Biden pushes climate, infrastructure spending

US president Joe Biden today called on lawmakers to approve his multi-trillion dollar proposals to rebuild infrastructure and invest in climate-focused projects — in part to position the US to win an economic and technological race with China.

"We are in a competition with China and other countries to win the 21st Century," Biden said in his first address to Congress. "We will see more technological change in the next 10 years than we saw in the last 50 years, and we are falling behind in that competition."

Biden took to the podium to defend the major initiatives he has advanced during his first 100 days in office. Congress already has enacted, voting along party lines, the $1.9 trillion American Rescue Plan of measures to bolster the economy and accelerate vaccine distribution.

Biden's $2.3 trillion American Jobs Act proposal to invest in infrastructure and advance energy transition over the next eight years is facing greater scrutiny in part because it is funded by raising corporate tax rates and removing tax breaks for oil and gas companies. The White House today released an even more ambitious proposal, the American Families Act, that would guarantee free public college education for every American and expand access to childcare, to be funded via an increase in personal tax rates for the highest-earning Americans.

While Biden is making overtures to Republicans in Congress — inviting legislative leaders of both parties for a White House summit on 12 May — passing his initiatives requires full cooperation from the thin majorities Democrats hold in the House of Representatives and the Senate.

Biden's reference to China may, in part, be an appeal to otherwise skeptical lawmakers to support his domestic priorities. Biden and his advisers say that they can advance their foreign policy priorities only if the US regains the technological and manufacturing advantage they say has eroded in recent decades.

"There is no reason the blades for wind turbines cannot be built in Pittsburgh instead of Beijing," Biden said.

US trade representative Katherine Tai earlier today downplayed concerns about the negative effects of punitive tariffs on Chinese-made solar panels on Biden's renewable energy proposals. Without high tariffs, "we will continue to experience these types of fights over the last scraps of an industry that we have lost to competitors and in particular, to the Chinese," Tai said.

The unusual setting for this address, with the chamber and the gallery only partially occupied by 200 members of Congress and government officials, was a reminder that the US is still fighting a pandemic that has killed 574,000 US residents and ravaged the economy.

But the Biden administration is taking credit for accelerating the vaccination rate to allow for lifting of travel and restrictions on economic activity by state governments. More than a third of the US adult population has been fully vaccinated. And herd immunity, which US health authorities define as over 70pc of the population being protected against Covid-19, can be achieved by late summer.

"America is on the move again, turning peril into possibility, crisis into opportunity, setback into strength," Biden said.

The US administration earlier this week launched its first major exercise in vaccine diplomacy, agreeing to make available to foreign countries 60mn doses of AstraZeneca vaccines that the US has ordered but does not plan to administer.

And Biden today pledged to make US-made and approved vaccines available to the rest of the world as soon as the US vaccination effort is complete.

"As our own vaccine supply grows to meet our needs, and we are meeting them, we will become an arsenal of vaccines for other countries, just as America was the arsenal of democracy in World War II," Biden said.

By Haik Gugarats