Remember when Trump was the Nationalist?
As with his other plans, he stars the first 1,000+ words talking about all that is wrong, which is quite questionable; he again leverages the pandemic to point out all that is wrong with employers and employees, which isn’t a true representation. He claims Trump gave wealthy tax breaks with no incentives to build onshore – which is flat out untrue. Trump has increased penalties through tariffs for companies importing product instead of making it here. But if you don’t research it, you believe this stuff. So, then we get to the meat of the plan:
Biden will send legislations called “PRO” to congress – “Protect Right to Organize”, which is all about unionization and even brings back card checks. His plan then focuses on 6 strategies:
- Buy American. He will increase gov’t spending by $400B to ensure they only buy American and shipping is on American flag carriers, including between US sea ports.
- Make it in America. He is going to retool small businesses. No discussion of how or the cost to do so, but an emphasis on buying from women-owned and color-owned businesses.
- Innovate in America. $300B will be spent on R&D, especially in technology and electric cars.
- Invest in All of America. Major public investments will focus on reaching to communities of color and small businesses.
- Stand Up for America. Biden claims that Trump policies don’t give manufacturers and workers fair shots at jobs and market share. This one is a bit baffling – the exact opposite has been happening – manufacturing hit new highs, employment participation rates were at all-time highs, and wages were rising faster for workers and minorities faster than at any other time in history.
- Supply America. This one is all about critical supplies being made here, not in China. What he didn’t mention is that those practices were going strong as China grew and nobody stopped that until Trump came in. But even then, we still had massive amounts of meds and PPE being made overseas (going on for decades) – and Trump, early in the pandemic, went on TV and said that was going to change. We could no longer be China-dependent for that – which is the first president to say that. Where was Biden for 47 years?
Biden wants to also build back critical medical stockpiles, which is particularly ironic since those stockpiles were allowed to lapse and fall well below adequate levels after the bungled H1N1 Swine Flu pandemic, where Joe and Barrack were in charge (you know – where they stopped testing altogether – but nobody remembers that…). That, incidentally, was also where we lost critical amounts of testing capability that was never replenished.
Biden mentions saving the auto industry and helping them “win” in the 21st century. He goes on to talk about how he saved it during the Great Recession – when in fact what Obama did was continue loans to the auto industry that Bush started (Bush gave them $17.4B to start). Also, what Biden didn’t say was that they shifted to buying GM stocks instead of giving them loan cash. The end result: while GM profited $22B, under Obama and Biden the taxpayer lost $10B in the repayment (although GM technically paid back all they owed to the treasury…but then there were pesky stocks they bought).
Joe is also going to invest $300B in R&D across industries. No detail on how or what he’ll invest in.
Joe is going to invest another $70B in HBCU’s. This is almost laughable. Trump was the FIRST president to dramatically increase HBCU funding while also fixing the system so they didn’t need to come back to the White House each year to ask for more. Which they had to do under Obama and Biden! Now Joe cares?
Joe wants to take aggressive trade enforcement actions against China for unfair practices. This is also very laughable, as JOE was the one, on camera, praising China’s rise and advocating their entry into the WTO as a “good thing” for the world. It’s been everything BUT a good thing. Only one guy has taken China on and forced new trade deals, placed tariffs when they don’t cooperate, etc. It’s not Joe or Barack – they allowed China to play unfairly.
Oh – Joe wants to confront stealing of IP by China. Again, I’m almost on my back LMAO – what about the last 47 years, Joe??
Overall, what I see in this is three major things:
- An echoing of Trump trade and manufacturing policies already in place
- A massive increase in emphasis on unionized labor
- A massive increase (nearly a trillion dollars) in US gov’t spending to ensure we buy from all that union labor
Net net: I like the notion of buying and helping America first – always have. Trump was elected on that. But if you think Trump is a Nationalist – Biden just took Nationalist to a whole new level. With a big price tag.
