EXCLUSIVE – The Senate is considering a bipartisan bill that would forbid China and other adversaries from producing any technologies that were sponsored by American tax dollars.
The Invent Here, Make Here Act of 2023, which will mandate all federal agencies that commercialise taxpayer-funded research to invent new goods to licence only to American manufacturers, will be introduced on Tuesday by Sens. Tammy Baldwin, D-Wis., and JD Vance, R-Ohio.
The senators claim that even though current legislation mandates that ideas supported by federal funds be produced domestically, this provision is frequently disregarded, allowing cutting-edge, taxpayer-funded technologies to be licenced to foreign firms and produced in places like China.
“American companies and workers are the ones who should be reaping the benefits when taxpayer dollars are used to fund innovation,” stated Baldwin.
This “flawed” approach came to light in late 2022 when an NPR investigation discovered that the Department of Energy had authorised China to receive a production licence for vanadium redox flow batteries, a ground-breaking invention by researchers working in a federally financed lab.
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Senator Tammy Baldwin (Anna Moneymaker/Getty Images)
“The Invent Here, Make Here Act assures that cutting-edge American innovation is also American-produced, bolstering our manufacturing sector and our domestic supply chains and supporting American jobs,” Baldwin said. “We are building on the progress we’ve made to make more products in the USA.
Sen. JD Vance (AP Photo/Tom E. Puskar, File)
Sens. Baldwin and Rob Portman, R-Ohio, inserted a proposal to tighten the waiver procedure for inventions emerging from federal research at the Department of Homeland Security in the 2023 National Defence Authorization Act (NDAA).
However, the new regulations will broaden the definition to cover all programmes supported by all government agencies. Additionally, exceptions for licence applications from businesses planning to manufacture in a “country of concern”—currently China, Russia, North Korea, and Iran—will be completely prohibited by the proposed legislation.
Taxpayer-funded innovations ought to help American industry and workers, not our enemies abroad. We’ve allowed American innovations to be offshored to countries like China and Russia for far too long; this law would end those abuses, according to Vance.”It makes sense that goods created with American taxpayer money should be produced there by Americans,” one person said.
On March 28, 2023, in Durham, North Carolina, President Joe Biden delivers a speech during a visit to Wolfspeed, a semiconductor manufacturer. (Getty Images/Melissa Sue Gerrits)
In order to promote the commercialization of federal research by domestic manufacturers, the bill will also mandate that the National Institute of Standards and Technology, a division of the Department of Commerce and one of the country’s oldest physical science laboratories, enhance coordination with other federal agencies.
The Coalition for a Prosperous America’s CEO, Michael Stumo, hailed the legislation and said, “Our government has been subsidising the manufacturing of essential technologies in China and other nations for far too long. Taxpayer funds should not be used to support research that will ultimately be produced in adversarial nations.
He remarked, “We commend Senators Baldwin and Vance for bringing this long overdue legislation.”
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