NOTICIAS

Washington, D.C. — U.S. Senator Marco Rubio (R-FL) filed 22 amendments to the Senate’s United States Innovation and Competition Act of 2021, the substitute amendment to the rebranded Endless Frontier Act. The bill is the pending business before the Senate.  
 
“The ways in which the United States and the free world address the challenges posed by the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) will define the 21^st century,” Rubio said. “The CCP will stop at nothing to achieve its objective of reshaping the international rules-based system to its benefit. Confronting the CCP’s threats and challenges will take a whole of nation approach, and part of that means strengthening our resiliency at home, ensuring the CCP cannot exploit America’s open society, and to hold the CCP accountable for its malign activities around the world.”
 
A summary of Rubio’s amendments is below.
 
#1802: Protecting American research from China. An amendment to establish a counterintelligence screening process to protect the United States against the CCP’s and other adversaries’ efforts to engage in economic espionage and misappropriate America’s intellectual property, research and development, and innovation efforts. The amendment is co-sponsored by Senators Richard Burr (R-NC), Jim Risch (R-ID), Roy Blunt (R-MO), Tom Cotton (R-AR), John Cornyn (R-TX), Ben Sasse (R-NE), Thom Tillis (R-NC) and Chuck Grassley (R-IA). Rubio previously expressed concern about the lack of guardrails in the Endless Frontier Act.
 
#1778: Targeting Chinese aggression in the South China and East China Seas. An amendment, based on Rubio’s South China Sea and East China Sea Sanctions Act, reintroduced in May 2021, a bipartisan bill to impose sanctions against Chinese individuals and entities that participate in Beijing’s illegitimate activities to aggressively assert its expansive maritime and territorial claims in these disputed regions. 
 
#1754: Banning the TSP Board from steering federal retirement savings to China.  A bipartisan amendment, based on Rubio’s bipartisan, bicameral Taxpayers and Savers Protection (TSP) Act, first introduced in November 2019, and reintroduced May 2021, would prevent the Federal Retirement Thrift Investment Board (FRTIB) from steering federal retirement savings to China. Senators Shaheen (D-NH), Todd Young (R-IN), Rick Scott (R-FL), and Joni Ernst (R-IA) are cosponsors.
 
#1752: Preventing harmful Chinese companies from exploiting U.S. financial markets. An amendment, based on Rubio’s American Financial Markets Integrity and Security Act, reintroduced in March 2021, to prohibit malign Chinese companies — including the parent, subsidiary, affiliate, or a controlling entity — that are listed on the U.S. Department of Commerce Entity List or the U.S. Department of Defense list of Communist Chinese military companies from accessing U.S. capital markets. Senators Cotton (R-AR) and Rick Scott (R-FL) are cosponsors.
 
#1755: Rebuilding our nation’s medical and pharmaceutical manufacturing industry. An amendment, based on Rubio’s Medical Manufacturing, Economic Development, and Sustainability (MMEDS) Act introduced in 2020, to encourage companies currently producing medical and pharmaceutical equipment abroad to relocate to the U.S., including Puerto Rico. The companion version of the MMEDS Act of 2020 was introduced in the House of Representatives by Congresswoman Jenniffer González-Colon.
 
#1940: Protecting American’s genomic data. An amendment based on Rubio’s GENE Act to counter the growing threat caused by the Chinese Communist Party’s efforts to collect American’s genomic data. 
 
#1777: Upgrading the title of the Director of the American Institute. An amendment to change the title of the Director of the American Institute in Taiwan to “Representative.”  Senator Merkley (D-OR) is a cosponsor.
 
#1917: Leveraging Innovation to Strengthen Domestic Pharmaceutical Manufacturing Capabilities: An amendment to leverage the power of the National Institute for Innovation in Manufacturing Biopharmaceuticals (NIMBL) to recommend improvements to government manufacturing partnerships to ensure our facilities have state-of-the-art capabilities.
 
#1766: Prohibiting Chinese maritime militia vessels from participating in international fisheries. An amendment to require the U.S. to identify and report Chinese fishing vessels that conduct paramilitary activities to international fisheries management organizations to prevent them from fishing in international fisheries. 
 
#1750: Protecting Florida fishermen. An amendment to expand the current exemption under the Shark Fin Sales Elimination Act to exempt the commercial harvest and sale of shark fins from species that can currently be harvested commercially under the Magnuson Stevens Act.
 
#1753: Supporting small business manufacturing and innovation. An amendment, based on Rubio’s American Innovation and Manufacturing Act introduced in March 2021, to create a new facility in the Small Business Investment Company (SBIC) program to provide preferential and patient capital to America’s small manufacturers.  Senator Risch (R-ID) is a cosponsor. Senator Coons (D-DE) is a cosponsor.
 
#1767: Increasing transparency in federal contracting. An amendment, based on Rubio’s FACT Act, introduced in March 2021, to require any company with federal contracts to disclose contracts with the Chinese Communist Party and related entities. 
 
#1852: Strengthening American securities laws. An amendment to close a loophole in our securities laws by prohibiting companies that retain an auditor that U.S. regulators cannot oversee or are headquartered in a jurisdiction where U.S. regulators are prohibited from conducting inspections, to list on American exchanges. 
 
#1938: Increasing transparency of NIH grantees: An amendment to require that the National Institutes of Health (NIH) report to Congress annually on the status of its investigation into NIH grantees with ties to foreign governments. 
 
#1939: Reviewing and modernizing NIH’s approach to national security. An amendment to require a top down review of ways to update the NIH’s approach to national security in light of existing threats.
 
#1944: Prohibit NIH funding to Chinese genomic sequencing. An amendment to prohibit any NIH grant funding from going toward genomic sequencing services from Chinese companies with direct ties to the CCP, like BGI. 
 
#1960: Outlining best practices for research institutions. An amendment to direct the NIH to update their Genomic Data Sharing and for the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) to convene a working group to put forward best practices regarding data protection to help academic, public, and private institutions that partake in biomedical research so that the institutions can better protect themselves from national security threats and the risk of intellectual property theft. 
 
#1916: Assessing biosecurity practices. An amendment to require that the Office of Science and Technology Policy complete an assessment of our nation’s biosecurity standards. Senator Markey (D-MA) is a cosponsor.
 
#1941: Regional technology hub biosecurity practices.  An amendment to require that the U.S. Department of Commerce consider the biosecurity practices of applicants to become regional technology hubs.
 
#1751: Introducing Index Provider transparency and accountability. An amendment to introduce transparency and accountability for changes to the composition of indexes that are tracked or benchmarked against by investment funds.
 
#1937: Protecting Americans’ health data. An amendment to increase transparency in laboratory test licensure. This amendment would require Clinical Laboratory Improvement Amendments (CLIA) certificates to specify if a testing entity is tied to the Chinese government. 
 
#1984: Increase certain 13-D disclosure to protect national security. An amendment, based on Rubio’s forthcoming Shareholder National Security Awareness Act of 2021, to require the disclosure by certain investors of any plans or proposals they seek for a company that would, if implemented, materially reduce the operation of a national security asset, including certain assets developed through grants made available by the Endless Frontier Act. Lowers the threshold at which such investors have to disclose from 5 to 2.5 percent of all shares outstanding.