Tag Archives: Trump

Trump proposes rule on importing medicines which industry says won’t cut costs

By Michael Erman and Carl O’Donnell

NEW YORK (Reuters) – The Trump administration on Wednesday said it is proposing a rule to allow states to import prescription drugs from Canada, moving forward a plan announced this summer that the president has said will bring cheaper prescription drugs to Americans.

Importation of drugs from Canada as a way to lower costs for U.S. consumers has been considered for years. Alex Azar, secretary of the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS), called the move “a historic step forward in efforts to bring down drug prices and out-of-pocket costs.”

He said HHS would also offer guidance to drugmakers that wish to voluntarily bring drugs that they sell more cheaply in foreign countries into the United States for sale here.

Both pathways for importation were announced in July when Azar unveiled a “Safe Import Action Plan.”

Azar could not provide an estimate as to how soon Americans could start receiving drugs from Canada. He said the proposed rule would need to pass through a 75-day comment period before being finalized.

“We’re moving as quickly as we possibly can,” he said.

Governors of states including Florida, Maine, Colorado, Vermont and New Hampshire have already expressed an interest in importing drugs from Canada once the pathway to do so is fully in place, he said. States would be required to explain how any proposed drug imports would reduce drug prices for consumers.

The proposal faces opposition from large U.S. pharmaceutical and biotech companies.

Jim Greenwood, current head of biotech industry group BIO and a former Republican congressman, said that importation would not result in lower prices for consumers, citing nonpartisan budget experts and past FDA commissioners.

“Today’s announcement is the latest empty gesture from our elected lawmakers who want us to believe they’re serious about lowering patients’ prescription drug costs,” Greenwood said.

The Canadian government has also criticized the plan. The country’s ambassador said last month that importing medicines from Canada would not significantly lower U.S. prices. Reuters previously reported that Canada had warned U.S. officials it would oppose any import plan that might threaten the Canadian drug supply or raise costs for Canadians.

Drugs approved to be imported from Canada would exclude many prescribed drugs, such as biologic drugs, including insulin, controlled substances and intravenous drugs.

Trump, a Republican, has struggled to deliver on a pledge to lower drug prices before the November 2020 election. Healthcare costs are expected to be a major focus of the campaign by Trump and Democratic rivals vying to run against him.

The Trump administration in July scrapped an ambitious policy that would have required health insurers to pass billions of dollars in rebates they receive from drugmakers to Medicare patients.

Also in July, a federal judge struck down a Trump administration rule that would have forced pharmaceutical companies to include the wholesale prices of their drugs in television advertising.

Both the House of Representatives and the Senate are putting forth drug pricing bills that contain some of the proposals Trump has advocated, such as indexing public drug reimbursements to foreign drug costs.

But Trump has said he will veto the Democrat-led House bill if it comes to his desk on the grounds that it would slow down innovation.

(Reporting by Michael Erman and Carl O’Donnell; Editing by Leslie Adler and Nick Macfie)

Senate sends massive defense bill for Trump to sign, creating Space Force

By Patricia Zengerle

WASHINGTON (Reuters) – The U.S. Senate voted overwhelmingly on Tuesday to pass a $738 billion defense policy bill that creates President Donald Trump’s “Space Force” and gives federal employees 12 weeks of paid parental leave, sending it to the White House, where Trump has promised to quickly sign it into law.

The Republican-controlled Senate voted 86 to 8 in favor of the National Defense Authorization Act, or NDAA. The Democratic-led House approved the bill by 377-48 last week.

Trump said on Twitter last week that he would sign the bill as soon as it passes, saying it included all his priorities.

As one of the few pieces of major legislation Congress passes every year, the NDAA becomes a vehicle for a range of policy measures as well as setting everything from military pay levels to which ships or aircraft will be modernized, purchased or discontinued.

This year’s legislation included a 3.1% pay increase for the troops; the first ever paid family leave for all federal workers, and the creation of a Space Force, the first new branch of the U.S. military in more than 60 years and a top military priority for Trump.

The Democratic-led House and Republican-led Senate each voted for a version of the NDAA earlier this year. Then lawmakers negotiated for months with representatives from the White House to reach the compromise that just passed.

