Inflation Reduction Act of 2022

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    Trump’s Funding Freeze Raises a New Question: Is the Government’s Word Good?

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    As the Trump administration continues to withhold billions of dollars for climate and clean energy spending — despite two federal judges ordering the money released — concerns are growing that the United States government could skip out on its legal commitments.Typically, when the federal government spends money through a grant or a loan program approved by Congress, it signs a legally binding agreement, known as an obligation, to deliver the money. Companies, states and other recipients often spend millions of dollars to buy equipment, hire workers, build facilities and more, fully expecting that the federal government will make good on its promise to reimburse the funds.That expectation has been upended by the new administration.Following an order by President Trump, federal agencies, including the Energy Department, Environmental Protection Agency and the Agriculture Department, have paused funding for a wide range of obligated grants related to the 2022 Inflation Reduction Act and 2021 bipartisan infrastructure law, sweeping laws that provided billions for climate and energy programs.In just a few weeks, the consequences have begun to be felt nationwide. School districts that planned to use promised federal dollars to buy electric school buses have seen their accounts frozen. Farmers and store owners that spent hundreds of thousands of dollars of their own money to replace old refrigeration systems or install solar panels are finding their requests for reimbursements delayed.Two federal judges have explicitly ordered the Trump administration to end its freeze and let the money flow again. On Monday, one of those judges, Judge John J. McConnell Jr. in Rhode Island federal court, said the White House was defying his order by withholding funds.Jessica Tillipman, associate dean for government procurement law at the George Washington University Law School, said the administration’s actions had jeopardized the integrity of federal contracting.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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      Biden Turns to an Unlikely Ally to Help Protect His Legacy: Republicans

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      President Biden wants to make it more difficult for President-elect Donald J. Trump to repeal his signature legislation, which sent money flowing to Republican districts nationwide.President-elect Donald J. Trump has promised to unravel President Biden’s major legislation when he takes office next month, but Mr. Biden is hoping to salvage his most prized policies with help from an unlikely source: Republicans.With just weeks left in office, Mr. Biden and his aides have emphasized that his signature economic legislation, the Inflation Reduction Act, overwhelmingly benefits Republican districts, in the hopes that Mr. Trump would face blowback from his own party if he repealed it.The administration is also racing to award hundreds of millions of dollars in grants and finalize environmental regulations to lock in Mr. Biden’s economic agenda, including ramping up domestic manufacturing of clean energy products and semiconductors.“They are not going to want to undermine those jobs and those businesses that we know for the first time are really strong in so many districts around the country that have been left behind under trickle-down policies,” Lael Brainard, Mr. Biden’s national economic adviser, said in an interview.Roughly 80 percent of new clean energy manufacturing investments announced since the Inflation Reduction Act passed in 2022 have flowed to Republican congressional districts, according to data from Atlas Public Policy, a research firm.Mr. Trump and his allies have attacked the legislation, which provides at least $390 billion over 10 years in tax breaks, grants and subsidies for wind and solar power, electric vehicle battery production and other clean energy projects. More

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      Fact-Checking Biden’s ABC Interview

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      The president defended his debate performance with exaggerations about polling, his recent appearances and his opponent.President Biden rejected concerns about his fumbling performance in the first presidential debate last month in a prime-time interview on Friday.In the interview with George Stephanopoulos of ABC News, Mr. Biden downplayed and misstated polls showing him falling farther behind former President Donald J. Trump since the debate, exaggerated Mr. Trump’s proposals and made hyperbolic statements about his own record and recent events.Here’s a fact check.what Was SAID“After that debate, I did 10 major events in a row, including until 2 o’clock in the morning after the debate. I did events in North Carolina. I did events in — in — in Georgia, did events like this today, large crowds, overwhelming response, no — no — no slipping.”This is exaggerated. Since the debate on June 27, Mr. Biden has traveled up and down the East Coast and participated in more than a dozen events, according to his public calendar. Whether or not the events can be considered “major” and crowds “large” are matters of opinion, but Mr. Biden did misspeak at several.Before the interview on Friday, Mr. Biden said of Mr. Trump at a rally in Wisconsin that he would “beat him again in 2020.”At a Fourth of July barbecue with military members and their families, Mr. Biden referred to Mr. Trump as “one of our former colleagues” before correcting himself.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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      Podesta Meets With China’s Climate Envoy Amid Deep Economic Tensions

