The Biden administration is enlisting former Trump officials on Monday to convince Congress to pass legislation bolstering America’s semiconductor industry.
Why it matters: Officials believe the bill will make American manufacturing more competitive with China. By coordinating with Trump officials, the Biden team is trying to depoliticize and add urgency to the legislation.
- The bill has stalled because of differences between the House and the Senate on how much — and where — to spend billions of dollars to strengthen America's supply lines.
Driving the news: Commerce Secretary Gina Raimondo is hosting H.R. McMaster, President Trump’s former national security adviser; Matthew Pottinger, another Trump NSC official; Eric Schmidt, the former CEO of Google; and members of Congress, including Sen. Todd Young (R-Ind.), on Monday for a virtual conversation about semiconductor manufacturing.
- “This is clearly a national security issue, so we’ll be bringing together experts from both sides of the aisle, including Trump supporters,” Raimondo told Axios. “Every day that we wait is a day that we fall behind.”
- “Best-case scenario is we get this done in the next couple of months,” she said. “The worst-case scenario is nothing happens.”
The backstory: Last week, Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer (D-N.Y.) took a procedural step to resolve differences between the House- and Senate-passed versions....
- Both bills include some $52 billion to incentivize companies to build semiconductor manufacturing facilities in the U.S.
- The Senate bill, which received 18 Republican votes, totaled $250 billion, and included money for other industries on the front lines of the U.S-China rivalry. In addition, it had funding to overhaul the National Science Foundation.
- The House