US President Joe Biden visits a robotics lab at the North Carolina Agricultural and Technical State University in Greensboro, North Carolina on April 14, 2022 (AFP/MANDEL NGAN)
Joe Biden praised industrial innovation in the United States on Thursday during a trip to North Carolina during which he highlighted his efforts to fight inflation and relaunch high-tech research and production, intended to make the country more competitive on the world stage.
In Greensboro, meeting with students from the largest historically black university in the country, the American president said that his main priority since the beginning of his mandate had been to promote “Made in America” products.
“More things are going to change in the next 10 years than in the last 50 years,” Biden told these future engineers at North Carolina Agricultural and Technical State University.
“Science and technology are advancing incredibly rapidly. It’s all part of a larger vision at the heart of our agenda with Vice President (Kamala) Harris: to build an America even better than before the pandemic,” said he added.
The visit comes as inflation hit a 40-year high of 8.5% year on year in March, according to figures released Tuesday by the Labor Department, which blames mainly the Russian invasion of Ukraine, rising rents and gas prices.
Joe Biden met with professors and students in robotics and cybersecurity, and discussed a bill called the “Bipartisan Innovation Act”, aimed at improving American manufacturing.
“That means stronger supply chains, more manufacturing jobs, and lower prices for consumers as we break through bottlenecks, like in semiconductors, that have driven inflation since last year,” the White House said ahead of the visit.
Greensboro is an example of the type of “regional manufacturing ecosystem” Biden wants to build across the country to create an industry that can counter China’s growing influence.
North Carolina residents have voted for the Republican candidate in every presidential election for the past 20 years, except in 2008 when the state chose Barack Obama over John McCain.
But several of the state’s seven governors over the same period have been Democrats and poll aggregator FiveThirtyEight described North Carolina as a “perpetual” key state in the electoral race in 2020.
Joe Biden’s popularity has plummeted in recent months due to inflation, one of the biggest challenges for Democrats seven months from the midterm elections.
Nationally, a recent Quinnipiac University poll places his approval rating at just 33%.
Democrats and Republicans in Congress are preparing to launch a working group from April to reconcile the competing versions of the “Bipartisan Innovation Act”, adopted separately in the House and the Senate, and which diverge slightly. A final vote is expected in May or June.
© 2022 AFP
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