(Newswire.net— April 18, 2020) — Frequent accusations that China is “guilty” for the COVID-19 pandemic has led two Republican officials to an idea to propose a bill that will allow Americans to sue China for ‘damage they caused’ with the coronavirus outbreak.
American attorney, military veteran, and politician serving as the junior United States Senator for Arkansas Tom Cotton along with Daniel Reed Crenshaw, who is former United States Navy SEAL officer serving in the United States House of Representatives for Texas, have introduced a bill which steered up tensions between the US and China.
Both of them are vocal critics of the Chinese government and they attacked the Foreign Sovereign Immunities Act that protects foreign nations and their official agencies from being sued in US courts. They propose an exception to SIA for people to recover “damages caused by China’s dangerous handling of the COVID-19 outbreak,” Russia Today reports.
They claim that the Chinese Communist Party deliberately allowed the virus to spread quickly around the globe by silencing doctors and journalists who tried to warn the world about the coronavirus, Cotton explained why China should be an exception to the law.
The move is inspired by the constant accusations US President Donald Trump criticizing Beijing for being too slow to respond to the crisis. He also said that by failing to react properly in time China endangered the rest of the world. Trump even claims that the virus might have been created in a laboratory in Wuhan, the epicenter of the coronavirus outbreak in China.
Various experts’ analysis from EU countries said they have confirmed COVID-19 is a work of nature and not made in a lab, however, the US President is not convinced. He also accused the WHO of colluding with Beijing and halted the US financing the organization.
Cotton and Crenshaw claim lawsuits from American citizens would allow them to “recover damages for death, injury, and economic harm caused by the Wuhan Virus.” However, the move has a hidden agenda as lawmakers implied the private lawsuits could be dismissed if the country agrees to pay the US “damage it has caused.”
“If the United States and China come to an agreement to settle the claims, then the private suits could be dismissed. In other words, China can take responsibility and agree to pay for the damage it has caused, or it can face potentially millions of claims in federal court,” the lawmakers said in a joint announcement.
Since Cotton and Crenshaw are “deeply concerned” for Americans that have been severely hit by the effects of the coronavirus pandemic it is not clear how exactly the victims would receive justice if the money goes to the US government instead. Also, it is beyond understanding how exactly the US court would force China to pay.
The idea is not a new one since this kind of manipulation was on the table before with the Justice Against Sponsors of Terrorism Act bill from 2016, which allows families affected by the 9/11 terrorist attacks to sue countries they deemed responsible. That bill entered the gray area of the judicial system. President Barack Obama vetoed the bill to prevent it from going forward, but Congress voted to override the veto.
The US has a history of similarly broadening laws targeting specific countries, but if the bill manages to get through the almost guaranteed bipartisan political hurdles, it could backfire as other countries could sue the United States in American courts for illegal military and economy activities in their countries.
If somehow lawmakers could prove their allegations, lawyers will file a case valued at more than $ 2 trillion for the coronavirus against China. According to the US Department of Treasury, the US debt to China was $1.8 trillion through January 2020.