WASHINGTON – Elaine Chao is not exactly the kind of Cabinet pick you would expect from outsider Donald Trump.

The Bush administration retread has deep ties to the anti-coal Bloomberg Foundation, is married to big-time Trans-Pacific Partnership supporter and Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell and has deep business and political links to China.

And that’s just the beginning of her resume.

As WND reported, when President George W. Bush nominated her to be his labor secretary, Chinese dissidents like Hongda “Harry” Wu were shocked.

“I worry about Elaine Chao’s business relationship with communist China,” he said in 2001. “This woman has a significant shipping business through her father.”

James S.C. Chao is the founder of New York-based Foremost Maritime Corp., which ships goods to China and also buys ships from the China State Shipbuilding Corporation. Chao’s ties to former Chinese President Jiang Zemin run deep. The two were classmates at Jiao Tong University in Shanghai and have kept in touch ever since.

In 1994, for instance, James Chao, along with Elaine Chao and her husband, GOP Sen. Mitch McConnell, visited mainland China and met with Jiang. James Chao, along with his daughter, returned to China the next year to take an honorary professorship and presidency at the Shanghai Maritime College. When Jiang visited the White House in 1997, he met privately for about 20 minutes with Elaine Chao, along with McConnell, before an elaborate state dinner for Jiang hosted by President Clinton. The Kentucky senator met again with Jiang the next morning.

“He was trying to emphasize that the U.S. and China are natural friends, and their futures are intertwined, and that they should try to understand each other,” Elaine Chao said in describing her talk with Jiang.

She has lobbied for normalized trade with China and has downplayed concerns about China’s growing military threat, espionage campaigns in the U.S. and human rights abuses.