In a new article, CNN exposes multi-millionaire Connecticut hedge fund executive David McCormick for his recent tough talk on China failing to reflect the reality of his financial involvements. His call for the U.S. to divest from China stands in stark contradiction to his past actions of investing in Chinese companies during his tenure as an executive at the world’s largest hedge fund.
“It is clear that David McCormick’s tough stance on China is as disingenuous as his claimed Pennsylvania residency,” said Jonas Edwards-Jenks, Communication Director at End Citizens United // Let America Vote. “Rather than taking on China, David McCormick put his hedge fund profits ahead of American workers.”
Em Steck
11/4/23
Key findings:
-
In Republican David McCormick’s second bid for US Senate in Pennsylvania, he has rebranded himself as a Trumpian-hardliner on China, sounding the warning bells on US economic ties with China.
-
However, as the head of the world’s largest hedge fund, McCormick oversaw massive investments into US exchange traded Chinese companies and holdings, according to a CNN KFile review of the hedge fund’s holdings.
-
At a House select committee on China hearing in September 2023, McCormick testified that while he was CEO of the billion-dollar hedge fund Bridgewater Associates, he held “deep reservations” about doing business with the country.
-
Under McCormick’s leadership from 2017 through 2021, Bridgewater Associates disclosed holdings in US exchange traded Chinese companies grew from $1.6 million in the second quarter of 2017 to $1.77 billion in the final quarter of 2021, according to filings to the US Securities and Exchange Commission reviewed by CNN’s KFile.
-
McCormick’s hedge fund also held an additional $779 million indirectly in Chinese companies through their investments in exchange traded funds. And Bridgewater launched a China-focused investment fund in 2018 for investors that grew to $6.15 billion by March 2022.
-
One of the subsidiaries of an energy company Bridgewater invested in was added to a US trade blacklist in June 2021 after they “were implicated in human rights violations and abuses in the implementation of China’s campaign of repression, mass arbitrary detention, forced labor…. against Uyghurs” and other Muslim minority groups in the northwestern region of Xinjiang.”
-
The company and China fiercely denied committing rights violations in the region.
-
After the blacklist, Bridgewater Associates more than doubled its shares in the parent company, increasing its investment by 1.7 times between the second quarter of 2021 and the final quarter of the year.
-
Bridgewater also bought shares in a credit services company one year after the US Commerce Department blacklisted its parent company in May 2020 for “supporting procurement of items for military end-use in China.”
###