Findings

Congress makes the following findings: (1) The People’s Republic of China poses a significant competitive threat to the United States, accounting, as of the date of the enactment of this Act, for 35 percent of manufacturing volume globally and 29 percent of value-add (as opposed to 12 percent of volume and 16 percent of value-add for the United States). The People's Republic of China continues to gain ground in higher value-add technologies that were traditionally United States strengths. (2) The People's Republic of China’s increased competitiveness can be traced to multiple sources, including coordinated initiatives such as Made in China 2025, which channeled resources toward manufacturing in higher value-add industries. However, the People's Republic of China also, as of the date of the enactment of this Act, leads in research and development in 66 of 74 areas. (3) Taken together, the two trends described in paragraphs (1) and (2) suggest that the People's Republic of China's lead in exports will grow, not shrink, unless serious action is taken by the United States to strengthen its domestic innovation and industrial investment. (4) This is especially true for critical industries of the future, such as next-generation automotives and drones, industrial automation, biotechnology, biomanufacturing, quantum technology, and fusion energy, unless the United States takes steps to support technology development in those markets. Many of those markets are, or could be, vital export opportunities with meaningful economic, national security, and job creation implications for the United States. (5) The United States also faces supply chain vulnerabilities in critical inputs for those industries of the future, including energy, semiconductors and associated technologies like circuit boards, critical minerals, batteries, and other technology components. (6) Capital-intensive industries with long production cycles, such as shipbuilding, chemical processing, and nuclear energy systems, face particularly acute financing challenges during the commercialization phase and the scaling of domestic production. Similarly, drone manufacturing and advanced robotics require coordinated investments in both production capacity and workforce training that private markets struggle to provide. The result is that countries with patient public capital, particularly the People's Republic of China, have captured dominant market positions in sectors where United States innovation initially led. (7) If the United States does not respond, manufacturers in the People's Republic of China will continue gaining global market share in critical technologies at the expense of United States companies and the United States stands to lose critical industries that provide jobs, create production capacity, and serve essential national security goals. (8) As such, Federal policy should focus on ensuring that technologies that are invented and developed in the United States are commercialized and produced in the United States, along with the products and services those technologies create. That will require a whole-of-government effort dedicated to revitalizing the innovation and industrial infrastructure of the United States. (9) While this is a multi-faceted issue that the Export-Import Bank of the United States (in this section referred to as the Bank) cannot solve alone, the Bank can play a much more strategic role than the Bank is playing as of the date of the enactment of this Act by supporting the development phase of future technologies in areas that are underfunded by existing private sector tools. (10) The Bank has an opportunity to create the export markets of tomorrow by helping to fund the development, commercialization, and production of critical technologies in the United States, which will expand the long-term export base of the United States by increasing the overall competitive edge of the United States, and in doing so, support employment in the United States. (11) There exists an opportunity to enhance the Bank’s strategic planning capabilities and deepen the Bank’s focus on catalytic and scale-up financing. Such a repositioning would support technologies with substantial domestic manufacturing footprints in industries that represent not only strategic national security and competitiveness priorities but also significant employment opportunities across manufacturing communities in the United States. (12) Congress has already directed the Bank to undertake efforts in that direction, such as through the Program on China and Transformational Exports established under section 2(l) of the Export-Import Bank Act of 1945 (12 U.S.C. 635(l)), which explicitly requires 20 percent of the Bank’s funds to be invested in certain areas deemed highly strategic, including artificial intelligence, biotechnology, renewable energy, semiconductors, quantum technology, and fusion energy, among other industries. A logical next step would be to expand that program to broaden its aperture and importance within the Bank, while reaffirming the Bank’s mission to support export-related transactions that directly support United States jobs. (13) In 2022, the Bank’s Board of Directors with a unanimous vote launched the Make More in America Initiative to support export-oriented domestic manufacturing projects, extending some of the Bank’s existing demand-driven, export-contingent financing programs to a more domestic focus to help revitalize United States manufacturing, directly support United States jobs, improve the resiliency of domestic supply chains, and level the playing field for United States companies competing in overseas markets. (14) There is an opportunity for the Bank to play a convening role in developing a cohesive investment roadmap for the Bank’s own mandate, informed by input from across the Federal Government, including the industrial investment efforts of other Federal agencies, such as the Department of Commerce, the Department of Energy, the Department of Defense, the Department of Agriculture, the Department of Labor, the Department of Health and Human Services, the United States International Development Finance Corporation, and the Small Business Administration.