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**JULY 30, 2021**

Kuttner on TAP

Making America Great Again, Done Right

****

A 1930s law, the Buy American Act, requires products purchased by the
government with taxpayer dollars to be made in America. Seems only fair.
But thanks to waivers granted by recent administrations as part of trade
deals, the act has become more loophole than law.

Once again, Biden is demonstrating the power of executive action. On
Wednesday, he issued an order defining what counts as made in America

for purposes of the act as 75 percent, up from its current 55 percent.

More importantly, the president's Made in America office has been
engaging in a comprehensive review of the waivers, setting in motion
much stricter standards. This is all part of Biden's welcome reversal
of the corporate "free-trade" dogma that has crippled U.S. industry and
set the table for Donald Trump's faux nationalism.

Trump supplied the rhetoric of making America great again, but strip out
the racist jingoism and there was little other than tariffs in the way
of practical policy. Biden is actually making constructive changes.

The government buys about $600 billion worth of goods and services every
year. Why shouldn't most of the physical goods be made in America?

Even more important than the latest order is a comprehensive 250-page
report issued by the White House in June on what it would take to
recapture supply chains essential to America's economic security
.

This is really a blueprint for a comprehensive industrial policy, which
is no longer the phrase that dares not speak its name.

What a pleasure to see a president who goes beyond rhetoric and not only
defies the free-market orthodoxy but constructs systematic policies to
bring back technology, jobs, and an economy that serves Main Street, not
Wall Street.

~ ROBERT KUTTNER

Follow Robert Kuttner on Twitter

Robert Kuttner's latest book is
The Stakes: 2020 and the Survival of American Democracy
.

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