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