US President Joe Biden arrives to make remarks during a visit to United Performance Metals in Hamilton, Ohio, May 6, 2022.
Elizabeth Franz Reuters
President Joe Biden on Friday urged Congress to swiftly pass the Bipartisan Innovation Act, a multibillion-dollar investment in the U.S. semiconductor industry that Republicans and Democrats say will help isolate the country from future supply chain disruptions in Asia.
Biden speaks at United Performance Metals, a metal producer near Cincinnati. Sensor Sherrod Brown and Rob Portman, a Democrat and Ohio Republican, respectively, joined the president.
Biden applauded the two men for cooperating on the law as part of a broader bipartisan effort to increase local production.
“This is a bipartisan bill,” Biden told factory workers. “Senators Brown and Portman are working hard to do that.”
“Hand over the damn bill and send it to me,” the president continued. “If we do, it will help reduce prices, create jobs and bring production back to America.”
While the Bipartisan Innovation Act is popular with members of both parties, members of the House of Representatives and the Senate are on track to work to correct differences in their two legislative versions. Negotiators for the two houses, including Brown, will hold their first formal meeting on the bill on Thursday, a source familiar with the matter told Reuters.
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Among its many provisions, the Bipartisan Innovation Act includes $ 52 billion in government subsidies to increase semiconductor production in the United States.
Biden said on Friday that the sum would encourage semiconductor companies to build facilities in the United States and help prevent the types of chip shortages that are currently undermining the automotive and electronics industries.
But the president stressed that US lawmakers like the bill because it seeks to boost US technology and innovation and keep pace with China, a key geopolitical rival.
This will help “strengthen our economic and national security,” Biden said. “It is no wonder that the Chinese Communist Party is literally lobbying – paying lobbyists – against the adoption of this bill.
Biden’s trip to Ohio also comes as the president tries to help fellow Democrats in the upcoming 2022 by-elections and prevent Republicans from taking over Congress.
The Republican Party and its candidates have attacked the president and the Democratic Congress for their governance of the U.S. economy, noting that inflation is at its 40th peak, oil prices are still above $ 100 a barrel and the national average price per gallon of regular gasoline is $ 4. 28.
Former President Donald Trump won Ohio in 2016 and 2020, thanks in part to Rust Belt’s disappointment that manufacturers are relocating jobs to countries where labor costs are lower. Voters will decide in November whether Trump-backed Republican author JD Vance or Democratic MP Tim Ryan will replace Portman’s resigning Senate.
In his speech, Biden highlighted the April report on the Ministry of Labor’s employment, which shows that American employers added 428,000 jobs last month.
The April report was the 12th consecutive month with gains of more than 400,000.
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