Joe Biden will go into November’s US presidential election touting his lavish spending on the green transition — and his interventionist industrial policy more generally — as one of his great achievements. He also wants to export it to the rest of the world. Jake Sullivan, head of the White House National Security Council, said last year: “We will unapologetically pursue our industrial strategy at home, but we are unambiguously committed to not leaving our friends behind. We want them to join us. In fact, we need them to join us.”In reality, Sullivan might have to resign himself to the administration going it alone. When your economic interventionism involves fiscal largesse other big economies can only dream of affording and protects US industry with trade barriers other governments find unpalatable, it’s tricky to see how you can assemble a gang of like-minded countries.
Biden has shielded US steel producers from import competition — though with nothing like the sweeping tariffs imposed by Donald Trump — and tried to build a US semiconductor industry through the Chips Act. But his centrepiece is the Inflation Reduction Act, which includes a massive programme of federal spending and open-ended tax credits aimed at creating domestic green production to service the American market.
The cost of the IRA’s spending elements for climate and energy was originally estimated at $385bn over 10 years, but projections made last spring suggested it had risen to about $1tn. Some estimates show that by the time the programmes have achieved their environmental targets, their cost could be nearly $3tn. Famously, the administration placated Congress by restricting the electric vehicle tax credits to car companies from US allies and in general excluding products made with certain amounts of Chinese components.