Majority Leader Schumer Floor Remarks On Proposed Biden Administration Guidance To Support Chip Production
Washington, D.C. – Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer (D-NY) today spoke on the Senate floor applauding the Biden Administration’s proposed rules aimed at guarding and supporting American chip production increased as result of the CHIPS and Science Act. Below are Senator Schumer’s remarks, which can also be viewed here:
Today, the Administration released a number of proposed guardrails that will ensure that the Chinese Communist Party does not benefit from our efforts to increase chip production here at home.
We first put these guardrails into the CHIPS and Science bill, which we enacted into law last summer – something we’re very proud of. We put them in because we didn’t want to see companies getting help to expand operations in America and then use other dollars to expand operations in countries like China.
I am glad the Administration is implementing this law with good, strong guidelines – good strong regulations.
Specifically, the Department of Commerce and the Treasury have proposed new restrictions—which the Senate approved through the CHIPS and Science Act—on the amount companies receiving CHIPS money can invest in projects located within “countries of concern,” and that includes Russia and China.
Abusing CHIPs funding to expand projects in China-based markets would be self-defeating and it would endanger our national security. This is what we passed into law in the CHIPS bill, and this proposed rule will implement it in a strong way.
If we’re serious about investing in domestic chip production, the last thing we should be doing is allowing companies to take CHIPS dollars and use them to build facilities in China that benefit the CCP.
I applaud the Administration. I applaud our great Secretary of Commerce for this proposed rule, which I called on them to fast track weeks ago, and I am glad they’re doing it.
I am also glad this week, the Administration is also rolling out proposed guidance for implementing the CHIPS Investment Tax Credit—the ITC.
I fought relentlessly to get this tax credit into CHIPS and Science. We knew without it our new factories here in America that are going to make advanced computer chips would not grow as quickly and as well. And I want to thank Senators Wyden, Brown, Casey, Tester, Kelly, Warner, Cantwell, and many others for joining me in this effort.
As I’ve said many times, President Xi and the Chinese Communist Party are in an all-out campaign to replace the US as the global force of the 21st century. Look no further than the headlines today: President Xi is being wined and dined by Vladimir Putin, leaving no doubt that the CCP is rooting for Putin to prevail in Ukraine.
But it’s not just on military matters that China wants to dominate: for decades the CCP has rapaciously stolen American, European, Japanese technologies and intellectual property. The Chips and Science Act was designed to halt this bleeding and bring semiconductor jobs back to our shores.
But if that’s going to happen, we can’t allow taxpayer dollars to expand projects in China to begin with, so I applaud the Administration for introducing this proposed rule today.
###
