FBI and SEC statements don’t match up.

The Federal Bureau of Investigation reports that the “annual cost to the U.S. economy of counterfeit goods, pirated software, and theft of trade secrets is between $225 billion and $600 billion.”  The bureau goes on to report that the “Chinese government is the world’s principal infringer of intellectual property…” www.fbi.gov/file-repository/china-risk-to-corporate-america-2019.pdf

Securities and Exchange Commission Chairman Gary Gensler testified to Congress yesterday.  His written testimony stated that the SEC’s Division of Economic and Risk Analysis helps the Commission “…quantify harm to investors, calculate ill-gotten gains, and assist enforcement with returning funds to harmed investors (SEC Gives Testimony to U.S. House Committee on Financial Services | CLS Blue Sky Blog (columbia.edu)).

We could not find SEC or public company reports that match the scale of the FBI quantification of harm to investors.  If the FBI is right, and the SEC has either no IP theft reports or required no public company to report IP theft, then the SEC is failing to recover value for harmed US investors.

Congress should ask Chairman Gensler questions about this apparently glaring failure.  To start:

1. Every two to 5 years, that means PRC agents take $1 Trillion of US IP.  Does the SEC track thefts of that significance?
2. Do those thefts concern the SEC?
3. Do those thefts not have a material effect on US balance sheets?
4. It seems that PRC companies are turning US balance sheets into battlefields.  What is the SEC doing to alert American investors about those impairments?