USA: Joe Biden is planning the most radical economic package since the New Deal

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In a joinery on the outskirts of Pittsburgh, in front of shelves of tools and building materials, Joe Biden announced that he wanted to fix America.

“It is high time to repair our country,” said the US President on Wednesday in his first major economic policy speech since taking office.

"Roads, bridges, power lines - our infrastructure is in a desolate state." In the next eight years, Biden plans to spend two trillion dollars to change that.

The place of the speech was well chosen.

Just a few years ago, Pittsburgh looked like a post-industrial apocalypse.

The factories that once produced steel for the whole country here closed and rotted because production had become cheaper in Asia.

But now the city is experiencing an economic rebirth.

It is turning into a tech hub.

Companies and universities are now researching self-driving cars, robots and medical technology here.

Pittsburgh is perhaps the best American example of how a metropolis can change.

The old industrial stronghold thus symbolizes Biden's goal: the redevelopment of the USA.

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In his speech, Biden announced that he would invest $ 620 billion in America's transportation network.

Because everywhere in the country it crumbles, wobbles and splinters.

Almost every second street is full of holes, as data from the ASCE engineering association show.

230,000 bridges have reached the end of their lifespan.

Rails, locks and dams also urgently need to be repaired.

Economists support Biden's plan.

"Our infrastructure is falling apart," says Neil Bradley of the American Chamber of Commerce.

“We need a courageous program to modernize the country.” He was happy that, with Biden, a US president was finally making infrastructure a priority.

Biden wants to replace 50,000 diesel locomotives and diesel buses with electric models

At the same time, Biden is planning the electric revolution: In Pittsburgh, he promised to have half a million charging stations built for battery cars across the country.

The network should be so dense that you can drive from the Atlantic to the Pacific, a distance of more than 4000 kilometers without stopping.

Biden also announced plans to make local transport more environmentally friendly and to replace 50,000 diesel locomotives and diesel buses with electric models.

All of this will cost $ 170 billion, according to the president - and help the US economy be carbon neutral by 2050.

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Biden wants to invest another 100 billion dollars each in a faster Internet, a better drinking water supply and a more reliable power grid.

It seems high time for that too.

It wasn't until mid-February that there was a major blackout in Texas.

More than five million citizens had to do without light and warmth, some for days.

And in other states, the network is hardly better.

In 2017, according to the US statistics agency, electricity was off for an average of almost eight hours across the country; in 2018 it was almost six hours.

No data are yet available for 2019 and 2020.

For comparison: the Germans only had to go without electricity for 13 minutes and 20 seconds in 2018.

At the joinery in Pittsburgh, Biden used pathetic words to praise his own program.

“The life of all Americans,” he said, “will get better”.

He expects "historic economic growth".

Later Biden shouted to the audience: “In 20 years we will look back on the present day and judge that this was the moment when America conquered the future.” And once Biden even compared his infrastructure package with the moon landing: “We prove again , "That America can achieve anything like it did in space."

But are its planned investments - $ 620 billion for roads, rails and bridges, $ 170 billion for electric cars, and $ 100 billion each for the Internet, water and electricity - enough?

It doesn't look like it.

The engineering association ASCE estimates an investment of $ 2.6 trillion will be required.

But Biden's plan is a start.

His predecessors Barack Obama and Donald Trump hardly invested in their country's infrastructure.

Well, with Biden, things seem to be going in the right direction after all.

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Additional money is earmarked for health, education and the fight against poverty.

And in just a few weeks, Biden plans to announce further investments in these areas.

The president is expected to introduce permanent child support for the first time in US history.

So far, this measure has been intended to help in the Corona crisis and is limited to one year.

Biden wants to raise corporate tax to 28 percent

The combined cost of the two packages is around four trillion dollars and could represent the biggest interventions in the US economy in 85 years, since the New Deal era when President Franklin Roosevelt launched a major program against the Great Depression.

The corona crisis, climate change and the realization that America's infrastructure is out of date seem to give Biden the momentum for comprehensive reforms.

He wants to finance everything with a big tax hike.

Trump lowered corporate taxes from 35 to 21 percent at the end of 2017.

Now Biden wants to raise it to 28 percent.

In addition, the Democrat announced that it would remove tax breaks for oil and gas companies.

And citizens should also pay more.

But only those who make over $ 400,000 a year make up the top two percent of the population.

No president had dared such a far-reaching tax reform since Bill Clinton in 1993.

The tax hike is a central point in Biden's economic agenda, the heart of the “bidenomics”, so to speak.

During the election campaign, the Democrat promised to reverse Trump's reform on the “first day in the White House”.

In fact, the new rules will probably only apply in the coming year.

Biden hopes that the US economy will have largely recovered from the Corona crisis by then.

But the tax hike could make it difficult to get the package through US Congress.

Because the Republicans are strictly against it.

Negotiations are likely to be tough, especially in the Senate.

There the Democrats only have a wafer-thin majority.

And some moderate party politicians have already spoken out against Biden's plans.

The US Chamber of Commerce is also against the increase in corporate taxes.

She fears that this will stop the boom America is currently experiencing.

The Americans for Tax Fairness platform, on the other hand, praises Biden's project.

“It is correct that the companies pay for the renovation of our infrastructure,” says boss Frank Clemente, “after all, they benefit from it themselves”.