#NNPA BlackPress

COMMENTARY: Biden’s Anti-NAFTA Moment is Here

THE AFRO — The Chinese government has not played fair. It overproduces in order to flood global markets. It has leaned on exports of “bifacial” (basically, two-sided) solar panels, which were foolishly exempt under the Trump-era solar tariffs – with 98 percent of Chinese solar panel imports to our country now being bifacial. And the Commerce Department is now investigating how China has allegedly used countries like Vietnam, Cambodia, Malaysia, and Thailand as pass-throughs to route solar products to the US and evade tariffs.
The post COMMENTARY: Biden’s Anti-NAFTA Moment is Here first appeared on BlackPressUSA.

Published

9 months ago

June 10, 2024

admin

By Ben Jealous | The AFRO

Ben Jealous is the executive director of the Sierra Club and a professor of practice at the University of Pennsylvania. This week he discusses America’s ability to lead the clean energy revolution.

The Biden-Harris administration is making bold moves to ensure America leads the global clean energy economy of the 21st century.

We are at the crossroads of our country’s next major shift in trade policy and domestic manufacturing that will define our economy for decades. The last time we were here was more than 30 years ago. I was helping to organize the movement to stop the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA). The framework being put forward this time, by the current administration, is the anti-NAFTA moment American workers have been waiting for. I am organizing in support of it.

The tariffs announced this month on electric vehicles (EVs), solar panels, batteries, semiconductors and materials like aluminum and steel are part of a broader regime of policies and investments creating the foundation for America’s leadership in the next economy.

These tariffs are part of a smart, targeted approach that stands at odds with the flailing, nonstrategic approach of his predecessor. They show the president understands the threats posed by China and has the courage to take them on in a real and impactful way.

And the administration gets that tariffs are just one piece of the puzzle. In his remarks at the signing ceremony for the tariffs, Biden highlighted his bipartisan infrastructure law’s investment in building 500,000 EV charging stations nationwide and the “thousands and thousands of jobs” it would create. The tariffs will help ensure the aluminum, steel, solar panels, and other components and materials for these charging stations are American-made. And that means even more good American jobs.

NAFTA cost our country hundreds of thousands of jobs and devastated America’s manufacturing sector. By contrast, Biden’s trade policies, coupled with other policies and investments, have the power to create a green jobs boom and birth a new manufacturing renaissance. Companies have already announced over $825 billion in private sector investments in US manufacturing and clean energy since Biden took office. All of this is key not only to long-term job creation, but to stopping China’s domination of the next economy.

A future in which China holds all the economic cards is one in which climate change is allowed to run rampant. Even though manufacturing in the United States is 3.2 times more carbon efficient than manufacturing in China, China has a grip on more than 80 percent of the world’s solar manufacturing. China produces 58 percent of all new electric vehicles sold worldwide. In 2022, China accounted for about 59 percent of global primary aluminum production and 54 percent of the world’s crude steel production.

All that manufacturing is energy intensive, especially for steel and aluminum. And in China that energy comes primarily from coal – the dirtiest energy source there is.

China is the world’s largest consumer of coal – with 56 percent of global consumption in 2020, according to the International Energy Agency. That coal reliance makes carbon emissions from Chinese steel production as much as double that from American steel. It adds to the urgency of seizing market share from China and using our own domestic manufacturing to help expand the market. And it is why the president paired his tariffs on Chinese solar with tariffs on aluminum and a $500 million investment in the first aluminum smelter in the US in 45 years. Imagine that new aluminum plant being built with modern protections against pollution and powered by American-produced solar panels made with the plant’s own aluminum. That is what President Biden imagined. And he is making it happen.

The Chinese government has not played fair. It overproduces in order to flood global markets. It has leaned on exports of “bifacial” (basically, two-sided) solar panels, which were foolishly exempt under the Trump-era solar tariffs – with 98 percent of Chinese solar panel imports to our country now being bifacial. And the Commerce Department is now investigating how China has allegedly used countries like Vietnam, Cambodia, Malaysia, and Thailand as pass-throughs to route solar products to the US and evade tariffs.

The Biden administration’s trade policy in this area can help make China more of an honest broker. But even that is no substitute for owning the manufacturing and supply chains of the staple goods that will power our next economy. And let us not forget the national pride Americans once felt in the products invented and built by American hands.

The US automobile industry is a great example. The future of automobiles is electric. If we do not invest heavily in US EV production, we cede important ground to our primary global competitor. And we leave behind the current and future auto workers who will benefit from robust domestic EV production. But President Biden’s policies once again show he has the whole picture in mind. He is not simply putting a tariff on EV’s and expecting us to dominate. He is investing in the supply chain and protecting it – with tariffs on the aluminum, steel, semiconductors, and chips that are all vital to EV manufacturing (EVs use twice as many chips as gas-powered cars).

