Trickle-down Bidenomics: Help unions by subsidizing big business
Timothy P. Carney
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President Joe Biden announced $12 billion in corporate welfare to U.S. automakers and their suppliers this week to subsidize a transition from gasoline-powered cars to electric cars.
This should be understood as part of the long-term effort to ban gasoline-powered cars while insisting that they are not banning gasoline-powered cars.
Check out this paragraph in this CNN article on the subsidies: “The U.N.’s Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change reported last year that aggressive, pollution-slashing changes in the global transportation sector — including the transition to EVs — could reduce the sector’s emissions by more than 80%.” The New York Times likewise writes in its article on this $12 billion in handouts: “Transportation is responsible for about one-third of the greenhouse gases generated by the United States, pollution that is dangerously heating the planet.”
But more interesting than the climate angle here is the redistribution angle. Biden administration officials present this corporate welfare as a way to help auto workers.
“Under Bidenomics, building a clean energy economy can and should provide a win‑win opportunity for auto companies and unionized workers who have anchored the American economy for decades.”
This is literally trickle-down economics. Biden gives billions to big business in the hope that big business will pass the money on to workers. The irony is that Biden always pretends to hate “trickle-down economics” and claims that Bidenomics is the alternative.
“Here’s the simple truth about trickle-down economics,” Biden said this summer: “It didn’t represent the best of American capitalism, let alone America.”
This is totally empty rhetoric, as Biden’s $12 billion corporate welfare to automakers shows.
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Biden has also successfully portrayed himself as the scourge of big business and won populism points from the press for this. Tesla, Ford, and General Motors will be the biggest beneficiaries of this money, which will exacerbate inflation, thus hurting middle-class families.
That’s Bidenomics!