The House of Representatives today passed Rep. Greg Stanton’s bipartisan bill to protect American entrepreneurs and safeguard against foreign governments from using state-sponsored enterprises to wrongfully influence U.S. markets, steal intellectual property, and suppress competition.
“Time and again, this Congress has voted to invest in the American worker, to invest in American businesses, and to invest in America’s high-tech manufacturing,” Stanton said, speaking from the House floor ahead of a final vote. “Our bill will ensure those investments are not undermined.”
Video of Stanton’s remarks is available HERE.
Stanton introduced the bill last year alongside Reps. Scott Fitzgerald of Wisconsin, Barry Loudermilk of Georgia, and Jackie Speier of California. It would require merging companies operating in the United States to disclose information about any financial support or subsidies provided by a foreign government to U.S. antitrust regulators, the Federal Trade Commission, and the Department of Justice Antitrust Division.
Background
There was more than $4.9 trillion of foreign direct investment in the U.S. at the end of 2021, more than double what it was two decades ago. While foreign investment capital can drive job creation and innovation, antitrust regulators must be able to recognize when heavily subsidized, government-owned companies harm competition, particularly when China uses state-owned enterprises to acquire American emerging technologies and intellectual property in areas in which it seeks to surpass and suppress U.S. companies.
The Chinese government dedicates 3 percent of its GDP annually to corporate subsidies, enabling companies to price goods below market and still remain in business, often through state-owned enterprises (SOEs). These government subsidies are then used to acquire U.S. assets, including those with strategic and emerging technologies that are seen as priorities by the Chinese government.
The U.S.-China Economic and Security Review Commission, a bipartisan panel of experts chartered by Congress, recommended that Congress require companies to disclose to the antitrust agencies (the Federal Trade Commission and the Antitrust Division of the Department of Justice), as part of pre-merger notification, information about any financial support or subsidies provided by a foreign government.
SOEs and companies that receive foreign subsidies may take anticompetitive actions such as predatory pricing because they do not need to generate a profit, potentially distorting markets even more than their private counterparts. “U.S. workers and companies, no matter how innovative and efficient, struggle to compete when the Chinese government so decisively tilts the playing field in favor of Chinese companies. . . and when U.S. companies are granted access to the Chinese market, it is at the cost of transferring valuable intellectual property to their Chinese counterparts,” the Commission wrote. “Failure to appreciate the gravity of this challenge and defend U.S. competitiveness would be dire. Because these emerging technologies are the drivers of future growth and the building blocks of future innovation, a loss of leadership today risks setting back U.S. economic and technological progress for decades.”