At the end of the day, we must invest in domestic growth of the industries at the center of the emerging global economy. If we fail, we allow China to dominate that economy and risk taking steps backwards in our efforts to curb climate change and save our planet. The Biden administration is showing its keen understanding of what is needed to tackle that challenge and build a strong future for American workers at the same time.

The post COMMENTARY: Biden’s Anti-NAFTA Moment is Here first appeared on BlackPressUSA.

admin

Posts by admin

Up Next

St. Andrew Presbyterian Church Sponsors Free Sailboat Ride for Children and Guardians

Don't Miss

Raising Successful Kids: Picking the Right School Starts Earlier Than Parents Think

admin

Click to comment

#NNPA BlackPress

Fighting to Keep Blackness

BlackPressUSA NEWSWIRE — Trump supporters have introduced another bill to take down the bright yellow letters of Black Lives Matter Plaza in Washington, D.C., in exchange for the name Liberty Plaza. D.C.

Published

5 days ago

March 7, 2025

Oakland Post

By April Ryan

As this nation observes the 60th anniversary of Bloody Sunday in Selma, Alabama, the words of President Trump reverberate. “This country will be WOKE no longer”, an emboldened Trump offered during his speech to a joint session of Congress Tuesday night. Since then, Alabama Congresswoman Terri Sewell posted on the social media platform formerly known as Twitter this morning that “Elon Musk and his DOGE bros have ordered GSA to sell off the site of the historic Freedom Riders Museum in Montgomery.” Her post of little words went on to say, “This is outrageous and we will not let it stand! I am demanding an immediate reversal. Our civil rights history is not for sale!” DOGE trying to sell Freedom Rider Museum

Also, in the news today, the Associated Press is reporting they have a file of names and descriptions of more than 26,000 military images flagged for removal because of connections to women, minorities, culture, or DEI. In more attempts to downplay Blackness, a word that is interchanged with woke, Trump supporters have introduced another bill to take down the bright yellow letters of Black Lives Matter Plaza in Washington, D.C., in exchange for the name Liberty Plaza. D.C. Mayor Morial Bowser is allowing the name change to keep millions of federal dollars flowing there. Black Lives Matter Plaza was named in 2020 after a tense exchange between President Trump and George Floyd protesters in front of the White House. There are more reports about cuts to equity initiatives that impact HBCU students. Programs that recruited top HBCU students into the military and the pipeline for Department of Defense contracts have been canceled.

Meanwhile, Democrats are pushing back against this second-term Trump administration’s anti-DEI and Anti-woke message. In the wake of the 60th anniversary of Bloody Sunday in Selma, several Congressional Black Caucus leaders are reintroducing the Voting Rights Act. South Carolina Democratic Congressman James Clyburn and Alabama Congresswoman Terry Sewell are sponsoring H.R. 14, the John Lewis Voting Rights Advancement Act. Six decades ago, Lewis was hit with a billy club by police as he marched for the right to vote for African Americans. The right for Black people to vote became law with the 1965 Voting Rights Act that has since been gutted, leaving the nation to vote without the full protections of the Voting Rights Act. Reflecting on the late Congressman Lewis, March 1, 2020, a few months before his death, Lewis said, “We need more than ever in these times many more someones to make good trouble- to make their own dent in the wall of injustice.”

Oakland Post

Posts by Oakland Post

#NNPA BlackPress

Rep. Al Green is Censured by The U.S. House After Protesting Trump on Medicaid

BLACKPRESSUSA NEWSWIRE — His censure featured no hearing at the House Ethics Committee and his punishment was put on the floor for a vote by the Republican controlled House less than 72 hours after the infraction in question.

Published

5 days ago

March 6, 2025

Oakland Post

By Lauren Burke

In one of the quickest punishments of a member of the U.S. House of Representatives in the modern era, Congressman Al Green (D-TX) was censured by a 224-198 vote today in the House. His censure featured no hearing at the House Ethics Committee and his punishment was put on the floor for a vote by the Republican controlled House less than 72 hours after the infraction in question. Of the last three censures of members of the U.S. House, two have been members of the Congressional Black Caucus under GOP control. In 2023, Rep. Jamal Bowman was censured.

