Sen. Bill Hagerty, Republican of Tennessee, discussed President Biden’s “misguided policy” about removing tariffs on China.
Compromise on details of legislation aimed at boosting state capacity as Congress begins formal talks compete with Chinathe American manufacturer offered their two cents on the matter.
On Thursday, the National Association of Manufacturers sent a letter to congressional leadership as dozens of lawmakers convened “conference committee” to find out how to bridge the gap between two separate bills in both chambers: the Senate’s America Innovation and Competition Act and the House’s America Competition Act.
A welder at the Launcher in Hawthorne, California, U.S., Wednesday, April 20, 2022. (Photographer: Alisha Jucevic/Bloomberg via Getty Images/Getty Images)
The trade association listed ten priorities, starting with the $52 billion Semiconductor Manufacturing Subsidies Included in both pieces of legislation and backing another $45 billion to create the manufacturing safety and resiliency program proposed in the House legislation to help ease supply chain woes.
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The manufacturer also expressed support for the Ocean Shipping Reform Act, which aims to improve the efficiency of U.S. ports, and provisions to prevent counterfeit goods, writing: “Counterfeiting, especially from China, hits manufacturers of all shapes and sizes, But it’s especially disruptive for small businesses. And midsize manufacturers fighting to protect their core products.”
Smaller U.S. ports offer a potential solution to supply chain delays. (Stephen Ghosn/Fox News)
NAM also called on Congress to reauthorize the Miscellaneous Tariff Act to be “fully retroactive to January 1, 2021 and without the broad and arbitrary restrictions on future MTB cycles found in the U.S. Competition Act.” The group said that since the act expires in late 2020 Since then, “manufacturers and other businesses have paid more than $500 million in tariffs, or $1.3 million a day, on goods the U.S. doesn’t have, increasing inflationary and anti-competitive costs.”
Manufacturers also called on lawmakers to reverse Recent changes in tax law This now requires R&D costs to be amortized over several years, rather than immediately deductible as regulations from 1954 to this year allow.
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“This detrimental change in the tax treatment of R&D expenses comes at a time of increasing global competition for research funding,” NAM wrote. “As a result of this tax change, the U.S. is now only one of two developed countries with amortization requirements ( The other is Belgium). Meanwhile, China — which has made no secret of its plans to become a world leader in advanced manufacturing — has increased the super-deduction of its R&D expenses to qualify, in addition to the actual R&D expenses incurred an additional 100% of the R&D expenses.”
On July 28, 2021, U.S. President Joe Biden toured the Mack Trucks Lehigh Valley Operations manufacturing facility with Mack Trucks President Martin Weissburg (R) and UAW Local 677 Store Chairman Kevin Fronheiser (L). (Photo by SAUL LOEB/AFP via Getty Images/Getty Images)
The last point in the letter asks attendees to repeal provisions in House bill that help workers union‘ Organizational Capabilities, saying “manufacturers strongly oppose labor and card inspection provisions contained in U.S. competition law.”
“Implementing ill-considered labor and card checking regulations would upend decades of labor precedent, employ anti-competitive, anti-democratic processes, abolish secret ballots and eliminate proper oversight,” the letter argues.
Tyler Olson of FOX Business and Reuters contributed to this report.
