Biden Says “Competing With China” Requires He Takes Out Yet Another $2.3 Trillion in Loans and Distributes It

That's convenient

In promoting his sweeping US$2.3 trillion infrastructure plan on Wednesday, US President Joe Biden again stressed that the investment was part an ideological competition against China that the United States could not afford to lose.

Speaking in Washington, Biden stressed the urgency of the proposal, which has met with resistance from Republicans and even several Democratic lawmakers who say the price tag is too high and object to the administration’s plans to pay for it.

“You think China is waiting around to invest in this digital infrastructure, on research and development?” Biden asked. “I promise you, they are not waiting. But they’re counting on American democracy to be too slow, too limited and too divided to keep pace.”

When Biden unveiled the American Jobs Plan last week, he mentioned China six times.

“It will create millions of jobs, good-paying jobs. It will grow the economy, make us more competitive around the world, promote our national security interests and put us in a position to win the global competition with China in the upcoming years,” he said on March 31 in Pittsburgh. [So why stop at $2.3 trillion?]

On Wednesday, the president defended the scope of the plan and his proposal for funding it by increasing the corporate tax rate, but he left room for negotiation. [A joke, of course, it will be funded by debt. ]

Biden said that he believed “this generation will be marked by the competition between democracies and autocracies”, and that “the autocrats are betting on democracy not being able to generate the kind of unity needed to make decisions to get in that race”.

“We can’t afford to prove them right,” he said.

While the proposal is a domestic initiative aiming to create millions of jobs – with spending on green energy projects, expanded high-speed broadband and electric vehicles as well as traditional infrastructure projects – Biden said it was the only way to fight China in the competition to dominate the future and to regain US leadership of the world.

“Over the next six to eight months,” he said, there will be reports about “how China and the rest of the world is racing ahead of us and the investments they have for the future.

“America is no longer the leader of the world because we aren’t investing.”

Federal government spending on infrastructure has dropped to 0.7 per cent of the GDP, Biden said, adding that the US is one of the few major economies in the world whose public investment in research and development (R&D) has declined.

Under the current proposal, infrastructure projects in transportation, home care services, manufacturing, housing, water and public schools will be upgraded.

Biden said on Wednesday that while he and Vice-President Kamala Harris welcomed debate on the details, doing nothing was not acceptable.

“Inaction is not an option,” he said.

“We have to show the world, much more important, we have to show ourselves that democracy works. That we can come together.”

Source: South China Morning Post

4 Comments
  1. Gerald says

    20 years too late. Infrastructure for the US is beyond short or medium term repair. The Chinese plan 50 years ahead the US don’t plan beyond the end of their nose. Too many years of pillaging their own people has made these problems too deep rooted. If the US took their troops home and put the money into the homeland they could see results within 20 years maybe, so for them now, it’s just printing money until war or total collapse.

    1. Pablo says

      The real problem is that the people who own the US Government don’t have the least bit of concern for the future of the USA. And they don’t care about the General Welfare of the USA. This should be obvious.

  2. ken says

    Printing huge sums of phony money is a normal sign of the end of not very bright empire wannabees.

    Government and their child corporations sent manufacturing packing for higher profits and kickbacks while Americans lost their manufacturing sector and jobs. Now they’re maxing out credit cards and whatever to buy stuff that used to made here,,, which means the money stayed here and the skills stayed here.

    When some government officials complain about the trade deficits, the fact is it’s the American corporations importing stuff their factories are producing in China.

    Every economic problem the US has today, besides the idiots in charge, is directly related to off shoring.

    You want a decent economy Mr. Government? Stop taxing the crap out of everything, reduce your payroll, bring your mercenaries home, stop the illegal lockdowns, and get the hell out of the way.

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