The US climate law is fueling a factory frenzy
canarymedia.com
canarymedia.com
I avoided reading up on it too deeply, because it seemed to be much bigger than I was expecting, and I didn't believe they'd get something that big through congressional gridlock.
I basically assumed there were some poison pills baked in, and nothing much would come of it.
The ACA is severely limited, but getting anything at all passed was a superhuman effort. It was a ton of ground-level politicking, taking advantage of a brief moment of Obama's extraordinary popularity. It might be his only real legislative accomplishment, but it's the most influential piece of legislation in decades.
Obama and Biden had somewhat similar styles in that regard. Obama led the country out of the 2007 recession. For the most part it wasn't flashy, just slow and steady growth without drama. (He was known as No Drama Obama among the DC bureaucrats.)
He himself was much prettier than Biden and inherently more interesting as a human being, so he got more celebrity. But his actual governance was also similarly "quiet, serious, and disciplined".
It is possible that Obama would have been a better post-Trump President than Biden--I'm certain he'd win against Trump in a landslide--but we'll never know. Certainly it is the case that sometimes it is the opportunities you have--or what the country is ready for--that makes for the success of a presidency, along with a giant gob of good luck.
No Drama Obama, No Cryin' Biden.
https://www.macrotrends.net/countries/USA/united-states/manu...
not to take away from the bill itself, but it seems like the most important thing was that Democrats just controlled house/senate/white house at the same time and couldn't be easily blocked
Correct. It's a job where you get very little done, you're constantly cutting ribbons and going to boring galas to fundraise, your life is put under a microscope, and the other side will investigate you and your family and maybe even try to throw you in jail.
Hard pass. No sane person wants the job.
One almost needs to destroy their life to get the job, and even then the chances seem to be so low that you'd more likely end up with a destroyed life and not a political office.
Trump gets over a third of the GOP vote by just lying and so opposition to him as hard as you can't call him out on his lies which makes defeating him impossible, you can't beat the make believe land where everything is possible.
Biden will likely be the nominee as typically the incumbent gets first dibs per tradition.
Technically he needs to win the primary but at minimum the average person needs to be worse off in 2024 than they were in 2020.
Tha might be the case due to inflation and GOP court decisions. But then that leaves the bigger hurdle, who is best to beat Trump the candidate who already did or someone else.
It doesn't matter what the real answer is it matters what people feel.
Obama was 47 when first elected in 2008.
The Republican party runs on several broadly unpopular or unwise policy platforms (anti-abortion, anti-weed, anti-welfare, anti-healthcare, anti-immigration, anti-science) and is hesitant to actually implement any of them for fear of igniting opposition.
Recently they’ve taken the side-channel of stuffing the courts and then legislating from the bench, since judicial appointees are immune to voter pressure.
Time will tell how this all plays out for the Republican party. In the short-term, it causes tremendous damage to our institutions.
In the long-term, my best guess is that the current Republican platform will collapse within 10-20 years as the current leadership ages out, and there will be a phase change where the Republican platform recrystallizes around a more modern set of conservative values that appeals more to younger voters. The party itself will likely survive because the two-party system is too stable.
The Biden push for requiring federal purchases to have more 'made in USA' components seems a combination of stupidly simple, long overdue, and easy to understand. Govt requiring more stuff made in the US - and giving some tax cuts to help spur it - seems like it's a basic way to ignite manufacturing stateside.
Yes, I recently wrote about my own frustration with this: https://enki.org/2023/08/01/steel-prices/
Why pretend that Trump was the first person to talk about creating manufacturing jobs when it has been a hot political topic since the first time jobs started disappearing in the US?
No, he was laughed at because he's sort of a buffoon, and steel tariffs just raised the cost of everything for people using steel; it didn't have any big impact on 'steel jobs'. It didn't create big demand for more US-made steel. That said, IIRC, they're still in place, and current admin should remove them (perhaps gradual removal over 2 years?)
He did nothing meaningful to spur US-based manufacturing, despite talking a big game. But that was basically Trump all over. (attempting to not get too political here)
Trumpism is the modern set of conservative values that appeals more to younger voters. Trump was the one that killed GOP efforts to privatize social security and cut Medicare, and he’s been critical of the party’s more extreme positions on abortion.
We just had an election where the GOP won 3 million more votes than Democrats. Trump and Biden are tied in national polling: https://thehill.com/homenews/campaign/4155482-biden-trump-vi...
Meanwhile, Democrats have managed to fend off Trump only through a coalition that includes AOC, most of Silicon Valley and Wall Street, and Liz Cheney. How long do you think that’s sustainable? Democrats have been forced into a neoliberal corner where they can’t actually do anything liberal (raising taxes, criminal justice reform, welfare expansion).
