An Update on the Printed Circuit Board and Substrates Act

Estimated reading time: 6 minutes

Momentum continues to build in Washington for legislation aimed at strengthening America's PCB industry. With companion House and Senate bills now in play, growing bipartisan support for domestic manufacturing, and key defense-related regulations advancing, the policy landscape remains active for the U.S. electronics manufacturing base.

The Printed Circuit Board Association of America (PCBAA), which has just celebrated its fifth anniversary, has been heavily involved in those advocacy efforts. In this exclusive audio interview, Executive Director David Schild discusses the latest developments surrounding the Protecting Circuit Boards and Substrates Act, the significance of recent progress on Capitol Hill, and how he’s keeping the industry involved in the advocacy process.

Audio transcript:

Marcy LaRont: David, it's always good to talk to you. It's always good to check in with PCBAA, and there has been a lot of activity happening just recently. But let's start. PCBAA is just celebrating five years. You've been around for five years now. Take us a little bit through that journey and some of the milestones. You guys really have a lot to be proud of.

David Schild: Thanks, Marcy, and it's always great to be with you. It is a really impressive milestone, I think, to be where we are five years after the founding of the Printed Circuit Board Association of America.

That was, at the time, five companies that decided we needed a collective voice in Washington to educate, advocate, and legislate on behalf of America's PCB ecosystem. Today, that number is 90 organizations, and that is impressive growth to be sure. Not just in numbers, but in diversity, right? We have gone from an organization that was really organized by fabricators primarily, and now we have folks in the EMS space, we have folks in the testing space, in the raw and refined materials space, and in the OEM space.

Companies like Raytheon and Bausch + Lomb, and Neros, one of the Pentagon's major drone providers. And we're in talks with more folks who are in that OEM and large manufacturing space, because they look up and down their supply chains. They see printed circuit boards as a critical microelectronic component.

To have legislative wins, to have regulatory progress, and to have, I think, more people in Washington who know what a circuit board is and why it's essential to the modern world, those are all things that we should be very proud of here as we go into our fifth year.

LaRont: That's great.vCongratulations, and it certainly is good to be here from where we started five years ago. You also just had a very big meeting in Washington, D.C. Talk a little bit about that.

Schild: Sure. Our in-person gathering every year is the PCBAA annual meeting. This was our biggest and best effort. We had more than 80 executives from across that ecosystem who got to sit down in closed-door sessions with officials from the Department of War and the Department of Commerce.

A lot of major primes were there talking about their supply chain challenges. And of course, it's an opportunity for all of these folks in leadership roles to be in the room with one another, which is, I think, a unique value proposition, that maybe other gatherings don't deliver. And of course, we went to Capitol Hill as well and visitedvalmost 90 congressional offices to really make the pitch for further industrial policy, further government investment in American-made printed circuit boards.

LaRont: Wow, 90, congressional visits. I have to wonder if that would've even been possible a few years ago, to set that number of visits up. So, that's quite something.

Schild: We had to get bigger before we could get better at what we're doing. Every time I add a member to our roster, I add a dot on the map that equals more political power in Washington.

It's a new set of senators; it's a new member of Congress. These are really important growth days for the PCBAA.

LaRont: I know that recently, a Senate bill has been introduced. Where are we in that process? Describe that process a bit for everybody, and then where we are in it right now and what's next.

Schild: Sure. So, the legislative journey is never a pretty one to watch. Nobody wants to see how the sausage gets made. But it does involve both House and Senate legislation. So, we've long had the Blake Moore, Raja Krishnamoorthi bill in the House, the Protecting Circuit Boards and Substrates Act. Now we have a matching piece of legislation in the Senate, introduced by Sens. Ruben Gallego and Jim Justice.

So, these bills—and I anticipate that there may be more Senate legislation coming— are mutually supportive. They have to make their way through the relevant Senate committees. They have to pick up the relevant Senate co-sponsors, as we are picking up co-sponsors for our House bill. But it is an important milestone.

