The Senate Commerce Committee will likely mark up on May 16 the Invent Here, Make Here Act of 2023, a bill designed to limit the ability of agencies to allow federally funded inventions to be manufactured outside of the United States. In a new insight, Director of Technology and Innovation Policy Jeffrey Westling explains how the bill would work and considers its potential harms to the innovation and deployment of new technologies.

Key points:

• Invent Here, Make Here Act would expand strict waiver requirements currently in place for federally funded inventions licensed by the Department of Homeland Security to all federal agencies and would prohibit waivers for license applications that intend to manufacture in a “country of concern.”
• The bill may impose unnecessary barriers to the deployment of new technologies because it adds a strict definition of “manufactured substantially in the United States” and allows the secretary of the Department of Commerce to prohibit licensees from manufacturing in countries it determines to be a risk to national security.
• Moreover, the existing waiver requirements are already fairly restrictive, so it is unclear why additional restrictions are necessary.

Read the analysis