American president Joe Biden will present a comprehensive new economic support package for the United States on Wednesday. It is a package of investments of 2.25 trillion dollars, or 2250 billion dollars, over an eight-year period. The money goes, for example, to bridges, roads, railways, ports, airports and other infrastructure.
Biden will explain his support plans for the world’s largest economy later in a speech in the city of Pittsburgh. Money is also being invested in water supply, sewerage, energy networks, telecommunications equipment for high-speed internet, public transport, charging stations for electric cars and tax incentives for the purchase of American-made electric cars.
Furthermore, Biden plans to make major investments in clean and renewable energy sources, such as solar parks and windmills, in order to reduce emissions and combat climate change. He has set a target that the US should be completely climate neutral by 2050. Biden also wants to strengthen the American chip industry and make more money available for research and development, in order to compete better with China.
In a second phase, a great deal of money would also be allocated to, for example, childcare, education, care and more help for poor families. In April Biden wants to go public with these plans, in order to combat the great social inequality in the US. He has called his economic stimulus agenda ‘Build Back Better’.
This could give the president’s new support package a total value of 3 trillion to 4 trillion dollars. That investment program comes on top of an earlier coronavirus support package of $ 1.9 trillion that was approved by the US Congress earlier this month, including additional financial support for households and businesses against the coronavirus crisis.
Biden wants to finance the new investment plans by raising corporate taxes from 21% to 28% over the next 15 years and also raising taxes on foreign profits of US multinationals. Company taxes had been reduced by his predecessor Donald Trump. Biden reportedly wants to raise taxes on rich people later.
The White House says that Democrat Biden’s plans will “mobilize the country to face the great challenges of our time, namely the climate crisis and the ambitions of autocratic China.” The aid package is expected to create millions of jobs. Given the size and ambitions of Biden’s economic plans, they are compared to the American space program of the 1960s.
Lesley Woutersen, one of the co-founders of the EconomicInform gives away all of his free time to the project. He is interested in stock exchange and digital assets. Lesley can be reached by lesley.woutersen@economicinform.com.
