President Biden comes through
The 1950 Defense Production Act is a law that was rarely discussed until 2020, following the peak of the COVID pandemic. After the former guy gutted the federal government’s pandemic response team, he left states to figure out how to get the supplies they needed and took his time invoking the Defense Production Act to make ventilators at a time when patients needed to share them.
Under the Biden administration, the act has been invoked several times already – to mass produce COVID vaccines and to accelerate the production of baby formula. Now, as the energy crisis is driving up gas prices, President Biden is implementing the DPA yet again while pushing legislation to crack down on price gouging. This time, the DPA is being used to manufacture solar panel technology – glass panels and platinum group metals, along with heat pumps, insulation and transformers- even electrolyzers used for making hydrogen fuel for heavy duty trucks and steel manufacturing.
In addition, the administration is putting a pause on the solar tariffs that were implemented under the Trump administration and had forced solar manufacturers to export their goods through other countries. Now they will be able to easily obtain goods from the US – a factor that will lower the costs of clean energy for American families. While the prices of fuel will drop eventually, this new executive order is to help gradually transition the US to cleaner and safer technology. It’s yet another part of building back better where President Biden is delivering for the American people.
James Sullivan is the assistant editor of Brain World Magazine and an advocate of science-based policy making