One of the Biden administration’s signature pieces of legislation, the Inflation Reduction Act (IRA), includes “Buy American” provisions for renewable technologies that are not allowed under WTO rules.
“We are favoring domestic production over imports. That’s flatly prohibited in the rules of the WTO,” said Robert Lawrence, a professor of trade and investment at the Harvard Kennedy School, in an interview with The Hill.
Biden has also imposed new export controls with China covering artificial intelligence and quantum information systems amid rising national and economic security concerns that China is closing a tech gap.
“When it comes to international trade, [Biden] has continued pretty much along the same protectionist line that Trump started and he’s maintained most of Trump’s policies,” Lawrence said.
Also like Trump, Biden has sought to reinvigorate U.S. manufacturing, which has declined as a source of employment since the early 1980s.
Increased trade has been blamed in part for the loss of U.S. manufacturing jobs and clout as well as stagnating U.S. wages, which haven’t moved much in real terms in 40 years.
Read more here from The Hill’s Tobias Burns.
