Why Biden’s Buy American plan is a bad Trumpian idea in new protectionist clothes
- The Buy American initiative may be less ill-judged than the tariff war, but in barring foreign firms from US government procurement contracts, it will cost American consumers – and taxpayers – dearly and may prompt foreign retaliation
Many of the orders are mere markers making good on pledges made in the heat of presidential election campaigning. Most are welcome, as he squares off to tackle four momentous challenges in the coming year – the pandemic, the recession, climate change, and social divisions and injustices that threaten to tear apart the fabric of US society.
But when, last Monday, he stood in front of a blue banner proclaiming “The Future Will Be Made in America” and unveiled a new “Buy American” initiative, I felt a shiver of angst. I tend to agree with The Washington Post headline: “Biden’s ‘Buy American’ plan is good politics – and awful economics”.
We, of course, should not be surprised. Democrats, strongly supported by American trade unions, have never been fans of international trade, and continue to put many of the country’s economic ills at the door of traitorous multinationals who have “sold out” American workers by shifting their manufacturing overseas, most controversially to China.
As a Financial Times editorial said last week: “Mr Biden wants his presidency to restore the status and well-being of ordinary workers, many of whom supported Mr Trump, after suffering the sharp end of automation, globalisation and economic change, for decades. That is a noble agenda. But it does not justify this sort of crude protectionism.”