We Need a More Resilient American Economy

quote:

---

I have worked to put forward a foundation for this, calling for the re-shoring of supply chains integral to our national interest — everything from basic medicines and equipment to vital rare-earth minerals and technologies of the future. Before the pandemic, I proposed a reauthorization of the Small Business Act to serve as a template for how we could make our economy more productive. There is a clear need for a sweeping pro-American industrial policy, brought into sharp relief by this crisis.

We need to apply this thinking to the conditions that intensified the continuing pandemic. In February, I submitted a bipartisan plan to require drug producers to identify where ingredients are produced, create tax breaks for U.S. producers of these ingredients and mandate that federal buyers purchase drugs made in America.

A sensible industrial policy will also mean creating federal incentives for productive investment in workers and equipment through tax policy and robust federal guarantees, while discouraging unproductive corporate behavior like stock buybacks. Where foreign subsidies draw away investment outside our own borders, the federal government should introduce cooperatives to spur the creation of domestic supply chains.

Though rebuilding a more productive and pro-worker economy will take time, we can achieve it and ensure that America’s next economic chapter will owe its character to the same spirit of resiliency, solidarity and collective pursuit of the common good that our people are now displaying to the world.

---