Donald Trump-endorsed Republican congressional candidate Rob Bresnahan Jr., running in one of the nation’s most hotly contested U.S. House races, has a decidedly anti-China message for Pennsylvania voters he’s hoping to win over.
“Here in northeastern Pennsylvania, there used to be hundreds of businesses like ours that made things until DC politicians turned off the lights on American manufacturing and sent those jobs to China,” Bresnahan said in his campaign launch video for Pennsylvania’s 8th Congressional District, noting his family business in electrical contracting.
“We have to prioritize America. We have to think about our own country and our own people right here,” Bresnahan said during a Newsmax interview in May. “And what’s extremely frustrating is when you see billions and billions of dollars being sent to places all across the world when we’re struggling here.”
But a campaign jacket that Bresnahan has worn at numerous campaign appearances was made in China, according to a Raw Story source who requested anonymity to protect their job.
The source, who won the campaign jacket at a Bresnahan campaign event raffle, shared a photo of the jacket, the label of which indicates it was made in China.
The jacket tag indicates that it is a product of Port Authority, a brand that manufactures products in countries such as China, Vietnam and Bangladesh, according to online retailer Full Source. Port Authority is owned by SanMar, a clothing company headquartered in Wisconsin, whose “supply chain partners” include at least 20 firms in China, according to its website.
Bresnahan is challenging six-term Rep. Matt Cartwright (D-PA) for Pennsylvania’s 8th Congressional District in what the nonpartisan Cook Political Report has declared a “toss up” race, where either candidate has an equal chance of winning.
Derek Rockey, a spokesperson for the Rob for PA campaign committee, would not confirm where Bresnahan purchased the jacket that he wore to meet with local policymakers and government officials, constituents, Republican Party peers and at local business and community events.
“Congressman Cartwright and his far-left allies are beyond desperate if they’re seriously trying to use a jacket purchased from a Scranton-based small business that has been serving our community for over 40 years to distract from Congressman Cartwright repeatedly voting to send blue-collar American jobs overseas to Communist China,” Rockey told Raw Story via text message.
“This is a desperately transparent attempt to inoculate Congressman Cartwright for his repeated pro-China votes at the expense of a local small business in his district, and it’s pathetic,” Rockey continued.
Wendy Wilson, a spokesperson for Cartwright’s congressional office, deferred questions to Cartwright’s campaign committee. The Cartwright for Congress campaign committee did not respond to Raw Story’s request for comment.
Bresnahan has raised more than $1.4 million this election cycle through April, where Cartwright has raised nearly $4 million in the same time period, according to the Federal Election Commission.
Bresnahan has loaned his campaign at least $400,000 and provided various in-kind donations from office rent to promotional items such as beanies, baseball caps and jackets, according to the FEC. The filings do not indicate where the merchandise was purchased.
Irina Tsukerman, a foreign policy expert, human rights and national security lawyer and president of communications advisory company, Scarab Rising, said Bresnahan’s merchandising choice raises the question of “optics.”
“If you claim that you’re vigilant against a country's human rights [atrocities], the threat to the United States’ national security and economic interests, that you are opposed to China flooding U.S. markets with cheap goods in violation of principles of free trade … it's kind of self serving and hypocritical, even if it's inadvertent, to utilize merchandise made in that country, particularly for your political campaign purposes,” Tsukerman said.
But optics aren’t the only potential problem with making a merchandise choice contradictory to foreign policy statements, Tsukerman said. Such actions can send a message to China that U.S. politicians aren’t serious about their threats to back away from the country, she said.
“You are encouraging your constituents to do one thing, and while you're doing something entirely different,” Tsukerman said. “It shows that you don't actually care about your message, that you're doing that just to score political points, and you're making a populist message, but you are not necessarily as concerned about the national security and economic implications, as you say.”
China’s human rights concerns range from slave labor to suppression of religious freedom, Tsukerman said.
Former Republican presidential candidate Vivek Ramaswamy found himself in a similar situation when Raw Story broke the news last year that his campaign’s baseball caps were manufactured in Myanmar, a country rife with human rights atrocities and led by a military junta that has close ties with China — a country with which Ramaswamy campaigned to cut dependence.
Ramaswamy continued to distribute the hats even after vowing to stop using them after Raw Story’s investigation.
“There is a big problem that now a couple of U.S. political candidates claim to be positioning themselves as tough on China but themselves are not observing their own proposed rules,” Tsukerman continued.