A few left-leaning Democrats and libertarian-leaning Republicans voted against the NDAA because it did not include policy planks that would have restrained Trump’s war powers, including banning support for Saudi Arabia’s air campaign in Yemen.

Some also objected to the increase in military spending, as the national debt is skyrocketing.

“Conservatism is about more than supporting military spending at any cost,” Republican Senator Rand Paul said.

The NDAA also does not bar the Republican president from using military funds to build a wall on the U.S. border with Mexico.

Those provisions were included in the House’s version of the NDAA, but not in the Senate’s. They were removed during the negotiations.

Democratic leaders said they had extracted some concessions from Republicans, the 12 weeks of paid family leave for federal workers.

The fiscal 2020 NDAA increases defense spending by about $20 billion, or about 2.8%. It includes $658.4 billion for Department of Defense and Department of Energy national security programs, $71.5 billion to pay for ongoing foreign wars and $5.3 billion in emergency funding for repairs from natural disasters.

(Reporting by Patricia Zengerle, Editing by David Gregorio and Steve Orlofsky)

Hospital groups file lawsuit to block Trump’s price transparency rule

(Reuters) – U.S. hospital groups have challenged the Trump administration’s rule that requires them to be more transparent about prices they charge patients for healthcare services, according to a lawsuit filed on Wednesday.

The plaintiffs, including the nonprofit American Hospital Association (AHA), are looking to block the rule issued last month that mandates hospitals to publish pricing information of their services on the internet.

“The rule … does not provide the information patients need. Mandating the public disclosure of negotiated charges would create confusion about patients’ out-of-pocket costs, not prevent it,” the plaintiffs said.

The rule, seen as a violation of the First Amendment by the hospital groups, also demands confidential information on individually negotiated contract terms with all third-party payers, including private commercial health insurers.

Such disclosures would eliminate hospitals’ ability to negotiate pricing with insurers that would undermine competition and blunt incentives for health insurers to sign arrangements that could potentially lower costs, the plaintiffs said.

This is not the first time that the industry has challenged President Donald Trump’s efforts to lower drug prices.

In July, a federal judge sided with drugmakers by striking down a rule that would have forced pharmaceutical companies to include the wholesale prices of their drugs in television advertisements.

“Hospitals should be ashamed that they aren’t willing to provide American patients the cost of a service before they purchase it,” said Caitlin Oakley, a spokeswoman for the Department of Health and Human Services, adding that the administration would continue to fight for price transparency.

The AHA, along with the Association Of American Medical Colleges and Federation Of American Hospitals, among others, said it would press for speeding up the decision on the rule, so hospitals do not spend time and resources preparing for what may be invalidated.

The rule is expected to come into effect on January 1, 2021.

(Reporting by Saumya Sibi Joseph in Bengaluru; Editing by Shinjini Ganguli and Anil D’Silva)

‘Nasty’, ‘two-faced’, ‘brain dead’: NATO pulls off summit despite insults

By Robin Emmott and Andreas Rinke

WATFORD, England (Reuters) – NATO leaders set aside public insults ranging from “delinquent” to “brain dead” on Wednesday, declaring at a 70th anniversary summit they would stand together against a common threat from Russia and prepare for China’s rise.

Officials insisted the summit was a success: notably, Turkey’s President Tayyip Erdogan backed off from an apparent threat to block plans to defend northern and eastern Europe unless allies declared Kurdish fighters in Syria terrorists.

But the meeting began and ended in acrimony startling even for the era of U.S. President Donald Trump, who arrived declaring the French president “nasty” and left calling Canada’s prime minister “two-faced” for mocking him on a hot mic.

“We have been able to overcome our disagreements and continue to deliver on our core tasks to protect and defend each other,” NATO’s ever-optimistic Secretary-General Jens Stoltenberg told a news conference.

In a joint declaration, the leaders said: “Russia’s aggressive actions constitute a threat to Euro-Atlantic security; terrorism in all its forms and manifestations remains a persistent threat to us all.”

The half-day summit at a golf resort on the outskirts of London was always going to be tricky, with officials hoping to avoid acrimony that burst forth at their meeting last year when Trump complained about allies failing to bear the burden of collective security.

