A growing number of US lawmakers see the tax code as a way to shift corporate America’s reliance on Chinese technology, framing economic ties as a national security risk, seen most recently in a congressman’s comments on Thursday.
Moran was promoting his own bill, the Deterring Adversarial Access to Americans’ Data Act, which would deny major tax breaks, such as bonus depreciation and R&D expensing, to US companies which use technology from “foreign entities of concern” that can access private American data.
“We want to incentivise people to make longer-term decisions,” Moran, a Republican from Texas, added.
This dovetails with broader concerns raised by bipartisan congressional panels, which argue that China uses data as a strategic resource and that Washington has failed to counter Beijing’s data-collection drive.