Here's an impressive quiet accomplishment from the Trump administration, now noted by Judicial Watch:
Under a long-term deal sealed by the Obama administration, a Chinese Communist company was set to control the second-busiest container port in the United States. In an unreported Trump administration victory,
the Communists are out after a drawn-out national security review forced a unit of China-based COSCO Shipping Holdings Co. (Orient Overseas Container Line—OOCL) to sell the cherished container terminal business, which handles among the largest freight of imports into the U.S.
It all started with a 40-year container terminal lease between the Port of Long Beach in southern California and Hong Kong. The Obama administration proudly signed the agreement in 2012 giving China control of America’s second-largest container port behind the nearby Port of Los Angeles. One of the Trump administration’s first big moves was to get the Communists out of the Port of Long Beach. After a national security review and federal intervention, the Long Beach terminal business, which handles millions of containers annually, is finally being sold to an Australian company called Macquarie Infrastructure Partners. That essentially kills China’s decades-long contract with the Obama administration.
The watchdog group didn't say, but that news came about in May and was brilliantly reported by American Thinker contributor Chriss Street.
Here's the excellent item, which certainly got notice at the time and is well worth a read or reread for a more detailed perspective:
The Trump Administration's Department of Homeland Security has forced China's state-owned Cosco* to sell the Port of Long Beach over security concerns.
China's Cosco Shipping Holdings, which bought out its 75 percent–owned Hong Kong–based Orient Overseas International (OOCL), was forced to sell its Port of Long Beach Container Terminal ownership to Macquarie Infrastructure Partners for $1.78 billion.
The Obama administration had no problems with OOCL signing a 40-year lease with the City of Long Beach in 2012 for control of America's second largest and most automated container handling operation. The sweetheart deal was part of the "Middle Harbor Redevelopment Program" to fund a $1.5-billion expansion through 2020.
But one of the first major actions of the Trump administration's Department of Homeland Security in March 2017 was issuing a "Committee on Foreign Investment in the U.S." national security hold on Cosco's acquisition of a former U.S. Navy port facility.
I wasn't the editor for the piece and didn't see the story until it went up, but now I can't resist throwing in at this late date that I was actually there, at the Port of Long Beach, at the 2012 handover, at the time as an editorial journalist for Investor's Business Daily, and I saw the opening firsthand.
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