trump says he supports giving more power to committee that reviews foreign investments for national security threats creditagence francepresse getty imagesjune 26 2018washington president trump signaled on tuesday that the white house may soften a plan to impose sweeping new investment restrictions on china saying he supported giving more power to an existing government body that reviews foreign investments for national security threatsno final decisions have been made and mr trump could ultimately decide to move ahead with the type of tough bans on chinese investment in american companies that he has been threatening as part of his crackdown on beijings trade practices the administration which has already threatened china with tariffs on as much as 450 billion worth of its products had promised to outline by saturday proposed restrictions on chinese investment to protect american companies it says were pressured to hand over valuable technology and trade secrets to operate in chinathe white house is still expected to unveil by saturday restrictions on exporting sensitive american technologies abroad that could have a more significant effect on united states companies than restrictions on chinese investment since it would limit the ability of american companies to sell a range of products to china the white house has targeted specific products that it wants to prevent china from dominating including robotics artificial intelligence and new energy vehiclesbut people familiar with the discussions said that at least on the issue of chinese investment the white house was now leaning toward endorsing a current effort in congress to expand the authority of the committee on foreign investment in the united states or cfius which reviews investments for security threatswe have the great scientists we have the great brains the president said tuesday were going to protect it and thats what we were doing and that can be done through cfius we have a lot of things we can do it through and were working that outin a statement on wednesday chinas commerce ministry said that officials are playing close attention to it and will assess the potential impact on chinese companiesthe congressional overhaul to cfius would include a list of countries of special concern that allow it to review investments from those nations but stops short of specifically naming china as the targetsuch an outcome would be a victory for mr trumps more moderate economic advisers including steven mnuchin the treasury secretary who has tried to use his clout with the president to deescalate trade tensions with china mr mnuchin has argued internally that congressional efforts to strengthen current security checks were both sufficient to guard against threats to american technology and targeted enough to avoid disrupting the american economymr mnuchin has tried to prevent the administration from employing aggressive measures against china including an effort by some in the white house to use the international emergency economic powers act which would allow the administration to take broad action against china by declaring a national emergency mike pompeo the secretary of state had recently