Biden spotlights ‘buy American’ plan at factory
MACUNGIE, Pa. — President Biden checked out the big rigs at a Pennsylvania truck factory on Wednesday and promised workers that his policies would reshape the U.S. economy for the working class — a message clearly aimed at a group of voters who have drifted to Republicans.
Biden highlighted new “buy American” rules from his administration that he said would put a new muscle behind an initiative that he argued had become a “hollow promise” in recent years.
“They got a new sheriff in town,” Biden said after touring Mack Truck’s Lehigh Valley operations facility. He said the effort would help create jobs, a central thrust of his administration’s “build back better” program.
Administration officials, who have made manufacturing jobs a priority, believe Democrats’ political prospects next year might hinge on whether Biden succeeds in reinvigorating a sector that has steadily lost jobs for more than four decades.
Presidents Bill Clinton, George W. Bush, Barack Obama and Donald Trump each said his policies would save manufacturing jobs, yet none of them broke the longterm trend in a lasting way.
The administration is championing a $973 billion infrastructure package, $52 billion for computer chip production, sweeping investments in clean energy and the use of government procurement contracts to create factory jobs.
On the visit, Biden heard about Mack’s electric garbage trucks.
“The ability to build and sell these new trucks would be helped by the president’s proposed investment in buy American production incentives for domestic electric vehicle manufacturing,” said White House deputy press secretary Karine JeannePierre.
The president won Lehigh County in the 2020 election, but he is facing the perpetual challenge of past administrations to revive a manufacturing sector at the heart of American identity. Failure to bring back manufacturing jobs could further hurt already ailing factory towns across the country and possibly imperil Democrats’ chances in the 2022 midterm elections.
For the past several decades, presidents have pledged to bring back factory jobs without much success. Manufacturing employment peaked in 1979 at nearly 19.6 million jobs, only to slide with steep declines after the 2001 recession and the 200709 Great Recession. The figure now stands at 12.3 million.