American manufacturing has been on the decline for decades. Accelerating climate and public health crises have, in recent years, exacerbated and exposed longstanding underinvestment in critical supply chains, underdevelopment of advanced technologies and processes, and declining worker power. However, the sector remains one of the most reliable pathways to the middle class and high-skill, high-wage jobs for millions of workers. The message from the Biden-Harris White House has been loud and clear: If we continue to underinvest in American industry, we will fail to address our economic, social, and environmental challenges.
That’s why we need a new strategy. An industrial strategy for the second quarter of the twenty-first century. One that draws from the best lessons of the past, but leans into the challenges of the future. This strategy is built on five core pillars: supply chain resilience, targeted public investment, public procurement, climate resilience, and equity.
Brian Deese, Director of the National Economic Council (June 2021)
So, to tackle the climate crisis and create millions of American jobs, Congress can and should take a much stronger role in boosting clean American manufacturing. Recent reports from CSIS, ITIF, and others have argued for a more strategic national agenda for climate manufacturing. Policies tend to fall in two categories: (1) efforts to increase domestic manufacturing of clean energy technologies, and (2) efforts to decarbonize the essential, but historically emissions-intensive products that underpin modern life, such as steel and cement.
In the American Jobs Plan, the president laid out an ambitious strategy to revitalize and decarbonize U.S. advanced manufacturing in a manner that creates high-quality jobs and promotes environmental justice. The plan earmarked roughly $300 billion for clean energy manufacturing, domestic electric vehicle (EV) supply chains, and semiconductors, as well as tax credits to spur the deployment of energy storage and other advanced energy technologies, first-of-a-kind demonstrations of zero-emissions industrial processes (à la a recent breakthrough in clean steel), workforce development programs, and much more. Unfortunately, just a fraction of the president’s manufacturing agenda has made it into legislation. We are at serious risk of missing yet another major opportunity to reverse decline.
The opportunity is urgent and unprecedented. According to the International Energy Agency, facilitating the transition to a net-zero emissions economy (NZE) will require global investment in clean energy and infrastructure to swell from $2 trillion to $5 trillion by 2030, and be largely maintained until midcentury. According to the IEA, this investment would bring an increase of 30 million jobs within the next decade, 28 percent of which would occur in the manufacturing sector. American manufacturing leadership will create jobs and enable us to compete with China to supply the world with the solar cells, semiconductors, clean cement, and more we need to tackle our most pressing 21st-century challenges.
Finally, such investments are not just essential for meeting our climate goals, but also deeply appeal to voters across the political spectrum. In this series, we explore some of the most popular and powerful near-term policy levers that Congress and the Biden-Harris Administration can use to ensure American workers and manufacturers are at the cutting edge of the clean economy.
A just and sustainable future can be made in America.