I think people forget that the House and Senate have got to pass paired legislation. They've got to reconcile the differences before anything goes to the desk of the President. And in this case, it opens up, Marcy, an entirely new avenue of advocacy work. Because when I've been going to the Hill over the last five years, I've been really focused on the House of Representatives, and of course, that's 435 offices that we need to call upon.

Now I've got 100 senators whom we can call on, and our membership represents 35 different states. So, you can bet that beyond the recent annual meeting we had, there's going to be quite a lot of advocacy activity on the Senate side.

LaRont: I actually find the process fascinating, so I have to ask you, is it remarkably different for you, and now how you approach your advocacy work in the Senate versus the House?

Schild: I think that the view in Washington is that the Senate moves slower, and is a more deliberative body perhaps than the House. There are some rules about tax legislation, of course, having to originate in the House of Representatives. And so that changes the dynamic a little bit since we have a tax provision.

But I would say that the arguments at their core are very similar. We need to reinvigorate the Defense Industrial Base. We need to end our dependency on foreign sourcing and, of course, very much on Chinese sourcing of PCBs. We need to have a manufacturing renaissance in this country.

We need the Department of War to get the things that it needs in a timely fashion, so we've got to invest in American PCBs. These arguments, I think, Marcy, work whether you're in the House or the Senate, and whether you're talking to a Democrat or a Republican. They are uniquely bipartisan, and so I don't think the core of our messaging will change as we move and add the Senate to our focus.

LaRont: Before I forget to ask, I want to know, is there a Senate bill number that people can be kind of looking into or watching?

Schild: Yes, there is. It's the same bill name, the Protecting Circuit Boards and Substrates Act. it's S4569 in the Senate and HR3597 in the House. I would focus less on the Senate or the House number, and more on that title, Protecting Circuit Boards and Substrates. Because it's the same in both chambers.

LaRont: That's helpful. I know people are, at this point, maybe watching it a little more closely, because it's a little further along, and we've talked about it a lot. So, I want to give people that opportunity. Lastly, David, there's something called Section 851 or Section 851 rule, if I'm saying it properly. I know that it’s really important and that there are some things happening with that right now that are relevant. Can you take us through that?

Schild: Now, this gets into sort of the regulatory side of our educate-advocate-and-legislate effort. Let me go back a few years to the NDAA, the National Defense Authorization Act. That is the bill that basically tells the Pentagon what to do. Appropriators give the Pentagon the money to do those things.

About four years ago, the Armed Services Committees in the House said to the Pentagon, "You know, you guys have got to get these restricted country electronics out of your dual-use and commercial off-the-shelf supply chains, and we're going to give you until 2027 to get this done.” And that means Russia, Iran, North Korea, and most importantly, China.

ITAR keeps a lot of our defense products made in the United States, but when it comes to dual-use and commercial off-the-shelf, it's kind of a loophole that allows Chinese electronics into defense products. That's the bottom line, and Congress said to the Pentagon, "You can't do this, and you've basically got five years to get this rule implemented."

Now we know that the rulemaking is moving forward because we see in the Federal Register an invitation to comment and answer questions about this process. It's a public comment period, and what that generally means is we're getting ready to write the rule. Congress told us to do something.

We're going to write it into federal regulation. But before we do that, we say, "Hey industry, hey stakeholders, weigh in and tell us what's happening." Well, that's a golden opportunity for our members, and we're coaching them up right now on how to insert themselves in this rulemaking public comment period to let government regulators know, yes, 851 is a good idea.

Yes, 851 increases the security of our defense products. Yes, American industry is ready to step up and deliver these products. This is the reason we have public comment periods, so that anybody who has a stake in these kinds of rules can weigh in, and rest assured we will.

LaRont: David Schild, it is always good to talk to you. It's always good to hear what PCBAA has been up to. I look forward to our future conversations and hearing future developments as well. So, thank you so much for talking with me today.

Schild: Always great to be here. Thanks for the opportunity, Marcy.