Democrats in the U.S. Senate are drafting a bill designed to blunt China’s technological advantage and vault the U.S. into leadership in high-tech manufacturing and other industries that will define the global economy in coming decades.
Senate committees are working on aspects of the legislation and could have a bill ready to introduce next month, Congressional officials disclosed to The Washington Post.
The new bill is based on the “Endless Frontier Act” that Democrats introduced last year.
The measure proposed $10 billion to establish regional tech hubs to incubate new businesses, particularly in manufacturing. The plan also would have redefined the “National Science Foundation” as the “National Science and Technology Foundation” and given it $20 million annually for five years to fund basic research, product development and testing, and small manufacturing pilot projects.
The new, broader bill also would expand the U.S. semiconductor industry and speed the spread of 5G wireless technology nationwide, among other advances, Senate Majority Leader Charles Schumer said in a statement quoted by The Washington Post.
The legislation also could address issues ranging from China’s theft of U.S. intellectual property and its currency manipulations to the Asian nation’s chokehold on the world’s supply of crucial rare earth minerals, insiders told The Post.
“We need to get a bill like this to the president’s desk quickly to protect America’s long-term economic and national security,” Schumer commented in February.
“This is literally the highest potential for bipartisanship of almost any policies you can think of. I think it makes a lot of sense,” Douglas Holtz-Eakin, president of the American Action Forum and a former director of the Congressional Budget Office, commented to the WP.
TREND FORECAST: Too little too late. As we have detailed over the decades, after the United States and Europe brought China into the World Trade Organization in 2001 and gave the Chinese nation all of what they needed and never had in heavy industry to hi-tech, Beijing 2021 no longer relies on the West for advancements in innovation.
The money earmarked by the United States is chump change in the grand scheme of research and development and, as with most of these projects, nothing of substance will be achieved and the taxpayer money will be shoveled into the pockets of Washington’s revolving door club.
As we have forecast: The 20th century was the American century. The 21st will be China’s.
