Manufacturing Is Back, Baby

For my entire life, I’ve heard politicians talk about bringing manufacturing jobs back to America. Now it is finally happening. “We’re not going back!” has become Kamala Harris’s rallying cry, and it’s apt here too, because those jobs and industries of the future are what’s at stake in this election.

The Biden-Harris administration and the 117th Congress enacted a trio of laws — the Inflation Reduction Act, the CHIPS and Science Act, and the Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act, otherwise known as the Bipartisan Infrastructure Law — that made major public investments to cultivate and strengthen several key industries of the future: semiconductors, electric vehicles, batteries, solar and wind manufacturing, hydrogen-based energy, and clean steel.

Those new laws (and other Biden-Harris Administration actions on trade and tariffs) have directed and amplified a megatrend in “reshoring” and driven a huge surge in private sector investments in U.S. manufacturing, creating tens of thousands of good jobs in communities across America. Investment in manufacturing construction has more than doubled since passage of the IRA and CHIPS, and the U.S. has seen nearly 127,000 new jobs created, according to Energy Innovation policy analyst Jack Conness.

Just last week, on the occasion of the IRA’s two-year anniversary, Heatmap’s Emily Pontecorvo wrote about a new report finding that 6,285 utility-scale clean energy projects in the U.S. may be eligible for IRA tax credits, meaning 3.9 million jobs, all of which will be subject to minimum pay standards if they want the federal rewards.

These investments are supporting a diverse set of communities across America. Of the nearly $71 billion of clean energy manufacturing investments announced in 2023, more than $59 billion — around 83% — were in House districts represented by Republicans per the Clean Economy Tracker, a partnership between Atlas Public Policy and Utah State University. That’s tens of billions of dollars flowing into rural areas, including a significant chunk going to “energy communities,” areas that have historically produced, processed, or transported fossil fuels.

We all know that manufacturing plants can be an anchor employer for a community and play an even more important role than the direct jobs numbers reveal. The opening of dozens of new advanced manufacturing plants means dozens of communities across America have a brighter economic future —  or at least, they do for now.

Project 2025, the Heritage Foundation’s vision for “the next conservative administration,” contains a set of plans and policies that would put all those communities and hundreds of thousands of good paying jobs in jeopardy. Energy Innovation modeled the policy scenario outlined in Project 2025 against one in which the U.S. meets its stated goal of reducing emissions 50% to 52% below 2005 levels by 2030 and found that the former would lead to 3.9 million fewer jobs in 2030 compared to the latter, including 1.7 million jobs straight-up lost. The overall economic effect would be catastrophic: a $320 billion annual drop in GDP in 2030, compared to a $450 billion per year gain if the U.S. meets its clean energy and climate goals.

Trump has publicly disavowed Project 2025, but the evidence for his private alignment with its authors and principles continues to mount — most recently the release of secret Project 2025 training videos, featuring more than two-dozen former Trump administration figures.

Project 2025 calls for gutting the IRA and the infrastructure law, which would, in the words of a memo released last week by the center-left think tank Third Way, “end crucial federal investments in US manufacturing, scrap tax incentives that help U.S. manufacturers compete with China, and make it harder for U.S. manufacturers to obtain loans.” It would also have ominous implications for America’s geopolitical position in the medium- to long-term. “Funding basic research and then cutting all subsequent support, as Trump plans to do, opens the door for other countries to swoop in and claim market share,” the authors write. This has happened before: The U.S. developed much of the solar and battery technology China is now using to dominate those global markets.

That’s to say nothing of the overall environment of chaos and policy uncertainty that comes with a Trump presidency, which wreaks havoc on business investment. Business leaders would be wise to remember what it was like under Trump 1.0. Trump might promise corporate tax cuts, but with a strong economy, cooling inflation, and a vibrant manufacturing renaissance finally underway, the worst thing we could do is pull the rug out from under the entire U.S. economic policy framework — continuity and certainty are good for business.

As Greg Sargent pointed out in The New Republic, “All this gives Harris an opening.” The green transition can be exciting, a source of the kind of joy Harris and her vice presidential nominee, Tim Walz, have been stumping about. “Without getting entangled in cultural cross-signaling around fossil fuels, she can argue that the very last thing we should do is reverse the clean energy boom. It’s creating lots of jobs building cool, innovative stuff right in the American heartland.”

I, for one, will be looking to see if this contrast starts to show up in political ads and speeches at this week’s Democratic National Convention — something like: “Harris will continue investing in U.S. manufacturing and the industries of the future. Trump will blow that all up. The choice is on the ballot. And we’re not going back.”

What future do you choose?