This year, for the first time in two decades, America’s infrastructure investment will grow faster than China’s. Yes, it will connect more people to more places, create jobs, and push innovations from laboratory to market.īut it also represents the most significant effort in the last half-century to make a sustained, long-term public investment in America. Yes, it will make our supply chains more durable and reduce price pressures. The Bipartisan Infrastructure Law is a case in point. For the past year, we’ve centered on two core principles:įirst, strategic public investment must serve as the backbone to a strong industrial base. Today, I’d like to take stock of how far we’ve come and reassess the case for an American industrial strategy going forward. We should seize it-with an economic strategy that matches the moment. What we have now is an opportunity, amid historic uncertainty. And now, Russia’s unprovoked invasion of Ukraine has compounded these challenges-exacerbating supply constraints, pushing up prices, and straining the post-Cold War world order.Įven so, the United States retains a stronger economic position than any other major country in the world, based on economic growth, job growth, consumer spending, and household balance sheets-even taking inflation into account. The pandemic exposed structural vulnerabilities-resulting from decades-long underinvestment in our industrial strength-that have continued to generate supply-chain bottlenecks across the economy. Our convulsive, pandemic-constrained recovery has produced high inflation globally and domestically. Yes, our economy faces significant challenges. But there’s no question the President’s strategy helped generate the strongest recovery in modern history-with the fastest economic growth in nearly four decades the strongest labor market recovery ever recorded and record progress for Black and Hispanic Americans, the long-term unemployed, and others often left behind in a slow-growth economy. History will judge the virtues of our crisis response-there’s room for debate. President Biden came into office and set the nation on a new course, taking immediate action to fight the virus and deliver economic relief. Job losses were the worst since the Great Depression-with communities of color and young people hit hardest. When the pandemic began, our economy suffered its sharpest contraction since the end of the Second World War. The question should move from “ why should we pursue an industrial strategy?” to “ how do we pursue one successfully?” The turbulent, historic economic events of the last year have underscored the case. Ten months ago, I proposed the idea of a modern American industrial strategy to describe what animated President Biden’s approach to strengthening the economy. Investments in our industrial capacity will leave our economy better positioned to weather future shocks-and to help all Americans thrive. Properly conceived and implemented, an industrial strategy is an economic resilience and capacity strategy. My core point today is this: it is a critical and urgent imperative for the United States to chart and implement a modern American industrial strategy. But our economy has changed, and the world has changed, too.
For much of the last half-century, even uttering the words “industrial policy” was met with something between derision and concern. That imperative has a contested history in American economic policy. In what can it be so useful as in prompting and improving the efforts of industry?”
In the United States, he argued, “the public purse must supply the deficiency of private resource. And the third-his 1791 Report on the Subject of Manufactures-offered a vision for a strong industrial system in America. The second was about establishing a national bank.
The first report was about securing the public credit.
#Empire total war map port series#
In the early days of the Republic, Alexander Hamilton prepared a series of reports to Congress that laid the intellectual foundations for the young American economy. Thanks to Barbara Van Allen and the entire team at the Economic Club of New York for hosting me today.
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