Buy and Hire American

The political slogan “Buy American and Hire American” got President Trump into the White House and gave the Republicans control of Congress. Sipping my morning coffee in Prescott, Arizona, reading, listening and watching the partisan political clashes taking place in Washington D.C., reminded me of the same battles when President Bill Clinton was investigated and impeached during his presidency. At the time, instead of focusing on how to decapitate al Qaeda and capture Osama bin Laden, the self-serving career politicians in Washington put party first instead of country. They are now doing the same rather than focusing on how to put America First.

A good easy and simple place to start is a bipartisan law from a time when NAFTA didn’t exist and “twitter” meant the chirping of birds. The 1980 Bayh-Dole Act. It established a government-wide policy that gave patent rights to the university or non-profit receiving the research grant. Section 204 of the law says no recipient of federal research monies – and that would be all or most research at some universities – may sell or license an invention to anyone “unless such person agrees that any products embodying the subject invention or produced through the use of the subject invention will be manufactured substantially in the United States.”

This requirement may be waived by the federal government only upon a showing there were “reasonable but unsuccessful efforts” to find American manufacturers who could make the product and make a profit on it. “Yet this provision of the law has been all but forgotten” wrote Justin Hughes, a former Commerce Department adviser who teaches international trade and intellectual property at Loyola Law School, in a well-researched July 5th USA TODAY editorial opinion.

The federal government has spent tens of billions of taxpayer dollars supporting scientific and technological research – for example more than $131 billion in 2015 alone. There is no question that the technology transfer triggered by this new system has been a boon to the U.S. economy. According to one survey, university-licensed products in the past 20 years have generated up to 4 million jobs and contributed somewhere up to $600 billion to gross domestic product.

Bayh-Dole was in part a reaction to concerns over industrial decline. “Japan was busy snuffing out Pittsburgh’s steel mills, driving Detroit off the road, and beginning its assault on Silicon Valley,” The Economist wrote at the time. Today, China is doing the same on all American roads and towns I wrote in my 2009 book Feasting Dragon, Starving Eagle.

I am sure that a system wide audit will show that many universities have largely failed to include this “make it in America” provision in their license agreements with private industry. This gives the federal government “march in rights.” There is no ambiguity: You either are meeting the make-it-in-America requirement, you obtained a waiver, or the government can “march in” and license a different company. Yet over the decades the march-in has NEVER been used. Why not?

Putting America first also means Democrats, Republicans and Independents in Congress must put aside the partisan political differences and grudges and work together to do what’s best for America – all Americans! Give Americans more incentives to buy and hire American by enforcing the laws requiring them to do so.