Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) may be luxuriating in his reputation as a villainous legislation killer, but his wife, Transportation Secretary Elaine Chao, has kept a fairly low profile for a member of President Trump's Cabinet — in the U.S., at least. Chao has been a celebrity in China since she became the first Chinese-American Cabinet secretary under George W. Bush, and she "has repeatedly used her connections and celebrity status in China to boost the profile" of her family's shipping business, The New York Times reports.
Chao's father, James Chao, founded the shipping company, Foremost Group, in 1964. While its headquarters are in Manhattan, Foremost now "builds most of its ships in state-owned shipyards in China, with some financed by Chinese government loans," primarily shipping iron ore and other raw materials to China, using ships registered in Liberia and Hong Kong through companies in the Marshall Islands, the Times reports.
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