Bill Easing High-Tech Joint Ventures OKd : Legislation: Senate passes measure after sponsors agree to remove a requirement that products have made-in-America labels for firms to qualify.
A jobs bill moving through Congress would ease the way for joint ventures by manufacturers of high-technology products such as semiconductors and industrial robots.
But under White House pressure, Senate sponsors agreed to remove a requirement that their products carry a made-in-America label for the companies to qualify for the legislation’s antitrust exemptions.
Before passing the bill Thursday, 96-1, the Senate modified a requirement that such high-tech ventures locate their principal manufacturing facilities in the United States.
The legislation is aimed at reversing a trend in which products such as VCRs, memory chips, industrial robots and liquid-crystal displays are invented in the United States, only to have their markets lost to foreign producers.
“We innovate, we invent, we design, we create, . . . but the Japanese and others do the manufacturing,” said Sen. Patrick Leahy (D-Vt.)
“If we’re smart enough to do it to begin with, . . . once we’ve done it, for heaven’s sakes, let us keep the jobs here,” he said.
However, after Administration officials this week threatened a veto, Leahy and other sponsors agreed also to include plants in foreign countries that provide reciprocal antitrust waivers to U.S. companies.
Administration officials said the made-in-America requirement would discriminate against ventures that decide to locate manufacturing offshore and could provoke similar differential treatment of U.S. firms abroad.
Only Sen. Howard Metzenbaum, D-Ohio, voted against the bill, complaining that it tells businessmen that they can “push” Congress to weaken antitrust laws “under the guise of international competitiveness.”
The legislation would expand a 1984 law that lowered antitrust standards for joint research and development ventures. The standards now apply to industries ranging from computer chips to steelmaking; under the bill, they would also include joint production facilities.
Under the bill, once the combines filed their plans with the Justice Department and Federal Trade Commission, competitors, customers or suppliers could use antitrust suits to recover only the actual losses they suffer as a result of unfair trade practices, rather than the treble damages now allowed.
A similar bill, which would limit foreign participation in an antitrust-exempted joint venture to 30%, is pending in the House.
Rejected as a part of the Senate bill by a 44-54 vote was an effort by conservative Republicans to give Bush line-item veto authority to ax federal projects he opposes as part of the bill.
