WASHINGTON — The Senate on Wednesday passed a staggering $280 billion bill aimed at building America’s manufacturing and technological superiority to compete with China, in an overwhelming bipartisan vote. It embraced the most significant government intervention in industrial policy in decades.
The law reflects a remarkable and rare consensus in a polarized parliament in favor of building a long-term strategy to deal with the growing geopolitical competition with Beijing. The plan centers on investing federal funds in cutting-edge technology and innovation to strengthen the nation’s industrial, technological, and military capabilities.
The bill passed 64-33, with 17 Republicans voting in favor. Bipartisan support means that commercial and military competition with Beijing, and the promise of thousands of new American jobs, have dramatically altered long-standing party legitimacy and once avoided government intervention in markets. It shows that it produced a consensus between the Republicans who were in the shower and the Democrats who were resisting taking a shower. Federal large enterprise.
“No government, not even a powerful country like ours, can afford to sit on the sidelines,” said New York Democrat and Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer, who spearheaded the bill. MP said in an interview. “I think it’s a big shift.”
The bill will next go to the House of Representatives and is expected to pass with Republican support. President Biden, who has backed the package for more than a year, could sign the bill into law as early as this week.
The bill, a blend of economic and national security policies, provides $52 billion in subsidies and additional tax credits to companies that make chips in the United States. It will also add her $200 billion to scientific research, especially artificial intelligence, robotics, quantum computing and various other technologies.
The bill seeks to pour $10 billion into the Department of Commerce, which will distribute chip subsidies to companies that apply and create 20 “Regional Technology Hubs” across the country. The brainchild of Indiana Republican Senator Todd Young and Schumer, the hub aims to bring together research universities and private industry to create a Silicon Valley-like innovation center in a region hollowed out by globalization.
The bill would pour billions of dollars into the Department of Energy and the National Science Foundation to advance both basic research and advanced semiconductor manufacturing research and development, and workforce development programs, creating a labor pipeline for many startups. I am trying to build a industry.
This effort marks a move into industrial policy that is almost unprecedented in recent American history, and on how the Biden administration and Congress implement and supervise key initiatives, including hundreds of billions of dollars in taxpayers. It poses a myriad of questions.
Read more about relations between Asia and the United States
Passing the bill, Schumer said, was the culmination of years of work that began in 2019 when he pitched the idea to Young in the Senate gymnasium.Mr. Young Fellow Chinese hawkPreviously, he worked with the Democratic Party on foreign policy.
In the end, Senate support was made possible only by a clash of unlikely factors: a pandemic that exposed the cost of a global semiconductor shortage, intense lobbying from the chip industry, and his colleagues with the party. Young’s tenacity to encourage a break, orthodox and supportive of the bill, Schumer was promoted to the top position in the Senate.
Many senators, including Republicans, are critical to strengthening US semiconductor manufacturing capabilities as the US puts advanced chips at risk to foreign countries, especially Taiwan, which is becoming increasingly vulnerable. viewed as a step.
Schuma said it wasn’t too difficult to collect votes from Democrats who are less likely to dislike government spending. But he also nodded to support from Republicans, including minority leader Mitch McConnell, a Kentucky senator.
The law known by the ever-changing carousel of the lofty name in Washington went against a simple definition. Over 1,000 pages long, it simultaneously summarizes R & D bills, short-term and long-term employment bills, manufacturing bills, and semiconductor bills.
The first version written by Schumer and Young was known as the Endless Frontier Method. [1945LandmarkReport[1945年のランドマークレポート At the request of President Franklin D. Roosevelt, I asked how the federal government would promote scientific progress and human resources.
Mr. Roosevelt wrote at the time: Employment and a more fulfilling and fruitful life. “
The enactment of this law is seen as an important step to boost US semiconductor capacity at a time when the share of US modern manufacturing capacity plummeted to 12%. This makes the country increasingly dependent on foreign countries amid chip shortages that have impacted global supply chains.
Subsidies to chip companies are expected to create tens of thousands of jobs in the short term, prompting manufacturers to build new factories or expand existing ones in Ohio, Texas, Arizona, Idaho and New York. I promised. Chip companies won’t receive federal money anytime soon, but some have said they will make business decisions in the coming weeks based on whether they have received assurances that the money will come soon. I got
The bill also aims to create R&D and manufacturing jobs in the long term. This includes through workforce development grants and other programs aimed at building a pipeline of workers, concentrating in once-booming industrial hubs hollowed out by corporate offshoring. Includes provisions.
Young explained in an interview that the law is an effort to provide jobs in cutting-edge fields for American workers hurt by globalization, and that it will also help reduce the nation’s dependence on China.
“These technologies are key to our national security,” Young said. “We are actually giving ordinary Americans the opportunity to play a meaningful role not only in supporting their families, but in harnessing our creativity, talents and hard work. to win.”
The bill is expected to pave the way for factories to be built across the country, creating an estimated tens of thousands of jobs along the way.
Semiconductor makers are often brazenly lobbiing hard to get subsidies, and if Congress doesn’t immediately agree to shower them with federal money to stay in the United States, foreign countries such as Germany and Singapore will be forced to do so. threatened to invest resources in building a factory in state.
The law also allows chip manufacturers receiving federal funding and tax subsidies provided by law to curtail advanced chip manufacturing in countries that present national security concerns, including China and Russia. It stipulates that the country cannot expand existing factories or build new ones. ..
The Commerce Department will withdraw the funds provided by the bill if businesses do not comply with these restrictions, senators said.
Most senators, especially those representing states with chip companies eyeing them, saw these efforts as reasons to quickly pass the bill. But they particularly enraged Vermont independent Senator Bernie Sanders.
“To make more money, these companies took government money and used it to send high-paying jobs out of the country,” Sanders said. “Now, in return for their bad behavior, these same companies will receive hefty subsidies from taxpayers to undo the damage they’ve done.”
Several times in the bill’s lifetime it seemed destined to collapse or be significantly slimmed down. In its narrower form, it could have avoided long-term strategic policy provisions, leaving only the most urgent commercial and political measure: $52 billion in subsidies to chip companies.
The bill appears to be in jeopardy after McConnell announced late last month that he would not allow the bill to proceed if Senate Democrats continue to push for social and tax reform central to Biden’s domestic agenda. Looked.
In a private conversation, Young asked McConnell to reconsider.
McConnell “looked at the short-term value proposition and, frankly, recognized the importance of funding the tip bill,” Young recalled.
Still, with McConnell’s position unclear and other Republicans refusing to endorse the bill, Schumer moved last week to force a speedy vote on semiconductor subsidies, prompting the broader bill to take effect. leaving the possibility of exclusion.
With this, Young sought to secure the support of enough Republican supporters — at least 15, according to Schumer — at the last minute to revive critical investments in manufacturing and technology. Young and his supporters spent days on the phone trying to persuade Republicans, highlighting the bill’s national security significance and the opportunities it would bring to the state.
At Tuesday’s private party lunch, Schumer made his own pitch to the members.
“This bill will have the biggest and broadest impact on America ever,” Schumer told Democratic senators. “Thanks to your vote, many of your grandchildren will get high-paying jobs.”