As war continues in the aftermath of Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, interest by policymakers and the media has spiked in the America COMPETES Act, legislation that would purportedly help the U.S. better compete with powers such as Russia and China. My Competitive Enterprise Institute (CEI) colleagues and I have mostly panned that bill, which passed the Democrat-controlled House on a largely party-line vote about two weeks before the Russian invasion. Iain Murray, Wayne Crews and others at CEI have pointed out that many of the bill’s provisions will not achieve its stated goal of increasing American competitiveness but would instead undermine that goal.
However, during the House floor debate before the bill’s passage, one provision added to the bill actually would increase U.S. competitiveness by cutting red tape that hobbles exports from a growing American industry. Ironically, even though this provision has widespread bipartisan support, it became the punchline for Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-KY) in describing all that was supposedly bad in the bill.
– Read the entire article at Forbes.
