The Chamber of Commerce is getting anxious: if a Pentagon contractor wants to repurchase shares, do they have to first go and get the Department of Defense to issue a clearance order? If this happens, companies’ spending would have to look to people’s faces, and the right to allocate capital would be handed over directly.

Cointelegraph News: According to Cointelegraph, the U.S. Chamber of Commerce and 40 business groups sent a letter to the Senate leadership, urging them to remove a provision in the National Defense Authorization Act that would strip Pentagon contractors of the ability to conduct stock buybacks and pay dividends. The provision requires contractors to obtain approval from the Department of Defense before carrying out these actions. The Chamber said the provision would have an unprecedented impact on tens of thousands of companies that work with the Pentagon, and could shift responsibility for capital allocation decisions from corporate leadership to the government. The provision has already passed the Senate Armed Services Committee and is expected to be considered by the Senate this week.