Commerce, labor cabinet picks announced
President-elect Joe Biden has selected two prominent New England politicians with sharply different profiles to run the principal cabinet agencies handling business and labor issues.
Biden intends to name Rhode Island Gov. Gina Raimondo to be his Secretary of Commerce, choosing the former venture capitalist to helm the agency at a time when the nation’s business community is struggling to adjust to an economy reshaped by the coronavirus pandemic, according to a person familiar with the matter. And he has picked Boston Mayor Marty Walsh, a self-described “lifelong champion of working people,” to be the next Secretary of Labor, according to the same person.
In pairing the two cabinet picks, Biden balanced Raimondo, who has often been at odds with major labor unions, with Walsh, who enjoys strong support from leaders of the AFLCIO and earned his union card in 1988 when he joined Laborers Local 223.
Before becoming mayor, Walsh was the head of Boston’s Building and Construction Trades Council.
If confirmed, Raimondo would take over a department with a roughly $8 billion budget and more than 43,000 employees, which traditionally has been the center of business influence within the federal government. She will have a voice in the administration’s “Buy America” efforts, designed to promote domestic manufacturing, and she also will likely need to mollify corporate interests worried by Biden’s promise to give organized labor and environmental groups a greater say in trade policy.
During the Trump administration, Commerce was repurposed as a central player in the president’s multifront global trade war, with Commerce Secretary Wilbur Ross at the helm.
Ross presided over an elastic interpretation of U.S. trade law, which saw President Donald Trump cite national security considerations to impose tariffs on imported steel and aluminum.
These so-called Section 232 tariffs — named for the provision in U.S. trade law that authorized them — were deeply controversial with trade experts and alienated major U.S. trading partners, including Canada and the European Union.
If confirmed, Walsh will inherit the Labor Department in the midst of an economic crisis that has fundamentally shaken American workplaces. Tens of millions of workers have lost jobs at some point this year during an economic blow that has been more punishing than any other since the Great Depression.
Though the economy has rebounded faster than initially predicted, the recovery has been slowing for months. Some economists warn that the country may already be shedding jobs again, amid a resurgent coronavirus pandemic and congressional delays in providing additional aid.
Many who have kept their jobs face complicated safety questions at work.
The Labor Department has taken a largely employer and industry friendly approach under Trump, angering labor unions and Democrats, and inviting legal challenges.