But this year’s meeting was made even more difficult by Erdogan, who launched an incursion into Syria and bought Russian missiles against the objections of his allies, and by French President Emmanuel Macron, who had described the alliance’s strategy as brain dead in an interview last month.

In public it seemed to go worse than expected, beginning on Tuesday when Trump called Macron’s remarks “very, very nasty” and described allies who spend too little on defense as “delinquents” — a term officials said Trump used again on Wednesday behind closed doors during the summit itself.

At a Buckingham Palace reception on Tuesday evening, Canada’s Justin Trudeau was caught on camera with Macron, Britain’s Boris Johnson and Mark Rutte of the Netherlands, laughing at Trump’s long press appearances. “You just watched his team’s jaws drop to the floor,” said Trudeau.

By the time the summit wound up on Wednesday, Trump had decided not to hold a final press conference, saying he had already said enough. “He’s two-faced,” Trump said of Trudeau.

HUAWEI SECURITY RISK

Nevertheless, officials said important decisions were reached, including an agreement to ensure the security of communications, including new 5G mobile phone networks. The United States wants allies to ban equipment from the world’s biggest telecoms gear maker, Chinese firm Huawei.

“I do think it’s a security risk, it’s a security danger,” Trump said in response to a question on Huawei, although the leaders’ declaration did not refer to the company by name.

“I spoke to Italy and they look like they are not going to go forward with that. I spoke to other countries, they are not going to go forward,” he said of contracts with Huawei.

Ahead of the summit, Johnson — the British host who faces an election next week and chose to avoid making any public appearances with Trump — appealed for unity.

“Clearly it is very important that the alliance stays together,” he said. “But there is far, far more that unites us than divides us.”

Macron held his ground over his earlier criticism of NATO’s strategy, saying as he arrived that it was important for leaders to discuss issues in an open and forthright manner if they were to find solutions.

“I think it’s our responsibility to raise differences that could be damaging and have a real strategic debate,” he said. “It has started, so I am satisfied.”

One of Macron’s chief complaints is that Turkey, a NATO member since 1952 and a critical ally in the Middle East, has increasingly acted unilaterally, launching its incursion in Syria and buying Russian S-400 anti-aircraft missiles.

In his comments to the press, Stoltenberg said that while Russia was a threat, NATO also wanted to ensure a constructive dialogue with it. He added, in a reference to Turkey, that the S-400 system was in no way compatible with NATO’s defense.

At the summit, Europe, Turkey and Canada pledged to spend an extra $400 billion on defense by 2024, responding to Trump’s accusations that they spend too little. Germany, a frequent target of Trump’s blandishments, has promised to spend 2% of national output by 2031.

France and Germany also won backing for a strategic review of NATO’s mission, with the alliance set to establish a “wise persons” group to study how the organization needs to reposition for the future. That could involve shifting its posture away from the East and toward threats in the Middle East and Africa.

(Additional reporting by Andreas Rinke, John Chalmers and Johnny Cotton in Watford, and Estelle Shirbon in London; Writing by Luke Baker; Editing by John Chalmers and Peter Graff)

‘Very, very nasty’: Trump clashes with Macron before NATO summit

By Michel Rose and Estelle Shirbon

LONDON (Reuters) – U.S. President Donald Trump and French leader Emmanuel Macron clashed over the future of NATO on Tuesday before a summit intended to celebrate the 70th anniversary of the Western military alliance.

In sharp exchanges underlining discord in a transatlantic bloc hailed by backers as the most successful military pact in history, Trump demanded that Europe pay more for its collective defense and make concessions to U.S. interests on trade.

Macron, the French president, stood by comments he made last month describing NATO as suffering from a lack of strategic purpose akin to “brain death”, and criticized fellow NATO member Turkey, which he accused of working with Islamic State proxies.

Washington and Paris have long argued over NATO’s purpose – France opposed the 2003 Iraq war – but the new tensions will add to doubts over the alliance’s future that have grown with Trump’s ambivalence over U.S. commitments to defend Europe.

Trump said Macron’s criticism of NATO was “very, very nasty” and questioned whether the U.S. military should defend any countries that were “delinquent” on alliance targets for national military spending.

