Speaker 1: US Congress preparing to pass legislation revamping US policy towards
Speaker 1: Taiwan and restricting government use of Chinese semiconductors. This is
Speaker 1: a major let's drill into this a bit, joining US
Speaker 1: Live as a Bloomberg Congressional corresponded Daniel Flatley, Uh, Dan,
Speaker 1: thanks so much for doing this. So this does a
Speaker 1: number of things because it's tied to the Pentagon, the
Speaker 1: defense budget. So where does it stand now in the
Speaker 1: House and other hopes earlier that it would be passed today? Sure,
Speaker 1: so this is part of the National Defense Authorization accident
Speaker 1: of the must pass defense bill that Congress takes up
Speaker 1: pretty much at the end of every year, um, and
Speaker 1: it's almost a guaranteed, uh thing that that they will
Speaker 1: pass it. I think it's been sixty years or sixty
Speaker 1: one years since they haven't done that. But the main
Speaker 1: thing here is that this will provide or authorize up
Speaker 1: to ten billion dollars over five years in arms sales
Speaker 1: to Taiwan. Obviously, the intent there is to help the
Speaker 1: island protect itself against the potential invasion by mainland China.
Speaker 1: So that's one of the main things. And then you
Speaker 1: have also, as you mentioned, the provisions related to restrictions
Speaker 1: on semiconductors used by US companies. I think this is
Speaker 1: mainly aimed at military contractors or federal contractors who are
Speaker 1: working with the government and maybe procuring chips for fighter
Speaker 1: jets or other kinds of military tech. But this is
Speaker 1: something that sort of signals the interest on the part
Speaker 1: of the Congress and the Biden administration in tackling this
Speaker 1: chips issue. So let's go through the kind of labyrinth
Speaker 1: of the politics within the Congress and the President. On
Speaker 1: on one hand, you have President Biden trying to smooth
Speaker 1: things out, meeting with jj imping. On the other hand,
Speaker 1: looks like Congress is saying, hey, let's go, let's go
Speaker 1: heads up on this. Yeah. I think this is sort
Speaker 1: of the classic good cop bad cop routine. Um, you
Speaker 1: have the meeting between President Joe Biden and Resident Jiji
Speaker 1: and Ping of China UH in recent weeks, which really
Speaker 1: was sort of a pressure release valve for the U. S.
Speaker 1: China relationship, which it had really experienced a lot of
Speaker 1: ratcheting up in tensions over the preceding a few months,
Speaker 1: especially with the visit by House Speaker Nancy Pelosi to Taiwan.
Speaker 1: So you certainly have that dynamic at play, but you
Speaker 1: also have a continued interest on the part of Congress
Speaker 1: and also parts of the administration as well, in really
Speaker 1: tackling the issue with competition with China, and so I
Speaker 1: don't think you'll see much slowing down as as far
Speaker 1: as that aspect of it goes. If anything, there may
Speaker 1: be some more confrontation when the Republicans take over the
Speaker 1: House of Representatives next year, but you will see sort
Speaker 1: of a balance balancing act I think to a certain
Speaker 1: extent between the administration and Congress, where they are trying
Speaker 1: to ratchet up the confrontation or the competition in certain areas,
Speaker 1: but also kind of keep the lines of communication open
Speaker 1: and kind of keep things within some some bounds of reason. Dan,
Speaker 1: I want to just there for just a second here, Um,
Speaker 1: a demonstration today or protests or whatever you want to
Speaker 1: call it, Washington, d C. Regarding a firmer gun control. Um,
Speaker 1: people talk about that often on it does not look
Speaker 1: like anything is going to get done now in this
Speaker 1: session of Congress, means it may not be done under
Speaker 1: Republican control in the House as well. Yeah, I think
Speaker 1: that's probably right. Um. For a variety of reasons. This
Speaker 1: has emerged as one of the stickiest issues that any
Speaker 1: congress or any presidential administration is going to have to
Speaker 1: grapple with. Uh. There hasn't really been any major legislation
Speaker 1: since the new Town, Connecticut incident and several years ago,
Speaker 1: with the exception of some some adjustments this summer, and
Speaker 1: I think that that will largely continue to be the case,
Speaker 1: simply be because the polars sation in the country is
Speaker 1: such that any movement on this to the left or
Speaker 1: to the right is sort of viewed as as a
Speaker 1: betrayal by by voters on those uh, you know, on
Speaker 1: either side of the issue. So I think that that's
Speaker 1: going to continue to be the case. But we'll see
Speaker 1: what happens in the new session. Yeah, nothing happening in
Speaker 1: this session, all right, Dan, thank you very much. That
Speaker 1: is Bloombers Daniel Flatley, Congressional reporter,