Asked this morning about Republican plans to create a Select Committee on China in the coming year, Speaker Nancy Pelosi noted that there is already a bipartisan, bi-cameral committee on China and made this “statement” about human rights.

Corporate America has [been] largely responsible for the situation we’re in, in terms of the trade deficit and the rest…but from a standpoint of values, from the standpoint of economy, and from the standpoint of security, China poses a challenge to us….We want to work together on climate issues and the rest, but, but we cannot have our workers disadvantaged by China having prison labor manufacture products or contribute to the manufacture of products that just provide unfair competition for us….My statement is that if we refuse to talk about human rights in China because of economic issues, we lose all moral authority to talk about human rights anyplace in the world.

Predictably enough, the press conference moved on quickly from there. A follow-up question on legislation to ban TikTok failed to elicit anything more on US economic interests and human rights in China. Here’s video of the moment: