Harris v. Trump
The Innovation Economy Edition
One benefit of running candidates who led the two previous administrations is that we can compare actual track records. What are their innovation economy records?
I’ve worked with both Administrations. I ran a non-profit business organization that worked on economic development priorities for the Washington DC region during Trump I and the beginning of the Biden/Harris administration.
We worked particularly closely with the Biden/Harris administration to advance sustainable inclusive growth for the Baltimore/Washington DC/Richmond region. (Here’s Vice President Harris at our $5 billion inclusive growth investment launch )
Since then I’ve been active in regional economic development efforts that take advantage of the Biden/Harris innovation economy investments, including co-founding Colorado’s new Mass Timber coalition, a field which has benefited from the Biden/Harris Build Back Better and Better Jobs Challenges; co-founding Colorado’s successful TechHubs effort that led to ElevateQuantum as one of 12 funded Tech Hubs in the country; and supporting the region’s successful NSF Regional Innovation Engines effort.
By contrast, the Greater Washington Partnership, including 50 CEOs from the region’s largest employers — had very limited success engaging with Trump I. In fact, Trump I opposed any Federally coordinated effort to steer or catalyze— pretty much anything. Even COVID response. The full story isn’t public, but senior White House officials risked their jobs to slip COVID data like this to our group and others, hoping that sharing actual data real-time on the pandemic would allow us to organize and act, since Trump I would not.
Trump I had no more interest in directly supporting a national sustainable inclusive growth economy built on innovation than it had in science. Economic development policies were largely limited to trickle-down tax cuts for corporations and the wealthy, and any engagement was strictly transactional.
Since then, the Biden/Harris innovation agenda has been part of a renewed global push to industrial policy ;
In the United States alone, major new industrial policies grapple with the green energy transition, geopolitical competition, and supply-chain resilience. And the US is not alone; it’s part of a global renaissance of industrial policy…
That industrial policy has been closely tied to America’s national security priorities;
A modern American industrial strategy identifies specific sectors that are foundational to economic growth, strategic from a national security perspective, and where private industry on its own isn’t poised to make the investments needed to secure our national ambitions.
This is positioned by the National Security Advisor as ‘a foreign policy for the middle class’, developing opportunities for families across America,
The first step is laying a new foundation at home—with a modern American industrial strategy.
While Trump II promises even more random transactions than Trump I, Project 2025 is the policy roadmap. Among proposals that will affect the innovation economy are privatizing education and eliminating the Department of Education, and mass incarceration and deportation of millions of immigrants:
Other Tump II positions include rewarding oil and gas investors in Trump Media, and paywalling weather data. Trump II has reversed Trump I on crypto;
Donald Trump’s about-face on Bitcoin is complete. After terming it a crime-riddled scam while he was in office, he’s now a crypto cheerleader.
The Trump /Vance (“Trance”) Ticket will end efforts to regulate AI by immediately rescinding the Biden/Harris Executive Order, and instead open up AI to the Thiel/Musk/Sacks crypto/autonomous AI warfare tech bropacalypse.
Harris/Walz will build on the great work done by Secretary Raimondo, the former (actual) VC and Governor who re-invented the Department of Commerce.
She deserves great credit for driving new, place-based innovation investments at scale from regions across the country toward national security priorities, with each program built on an equitable and inclusive family-sustaining jobs framework.
The industrial strategy driving those investments is informed by national security priorities closely defined across agencies including Defense and the NSA, Commerce, the NSF and others. That strategy is clear on the threat China and Russia present for priority technologies such as AI and quantum.
…the United States cannot have a repeat of what happened with semiconductors – the vast majority of which are now produced abroad….the CHIPS and Science Act is an “absolutely necessary” investment, (and) the United States must act now to significantly ramp up its investments in AI and quantum in order to “leapfrog” other nations.