“It’s not right to be taken advantage of on NATO and also then to be taken advantage of on trade, and that’s what happens. We can’t let that happen,” Trump said of transatlantic disputes on issues ranging from the aerospace sector to a European digital services tax on U.S. technology giants.

All 29 member states have a target of spending 2% of their gross domestic product on defense and Trump has singled out Germany for falling short of that goal.

But Macron stood by his criticism of NATO and said its real problem was a failure to forge a clear purpose since the end of the Cold War.

“If we invest money and put our soldiers’ lives at risk in theaters of operation we must be clear about the fundamentals of NATO,” he said in a tweet at the end of a day overshadowed by tensions between the French and U.S. leaders.

A French presidency official said Trump often makes strident statements ahead of bilateral meetings and cools his rhetoric later. He noted that Macron and Trump “exchanged jokes and were very relaxed” at a joint news conference in London.

COLLECTIVE DEFENSE AT STAKE

Turkey threatened to block a plan to defend Baltic states and Poland against Russian attacks unless NATO backed Ankara in recognizing the Kurdish YPG militia as terrorists.

The YPG’s fighters have long been U.S. and French allies against Islamic State in Syria. Turkey considers them an enemy because of links to Kurdish insurgents in southeastern Turkey.

“If our friends at NATO do not recognize as terrorist organizations those we consider terrorist organizations … we will stand against any step that will be taken there,” Turkish President Tayyip Erdogan said before traveling to London.

Erdogan has already strained alliance ties with a move to buy Russian air defense systems. Trump said he was looking at imposing sanctions on Ankara over the issue.

The uncertainty over the plan for Poland and the Baltic states, drawn up at their request after Russia annexed Crimea from Ukraine in 2014, raises issues about security on all of NATO’s frontiers.

Under the North Atlantic Treaty Organization’s 1949 founding treaty, an attack on one ally is an attack on all its members, and the alliance has military strategies for collective defense across its territory.

The summit, in a hotel in Hertfordshire just outside London, begins on Wednesday.

On Tuesday evening, alliance leaders attended a reception hosted by Queen Elizabeth at Buckingham Palace.

The British monarch, in a teal-colored matching jacket and skirt, greeted the summiteers and accompanying partners, including former fashion model Melania Trump, who was wearing a bright yellow dress with matching cape and purple sleeves.

They were then welcomed to 10 Downing Street by British Prime Minister Boris Johnson, host of the summit a little over a week before the country faces an election.

Several hundred protesters gathered in London’s Trafalgar Square, holding placards reading: “Dump Trump” and “No to racism, no to Trump”. A police line divided them from a small group of Trump supporters wearing Make America Great Again caps, waving American flags and shouting: “Build the wall”.

In Washington on Tuesday, Democrats in the U.S. House of Representatives laid out their impeachment case against Trump, accusing him of using the powers of his office to solicit foreign interference in the 2020 election.

Hoping to placate Trump, Europe, Turkey and Canada will pledge at the summit some $400 billion in defense spending by 2024, and agree to a reduction of the U.S. contribution to fund the alliance itself.

The allies will approve a new strategy to monitor China’s growing military activity, and identify space as a domain of warfare, alongside air, land, sea and computer networks.

Trump said he believed Russia wanted deals on arms control and nuclear issues, and that he would be willing to bring China into such accords.

(Reporting by Steve Holland, Phil Stewart, Robin Emmott and Iona Serrapica in London, Ali Kucukgocmen in Istanbul, Joanna Plucinska in Warsaw and Vladimir Soldatkin in Moscow; Writing by Mark John and John Chalmers; Editing by Timothy Heritage and Peter Cooney)

U.S. launches anti-violence effort for indigenous women, girls

U.S. launches anti-violence effort for indigenous women, girls
By Ellen Wulfhorst

NEW YORK (Thomson Reuters Foundation) – U.S. President Donald Trump launched a task force on Tuesday to help protect Native American women and children, calling the rate of violence among indigenous people “heartbreaking.”

The task force aims to improve coordination and communication among federal, state and tribal authorities in response to cases of missing and murdered indigenous women and children, the White House said in a statement.

