“You should do the same” : this is how Joe Biden’s energy secretary, Jennifer Granholm, dismissed Europeans who complain about the massive aid provided by the Biden administration, in the Chips Act and the Inflation Reduction Act (IRA). Adopted in the summer of 2022, these two laws subsidize respectively 52 and 369 billion dollars (49 and 347 billion euros) the microprocessor industry and the energy transition. There’s something for everyone, to the point that the White House has published a short explanatory text of… 184 pages on the IRA. And all of energy America was jubilant at the beginning of March at CERAWeek in Houston, the oil and energy forum organized by S&P Global, the parent company of the rating agency, as this policy changes the industrial situation beyond -Atlantic.
In the United States, we do not ask ourselves if an energy is blue or green. Thanks to the senator from West Virginia, the democrat Joe Manchin, who multiplied the demands to vote on the text this summer, everything is entitled to credits: nuclear power, hydrogen, solar power, wind power, the electricity grid, electric cars, the reconversion of automobile or electricity factories, the insulation of individual houses, etc. In the form of investment aid or production credit – such a sum is paid for each clean kilowatt-hour produced or such a quantity of CO2 sequestered – provided, in particular, that the wages comply with the requirements of the federal state.
In short, a national jubilation is spreading, in the name of strategic independence and the energy transition of which the United States wants to be the champions. Donald Trump had dreamed of “America first”. It is Joe Biden who realizes it. The sacred union is such that Elon Musk was even received at the White House, publicly thanked on Twitter by Joe Biden for making his network of car charging stations available. All of this is done in superb isolation, with a country that is closed to immigration and suffers from labor shortages.
“Carrot or stick”
In this atmosphere of joy, few critical voices are expressed. But so it was when Joe Biden adopted a mistimed and excessive stimulus package early in his term that helped bring inflation back. Spread over ten years, the sums at stake seem small – less than 0.2% of GDP each year – but they can boost margins or reduce installation costs, which suddenly makes many investments profitable. The effect is therefore stronger than it seems.
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