Kevin McCarthy and Mike Gallagher, anti-China hard-line Republicans in the U.S. Congress, wrote in an opinion piece for Fox News last December about the need for the United States to stop being dependent on China for critical supply-chain materials.

"The first step is to restore our supply chains and end critical economic dependencies on China," the opinion piece said. "China and the U.S. are locked in a cold war. We must win it."

And on Jan. 7, McCarthy was elected U.S. House speaker after 15 rounds of voting — the first time in 164 years that the House of Representatives had voted 10 times or more to pick a speaker, representing a historic deadlock — as he struggled to gain support from hard-line conservatives in his own party.