Missouri Attorney General Andrew Bailey secured a $24 billion judgment against the Chinese Communist Party on Friday after a federal judge found the US adversary liable for damages related to the hoarding of personal protective equipment during the COVID-19 pandemic.
“This is a landmark victory for Missouri and the United States in the fight to hold China accountable for unleashing COVID-19 on the world,” the attorney general said in a statement.
Missouri sued the CCP, the Wuhan Institute of Virology and several other Chinese entities in 2020, alleging that China caused and exacerbated the COVID-19 pandemic by thwarting the production, purchasing, and import and export of PPE.
The lawsuit accused China of nationalizing American factories producing PPE and hoarding protective equipment manufactured or available for sale in the US.
“China’s campaign to hoard the global supply of PPE was performed in conjunction with its repeated misrepresentations on the existence, and then scope and human-to-human transmissibility of, the COVID-19 virus,” Missouri District Judge Stephen Limbaugh, Jr., wrote in his ruling. “Plaintiff has submitted into the record substantial evidence demonstrating as much.”
The judge agreed with Bailey that China had violated state and federal anti-monopoly laws, and by doing so, the state “suffered significant harm in the form of lost net general tax revenue” and “heightened PPE expenditures.”
“During the early months of the pandemic, Missouri spent millions more on PPE than it otherwise would have because of Defendants’ hoarding,” Limbaugh wrote.
The state claimed it spent more than $122 million more for PPE than it would have without the hoarding and lost more than $8 billion in tax revenue.
“China refused to show up to court, but that doesn’t mean they get away with causing untold suffering and economic devastation,” Bailey said. “We intend to collect every penny by seizing Chinese-owned assets, including Missouri farmland.”
The attorney general said if needed, Missouri would work with the Trump administration to “identify and seize Chinese-owned assets” in order to collect on the state record-setting $24 billion judgment.