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      Beijing’s dominance raises economic and security concerns, and tensions will be on full display as top climate diplomats meet this week.The world’s two most powerful countries, the United States and China, are meeting this week in Washington to talk about climate change. And also their relationship issues.In an ideal world, where the clean energy transition was the top priority, they would be on friendlier terms. Maybe affordable Chinese-made electric vehicles would be widely sold in America, instead of being viewed as an economic threat. Or there would be less need to dig a lithium mine at an environmentally sensitive site in Nevada, because lithium, which is essential for batteries, could be bought worry-free from China, which controls the world’s supply.Instead, in the not-ideal real world, the United States is balancing two competing goals. The Biden administration wants to cut planet-warming emissions by encouraging people to buy things like EVs and solar panels, but it also wants people to buy American, not Chinese. Its concern is that Chinese dominance of the global market for these essential technologies would harm the U.S. economy and national security.Those competing goals will be on vivid display this week, as the Biden Administration’s top climate envoy, John Podesta, meets for the first time with his counterpart from Beijing, Liu Zhenmin, in Washington.Trade tensions are likely to loom over their talks.The flood of Chinese exports, particularly in solar panels and other green-energy technology, has become a real sore spot for the Biden administration as it tries to spur the same industries on American soil. Mr. Podesta has sharply criticized China for having “distorted the global market for clean energy products like solar, batteries and critical minerals.”Not only that, he has set up a task force to explore how to limit exports from countries that have high carbon footprints, a practice that he called “carbon dumping.” That was considered a veiled reference to China.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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      Yellen to Warn China Against Flood of Cheap Green Energy Exports

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      The Treasury secretary, who plans to make her second trip to China soon, will argue that the country’s excess industrial production warps supply chains.The Biden administration is growing increasingly concerned that a glut of heavily subsidized green technology exports from China is distorting global markets and plans to confront Chinese officials about the problem during an upcoming round of economic talks in Beijing.The tension over industrial policy is flaring as the United States invests heavily in production of solar technology and electric vehicle batteries with funding from the Inflation Reduction Act of 2022, while China pumps money into its factory sector to help stimulate its sluggish economy. President Biden and Xi Jinping, China’s leader, have sought to stabilize the relationship between the world’s two largest economies, but differences over trade policy, investment restrictions and cyberespionage continue to strain ties.In a speech on Wednesday afternoon, Treasury Secretary Janet L. Yellen will lay out her plans to raise the issue of overcapacity with her Chinese counterparts. At the Suniva solar cell factory in Norcross, Ga., she will warn that China’s export strategy threatens to destabilize global supply chains that are developing around industries such as solar, electric vehicles and lithium-ion batteries, according to a copy of her prepared remarks reviewed by The New York Times.“China’s overcapacity distorts global prices and production patterns and hurts American firms and workers, as well as firms and workers around the world,” Ms. Yellen will say. “Challenges for individual firms can lead to concentrated supply chains, negatively impacting global economic resilience.”The Treasury secretary is expected to make her second trip to China in the coming weeks. The South China Morning Post reported that she will visit Guangzhou and Beijing in early April. The Treasury Department declined to comment on her travel plans.In her speech in Georgia, Ms. Yellen will compare China’s investments in green energy technology production to what she described as its previous overinvestment in steel and aluminum, saying it created “global spillovers.”We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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      Meet the Diplomat Who Shaped Biden’s Global Economic Policy

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      Mike Pyle, who will leave the administration later this month, helped broker agreement with Europe and other allies over clean energy, China and Russian sanctions.In the fall of 2022, two top Biden administration officials met in New York with a key European diplomat. Over dinner outdoors, they strategized about how best to throttle Russia’s oil revenues in retaliation for its invasion of Ukraine.Near the end of what had been a collegial meal, the European official, Bjoern Seibert, dropped a bombshell on his hosts, Mike Pyle of the National Security Council and Wally Adeyemo, the deputy Treasury secretary. Europe, Mr. Seibert said, had big problems with President Biden’s sweeping new climate law.Mr. Seibert, the head of cabinet for the president of the European Commission, said top officials among European Union member states feared Mr. Biden was trying to drive a competitive wedge between their countries and the United States, by lavishing subsidies on made-in-America clean energy technology. They were worried the president was trying to ensure the future of U.S. manufacturing at the expense of some of America’s closest allies.The exchange set off months of behind-the-scenes talks, a major regulatory concession from the Treasury Department and high-level negotiations between Mr. Biden and fellow world leaders, all meant to soothe those concerns.The officials at that dinner worked to pull together a harmonized industrial strategy between wealthy nations. It seeks to boost technology that reduces greenhouse gas emissions, limit global warming and counter China’s manufacturing might in global markets.That effort appears to have partly repaired a trans-Atlantic rift over what Europe sees as America’s increasingly protectionist economic policies.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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      Grading Biden’s Big Law

