Sen. Mitt Romney (R-UT) and Sen. Bob Menendez (D-NJ) have been offering various ideas on how the US can best compete with China, and they recently co-sponsored an amendment to a giant China-related bill Congress is working on that calls for think tanks to help with a US-China strategy.
Here is more on the amendment from a Romney press release:
U.S. Grand Strategy with Respect to China. Requires the President to develop and submit to Congress a grand strategy to address the new era of geostrategic and geoeconomic competition with China. Convenes an advisory board of outside experts from the private sector, academia, and think tanks to review the current strategy, including challenging its assumptions and approach, and make recommendations to the President for the strategy.
Romney has embraced think tanks for years, and when he ran for president in 2012, he selected advisors from think tanks like the Heritage Foundation, Center for Strategic and International Studies (CSIS), American Enterprise Institute (AEI), Brookings Institution, Council on Foreign Relations (CFR), and Carnegie Endowment for International Peace.
During that time, Romney suggested that he supports the US government funding think tanks.
The Week recently said that Romney has emerged as a "one-man think tank," citing all the different policy ideas he has been proposing.