WASHINGTON — President Biden boasted his administration’s infrastructure investments — with an emphasis on clean energy projects — in his State of the Union address to the nation Thursday evening.
In his opening remarks about the economy, Biden noted his administration had created nearly 800,000 manufacturing jobs, with more to follow in 2024.
He touted his commitment to domestic manufacturing, a priority of his since his election to office, as a result of the Bipartisan Infrastructure Law’s Build America, Buy America provisions.
“Buy American has been the law of the land since the 1930s,” Biden said. “On my watch, federal projects like roads, bridges and highways will be made with American products built by American workers, creating good-paying American jobs.”
He rooted his accomplishments in Belvidere, Ill., where Biden backed the United Auto Workers labor union in revitalizing and converting the Belvidere Assembly Plant into an all-electric facility. A nearby $3.2 billion battery factory will manufacture materials for the vehicles.
The president said infrastructure investments like these are part of America’s “comeback story.”
“Instead of watching auto jobs of the future go overseas, 4,000 union workers with higher wages will be building that future here in America,” Biden said.
These are just two of 46,000 projects the president promoted last night, aiming to modernize roads, bridges, ports, airports and public transit systems. Most projects have a clean-energy focus, with his administration hiring at a rapid pace to meet demand and slow climate change.
Biden said his clean-energy policies have attracted $650 billion of private sector investments in advanced manufacturing, making progress on priorities such as installing nationwide EV charging stations.
“I’m taking the most significant action on climate change in the history of the world,” Biden said. “I am cutting our carbon emissions in half by 2030 and creating tens of thousands of clean-energy jobs.”
