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As reported by The New York Times Magazine at the time, Joe Biden’s goal was to transform the economy from the get-go: “The Biden Team Wants to Transform the Economy. Really.” Nearly two-and-a-half years later, the damage and chaos of that transformation process are obvious: continuing high inflation (especially energy, food, and gasoline prices), rising interest rates, recession predictions, a stagnant economy, depleted individual savings, sky-high credit card debt, and other indications of stagflation and recession.
Who has benefited from the Biden economy? Green-New-Deal grifters benefit from the gargantuan tax subsidies and federal spending on transitioning the U.S. economy from hydrocarbon energy sources to “clean” sources, especially solar and wind energy.
The communist Chinese are happy to benefit from Biden’s economic policies, which ultimately mandate and subsidize green products from Chinese companies at the expense of the U.S. companies who produce and use hydrocarbons.
Let us examine the issue.
Bidenomics
The Biden economic plan was the reverse of the Trump plan—the latter emphasizing low inflation delivered through U.S. energy independence and moderate federal taxation and regulations. Biden entered office as the COVID-19 pandemic was ending, with the macroeconomic balance being “excess demand and low supply.” The demand was created by federal stimulus bills passed in 2020, including the $2.2 trillion CARES Act (March), the $483 billion Paycheck Protection Program and Health Care Enhancement Act (April), and the $920 billion Consolidated Appropriations Act (December). The pandemic itself created supply chain problems virtually across the board.
The Biden economic program was intended to capitalize on the unique circumstances (chaos and fear) created by the pandemic to implement a radical transformation of the U.S. economy. As noted here, Biden promised this during his 2020 campaign: “I truly think that if we do this right, we have an incredible opportunity to not just dig out of this crisis, but to fundamentally transform the country.”
Democrats in Congress subsequently passed and Biden signed a $1.9 trillion spending bill misnamed “The American Rescue Plan.” This bill increased demand while discouraging work through direct federal benefits to individuals (and dependence on government for income), continuing supply chain disruptions and supply shortages, drying up individual savings accounts while increasing credit card debt balances of average Americans, and resulting in the historic levels of inflation experienced in the United States in 2022.
Perhaps the most damaging elements of Biden’s economic plan involve efforts to transition the U.S. economy from hydrocarbon energy sources to “green and clean” sources such as wind and solar through federal regulations and subsidies under the Democrats’ proposed “Green New Deal.” Biden campaign promises (gaffes?) were a harbinger. From September 2019: “I guarantee we’re going to end fossil fuel.” Biden’s subsequent actions in office have included killing oil pipeline projects, refusing to grant oil leases, refusing to approve drilling permits, and limiting the ability of energy companies to obtain financing.
Biden’s Green Policies
Federal subsidies and federal regulations form the basis of the Biden green policies that underpin Bidenomics. Most of the federal funding for green projects was accomplished and sold politically under the guise of the $430 billion “Inflation Reduction Act,” which was passed along party lines in August 2022. The Washington Post let the cat out of the bag in April 2023 with this excerpt from an article: “Last year’s climate spending bill, called the Inflation Reduction Act, … ” So much for “reducing inflation”!
Regulations are a main weapon in the Biden administration’s arsenal in forcing the green transformation of the U.S. economy. Last August, Biden issued “Implementing Instructions for Executive Order 14057, Catalyzing Clean Energy Industries and Jobs Through Federal Sustainability.” EO 14057 forces unsustainable green energy technologies into the federal government and, subsequently, throughout the U.S. economy that will lead to the displacement of all of America’s hydrocarbon energy sources under Biden’s “Federal Sustainability Plan.”
A key top-down regulatory effort consistent with that EO is to require corporations to adhere to so-called environmental, social, and governance (ESG) reporting requirements in their periodic financial disclosures to the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission. In a press release last year, the SEC “proposed amendments to rules and reporting forms to promote consistent, comparable, and reliable information for investors concerning funds’ and advisers’ incorporation of ESG factors.” Companies would be forced to conform to left-wing environmental requirements for climate risk management plans, and noncompliance could result in fines and penalties in the future if/when these SEC guidelines are implemented.
In demonstrating a continuing commitment to implementing radical ESG compliance monitoring measures, Biden issued his very first veto on March 20, 2o23 to protect the ability of the federal government to monitor and regulate ESG mandates—“halting a Republican-led effort to overturn a federal rule allowing retirement plan advisers to take environmental, social and corporate governance (ESG) factors into account.”
EPA Regulations
A key regulatory effort to force Americans away from hydrocarbon energy sources has been the EPA’s ever-tightening rules that govern the emissions of power plants and vehicles. As reported by The Epoch Times on May 11, “the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) unveiled its strictest-ever rules for power produced using natural gas, coal, and oil that could spur the use of carbon capture technologies … to induce U.S. power plants to boost their use of certain technologies, including the co-firing of fossil fuels with what it calls low-greenhouse gas (GHG) hydrogen and, in particular, the capture, sequestration, and storage of carbon.”
The EPA has also supported California’s new emission rules that will eliminate the use of diesel trucks over time. As reported by ABC News on March 31, the EPA’s decision “allows California to require truck manufacturers to sell an increasing number of zero-emission trucks over the next couple of decades. The rule applies to a wide range of trucks including box trucks, semitrailers and even large passenger pick-ups.”
Not Just the EPA
In jumping through Biden’s EO 14057 hoops, other federal agencies are pushing green fantasies, too.
In a Senate Appropriations Committee hearing on May 3, 2023, Sen. John Kennedy (R-La.) obtained from Deputy Energy Secretary David Turk an estimate of “trillions of dollars” required for implementing Biden’s carbon neutrality goals in the United States by 2050 (see video here).
In April 2022, the Dept of Energy effectively banned traditional light bulbs by arbitrarily changing rules on light bulb efficiency.
The U.S. Consumer Products Safety Commission proposed to ban gas stoves just last month, according to the Daily Caller.
Concluding Thoughts
Communist China is a key beneficiary of Bidenomics—particularly as relates to green technology exports—and U.S. policy won’t be changing anytime soon. U.S. Treasury Undersecretary for International Affairs, Jay Shambaugh, made the following statement in a recent Bloomberg interview: “The U.S. is not seeking to decouple from China. We’re not seeking to limit China’s growth. Those aren’t our strategic objectives.”
The Biden administration’s ongoing transformation of the U.S. economy into a green dystopia further incentivizes the importation of Chinese-made green technologies and adds to the U.S.-China trade deficit, since China is the world’s largest producer of electric vehicles, lithium batteries, and solar panels.
Article cross-posted from The Epoch Times.
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