Joe Biden

ICYMI: President Biden to Tout Bipartisan Innovation Act in North Carolina as Urgency Grows to Invest in More Resilient Economy

April 14, 2022

During the President's visit today to North Carolina Agricultural and Technical State University in Greensboro, North Carolina, he will highlight the investments of the Bipartisan Infrastructure Act in America's global competitiveness, our supply chains, and in domestic manufacturing. This bill will provide historic funding for crucial investments in advanced semiconductor manufacturing, innovation, and R&D that will improve the nation's supply chain resiliency and address bottlenecks that are driving inflation.

As the President hits the road, a new story in Axios highlights the Administration-wide effort to urge Congress to act on this legislation, and McClatchy underscores how this bill would address vulnerabilities that have been exposed by the war in Ukraine and the pandemic.

Read more below:

Axios: Biden to push Congress on China competition bill
[Sarah Mucha, 4/13/22]

President Biden is planning to pressure Congress to pass an innovation and competition bill that would boost the semiconductor industry, among others, when he travels to Greensboro, N.C., on Thursday, Axios has learned.

Why it matters: The administration knows voters want to see it taking action on inflation and supply-chain issues. It's especially cognizant of the effect raising food and gas prices are having on voters' pocketbooks in the buildup to this fall's midterms.

  • Recent international sanctions on Russia have shown how any country that's too reliant on one export — energy exports, in Moscow's case — can be hurt economically.
  • The bill is meant to increase U.S. competition globally but especially with China.
  • The trip to North Carolina comes after a visit by the president on Tuesday to Menlo, Iowa, where he discussed a plan to lower gas prices in part by granting a waiver to use cheaper ethanol fuel into this summer.

The details: The full force of the administration will be behind the innovation and competition effort.

McClatchy: Will United States start making more computer chips at home?
[Alex Roarty, 4/13/22]

A proposal to spend billions of dollars ramping up semiconductor production in America gained bipartisan momentum over the course of the coronavirus pandemic. But it may be Russia's invasion of Ukraine that finally convinces Congress to pass the bill into law.

White House officials and lawmakers say that each global shock has limited the availability of a product that is key to running everything from coffee machines and smartphones to fighter jets. The pandemic reminded officials how reliant the United States has been on overseas production of the chips — and concerns have culminated since Russia's invasion began on Feb. 24.

[...]

A final vote on the bill remains uncertain, but passage could lead to significant new manufacturing job investment in states like Ohio and Pennsylvania and research opportunities in California and Florida, already home to some of the nation's largest chip research centers.

"What we see now, first with COVID and then the chip shortage and now Russia's invasion of Ukraine, is that these aren't black swan events," Sameera Fazili, deputy director of President Joe Biden's National Economic Council, said in an interview.

"The frequency of events is increasing. These events have continued to have real micro-shocks that have macro-implications for certain industries. "What felt like a theoretical risk all of a sudden became something that was hurting companies' bottom line," Fazili added, "and hurting consumers and families in a very real way."

Joseph R. Biden, ICYMI: President Biden to Tout Bipartisan Innovation Act in North Carolina as Urgency Grows to Invest in More Resilient Economy Online by Gerhard Peters and John T. Woolley, The American Presidency Project https://www.presidency.ucsb.edu/node/355454

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