President Joe Biden delivers remarks in March. Credit: Official White House Photo by Adam Schultz
As the Biden administration attempts to steer its massive ‘American Jobs’ plan through Congress, it’s pushing one key selling point: That it will be central to U.S. efforts to “out-compete China.”
But experts warn that if the U.S. is to achieve the plan’s goals of rebuilding America’s infrastructure — all while achieving carbon neutrality by 2050 and creating millions of jobs — it will have little choice but to rely heavily on its biggest economic rival.
That’s partly because the U.S. won’t be able to develop many of the industries involved at the speed or scale necessary. In addition, several of the clean energy industries the government hopes to encourage require materials where China is set to dominate production for years to come.
“This idea that you can rapidly decarbonize while having this project done in competition with China ignores the fact that we’re completely dependent on Chinese supply chains,” says Jonas Nahm, a professor at Joh
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