Senator Mark Kelly (D-AZ) has introduced a bill with other Senate Democrats seeking to boost domestic manufacturing, arguing that President Donald Trump has not fulfilled his own promise to do so.
What the Bill Does
Specifically, Sen. Kelly's Make More in America Act expands the Export-Import Bank's (EXIM) Make More in America Initiative (MMIA), launched in 2022, to work with private-sector partners to grow critical industries such as semiconductors, artificial intelligence (AI), critical minerals and materials, biotech, and shipbuilding.
Additionally, the MMIA would be codified into law with a 30% EXIM portfolio goal across the supported industries and would provide financial support for domestic manufacturing projects.
Finally, the bill prohibits the use of funds for stock buybacks or debt repayment, and the President, Vice President, members of Congress, and their immediate families cannot receive these funds.
What Kelly is Saying
"Trump's 'golden age of American manufacturing' is just another broken promise. Instead, folks are faced with skyrocketing costs without being able to get good-paying jobs," said Sen. Kelly in a press release. "We cannot keep relying on foreign supply chains that leave us vulnerable. It's bad for our economy and our national security. This bill will help us continue to build more things here at home and create good-paying jobs while reducing our dependency on foreign adversaries."
Gallego's Similar Bill
Last week, Senator Ruben Gallego (D-AZ), introduced a very similar bill, the China Subsidy Response and Export Competitiveness Act.
Sen. Gallego's bill gives EXIM greater flexibility to address Chinese practices that undercut American competition, adds medical manufacturing to the list of transformational exports to reduce reliance on foreign-made drugs, and folds the production of printed circuit boards into the semiconductor transformational export area, further reducing reliance on Chinese-made tech.
Where the bills differ is that Kelly's Make More in America Act uses the MMIA program as the primary vehicle for carrying out its goals, while Gallego's bill works through the China and Transformational Exports Program (CTEP), and was introduced in a bipartisan manner with Senator Pete Ricketts (R-NE).
