Biden’s Economic Plan Gets a Lot of Big Things Right
It’s not perfect, but the emphasis on R&D, education, reshoring supply chains and promoting manufacturing is a good start.
Something to like, though not perfect.
Photographer: Spencer Platt/Getty Images North AmericaPresidential candidate and former Vice President Joe Biden has just released a major industrial policy plan for reviving U.S. manufacturing. The proposal is the first in a four-part series called Build Back Better, which will also address economic recovery, infrastructure, clean energy, racial equity, and modernization of health care, child care and elder care.
Biden’s plan should immediately make one thing clear: The era in which free trade was a centerpiece of the elite economic consensus is well and truly over. Although President Donald Trump embraced a blunt form of protectionism and thinkers on the right have been floating ideas about industrial policy, there was always the possibility that Democrats would hew to a Clintonite free-trade position. But Biden’s announcement proves that Democrats, too, are squarely in the industrial policy camp.