The House today passed a sprawling bill with a sprawling name—the America Creating Opportunities for Manufacturing, Pre-Eminence in Technology and Economic Strength Act of 2022, “America Competes Act” for short—that addresses a vast array of concerns about US competitiveness.
The House’s 222-210 vote for that bill follows a 68-32 Senate vote last summer for a somewhat narrower competitiveness bill, the United States Innovation and Competition Act of 2021, and sets up a negotiating process to merge the two bills.
The massive America Competes Act—a “fact sheet” about it contains 20 pages, a section-by-section summary runs 109, and its full text goes on for 2,912 pages—leads off with provisions to address the ongoing chip shortage that match those in the Senate bill.
That part of the House bill, building on separate legislation introduced in 2020, would plow $52 billion into supporting domestic semiconductor chip research, development, and production. Some of that is already happening: In January, Intel announced plans to build a $20 billion chip factory in Ohio, although it said then that this federal funding would speed the Ohio project’s expansion.
The Competes Act would provide another $45 billion to support domestic manufacturing and strengthen supply-chain links—money absent from the Senate bill—and would channel further funding for research at such agencies as the Department of Energy, the National Institute for Standards and Technology, and the National Science Foundation
The House bill would counter Chinese activity at home and abroad, subjecting Chinese companies to added scrutiny in the US (firms like Huawei and DJI are already getting frozen out under existing laws) and supporting development initiatives overseas to provide alternatives to China’s “Belt and Road” initiative.
Immigration policy would get its own makeover under clauses establishing a startup visa and lifting visa caps on graduates with doctoral degrees in science, technology, engineering, or mathematics.
Even online shopping would look different, as the House bill folds in an earlier “Shop Safe” bill that would hold sites liable for counterfeit goods sold by resellers on their platforms.
Many of the non-chip provisions are absent from the Senate bill (which itself spans 2,376 pages), and some have already drawn criticism from outside groups.
The Electronic Frontier Foundation, for example, warned in September that the counterfeit-retail provision would require intrusive identify-verification measures and automated screening of product listings that the tech-policy nonprofit’s attorneys Cara Gagliano and Katharine Trendacosta wrote “would make it incredibly difficult for small businesses and individuals to sell anything online.”
And this week, the American Action Forum called the supply-chain funding a waste of money; Douglas Holtz-Eakin, president of that D.C. think tank, wrote that it would be “an open invitation to get taxpayer dollars to move something out of China that was going to be moved anyway.”
In a statement released Friday, Commerce Secretary Gina Raimondo highlighted the chip-manufacturing measures while telling the House and Senate not to get distracted by their disagreements: “I’m urging Congress to move quickly to begin negotiations and work out the differences between the bills, focus on areas of common agreement, and get a final version to President Biden’s desk for his signature.”
