The National Defense Authorization Act was passed out of the House Armed Services Committee on a 55-2 vote. The bill — HR 3838 — did not contain an amendment with Right to Repair language, and as a result the North American Equipment Dealers Association returned to neutral on the legislation. 

The Senate also released its version of the NDAA, S. 2296, this week with updated language. While both bills aren’t directly related to the ag industry, there was potential to set precedent.

We checked in with NAEDA’s Director of Government Affairs Kipp McGuire for more details on the development.

“We appreciate that Congress is trying to address this accessibility and availability of tools, parts documentation for our nation's troops in harm's way. And the AG equipment industry especially, we've kind of already recognized that and solidified it as a premise of doing business or as a cornerstone of doing business in the AG industry with the MOUs between manufacturers and the Farm Bureau. And so we appreciate that.”

“We still think that it's got a lot of room for improvement. It's still kind of bad policy the way that they're going about it. Specifically, they're addressing a symptom, not necessarily the root cause in our analysis of it, which is very similar to what we see from the AG industry whenever this comes up at the state's level. A little different in the details. But at the federal level, Senator Warren cited in her press release a report from the Rand Company that is a very large think tank. And she cited it as some examples of why the DOD needed better right to repair and better access to parts and things of that nature. But she kind of cherry-picked some of the information out of that report. And their conclusion was that the real problem for DOD and not having the access and availability of parts and documentation and information was a lack of training and knowledge on government contract officers, and their ability to make sure the contracts between manufacturers and the government include the rights to that information and those parts and things. And so really it's a workforce issue for them.”

“And NEDA brought this up with the members of the Senate that we talked to. And so kind of analogous to that, we've been saying this for years on the AG equipment side of it's not about availability of parts and things. It's a workforce issue, is we are drastically short manned in qualified technicians to be able to do just the amount of work, and especially within the context of the complexity of equipment. And so both of these issues really, whether you're talking about right to repair in the AG industry or this right to repair at the DOD level or the federal level with the NDAA, the root problem is workforce issues. And the right for repair legislation that we see is just an easy fix for a symptom and not the real problem.”  

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