Native American women in some tribal communities are 10 times more likely than the average American to be murdered, it said, and the initiative called Operation Lady Justice is an “aggressive, government-wide strategy” to address the crisis.

“The statistics are sobering and heartbreaking,” Trump said at a White House ceremony where he signed an executive order creating the task force. “Too many are still missing and their whereabouts are unknown.

“We’re taking this very seriously,” he added.

Research by the National Institute of Justice, a government research agency, has found more than four out of five American Indian and Alaska Native women – more than 1.5 million women – have experienced violence in their lifetime.

More than 5,700 American Indian and Alaska Native women and girls were reported missing in 2016, according to the National Crime Information Center, a government data agency.

American Indian women are two-and-a-half times more likely to be sexually assaulted than women of all other races, while one in three reports having been raped, the U.S. Department of Justice has said.

“It’s imperative that this changes, in a manner that we’re looked at not as the second-class citizens but looked like, looked at as any other group that exists within the continent of the United States,” said Kevin DuPuis, chairman of the Fond du Lac Band of Lake Superior Chippewa, at the White House event.

“It’s very, very important that we, as a people, have a true identity. And when we lose our women and we lose our children that goes with them,” he said.

Several leading Native American rights organizations did not respond to requests for comment on the new task force.

Law enforcement and prosecutions are often hampered by a maze of jurisdictions and justice systems based on such factors as whether a crime occurred on tribal land or whether the victim or the accused is a tribal member.

Last week the government announced an initiative to spend $1.5 million for law enforcement to help coordinate Native American missing persons cases.

Nearly seven million Native Americans live in the United States making up about 2% of the population, according to census figures.

Trump’s signing of the order came two days before the U.S. Thanksgiving holiday which commemorates a harvest celebration shared by Native Americans and European settlers in the 17th century.

(Reporting by Ellen Wulfhorst, Editing by Chris Michaud (Please credit the Thomson Reuters Foundation, the charitable arm of Thomson Reuters, that covers humanitarian news, women’s and LGBT+ rights, human trafficking, property rights and climate change. Visit http://news.trust.org)

Trump says he will allow states to import prescription drugs to lower costs

11-22-prescription-drugs

WASHINGTON (Reuters) – U.S. President Donald Trump said on Friday he will soon release a plan to let Florida and other states import prescription medicines to combat high drug prices, and he blasted the Democrat-led House for not going far enough in a drug-pricing bill.

“We will soon be putting more options on the table,” Trump wrote in a series of tweets, adding that House Speaker Nancy Pelosi “and her Do Nothing Democrats drug pricing bill doesn’t do the trick.”

The tweets were similar to comments the president made on Nov. 15 at a White House event with Health and Human Services (HHS) Secretary Alex Azar, among other officials. At that meeting, Trump said he would work with Florida Governor Ron DeSantis on a plan to broaden rules on importing pharmaceuticals into this country.

Drug companies have staunchly opposed such a plan, which has been mulled for years but never implemented.

“House Republicans are showing real LEADERSHIP and prepared to enact bipartisan solutions for drug prices. Do Nothing Democrats are playing partisan politics with YOUR drug prices! We are READY to work together if they actually want to get something done!,” the president, who faces impeachment by the Democrat-led House of Representatives, said on Twitter.

U.S. prescription drug costs are the highest in the developed world because most other countries negotiate pricing directly with manufacturers, while drug companies are allowed to set their own prices in the United States.

Lowering healthcare costs for U.S. consumers is expected to be a major issue in the 2020 presidential campaign.

(Reporting by Lisa Lambert; Editing by Bill Berkrot)

Trump predicts report on origins of Russia probe will be ‘historic’

By Lisa Lambert

WASHINGTON (Reuters) – U.S. President Donald Trump predicted on Friday that a government watchdog report on the origins of the probe into Russian interference in the 2016 U.S. presidential election, which engulfed two years of his presidency, will be historic.

“The word is it’s historic,” Trump told Fox News Channel about an upcoming Justice Department watchdog report on the FBI’s adherence to Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act requirements during the 2016 campaign.

“That’s what I hear. If it’s historic, you’re going to see something,” Trump said, declining to say how he knew.

