With about two months to go until President-elect Donald Trump is sworn into office, the Biden administration is announcing large investments to bolster American manufacturing and renewable energy.
Funded through the Inflation Reduction Act, the Bipartisan Infrastructure Law and the CHIPS and Science Act, the money is being spent in anticipation that some of President Joe Biden’s most sweeping legislative achievements could be undone with the incoming administration.
On Friday, the Department of Commerce announced it will provide $6.6 billion to the Arizona subsidiary of Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Company to help build three fabrication facilities in Phoenix. President Biden signed the $52.7 billion CHIPS Act in August 2022 to bring semiconductor production back to the United States from Asia. About two-thirds of the spending has been announced.
“The first of TSMC’s three facilities is on track to fully open early next year, which means that for the first time in decades, an American manufacturing plant will be producing the leading-edge chips used in our most advanced technologies — from our smartphones to autonomous vehicles to the data centers powering artificial intelligence,” Biden said in a statement.
Earlier this week, the Biden administration awarded the latest tranche of funding through the Bipartisan Infrastructure Law to fund clean energy infrastructure projects. Signed in 2021, the BIL authorized $1.2 trillion for green infrastructure and transportation spending, not all of which has been spent.
On Friday, the USDOT awarded $1.5 billion in BIL funding to upgrade the rail system in the Northeastern U.S. That announcement comes one day after the department announced $1.2 billion to help state transportation departments use more environmentally friendly construction materials and $172 million to local governments to make roads safer.
The Department of Agriculture also announced this week that it has spent more than $1 billion through the Biden administration’s Inflation Reduction Act in clean energy investments for farms and rural small businesses.
“Our goal is to make sure that all of our investment agenda gets into the economic bloodstream,” National Climate Advisor Ali Zaidi told Semafor Friday during the United Nations Climate Conference in Azerbaijan. “Nine out of every $10 in our investment agenda, on the grant side, has hit the road. We want to make sure the rest of it gets there.”
President-elect Trump said he plans to terminate what he often calls the “green new scam” once he takes office. In October, he pledged to rescind whatever funds haven’t been spent through the Inflation Reduction Act.