Photo source: whitehouse.gov
A peek at US President Joe Biden’s ‘Bidenomics’
It’s Bidenomics in action in the USA! After the US Treasury Department warned that without more borrowing, the US will not have enough money to meet all of its financial obligations as soon as June 5, 2023, United States President Joe Biden could avert a likely first-ever default by signing a bill that suspended the US government’s $31.4 trillion debt ceiling just two days ahead of the deadline, on Saturday, June 3, 2023. This meant limiting the total amount of money the government can borrow to pay its bills and Biden had to do tense negotiations with House of Representatives Speaker Kevin McCarthy. The crisis even forced the President to cut short a trip to Asia and threatened to push the United States to the brink of an economic crisis. A US default on its debt meant the government would no longer be able to pay the salaries of federal and military employees, and even Social Security cheques would stop.
Having confronted the crisis, Biden is nowadays busy propagating his ‘Bidenomics’ aggressively, for “restoring the American dream”. Following is an excerpt from the speech he delivered today about his ‘Bidenomics’ in West Columbia, South Carolina.
I’m here to talk about what we’re doing to invest in America — and I mean invest in America, all of America; it’s starting here in South Carolina.
Our plan is working. And one of the things I’m proudest of is that it’s working everywhere, not just on the coasts and big cities, like previous recoveries.
This time, investment is working, factories are being built, and jobs are being created — happening in rural America, the heartland, all across America — in communities that have been left out and hollowed out.
This is what it looks like across the country. Over 13 million new jobs since I’ve been elected to office — more jobs than any president has ever created in their first two years. Nearly 800,000 manufacturing jobs…
And again, that’s more in two years than was created in four years in any other administration.
Unemployment has been below 4 per cent for the longest time in 50 years. Inflation is less than half of what it was a year ago, and we’re continuing to work on it. Bringing down inflation remains one of my top priorities.
Job satisfaction nationally is at a 36-year high. The share of working-age Americans in the workforce is as high as it’s been in 30 years. Remember they used to say, “Biden is spending all this money to keep people from working”? People are off the sidelines. Twenty years high — higher than every single one of my predecessors. And the pay for low-wage workers has grown at the fastest pace in two decades. And, folks, it’s no accident.
Trickle-down economics has failed the country for decades. It means slashing public investment on things that helped America lead the world in innovation. We used to invest 2 per cent of our entire gross domestic product in research and development. Do you know what it is now? 0.7 per cent.
We used to be ranked number one in the world in research and development. Know what we’re ranked now? Number nine. China was number eight a decade ago, and now China is number two. And other countries are closing in fast.
This is the United States of America, for God’s sake.
We used to have the best infrastructure in the world, rated number one. Now we’re rated number 13 in the world in infrastructure. How can you have the best economy in the world and not have the best infrastructure in the world?
On my watch, we’re making infrastructure a decade headline. A decade.
Yesterday, we announced that since I took office, we have attracted half a trillion dollars — $497 billion — in private investment in American manufacturing, both here and around the world. It’s historic, and it’s Bidenomics in action. Instead of exporting jobs to cheaper labour costs — what we did for decades — we’re creating jobs here and exporting American products. Product, not jobs.
I cut the deficit by $1.7 trillion in two years. Nobody has ever done that. Cut the debt to 1.7. This generates income. It generates growth.
Enphase first commercialized the component that converts solar energy into electricity. All that solar energy doesn’t do a whole lot of good if you can’t do and convert it into electricity. It’s called — they invented a thing called a solar microinverter.
Jobs that used to go to Mexico, India, Romania, and China are now coming home to South Carolina. Now Enphase is partnering with Flex to make these parts here in South Carolina. And today, they’re shipping their first microinverters made in America. Made in America.
And the good news is 90 per cent of these jobs require intelligence but don’t require a college degree. And Flex is working with Midlands Technical College in Columbia to develop training and pathways so folks can get these jobs.
Since I took office, we’ve seen over 60 domestic manufacturing announcements all across the solar supply chain. One of the biggest is in Dalton, Georgia…and just today the Department of Energy announced new incentives for companies to bring solar power manufacturing back to our shores. We’re in a real race; China is ahead of us. This is another step in helping us meet the goal of 100 per cent clean, renewable energy electricity by 2035. By 2035, all electricity in America is going to be generated by clean energy — that’s a big deal — and saving billions of tons going into the air of pollution.