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      The climate-focused Inflation Reduction Act is popular with businesses. But its cost is expected to double over the next decade, and its outlook is uncertain.The Inflation Reduction Act is popular with business, and that’s adding to its cost.Kenny Holston/The New York TimesThe costs, and the benefits, of the I.R.A.In the past 24 hours, President Biden has taken questions (and heat) on his age, memory and mental fitness. But the one economic issue that is most likely to generate scrutiny from the business community and beyond over the next several months is the biggest bill he has passed, the Inflation Reduction Act, which he hailed at his news conference last night.Big questions still hang over the law, which many Americans appear not to know exists. How much will it add to the federal deficit? And can the law survive a potential Trump second term?The I.R.A. is expected to cost more than $800 billion through 2033, the Congressional Budget Office said, up from the $391 billion price tag assessed when it was passed in 2022.One reason: There’s huge demand for the credits and subsidies created by the law for building solar, hydrogen and nuclear energy projects, as well as discounts for buying electric vehicles. (An analysis by Goldman Sachs last fall showed that the law led to about $282 billion in investment and roughly 175,000 jobs in its first year.)The green transition won’t come cheap. The I.R.A., which aims for steep emissions cuts, is expected to add $250 billion more to the deficit than initially forecast, according to the C.B.O., despite cost-saving promises by the White House.That said, the math isn’t set in stone. The Treasury Department forecast this week that additional tax-collection resources provided by the I.R.A. would help the I.R.S. gather up to $851 billion more in tax revenue over the next decade. That raises the question of whether this is actually a deficit-paring law.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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      Bidencare Is a Really Big Deal

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      In 2010, at the signing of the Affordable Care Act, a.k.a. Obamacare, Joe Biden, the vice president at the time, was caught on a hot mic telling President Barack Obama that the bill was a “big deal.” OK, there was actually another word in the middle. Anyway, Biden was right.And in one of his major unsung accomplishments — it’s amazing how many Americans believe that an unusually productive president hasn’t done much — President Biden has made Obamacare an even bigger deal, in a way that is improving life for millions of Americans.As you may have noticed — as many Americans finally seem to be noticing — Biden has been racking up some pretty good numbers lately. Economic growth is still chugging along, defying widespread predictions of a recession, while unemployment remains near a 50-year low. Inflation, especially using the measure preferred by the Federal Reserve, has fallen close to the Fed’s target. The stock market keeps hitting new highs.Oh, and murders have plummeted, with overall violent crime possibly hitting another 50-year low.Biden deserves some political reward for this good news, given that Donald Trump and many in his party predicted economic and social disaster if he were elected, and that Republicans, in general, are still talking as if America were suffering from high inflation and runaway crime. (Trump, of course, has been dismissing the good jobs numbers as fake. Wait until he hears about falling crime.)It’s less clear how much of the good news on these fronts can be attributed to Biden’s policies. Presidents definitely don’t control the stock market. They have less influence in general on the economy than many believe; I would give Biden some credit for the economy’s strength, which was in part driven by his spending policies, but the rapid disinflation of 2023 mainly reflects a nation working its way out of lingering disruptions from the Covid pandemic. The same is probably true for the plunge in violent crime.One area where presidents do make a big difference, however, is health care. Obamacare — which arguably should really be called Pelosicare, since Nancy Pelosi (who is not, whatever Trump may think, the same person as Nikki Haley) played a key role in getting it through Congress — led to big gains in health insurance coverage when it went into full effect in 2014.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber?  More

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      Biden Vetoes Republican Measure to Block Electric Vehicle Charging Stations

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      Republicans and some Democrats tried to repeal a waiver issued by the Biden administration that allows federally funded E.V. chargers to be made from imported iron and steel.President Biden on Wednesday vetoed a Republican-led effort that could have thwarted the administration’s plans to invest $7.5 billion to build electric vehicle charging stations across the country.In issuing the veto, Mr. Biden argued that the congressional resolution would have hurt domestic manufacturing as well as the clean energy transition.“If enacted, this resolution would undermine the hundreds of millions of dollars that the private sector has already invested in domestic E.V. charging manufacturing, and chill further domestic investment in this critical market,” Mr. Biden said in a statement.The move comes amid a growing political divide over electric vehicles. The Biden administration is aggressively promoting them as an important part of the fight to slow global warming. The landmark climate law signed in 2022 by Mr. Biden, the Inflation Reduction Act, offers incentives to consumers to buy electric vehicles and to manufacturers to build them in the United States.Republicans, including former President Donald J. Trump, Mr. Biden’s likely challenger in the 2024 election, have attacked electric vehicles as unreliable, inconvenient and ceding America’s auto manufacturing to China, which dominates the supply chain for electric vehicles.Republicans, with some Democrats, voted to repeal a waiver issued by the Biden administration that allows federally funded electric vehicle chargers to be made from imported iron and steel, as long as they are assembled in the United States.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber?  More