A look at the three largest bills recently circulating in Washington, including the recently passed infrastructure law, and how they’ve gone soft on forced labor. The opportunity presented itself to take the issue more seriously than just another round of studies in each bill mentioned here.
At this week’s Trade Subcommittee hearing at House Ways & Means, talk of changing de minimis rules for goods bought on line; forced labor; and a few diehards bring up TPP.
Congressional-Executive Commission on China heard from four witnesses on November 17 discussing what China’s new tech companies means to the U.S. both in terms of business rivalries abroad, and creeping surveillance by the CCP.
The House Committee on Transportation and Infrastructure expects supply constraints to last into early 2022. Rep. John Garamendi of California highlights “tremendous trade imbalances” as one reason for the bottlenecks, caused by a surge in demand for Asian made goods.
A House Energy and Commerce Committee hearing on clean energy technologies shows division among the parties, with one main agreement: the U.S. will lose out on this market if Washington allows for dependence on Asia for solar, wind and EV battery materials.
The Senate Finance Committee’s confirmation hearing for two trade specialists appointed by Biden shows an obvious rift with the Executive Branch over recent China trade decisions.
An eye-opening exclusive by the WSJ shows just how much time and energy is being spent by American companies and Silicon Valley venture capitalists investing in semiconductor production…in China. The U.S. needs the CHIPS Act passed this year.
Background When inflation threatens America’s stability and economic growth, the Fed raises the Federal Funds Rate (FFR). This reduces domestic demand for borrowed funds, and that reduces the growth of domestic money in circulation and thus the rate of inflation. This approach worked reasonably well from the 1930s when the FFR became an official policy…