Reviews of Foreign Investment in U.S. Remain “Obscure”
“The Committee on Foreign Investment in the United States (CFIUS) is an interagency committee that serves the President in overseeing the national security implications of foreign investment in the economy,” the Congressional Research Service has explained (pdf). “Originally established by an Executive Order of President Ford in 1975, the committee generally has operated in relative obscurity.”
That relative obscurity continues to prevail. A new Department of Defense Instruction says that “The DoD CFIUS process should, to the extent possible, be a transparent process.” Yet the same Instruction dictates that “Information or documentary material filed with CFIUS shall be exempt from disclosure [under the Freedom of Information Act] and will not be made public.” See “DoD Procedures for Reviewing and Monitoring Transactions Filed with the Committee on Foreign Investment in the United States (CFIUS),” DoD Instruction 2000.25 (pdf), August 5, 2010.
Two informative background reports on CFIUS were recently updated by the Congressional Research Service (both pdf). See “The Committee on Foreign Investment in the United States (CFIUS),” July 29, 2010, and “The Exon-Florio National Security Test for Foreign Investment,” July 19, 2010.
We’ve created a tool to monitor the progress of federal actions on extreme heat, enhance accountability, and to allow stakeholders to stay informed on the evolving state of U.S. climate-change resilience.
Wickerson was a few years into their doctoral work in material science and engineering at Northwestern University when the prospect of writing a policy memo with FAS cropped up at a virtual conference.
Federal investment in STEM education/workforce development, though significant, can hardly be described as a generational response to an economic and national security crisis.
In the absence of a national strategy to address the compounding impacts of extreme heat, states, counties, and cities have had to take on the responsibility of addressing the reality of extreme heat in their communities with limited resources.