract with the United States government, shipping rice to Southeast Asia during the Vietnam War. Simultaneously, one of his old schoolmates, Jiang Zemin, began to rise up China’s political ranks. In 1985, Jiang became mayor of Shanghai, and consequently, Chao ordered two ships to be built at the state-owned shipyard in Shanghai. He started meeting Mr Jiang regularly, including three months after the Tiananmen Square crackdown in 1989, when most other American businessmen were avoiding the leadership.
By this time, Elaine Chao was already a Harvard MBA alumn well known in Washington and New York for her political fundraising skills. McConnell and Chao met through a mutual friend, Stuart Bloch, in Washington, DC, in the early ’90s. When the couple started dating, McConnell was already a Senator, and Chao was the director of the Peace Corps, a position she only held for a year. The couple married on February 6, 1993, choosing that date for three reasons:
- It’s Ronald Reagan’s birthday (Chao was in the White House Fellows program in 1983 during President Ronald Reagan’s administration).
- It was just before Chao’s 40th birthday.
- It was right before a one-week Senate recess.
Now that McConnell was enshrined in his family, James Chao scheduled a meeting between Elaine, Mitch, and Jiang Zemin. McConnell was the second Republican Senator to meet Mr Jiang since Tiananmen, a move which helped him build ties with senior diplomats in the US. After the 1994 senatorial elections, McConnell took over the helm of the influential foreign operations and export-financing subcommittee- a role that gave him many opportunities to get future corporate donations from members of the US-China Business Council. Shortly after, McConnell’s viewpoints on China changed completely. The once America-first Senator from Kentucky was now a pawn in China’s economic takeover of the world. He pushed provisions to expand immigration and became pro-trade. He launched the US-Hong Kong Policy Act to enshrine an active Washington relationship with a post-UK-controlled Hong Kong. He did nothing to stop businesses from moving their supply chains over to China.
Jiang Zemin would become the fifth President of China and one of the most influential members of the CCP over the last 100 years. He would end up meeting with McConnell and Chao one more time privately. James Chao and his other daughter Angela (the now co-president of Foremost Group) would end up being on the board of a China State Shipbuilding Corporation offshoot. Meaning, yes, they sat on the board of a defense contractor that produces equipment and research for the Chinese military. Angela Chao is also on the board of the Bank of China.
Foremost has an office in New York City, but it’s not exactly a US company. Its ships sail under flags registered in Liberia and Hong Kong, and the company does the vast majority of its business in China, where at least seventy percent of its freight, mostly industrial, is delivered. Foremost’s clients include Bunge (seed processing), Cargill (food processing), and Dreyfus (food processing).
Elaine Chao would eventually be named the US Secretary of Transportation under Donald Trump. During her tenure in the Trump administration, Chao pushed policies that directly helped her family’s business overseas. Even though the Trump administration took a hardline stance against China and its intent to compete with the US, the Chao family company proceeded to purchase ten new ships from the Chinese government. That strategic buy expanded the Foremost fleet capacity by more than forty percent, enabling the company to do even more business with the CCP.
At the same time, Elaine Chao used her political position to propose budget cuts for programs that stimulated American marine shipping and mariners. During her first year in Trump’s cabinet, her daily calendar contained more than 290 hours of “private” time, which did not include evenings after 6 p.m., weekends, federal holidays, or days marked “vacation.” Most of Chao’s appointments marked “private” reportedly occurred on Fridays, with nine Fridays including a full five hours of “private” time. It doesn’t take a genius to assume that private time meant make my family richer time.
The Chao family has also curated wealth by trading on their ties to McConnell. While she scarcely made US press appearances during her time in the Trump administration, Elaine Chao regularly appeared on Chinese TV, often expressing support for Foremost Group and their work in China. Chao, known for being quiet in the American public light, was not shy about her marriage to McConnell while doing interviews with Chinese media.
Elaine Chao has no formal affiliation or stake in her family’s shipping business, but she and her husband have received millions of dollars in gifts from her father. In the thirty years since they tied the knot, 13 members of the extended Chao family have given a total of more than $1 million to Mr. McConnell’s campaigns and to political action committees tied to him. In 2008, James Chao gave the couple a gift of as much as $25 million, which lifted McConnell into the ranks of the richest senators. That payment significantly bumped McConnell’s net worth, which was measured at around $3.1 million in 2004, to between $9.2 million and $36.5 million in 2014 (presumably much higher now).
So, why should this be concerning?
Simply put, McConnell, the longest-serving Senate leader in United States history, has had interests that weren’t loyal to those who democratically elected him. If McConnell and Chao are willing to take inheritance money birthed from the CCP, use their positions of power to make life easier for our competitors, and take meetings with Chinese officials on the taxpayer’s dime, they very clearly only care about their bottom line, and not the average American’s.
With McConnell becoming way more lenient on China after marrying Elaine Chao and Elaine Chao using her time in Trump’s cabinet to shrink America’s market share in global industrial shipping, who knows what else this couple is doing to keep their puppet masters happy? While Elaine Chao is now out of office, McConnell has been taking on pro-Trump positions from the Republican party more regularly. One of those positions is in the Ukraine, where he’s consistently vocalized more funding for the war effort.
Ukraine is often considered the bread basket of the world. It boasts some of the most fertile land on earth, with rich black soil, chernozem, that is perfectly suited to growing grains. Is it possible that McConnell wants the war to continue so that Foremost Group has greater access to Ukrainian shipping ports when the smoke clears? What other policies is McConnell pushing forward for his gain?
It makes you think.
