Wisconsin’s Democratic Senator has announced a bill she crafted with Vice President-Elect J.D. Vance.
In her statement, Senator Tammy Baldwin revealed that the Invent Here, Make Here Act of 2023 has passed the Senate unanimously.
The measure aims to ensure taxpayer-funded inventions are not manufactured in adversarial countries like China but rather in the United States.
While current law requires federally funded inventions to be manufactured in the United States, the requirement is often waived, allowing cutting-edge, taxpayer-funded technologies to be licensed to foreign companies and manufactured in countries like China.
In a noteworthy example of the flawed process, an investigative report in August 2022 found that a breakthrough battery technology invented in a federal lab had been licensed to a Chinese company and was being manufactured in China.
Sen. Baldwin said of the news, “Our bipartisan bill makes sure American businesses and workers are first in line to produce these taxpayer-funded inventions, keeping our country safe, creating jobs, and supporting our local economies.”
