WASHINGTON - Representatives from state governments across the country met in Washington Wednesday to "generate dialogue" about export controls on the U.S. aerospace industry.
The Aerospace States Association's quarterly meeting was attended by lieutenant governors from many of the group's 42 member states, as well as delegates from NASA, the Commerce Department, the State Department, several senators and congressmen, the French embassy and the FAA's top commercial space flight official, Patti Grace Smith.
One of the four-hour forum's key speakers, House space committee chairman Dana Rohrabacher (R-Calif.), asked for the association's support for his "zero-gravity-zero-tax" legislation that would slash capital gains taxes for investors in small aerospace start-ups.
"One of my goals has been to turn space industry from what it was -- which was a government-run enterprise -- into essentially a business enterprise," Rohrabacher said.
Throughout the morning, a variety of speakers called for a "balance" in U.S. policy on aerospace exports. The government has increased regulations in the past year because of increased concerns over national security. On Tuesday, a federal grand jury indicted McDonnell Douglas (now a division of aerospace giant Boeing) for transferring technology to China.
"There are national security issues certainly, and certainly there is no one here that [wants them to] be compromised," said ASA Chairman Joseph Kernan, lieutenant governor of Indiana. But if businesses are prevented from exporting, they may not be able to survive, he said.
And if the American aerospace industry falters, Kernan added, "that will blunt our technological edge, and that's a national security issue as well."
To bring space industry forward, Rohrabacher said, will take three things: private investment, dual-use programs that fulfill both military and commercial missions, and "programs that, from the very get-go, are international programs."
Rohrabacher has been very critical of the way NASA has handled the U.S.-Russia partnership on the International Space Station, as well as of Chinese trade policies that he thinks endanger national security.
However, Rohrabacher stated at Wednesday's meeting that he was always for "free trade with free people" and wanted to help the aerospace industry reduce export regulations to democratic countries.
advertisement
