Depending on your optimism, there are either one or two major pieces of legislation left in this session of Congress. A resumption of the Build Back Better process focused on energy is struggling to get going. The other bill, which has variously been known as the U.S. Innovation and Competition Act (USICA), the COMPETES Act, and the Bipartisan Innovation Act, has passed both houses of Congress, and is now in a process known as a conference committee, where the House and Senate find a consensus. (For simplicity’s sake, I’m just going to call it COMPETES.)

On the surface, that shouldn’t be too difficult. There are three major components to COMPETES. The first, an outlay of roughly $52 billion to subsidize an advanced semiconductor sector in the U.S., is virtually identical in the two bills. The second, a competitiveness chapter that enables advanced research through universities, research hubs, and a directorate at the National Science Foundation, isn’t too far off either.

It’s the third part of the bill, the unheralded trade and supply chain chapter, that features wildly different House and Senate versions. “There’s one head going this way, the other that way,” said Lori Wallach, director of Rethink Trade, a division of the American Economic Liberties Project. “The House trade title, I would fight for it as a freestanding bill. That’s a ton of stuff we ought to get done in trade. The Senate bill is like if Frankenstein, Dracula, and the Werewolf had a baby.”