By SHERRY ROBINSON
All She Wrote
© 2023 New Mexico News Services

In the years I covered economic development, manufacturing was always the gold standard because of its high wages. So two announcements in a week, which also coincided with the president’s visit, felt almost like the good old days of the 1980s when we had a lot of those announcements.

First there was Arcosa Wind Towers Inc., a manufacturing company, rolling out the red, white and blue bunting for President Biden as the company and Democrats celebrated Arcosa’s new manufacturing center near Belen.

CEO Antonio Carrillo told the small, enthusiastic and, no doubt, carefully selected audience: “A year ago Arcosa had no work. We were really struggling.” Then Congress passed the Inflation Reduction Act, and a few months later Arcosa received a $1.1 billion order for wind towers, the largest order in its history. Now Carrillo needed to expand, and a shuttered Solo Cup facility will be busy again.

“This is a great example of how policy has a direct impact,” Carrillo said.

That’s exactly the point Biden wanted to make on the first anniversary of the Inflation Reduction Act. He tied that law to his Infrastructure, Investment and Jobs Act and CHIPS Act. In New Mexico it translates as $160 million for the Eastern New Mexico Rural Water Supply Project to pipe water from Ute Lake to Clovis and Portales and $25 million to rebuild the Uptown Transit Center in Albuquerque.

He told New Mexicans and the rest of the country that his mission is to invest in America.

Then he talked about Bidenomics, the real reason for his visit to the Southwest and the subject of future presidential trips across the nation. In conversations directly with the public, he intends to explain his plan for the economy to voters who are more aware of the price of toothpaste than they are of landmark legislation.

Biden wants to say goodbye to Reaganomics and trickle-down theory – the idea that if you give tax breaks to big business and the rich it will trickle down to everybody – in favor of “building from the bottom up and the middle out.”

“When the middle class does well, everybody does well,” he said.

Bidenomics, according to the White House, is targeted public investment that can attract more private sector investment, especially in infrastructure, computer chips, clean energy and climate security.

The Wall Street Journal and Republicans have used “Bidenomics” as a derogatory term; Biden has embraced it as a shorthand way of referring to his economic legislation. The Inflation Reduction Act invests in clean energy and manufacturing. The bipartisan infrastructure plan invests in transportation. The CHIPS Act incentivizes domestic semiconductor manufacturing.

Both sides are spinning Bidenomics to suit win over voters. Republicans think the economy is performing poorly, and it’s all Biden’s fault. Biden argues that the economy has grown since he took office, and inflation is dropping. “Our plan is working,” he said.

Three days after Arcosa’s party, Maxeon Solar Technologies announced it will build a $1 billion manufacturing plant in Albuquerque to make solar cells and panels. The nation’s solar cell makers all moved offshore after the 2008 recession; Maxeon is the first to return, according to the Albuquerque Journal. We have the Inflation Reduction Act (plus state and local incentives) to thank for Maxeon’s 1,800 new jobs. It’s the biggest private-sector move since Intel put New Mexico on the map in 1980.

However, Bidenomics is wrapped in politics, as was Reaganomics and all the other presidential economic policies. Peel away the wrapping and ask, is it working? Maxeon and Arcosa would say yes. Numbers are mostly encouraging. Construction spending on new factories is up. Manufacturing jobs are at a 15-year high after growing by nearly 800,000 during Biden’s first term, according to the Associated Press, but hiring has slowed recently. Bidenomics has another year to prove its value.