Senator JD Vance (R-OH) confronted Secretary of Commerce Gina Raimondo on diversity mandates in the workforce during a Senate Committee on Commerce on Wednesday.
Mandating that companies submit diversity quotas is racist and un-American.
It also harms the noble goal of building more computer chips right here at home. https://t.co/qhvdTZFJru
— J.D. Vance (@JDVance1) October 4, 2023
The “CHIPS and Science Implementation and Oversight” hearing focused on the “implementation and oversight of the CHIPS and Science Act by the Department of Commerce and the National Science Foundation” one year after the bill was signed into law.
During her testimony, Raimondo touted diversity as part of the bill’s implementation, saying, “As CHIPS for America invests across the supply chain…the Department is working with like-minded partners to strengthen and diversify the global semiconductor supply chain.”
Vance, during his questioning, said he was “struggling to make sense of the fact that we apparently have a shortage of skilled labor to manufacture chips on the one hand, and yet the Secretary of Commerce is telling people that they can only hire the people who check the right diversity boxes.”
“That doesn’t make a ton of sense. And it seems to be counterproductive to the goal of bringing this industry back to the United States in the first place,” Vance added.
Vance then urged Raimondo to think about the situation “from the perspective of a company that is thinking about locating a chip fabrication facility in this country or in China.”
“From China, they get cheap labor, massive subsidies, and a government that seems to want to work with them. From the United States, they get a little bit of money and a human resources statement that looks like it was written by a 22-year-old gender studies graduate of Harvard or Yale, which let’s be honest, it probably was written by a 22-year-old gender studies graduate of Harvard or Yale,” Vance explained.
“Why would you locate your facility in the United States of America when you get a human resources lecture from us, but from China, you get a whole lot of money and a whole lot of facilitation for your business? What’s the market economy here? Is it the economy that makes it hard to do business or easier to do business?” Vance added.
– – –
Kaitlin Housler is a reporter at The Ohio Star and The Star News Network. Follow Kaitlin on X / Twitter.