Biden/Harris hasn’t shied away from innovating in the ‘deep state’ itself, creating the only new NSF Directorate in a decade. That Directorate has worked closely with Commerce on the Regional Innovation Engines and Tech Hubs efforts, which each provides (when fully funded under Harris/Walz) select regions in the country with from $160 mill to $1 billion in support over a decade. These amounts dwarf past regional innovation economy investments and create great jobs across the country:
In North Carolina (the) regional innovation engine is about high performance textiles and a circular economy for textiles, building on decades and centuries of expertise on textiles. In Arizona, it's about water, which is life and death in a place like Arizona. So it's it's very localized and it's driven by these communities. .. go visit these places and you meet people who are working in an hourly wage job, but going to a community college, getting an apprenticeship in a business that might have really promising prospects going out ahead.
Trump II will cede the future climate economy to the Chinese, while Harris/Walz will build from an innovation agenda that takes China on directly. China is on the march in cleantech, as it sees clean and bio tech, and advanced manufacturing as their winning global innovation — and Chinese jobs — investment priorities. And they’ll brute-force their way to those goals . Harris/Walz promise to extend the distributed regional innovation investment efforts in cleantech:
As the National Climate Resilience Framework notes, becoming a climate-resilient nation requires developing and deploying new and enhanced tools in our nation’s toolbox to address climate-related threats.
Meanwhile, the Biden/Harris track record on clean energy investments , much of it via the I.R.A., is staggering;
Has it lived up to its promise? From an investment standpoint, yes. The I.R.A. has unleashed a torrent of corporate investing in U.S. green-energy projects… will reach $100 billion this year, almost double from 2019. (It will) double again to $194 billion by 2030.
Ultimately, not a single Republican voted for the Inflation Reduction Act itself, and Vice President Kamala Harris cast the tie-breaking vote
Which Americans benefit? — This is in MTG’s district :
Dalton’s solar jobs are boosting wages, invigorating the historic town center, and employing local high school graduates. Those benefits are starting to spread to nearby communities, where new solar factories are springing to life.
And:
The Trance Ticket’s position is simple; it vows to end all of the above programs.
Another contrast; Biden/Harris centered innovation as a diplomatic priority, while the Trance Ticket disdains diplomacy among allies. Competing with China requires functional multi-lateralism. And diplomacy means innovation job growth: Secretary Raimondo’s Department of Commerce launched a US/EU Joint Talent for Growth initiative, which led Cisco and others to create the ICT tech jobs consortium, generating these commitments:
Cisco to train 25 million people with cybersecurity and digital skills by 2032.
IBM to skill 30 million individuals by 2030 in digital skills, including 2 million in AI by the end of 2026.
Intel to empower more than 30 million people with AI skills for current and future jobs by 2030.
Microsoft committed to training and certifying 10 million people in digital skills by 2025, surpassing this goal by training and certifying 12.6 million people a year ahead of schedule.
SAP to upskill two million people worldwide by 2025.
The Harris/Walz Administration now promises to extend the Biden/Harris distributed innovation acceleration approach to the care economy and affordable housing;
Harris-Walz Administration will propose a new $40 billion innovation fund—doubling down on the $20 billion Biden-Harris Administration’s proposed innovation fund. Like that proposal, it would empower local governments to fund local solutions to build housing. It would also go further to support innovative methods of construction financing, and empower developers and homebuilders to design and build rental and housing solutions that are affordable.
There’s no question — place-based industrial strategy for sustainable, inclusive growth — is hard work;
As Laura Tyson and Lenny Mendonca very politely put it: “Getting an industrial policy right is never easy, and getting a place-based one right will prove even more challenging.”
So …. America either innovates forward for all Americans… or goes back.
I’ve seen both, and I’m not interested in going back.
P.S. — recommend you read
latest. And … I’m personally rooting for Secretary Raimondo to become Sec Treasury under Harris/Walz — and to be replaced at Commerce by Colorado’s Governor Polis!
Good read!
Excellent!!!