No Conferees Named Yet for China Package, but Talks Have Momentum, Members Say
Indiana Republican Sen. Todd Young, who co-led the Endless Frontier bill with Majority Leader Sen. Chuck Schumer of New York, said he hopes to learn more soon about when conferees might be named to negotiate a compromise between the House and the Senate approaches to a China package. "I'm supposed to huddle up with Sen. Schumer today. I need to approach him. I have not had an opportunity to personally chat with him about the state of things," Young said in a brief hallway interview Nov. 30.
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The Senate China package, which was renamed from the Endless Frontier Act, included trade measures, such as renewing the Miscellaneous Tariff Bill, but is largely known for its funding of domestic semiconductor manufacturing.
The House did not pass semiconductor funding in the two bills it has advanced on China; the EAGLE Act, from the House Foreign Relations Committee, has not had a vote on the floor of the House yet, but is part of what is being discussed between the two chambers. It includes a Uyghur Forced Labor Prevention title, which would create a rebuttable presumption that goods made with Xinjiang content or made by Uyghur or other Muslim minority workers in other parts of China were made with forced labor, and therefore cannot be imported.
House Majority Leader Steny Hoyer, of Maryland, said, on a Nov. 30 call with reporters, that the EAGLE Act and the Science and Technology bills "are very important," just as the Senate's 2,025-page China package is. He praised the Senate's efforts to provide resources to make chips in the U.S. "We're going to try to work out differences" between the House and Senate approaches, he said. "That is what's now occurring."
Young, too, said that even though conferees have not yet been named, "we continue to enjoy forward momentum because of conversations between the Senate and the House on a path forward. That's progress." When asked if the Uyghur Forced Labor Prevention Act could be part of the package in the end, Young replied, "I hope so, but I'm always open to principled compromise, and if it can't be passed in conjunction with this compromise package, then maybe we'll find another vehicle."