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**MARCH 27, 2023**
Kuttner on TAP
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**** Using Industrial Policy to Promote Social
Justice
Can the Biden administration maximize its leverage-and speak with one
voice?
When the Commerce Department last month released its long-awaited
guidelines for applicants seeking some of the department's $53 billion
that the CHIPS and Science Act authorizes, one of the required criteria
was that companies seeking grants provide child care for their workers.
<[link removed]>
Secretary Gina Raimondo told
**The New York Times**
<[link removed]>
in an interview, "You will not be successful unless you find a way to
attract, train, put to work and retain women, and you won't do that
without child care."
That sounded great-until you looked at the Department of Energy's
conditions for its grantees
<[link removed]>
under its $7 billion programs
<[link removed]>
under the bipartisan infrastructure law to promote and subsidize
development and manufacturing of battery technology for electric
vehicles and other post-carbon applications. DOE's criteria require an
explicit Community Benefits Plan, which counts for 20 percent of an
applicant's score.
The plan must include four elements: Community, labor, and stakeholder
engagement; a diversity, equity, inclusion, and accessibility plan;
support for the administration's Justice40 Initiative, which applies
40 percent of funds to historically marginalized groups; and explicit
plans to invest in the workforce and promote workers' rights.
All of these elements require goals, benchmarks, and timetables. And the
Energy Department has made clear that one easy way to meet the labor
goal is to have a union.
The department's released list of the first 13 grantee companies
includes their highly detailed plans
<[link removed]>.
Speaking at a conference last week convened by the Hewlett Foundation,
Kate Gordon, a senior DOE adviser to Secretary Granholm, made clear that
these social goals rank equally with the technological goals.
As I wrote in this piece
<[link removed]>,
the labor movement and other progressive groups had pressed Commerce
Secretary Raimondo for just these sort of criteria in her guidelines for
applicants, but to no avail. DOE is clearly the leader here, and other
departments should follow. Someone at the White House should be
coordinating all this and promoting a race to the top on these
guidelines rather than a smorgasbord of divergent standards.
It would be a little too cynical to view Raimondo's child care
requirements as mere window dressing; they are valid in their own right
and a smart use of the leverage of government funding on corporate
behavior. But how about requiring both the Commerce Department's child
care requirements and the Energy Department's broader criteria for
promoting labor and community goals?
~ ROBERT KUTTNER
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California Goes In for Drugmaking
<[link removed]>
The state will make and distribute insulin at cost. That should be a
model for every other state. BY HAROLD MEYERSON
Donald Trump Deserves to Be Indicted
<[link removed]>
But not just for the Stormy Daniels affair; the most corrupt president
in American history has gotten away with far too much. BY RYAN COOPER
The SVB Collapse Reveals the Class Bias in American Policymaking
<[link removed]>
When bankers blow their businesses up, it's no-questions-asked bailout
time. When student borrowers need relief, not so much. BY DYLAN
GYAUCH-LEWIS
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