An obscure agency with ties to perhaps President Trump’s most senior adviser is tasked with countering China’s predatory lending programs and working with the Pentagon to move sensitive supply chains out of the communist regime’s control.
“They said, ‘Listen, this could be a great partnership,’” U.S. International Development Finance Corporation CEO Adam Boehler told the Washington Examiner, recalling his conversations with Pentagon leaders. Boehler is a healthcare entrepreneur whose relationship with Jared Kushner dates back to college. “So, when I think about the partnership between us and DOD, we obviously bring a lot of expertise because this is what we do around emerging countries.”
The agency helps U.S. companies take root in developing countries around the world. In theory, because it has the technical expertise to help U.S. and Western companies invest overseas, it has the know-how to help companies now operating in China move to the United States or elsewhere.
Beijing’s ability to freeze U.S. access to medical supplies manufactured by American companies in China underscored the national security stakes of the economic clash.
“The COVID-19 pandemic response has highlighted what DOD has always known, a strong domestic supply chain is critical for economic and national security,” Under Secretary of Defense Ellen Lord said Monday. “DOD is committed, in partnership with other federal agencies, to bring all tools available to support the response to COVID-19.”
The DFC’s role in that effort grew out of the administration’s scramble to get access to the medical supplies needed to weather the contagion in March. Boehler was pulled into the White House Coronavirus Task Force’s work to help find ventilators.
“I work on things with Jared closely when it’s relevant to Jared,” Boehler said. “And so some of what I do in DFC are relevant and touch on his portfolio, and some don’t.”
Kushner is a polarizing figure in the eyes of Washington’s professional class, but Boehler is respected even by skeptics of the president’s son-in-law. “No question he’s competent,” a close observer of the DFC said. “He’s probably one of the most competent people in the administration.”
Trump invoked the Korean War-era Defense Production Act that empowered him to order American companies to manufacture ventilators for coronavirus patients, a decision that Boehler said paid dividends for domestic healthcare and U.S. foreign policy. The administration ultimately had enough ventilator capacity to provide humanitarian assistance to foreign partners such as El Salvador.
“I’ve been involved with the president on a number of the head of state calls where we are able to provide ventilators to developing countries that need them,” Boehler said. “The lesson there was our strong manufacturing capabilities impact the United States and our allies in developing countries.”
Such donations provide a counterweight to the so-called “mask diplomacy” that China launched in order to provide medical equipment to other countries and burnish its image as the pandemic spread from Wuhan to Europe, the U.S., and the developing world. Trump soon invoked the DPA again when instructing Boehler’s team “to re-shore critical industries in our country,” as the agency CEO put it in May.
The expansion of his portfolio has made some DFC watchers nervous that the agency might not have sufficient funding or staff to succeed in these new roles while fulfilling its original mission of providing an alternative to countries at risk of falling into the “debt traps” that China lays to gain control of strategic infrastructure around the world.
“He barely has enough people right now to do the job he’s supposed to be doing,” the DFC observer said.
Boehler acknowledged that concern but emphasized that he isn’t letting the pandemic-related initiatives “distract” from the organization’s original mission. “My job in this was to say listen, how do we not miss a beat?”
He pointed to $1 billion of recent investments to allay those misgivings and emphasized that the $100 million funding for the Pentagon partnership is coming from Defense Department coffers.
If Boehler succeeds as the head of his agency and Trump wins reelection, there’s a good chance that this DFC role will not be his last job in the administration. Boehler has the makings of a commerce secretary in a hypothetical second term, some say.
“He definitely has great connections,” said a former senior congressional aide involved in the drafting of the law that created the DFC. “Given the strong relationship that he has [with Kushner], I don’t see any limits.”
