Democratic vice presidential nominee Tim Walz’s China tourism company was dissolved by the state of Nebraska in 1998 after he failed to pay $26 in business operating taxes, according to a report.
The Minnesota governor’s for-profit endeavor, Educational Travel Adventures, Inc., which catered to student groups seeking to travel to communist China, was shut down by the Nebraska secretary of state for “non-payment of occupational taxes” in April 1998, the Washington Free Beacon reported on Monday.
The company, co-founded by Walz and his wife, Gwen, was first registered in Nebraska in 1995.
Despite his company going defunct, Walz continued organizing student tours of China, including at least two trips in 1998 and 2001, according to the outlet.
In 2002, Walz founded another entity with the same name in Minnesota, which he touted during his 2006 run for Congress.
“Walz established a small business called Educational Travel Adventures, Inc. through which he conducts annual educational trips to China for high school students,” reads an archived press packet from Walz’s congressional run, which notes the governor was part of “one of the first government sanctioned groups of American educators to teach in Chinese high schools.”
Reports indicate that Walz stopped leading the student trips to China in 2003.
In 2008, Walz reinstated Educational Travel Adventures in Nebraska – a year after taking office in Minnesota’s 1st Congressional District – after paying $235 worth of back taxes and interest, according to the Washington Free Beacon.
After the Nebraska-based company was once again in good standing, Walz quickly moved to dissolve it.
House Oversight Committee Chairman James Comer (R-Ky.) raised concerns about Walz’s travel company last month, in a letter to FBI Director Christopher Wray.
Comer demanded information from the FBI “about the Chinese entities and officials Governor Walz has engaged and partnered with” as well as any “warnings or advice the FBI may have given to Governor Walz about US political figures being targeted by or recruited for CCP influence operations.”
The Oversight Committee chairman also expressed concern that the Chinese Communist Party may have subsidized some of Educational Travel Adventures’ trips to China.
Vice President Kamala Harris’ running mate has other ties to China as well.
He was a visiting fellow and lectured on international relations at the state-run Macau Polytechnic University until at least 2007.
Rep. Jim Banks (R-Ind.) has asked the Pentagon to investigate the association and inform Congress about whether Walz complied with foreign travel reporting requirements during his numerous trips to China – some of which took place while Walz was a senior-ranking member of the Minnesota National Guard.
Walz also married his wife on the fifth anniversary of the end of the deadly Tiananmen protests, and the couple spent their honeymoon in China.
“He wanted a date he’ll always remember,” Gwen told the Scottsbluff Star-Herald in 1994.
The Harris campaign did not respond to The Post’s request for comment.