Trump supporters have claimed the report from the Justice Department’s inspector general, which is expected to be released on Dec. 9, will raise questions about the legitimacy of FBI investigations into alleged links to Russia by Trump and some of his campaign advisers.

A central issue the inspector general’s office said the report looked into is how closely the FBI stuck to the law and rules when it went to a secret court beginning in 2016 to obtain authorization to conduct electronic monitoring of “a certain U.S. person.”

Carter Page, a onetime foreign policy adviser to Trump’s 2016 campaign, recently sued the Justice Department, accusing it of violating his privacy by failing to give him an opportunity to examine the report before publication.

(Reporting By Steve Holland and Lisa Lambert; Editing by Alex Richardson and Jonathan Oatis)

U.S. judge stalls Trump administration’s bid to resume federal executions

By Jonathan Allen and Maria Caspani

(Reuters) – A U.S. judge has halted the scheduled executions of four inmates on federal death row, temporarily stalling an effort by President Donald Trump’s administration to resume federal executions next month after a 16-year hiatus.

Judge Tanya Chutkan, who is presiding over long-running legal challenges by condemned prisoners to the Department of Justice’s lethal injection protocol, issued the temporary order late on Wednesday in the U.S. District Court in Washington.

She said the condemned inmates suing the government were likely to succeed on at least one of their arguments, namely that the Federal Death Penalty Act requires the Bureau of Prisons to follow the execution procedures of the state in which an inmate was convicted.

“There is no statute that gives the BOP or DOJ the authority to establish a single implementation procedure for all federal executions,” Chutkan wrote in her 15-page opinion, referring to the agencies by their initials.

She said it was likely that Attorney General William Barr had overreached his authority in July when he announced that the Justice Department planned to resume federal executions using a new one-drug protocol.

Barr said the department would execute condemned inmates with pentobarbital, a powerful barbiturate, replacing the three-drug protocol the department used in carrying out its last execution in 2003.

Barr also announced execution dates in December and January for five men on federal death row in Terre Haute, Indiana, all of them convicted murderers.

The announcement revived legal challenges to the lethal injection protocol dating back to 2005 that had lain dormant in federal court. Some 60 inmates are on federal death row, including Boston Marathon bomber Dzhokhar Tsarnaev, who killed three people and injured more than 260 in the 2013 attack.

One of the five men with execution dates, Lezmond Mitchell, won a stay in the 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals last month. The other four men are now protected by Chutkan’s order.

“This decision prevents the government from evading accountability and making an end run around the courts by attempting to execute prisoners under a protocol that has never been authorized by Congress,” Shawn Nolan, one of the attorneys for the men facing federal execution, said in a statement.

The Justice Department did not respond to a request for comment, but had opposed any delay in the executions saying the new protocol was lawful and the condemned inmates’ victims have a “compelling interest in the timely enforcement of a lawful death sentence.”

Condemned inmates have also said the Justice Department will breach a constitutional ban on “cruel and unusual” punishment by using pentobarbital. They cite physicians who say the corrosively alkaline chemical will likely cause them burning pain and force fluid into their lungs while they remain conscious, causing the sensation of drowning before they die.

The Justice Department says the lethal injections are humane and not excessively painful.

Most countries have abolished capital punishment.

In the United States, Trump, a death penalty supporter, has called for increasing its use for drug traffickers and mass shooters.

(Reporting by Maria Caspani and Jonathan Allen in New York; Additonal reporting by Sarah Lynch in Washington; Editing by Scott Malone and Jonathan Oatis)

U.S. Senate passes HK rights bill backing protesters, angers Beijing

By Richard Cowan and Patricia Zengerle

WASHINGTON (Reuters) – The U.S. Senate unanimously passed legislation on Tuesday aimed at protecting human rights in Hong Kong amid a crackdown on a pro-democracy protest movement, drawing condemnation from Beijing.

Following the voice vote, the “Hong Kong Human Rights and Democracy Act” will go to the House of Representatives, which approved its own version last month. The two chambers will have to work out their differences before any legislation can be sent to President Donald Trump for his consideration.