Democrats jumped there headfirst led by Clinton in 1992, and have not, since then, been any farther out of a “neoliberal corner” than they are today (which is not that far, to be sure, but its absolutely not the case that its something they recently backed into in response to Trump.)
Just look at the electoral map. Obama beat Romney by about the same margin as Biden beat Trump. But Obama’s margin in Michigan was 10 points, while Biden’s was 3. Obama’s 7 point margin in Wisconsin evaporates to 1 point.
Where did those other votes come from? To a significant degree, it was from affluent suburbs were the management class lives. Democrats now are utterly reliant on the very people they need to heavily tax to deliver any of their progressive promises. You can’t have a meaningful liberal party which counts among its base Silicon Valley, Wall Street, and Fortune 500 and Big Pharma executives.
The GOP has won a near complete victory. It can pick its fights on cultural issues. But win or lose, the worst thing that can happen is that the Democratic Party governs like Rockefeller Republicans. It must govern in a way that keeps Wall Street and Silicon Valley happy. It can’t roll back Reagan’s tax cuts on the upper middle class. In fact Biden preemptively ruled out any tax increases on people in the top 2%. Biden couldn’t even roll back Trump’s corporate tax cuts. It couldn’t extend the child tax credits. Y’all are excited about infrastructure investment, but that’s always been something liberal Republicans have entertained.
Social issues are really the only thing where the party is unified and can push through changes, especially through the administrative state. We didn’t get a permanent child tax credit, or paid family leave, but we did get abortions and DEI in the military.
Now now, I think you are being too generous. In fact, it takes a lot of effort to actively set the country back socially, culturally, and environmentally. Give credit where credit’s due. They work (in reverse) hard.
There's a saying: "Only Nixon could go to China", from the fact that only a president renowned for vehement anti-communism could open relations with communist China. The Democrats, at least since Bill Clinton's administration, have been very pro-free trade, after 2016 the Republicans were ready to do this sort of thing, but the Democrats were still pro-globalization. It's because the Democrats were the second party to swing against the idea that all trade is good no matter what the country or industry, that they were able to get stuff passed better.
It should also be said that covid closing of borders, post-covid supply chain problems, and Russia's invasion of Ukraine all swayed opinions as well.
Are industries with tariff subsidies competitive at international price points? Given domestic subsidy, will they be efficient enough to compete in international markets?
How do non- free-trade, non- fair-trade agreements affect other trade agreements?
Trade Protectionism: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Protectionism
"Can’t build a decent car, can’t make a TV set or a VCR worth a f, got no steel industry left, can’t educate our young people, can’t get health care to our old people, but we can [... war euphemism]" -- George Carlin (1992)
Have subsidies saved comparably inefficient [domestic manufacturing] markets, or have trade protectionist subsidies resulted in net unintended consequences when the externalities of "all you peoples' special deals" are accounted for?
Are information services and financial services a viable strategy for long-term growth in GDP?
Of the top 3 battery or solar producing countries, the US isnt one of them. Longi, Chinas flagship battery company, has been doing this for 23 years while the US is just now getting around to starting a domestic plant to compete. Frankly i dont imagine it will be competitive at all, as it would also be competing with other decades old players in Japan and Korea.
15 years ago it would have made sense to buy up one of these competitive players but that time has passed, and the cannibalistic nature of outsourcing in neoliberal capitalism means a domestic industry is seen as a liability, not a strength. heck, owning any means of production instead of a brand is as well so its no surprise Ford's just kicking this one over to China to solve.
tl;dr the climate bill is about national security, not climate.
edit: not sure why im getting downvoted but honestly this is the 2023 equivalent of the space race. the US is #2 in renewable energy generation behind a communist nation set to overtake it in the next decade on practically all fronts. Batteries and solar are the capital of the renewable economy and the US has basically ignored or avoided it for two decades at their peril.
It is a climate bill. It is also about re-industrializing America, decoupling from China, securing supply chains, and national security. All of those things.
I'm most excited by people such as Terraform Industries and others who I've heard talk about direct synthesis from atmospheric carbon. Though I just looked them up here and there seems to have been surprisingly little traction: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=30202155
But the other part, is well, because southern states have fewer regulations getting in the way of building things.
For my part, I'm happy enough with it. Get those states invested in green tech, and they'll defend their industries.
Renewables are great to remove coal/gaz electricity, but at some point, energy must be stored, and apparently there is not enough lithium on earth to store renewable electricity.
So I would say it really allows US to offset coal/gaz, but nuclear is still the best solution to entirely remove coal.
Any source for that? Also what quantity of power are we talking?
I am all for nuclear though.
Green hydrogen is one option for storing excess renewable energy.
Renewables are quite pointless without a energy storage solution.
Electricity is difficult to store, especially when you need to store between seasons.