The Biden administration at work to keep technologies within the national territory

The Biden administration has mapped out new measures with the aim of bringing manufacturing back to the United States and diversifying access to foreign-made materials such as rare earths used for batteries. The steps, which include the creation of a new government supply-chain task force, are within the initiative called 100-Day Supply-Chain Review launched by Biden in February following the onset of supply-chain problems that emerged during the pandemic with the intent to cover four areas: semiconductors, used in the production of cars and telephones, large capacity batteries used in electric vehicles, pharmaceuticals and rare earths which are fundamental for technology and defense. The White House said in a document summarizing the program’s findings: “While amplified by the health and economic crisis, decades of underinvestment and public policy choices have led to fragility in supply chains across a wide range of sectors and products. At the same time, the US is well positioned to maintain and strengthen its innovative leadership and rebuild manufacturing capacity in key sectors and value chains ”. Additionally, the Biden administration is moving to end exemptions that have allowed the export of technology developed with US government research funding for overseas manufacturing, the Secretary of Energy recently explained. Jennifer Granholm in an interview. We are talking about those billions of dollars in grants allocated by the Department of Energy and aimed at small companies and non-profit organizations, mostly universities and their spin-offs, which have made it possible to outsource the production of technology and to develop it all. with federal help. The general and overall objective of these political initiatives of the Biden administration is to increase domestic production in high-tech industries and to tackle China in particular in these sectors. Basically, if the US finances the research and development of your company, you have to produce at home, as Jennifer Granholm summed up: “If the seed was planted here, the tree should grow here”. Biden, meanwhile, has proposed an increase in federal spending, including a $ 2.3 trillion infrastructure package, to modernize the U.S. economy and ensure that the U.S. becomes a world leader in several nascent sectors or in evolution, in particular clean energy and low-emission transport.