In a speech yesterday in Indiana, Hillary mentioned a company called Magnequench which was bought by a consortium including Chinese investors back in 1995 while Bill Clinton was president.
The company was eventually closed and the manufacture of key missile components was moved to China. In her comments she complains that the Bush administration allowed the transfer of manufacture of key military components to China.
What she doesn’t say is that the transfer began during the Clinton administration in June 2000.
A McClatchy article has more details:
Clinton blasts Bush for not stopping a project Bill OK'd
INDIANAPOLIS — Hillary Clinton loves to tell the story about how the Chinese government bought a good American company in Indiana, laid off all its workers and moved its critical defense technology work to China.
It’s a story with a dramatic, political ending. Republican President George W. Bush could have stopped it, but he didn’t.
If she were president, Clinton says, she’d fight to protect those jobs. It’s just the kind of talk that’s helping her win support from working-class Democrats worried about their jobs and paychecks, not to mention their country’s security.
What Clinton never includes in the oft-repeated tale is the role that prominent Democrats played in selling the company and its technology to the Chinese. She never mentions that big-time Democratic contributor George Soros helped put together the deal to sell the company or that the sale was approved by her husband's administration.
Her Hillary Fact Hub attempts to counter the McClatchy article.
(Note: Magnequench is spelled wrong in the headline and article)
Fact Check: Magnaquench
Today, McClatchy published an article with the headline "Clinton blasts Bush for not stopping a project Bill OK'd," implying that the Clinton administration approved the move of a Indiana factory to China. In fact, the Clinton administration specifically prohibited the company, Magnaquench, from moving Indiana jobs overseas.
In 1995, Magnaquench was purchased by a consortium of investors that included two Chinese investors. At the time, the purchase was reviewed by the Committee on Foreign Investment in the United States (CFIUS), and was approved on the condition that the production and the technology to produce neo-magnets would stay in the U.S.
However....
What the Fact Check fails to cover is that the transfer of manufacturing to China had begun in June 2000, while Bill Clinton was president, with the closure and relocation of GA Powders, a Magnequench subsidiary company.
Counter Punch has more details:
Outsourcing US Missile Technology to China
The Saga of Magnequench
By JEFFREY ST. CLAIR
Magnequench is an Indianapolis-based company. It specializes in the obscure field of sintered magnetics. Essentially, it makes tiny, high-tech magnets from rare-earth minerals ground down into a fine powder. The magnets are highly prized by electronics and aviation companies. But Magnequench's biggest client has been the Pentagon.
...
One of Magnequench's subsidiaries is a company called GA Powders, which manufactures the fine granules used in making the mini-magnets. GA Powders was originally a Department of Energy project created by scientists at the Idaho National Engineering and Environmental Lab. It was spun off to Magnequench in 1998, after Lockheed Martin took over the operations at INEEL.
In June 2000, Magnequench uprooted the production facilities for GA Powders from Idaho Falls to a newly constructed plant in Tianjin, China. This move followed the transfer to China of high-tech computer equipment from Magnequench's shuttered Anderson plant. According to a report in Insight magazine, these computers could be used to facilitate the enrichment of uranium for nuclear warheads.
Perhaps "The Fact Hub" should check its facts???