We see the same story in semiconductors..America invented these chips. We’re the ones who invented them. We sophisticated those chips. We made them what they are. But over time, we went from producing nearly 40 per cent of the world’s chips down to less than 10 per cent. That’s why we designed and I signed the CHIPS and Science Act — all these names don’t mean much until you know what they produce — because I knew we had to reclaim America’s leadership. Now, all over the country, semiconductor companies are investing a record hundreds of billions of dollars to bring chip production back home in Ohio, New York, Arizona, and all across — like outside Columbus, Ohio, Intel is investing, in a thousand acres outside of Ohio, $20 billion. It’s going to take 7,000 people to build the two — they call them “fabs” — factories. And it’s going to take 5,000 permanent workers. Near Syracuse, Micron is investing up to $100 billion over the next 20 years, beginning now. In Phoenix, Arizona, TSMC is investing $40 billion, producing thousands of good-paying jobs. And you don’t need a college degree, to make a hundred grand.
The middle class — this is a game-changer, where Investing in America agenda is about bringing supply chains home, a clean energy future, made in America.
Before the pandemic, supply chains weren’t something most Americans thought about. But today, after delays in parts and products, everybody knows why supply chains matter. We know for too long China has dominated the production of raw materials needed for critical products. That’s why we’re building alliances with our friends all across the world, increasing our production here at home to create alternative sources for the minerals we need. Our goal is to bring the full battery supply chain home. We create a “Battery Belt” stretching from Michigan to Georgia. In Chester County, South Carolina, Albemarle is investing $1.5 billion to process lithium for electric vehicle batteries. That not only will create 300 permanent jobs, but it’ll lift up a whole community— restore some pride. It matters.
The lithium will power components like Redwood Materials near Charleston, where the company is making the largest investment in the history of this state: $3.5 billion to build a battery materials manufacturing plant, creating 1,500 jobs. That’s another community changer. It’s a game-changer. And those materials will go into batteries that will be recycled by companies like Cirba Solutions, which is investing $300 million here in Richland County, creating another 300 permanent jobs.
That’s community after community after community there’s been that change. And it’s on its way. If you change enough communities, it’s going to change the state, it’s going to change the country. In Jim Clyburn’s district, Pomega Energy Storage Technologies is investing 279 million dollars to manufacture batteries to store energy to power the grid.
Since I signed the Inflation Reduction Act and the CHIPS and Science Act into law, companies have announced $11 billion in manufacturing and clean energy investments just in South Carolina. Companies across the county are expanding factories, building new ones, and creating tens of thousands of good-paying jobs, most of which don’t require a four-year degree.
It’s not just manufacturing. Through the Bipartisan Infrastructure Law, we’ve already announced over 35,000 projects all across America, like the Brent Spence Bridge, which is a billion-dollar operation, over the Ohio River from Ohio to Kentucky. And today, in New York, we’re investing a record — a billion dollars to renew the Hudson Tunnel. You walk through that tunnel, it was built 100 years ago. It’s falling apart. You’ll be able to go through it 100 miles an hour instead of 30 miles an hour. Up in Union County, South Carolina, we’re rebuilding six bridges critical to moving people and goods across this region. Each bridge is over 60 years old with weight and volume restrictions that cause detours, congestion, and supply chain delays. The oldest one is where South Carolina 49 crosses the Tyger River. The biggest one is right here in Columbia: “malfunction junction.” You all know it. How many years you’ve been talking about fixing “malfunction junction”? Now It’s going to get fixed.
And we’re removing every single lead pipe in America. More than 100,000 lead service lines go into homes here in South Carolina. And they’re a risk to everyone’s health, including children, so it’s time to get them removed and replaced.
During the pandemic, thousands of people in this state (South Carolina) didn’t have a connection to high-speed Internet. South Carolina is receiving $1 billion to close that divide — connecting every home and small business across rural America and rural South Carolina that doesn’t have reliable high-speed Internet.
Some analysts have said that the laws I’ve signed are going to do more to help red America than blue America. Well, that’s okay with me, because we’re all Americans. Because my view is: Wherever the need is most, that’s the place we should be helping. And that’s what we’re doing. Because the way I look at it, the progress we’re making is good for all Americans, all of America.
Bidenomics is just another way of saying “restoring the American Dream.” It’s rooted in what always worked best for this country: investing in America.