On the night of March 4, as President Trump delivered a Joint Address to Congress, Rep. Green interrupted him twice. Rep. Green shouted, “You don’t have a mandate to cut Medicare, and you need to raise the cap on social security,” to President Trump. In another rare event, Rep. Green was escorted off the House floor by security shortly after yelling at the President by order of GOP House Speaker Mike Johnson. Over the last four years, members of Congress have yelled at President Biden during the State of the Union. Georgia Republican Marjorie Taylor-Greene was joined by Republican Rep. Lauren Bobert (R-CO) in 2022 in yelling at President Biden. In 2023, Rep. Greene, Rep. Bob Good (R-VA), and Rep. Lisa McClain (R-MI) yelled at Biden, interrupting his speech. In 2024, wearing a red MAGA hat, a violation of the rules of the U.S. House, Greene interrupted Biden again. She was never censured for her behavior. Rep. Green voted “present” on his censure and was joined by freshman Democrat Congressman Shomari Figures of Alabama who also voted “present”.

All other members of the Congressional Black Caucus voted against censuring Green. Republicans hold a four-seat advantage in the U.S. House after the death of Texas Democrat and former Houston Mayor Sylvester Turner yesterday. Ten Democrats voted along with Republicans to censure Rep. Green, including Rep. Jim Himes of Connecticut, who is in the leadership as the senior Democrat on the House Intelligence Committee. “I respect them but, I would do it again,” and “it is a matter of conscience,” Rep. Green told Black Press USA’s April Ryan in an exclusive interview on March 5. After the vote, a group of Democrats sang “We Shall Overcome” in the well at the front of the House chamber. Several Republican members attempted to shout down the singing. House Speaker Mike Johnson gaveled the House out of session and into a recess. During the brief recess members moved back to their seats and out of the well of the House. Shortly after the vote to censor Rep. Green, Republican Congressman Andy Ogles of Tennessee quickly filed legislation to punish members who participated in the singing of “We Shall Overcome.” Earlier this year, Rep. Ogles filed legislation to allow President Donald Trump to serve a third term, which is currently unconstitutional. As the debate started, the stock market dove down over one-point hours from close. The jobs report will be made public tomorrow.

Oakland Post

Posts by Oakland Post

#NNPA BlackPress

Trump Moves to Dismantle Education Department

BLACKPRESSUSA NEWSWIRE — The department oversees programs under the Individuals with Disabilities Education Act (IDEA), serving 7.5 million students. Transferring IDEA oversight to another agency, as Trump’s plan suggests, could jeopardize services and protections for disabled students.

Published

6 days ago

March 6, 2025

Stacy M. Brown

By Stacy M. Brown
BlackPressUSA.com Senior National Correspondent
@StacyBrownMedia

The Trump administration is preparing to issue an executive order directing newly confirmed Education Secretary Linda McMahon to begin dismantling the Department of Education. While the president lacks the authority to unilaterally shut down the agency—requiring congressional approval—McMahon has been tasked with taking “all necessary steps” to reduce its role “to the maximum extent permitted by law.” The administration justifies the move by claiming the department has spent over $1 trillion since its 1979 founding without improving student achievement. However, data from The Nation’s Report Card shows math scores have improved significantly since the 1990s, though reading levels have remained stagnant. The pandemic further widened achievement gaps, leaving many students behind.

The Education Department provides about 10% of public-school funding, primarily targeting low-income students, rural districts, and children with disabilities. A recent Data for Progress poll found that 61% of voters oppose Trump’s efforts to abolish the agency, while just 34% support it. In Washington, D.C., where student proficiency rates remain low—22% in math and 34% in English—federal funding is crucial. Serenity Brooker, an elementary education major, warned that cutting the department would worsen conditions in underfunded schools.

“D.C. testing scores aren’t very high right now, so cutting the Department of Education isn’t going to help that at all,” she told Hilltop News. A report from the Education Trust found that low-income schools in D.C. receive $2,200 less per student than wealthier districts, leading to shortages in essential classroom materials. The department oversees programs under the Individuals with Disabilities Education Act (IDEA), serving 7.5 million students. Transferring IDEA oversight to another agency, as Trump’s plan suggests, could jeopardize services and protections for disabled students.

The Office for Civil Rights also plays a key role in enforcing laws that protect students from discrimination. Moving it to the Department of Justice, as proposed in Project 2025, would make it harder for families to file complaints, leaving vulnerable students with fewer protections. Federal student aid programs, including Pell Grants and loan repayment plans, could face disruption if the department is dismantled. Experts warn this could worsen the student debt crisis, pushing more borrowers into default. “With funding cuts, they don’t have the materials they need, like books or things to help with math,” Brooker said. “It makes learning less fun for them.”