David McCormick, then a Republican candidate for U.S. Senate in Pennsylvania, speaks during a campaign stop in Lititz, Friday, May 13, 2022. (AP Photo/Matt Rourke)

David McCormick is the likely Republican candidate to challenge incumbent Pennsylvania Sen. Bob Casey (D) in 2024, despite constant criticism from his own party for his economic ideas promoting U.S.-China relationships.

In 2020, McCormick appeared in an economic forum where he said that an economic decoupling from China would be detrimental to both sides.

“I think it’s important to distinguish between decoupling of the U.S.-China economies and decoupling in key sectors or key technologies. And you know, it would really be- given the size of our respective economies, given the interdependence of supply chains, it would really be a blow to China and the United States to move down a path where we have, you know, economic decoupling,” McCormick said. “And that’s a risk with some of the extremes and some of the rhetoric that could emerge on both sides. So, I think that is very much not to be hoped for and something that is to be avoided.”

These comments came before McCormick’s run for the U.S. Senate in 2022, where he was defeated by Dr. Mehmet Oz in the Republican primary by fewer than a thousand votes. Oz was able to squeak out the win by portraying himself as an anti-China hawk, and he was supported by a Super PAC called American Leadership Action, which paid for political ads that targeted McCormick. One ad took McCormick to task for outsourcing jobs to Asia, which refers to McCormick’s time running a firm in Pittsburgh called FreeMarkets Inc. McCormick allegedly laid off 50 workers and subsequently announced 100 new job openings in India soon after.

From 2020-2022, McCormick also served as the CEO of Bridgewater Associates — one of the largest hedge funds in the world — where he also clashed with the company’s founder Ray Dalio over Chinese investments. Appearing on “The Shawn Ryan Show” Monday, McCormick claimed that Dalio did not recognize China as an “existential threat” as he did.

Despite his heavy economic ties to China, McCormick recently released a book called “Superpower in Peril: A Battleplan to Renew America,” wherein he called the China an “existential threat” and that he “raised alarms about China” for years to no avail in Washington. With another Senate bid in mind, McCormick could be attempting to change his tune in order to align himself with the China hawk rhetoric that Oz used to defeat him last year.

The GOP as a whole has also taken this stance especially after former President Donald Trump’s “trade war” with China. Speaker of the House Kevin McCarthy even created a select committee on the ruling Chinese Communist Party after he was elected speaker earlier this year.

After Oz’s defeat at the hands of John Fetterman in the general election, McCormick is the likely candidate to emerge on the Republican side to challenge Casey. Casey was first elected in 2006 and became the first Democratic senator from Pennsylvania to win three consecutive terms in 2018.