President Joe Biden stated Friday that his No. 1 concern is “getting prices under control” and touted the administration’s “Made in America” initiatives as providing the quickest path toward reaching that goal.
Biden’s comments came during an event with Siemens CEO Barbara Humpton at the White House, where he announced a new federal rule updating the Buy American Act, which White House officials called “the most robust” change to the law in seven decades.
The president’s new rule will raise the threshold for the federal government’s purchase of goods and services, an annual total in excess of $600 billion, from 55% to 75%.
“What this means is that if we’re identifying some product that is so critical to our national security, health, or resilience. We’re going to create rules that allowed us to pay a little more for them, if they’re made in America,” he stated. “We’re talking about things like semiconductors, pharmaceutical agreements, advanced batteries, among other things. It’s worth it, especially to make sure that we have a domestic capacity to protect us from shortages and price spikes in the future.”
“Today, I’m placing a bet on America,” Biden said. “We’ve seen in the past several months is more reason why we need to reject the defeatist view that the forces of automation and globalization mean we can’t have good-paying union jobs, manufacturing here in America. Our manufacturing future, our economic future, our solutions to the climate crisis, they’re all going to be made in America.”
Earlier in the event, Humpton announced a $54 million investment from Siemens to expand domestic production of “critical electrical infrastructure” supporting “everything from electric vehicle chargers to data centers to industrial sites.”
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You can watch Biden’s remarks in full below.
