US-China Economic Specialist: “If [McCormick] Was in the Business Community, He’d Still be Pushing for Relations with China”
PENNSYLVANIA — Connecticut hedge fund CEO and mega-millionaire David McCormick’s record of managing and investing millions with China are under continued scrutiny following a new report from the Associated Press. The report details that while McCormick led Bridgewater Associates, “those were big years for investing in China.”
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- But McCormick’s Wall Street days haven’t been such an asset of late. They provided grist for attacks by Republican primary rivals in McCormick’s failed 2022 run for Senate and now by Democrats in his challenge to third-term Sen. Bob Casey.
- McCormick declined an interview request.
- The need to fend off accusations that he profited at America’s expense comes at an unfortunate time for McCormick as China’s relationship with Washington has grown increasingly tense.
- As Bridgewater’s CEO in 2019, McCormick described China as America’s “most defining bilateral relationship of our time,” even as calls began in Washington to block American investments in Chinese companies that could pose a threat to U.S. security.
- In his two campaigns for Senate, super political action committees that support McCormick have raised tens of millions of dollars and counting from the finance world.
- When Bridgewater Associates hired McCormick in 2009 to be president, its founder, Ray Dalio, had a reputation for being bullish on China.
- Regulatory disclosures in China show that it has at least 10 billion renminbi — or at least $1.4 billion, and maybe much more — invested in Chinese assets there, said Harry Handley, a senior associate at Z-Ben Advisors, a financial advisory firm based in Shanghai.
- McCormick spent his last five years at Bridgewater as co-CEO or CEO, and those were big years for investing in China. That is when Chinese regulators relaxed restrictions over foreign investment in stocks and bonds, unleashing several years of particularly heavy investment, Brown and others say.
- Bridgewater forged a reputation among foreign firms as an aggressive investor in Chinese companies — “over the past few years they’ve kind of dominated among the global firms in China,” Handley said — and reputedly handled money for the Chinese government.
- In early 2022, McCormick left Bridgewater to run for Senate in Pennsylvania in a seven-way GOP primary.
- Bridgewater’s connections with China followed him.
- At a rally days before the 2022 primary, former President Donald Trump, aiming to help Oz, his endorsed candidate, derided McCormick as having been with a company that “managed money for communist China.”
- “McCormick has changed his tune because he’s a political type,” Scissors said. “If he was in the business community, he’d still be pushing for relations with China. Because that’s what they do.”
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