“The people of Hong Kong see what’s coming – they see the steady effort to erode the autonomy and their freedoms,” Republican Senator Marco Rubio said at the start of the brief Senate debate, accusing Beijing of being behind the “violence and repression” in the Asian financial hub.

The Senate passed a second bill, also unanimously, that would ban the export of certain crowd-control munitions to Hong Kong police forces. It bans the export of items such as tear gas, pepper spray, rubber bullets and stun guns.

Under the first Senate bill, U.S. Secretary of State Mike Pompeo would have to certify at least once a year that Hong Kong retains enough autonomy to qualify for special U.S. trading consideration that bolsters its status as a world financial center. It also would provide for sanctions against officials responsible for human rights violations in Hong Kong.

There was no immediate response from the White House, which has yet to say whether Trump would approve the Hong Kong Human Rights bill. A U.S. official said recently that no decision had been made, but the unanimous Senate vote could make a veto more difficult for the Republican president.

The official, who spoke on condition of anonymity, said if the measure got to Trump’s desk there would probably be an intense debate between Trump aides worried it could undermine trade talks with China and those who believe it is time to take a stand against China on human rights and Hong Kong’s status.

In Beijing on Wednesday, China condemned the passage of the Hong Kong Human Rights and Democracy Act, and vowed strong counter-measures to safeguard its sovereignty and security.

“This act neglects facts and truth, applies double standards and blatantly interferes in Hong Kong affairs and China’s other internal affairs,” foreign ministry spokesman Geng Shuang said in a statement.

“It is in serious violation of international law and basic norms governing international relations. China condemns and firmly opposes it.”

The United States must immediately stop interfering in Hong Kong affairs and China’s other internal affairs, or “the negative consequences will boomerang on itself”, Geng added.

Pompeo said on Monday the United States was gravely concerned about Hong Kong’s deepening unrest and violence, urging the city’s government to tackle public concerns and China to honor the promises it made to maintain liberties after taking back the territory from British rule in 1997.

Pompeo addressed the issue again on Tuesday before leaving the United States for a NATO meeting in Brussels.

“We continue to urge everyone to do this peacefully,” he told reporters. “There is a political resolution of this that is achievable, we hope that’ll be the path forward.”

Demonstrators are angry at what they see as Chinese meddling in the freedoms promised to Hong Kong when Britain handed it back to China.

Senate aides said they expected the legislation eventually would move forward as an amendment to a massive defense bill, the National Defense Authorization Act, expected to pass Congress later this year.

Demonstrators in Hong Kong have been protesting in the streets amid increasing violence and fears that Beijing will ratchet up its response to stop the civil disobedience.

Following passage of the bill, Senate Democratic Leader Chuck Schumer said, “We have sent a message to President Xi (Jinping): Your suppression of freedom, whether in Hong Kong, in northwest China or in anywhere else, will not stand.

“You cannot be a great leader – and you cannot be a great country – when you oppose freedom, when you are so brutal to the people of Hong Kong, young and old, who are protesting.”

Xinjiang, in northwest China, is home to many mostly Muslim Uighurs, large numbers of whom have been detained in what China says are vocational training centers, but which some U.S. officials have called “concentration camps.”

This month the foreign ministry said China had lodged “stern representations” with the United States about the legislation and urged that it not be passed into law.

China would “inevitably take vigorous measures to firmly respond, to staunchly safeguard our sovereignty, security and development interests,” the ministry added.

Trump prompted questions about his commitment to protecting freedoms in Hong Kong when he referred in August to the mass street protests as “riots” that were a matter for China to deal with.

Trump has since urged China to handle the issue humanely, warning that anything bad that happened in Hong Kong could hurt talks to end a trade war between the world’s two largest economies.

In a post on Twitter on Wednesday, China’s embassy in the United States said, “The democracy and human rights held so dearly by the American people are once again abused by some American politicians to justify violence and disorder.”

It added, “Do they want to side with the rioters? SAD!”

(Reporting by Patricia Zengerle and Richard Cowan; Additional reporting by David Brunnstrom, Daphne Psaledakis Matt Spetalnick and Humeyra Pamuk, and Ryan Woo and Se Young Lee in Beijing; Editing by Leslie Adler and Clarence Fernandez)