Biden’s Top-Down Economy, Powered By Executive Action

Joe Biden didn’t take a Juneteenth break, instead heading to Palo Alto to tout “historic action to combat the climate crisis, create good-paying clean energy jobs, and protect our environment for future generations.”

Biden frequently claims to be building out an economy “bottom up, middle out.” But the impulses on display in California entail more central government. His springboards for these ambitious extensions of Washington’s top-down power include the American Rescue Plan and the infrastructure, inflation and tech laws he takes credit for, plus his conviction that climate change is “the existential threat to humanity.”

But there’s more. Recently we showcased examples of this administration’s fondness—not just for ambitious legislation and revivals of big-gun regulation like a clean air plan and energy efficiency rules—but for sub-regulatory guidance documents. Recent examples of these decrees come from the likes of the Federal Trade Commission and the Department of Transportation and encompass competition policy, climate, environmental justice and more.

These transformations are getting interesting in real time. Some companies are learning the hard way that to get funding from Biden’s CHIPS and Science Act and the Infrastructure Law, they’ll need to jump through hoops such as providing child care services, committing to green energy sourcing, and even potentially agreeing to profit-sharing with the federal government.

Strings attached to government funding ought not to have surprised the grownups. The Biden administration has been anything but coy about its aggressive policy campaigns.

Read the full article on Forbes.