NEW YORK – Bringing America back to the dynamism of the 1960s, when state scientific research led the space race, major works and federal public works were an engine of growth. It is one of the themes that inspire Phase Two of Joe Biden, which officially begins tonight. It starts with a maxi-plan of 2,250 billion dollars in public investments, mainly focused on the reconstruction or modernization of infrastructures, a new industrial policy in favor of advanced technologies, sustainability and renewable energies. China will be a looming presence: among the reasons for this plan is the urgency to counter Xi Jinping’s efforts for leadership in advanced technologies and renewable energy. Biden presents his plan at 10.30 pm Italian time in a city-symbol of the first American industrial miracle, in Pittsburgh in Pennsylvania, what was once the capital of coal and steel. The president will illustrate the details of this ten-year investment maneuver in a professional training center for carpenters, a gesture of attention to the working class that will be the number one recipient of the economic revival. Millions of jobs are an expected “side effect” of this maneuver.
New US maneuver worth three trillion billions, Biden focuses on the environment and infrastructure
by our correspondent Federico Rampini
Biden Phase Two has a name: Build Back Better, that is, rebuilding better, rebuilding an economy suitable for the challenges of the future. But the 2,250 billion investments in ten years are only part of the project, and for this first chapter there is a specific name: The American Jobs Plan. The choice of slogans echoes Donald Trump’s nationalism and in fact Biden is determined to wrest the representation of the working classes from his predecessor, with a neo-nationalism of the left, without giving up an inch on protectionism towards China. But the challenge with Beijing is in fact won by building a more efficient, more competitive America. With Phase One, the maneuver already launched for 1.9 trillion, Biden has transferred public funds to individuals and families, has operated a redistribution in favor of the middle class. Now move on to the infrastructure investments he promised during the election campaign. The list is long. 650 billion for traditional “physical” infrastructures, by now often crumbling and inadequate: roads and motorways, ports and airports, railways. Another hundreds of billions for the water network, the electricity network, high-speed wi-fi, 5G telecom. In the key sectors of the Chinese challenge on advanced technologies – semiconductors, artificial intelligence, robotics, 5G, biotechnology – there will be 300 billion for a revival of industrial policy. An intervention of 400 billion that has a completely different sign is removed and anticipated from Phase 3 due to its urgency: 400 billion for a series of measures in favor of the elderly and the disabled, starting with home assistance.
There is also an indication on the financing of these plans, although the new taxes will be spun off in a subsequent bill. Unlike the welfare and redistributive maneuver already launched (the 1,900 billion one), which was all in deficit-spending, this time Biden wants to cover public investments with new taxes. He asks Congress to raise the levy on corporate profits from 21% to 28% and the global minimum tax for multinationals’ foreign profits from 13% to 21%. Biden has promised there will be no additional taxes on anyone earning less than $ 400,000 annually. The higher taxes will have to last 15 years, although the investment plan is expected to be completed within 8-10 years. The Democrats are ready to pass this second Biden-era maneuver as the first, that is, without a single Republican vote.
The Wall Street Journal underlines the enormous political significance of the two maneuvers that Biden presented within the span of his first 100 days: it is the demolition of the whole neoliberal revolution that began with Ronald Reagan in 1980. Biden has in fact put together a great plan of fighting poverty and redistribution of incomes in favor of the middle class (as Lyndon Johnson attempted with the Great Society in the 1960s) and now a grand revival of public investment in infrastructure that echoes Franklin Roosevelt’s New Deal in the 1930s. It is also an ideological reversal, a rehabilitation of the role of the state which returns to the center of economic policy.
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