By Iain McDavid, Policy Fellow, Urban Manufacturing Alliance
 

The Inflation Reduction Act (IRA) of 2022, and the economic agenda of the Biden-Harris administration in general, marks a significant shift in the US’s approach to industrial policy. Every country must engage in some degree of state planning for its long term stability. However, the US has displayed historically a remarkable aversion to the idea of government intervention in the economy – even though such interventions occur all the time. This vestige of the Reagan era has had an immense impact on policy, as subsequent administrations – both Democratic and Republican – have held fast to the notion that government should get out of the way and leave markets entirely to private industry. 

Today, however, this seemingly intractable policy logic has become undone. Decades of offshoring, widening inequality, accelerating climate change, and ever-diminishing prospects for younger generations demand more robust action on the part of the government. “Bidenonomics,” as it’s been termed by some, is a step in this direction. With an emphasis on domestic production and environmental resiliency, the slate of policies that have emerged over the past four years has sought to catalyze both competitiveness on the international stage and greater equity for those left out here at home. 

At a 30,000 foot view, the IRA is making and facilitating investments to strengthen domestic manufacturing, reinforce local supply chains, improve transportation, and accelerate the green energy transition across the country – all while providing good jobs and family-sustaining wages. In addition, a host of other initiatives and legislative efforts such as the Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act, the CHIPS and Science Act, and the American Climate Corps all aim to fulfill this ambitious industrial and infrastructural mandate. At the time of their passage, these bills approved over a trillion dollars for investment and immediate appropriations.

Where is all this money being spent? 

There is a growing body of investment trackers (and trackers of investment trackers) seeking to log these federal expenditures and make clear to what ends the money is being spent at state and municipal levels. It’s currently  beyond our capacity to catalog all the national investments of this administration’s industrial and climate policy but the trackers we’ve compiled here help to make sense of the surge of investment, particularly as it relates to the manufacturing sector. 

US Semiconductor Ecosystem Map

The CHIPS and Science Act is a critical piece of the Biden-Harris industrial policy agenda. Enacted in August 2022, CHIPS aims to fortify domestic supply chains and strengthen semiconductor manufacturing, while also paving the way for substantial investment in research and development. As of 2024, 447 billion dollars of private investment has been committed across 83 semiconductor sites throughout the country, a testament to the bill’s early success.

This tracker is useful for several reasons.

• First, it has a visual component, so end-users can easily interpret and analyze the data, and readily discern various manufacturing clusters.
• The tracker also includes an incredibly handy table, detailing various aspects of each project, including the recipient, locales, industry segment and facility activity, as well as if the investment is for an new or existing facility.
• There are also columns devoted to investment dollars and expected jobs gains, though the majority of the listed projects do not contain these figures. In this instance the cell is simply left blank.   

How effective CHIPS will be in promoting workforce equity and “good jobs” for the local communities? For its part, the Department of Commerce has laid out a series of labor standards for CHIPS applicants – which include safe working conditions, sustaining wages, and the right for workers to organize without retaliation – as conditions for funding. In some instances, entities applying for direct funding have even been required to submit a plan for how they will provide access to child-care for employees. Further, throughout its materials, the department emphasizes partnership with community organizations and labor unions as key to ensuring CHIPS meets its mandate. We hope to evaluate these varied dynamics in coming years. But for now, this tracker functions as a critical jumping off point to conduct more grounded analysis. 

The Center for American Progress: Biden Administration Investment Tracker

This tracker has cataloged over 35,000 investments across the country. Users can filter results by various tags, such as Electric Vehicles and Batteries, Broadband Infrastructure, Environmental Remediation, and more. Users can further narrow their search by specific law – whether that be the IRA, IIJA, or CHIPS – state, typology, and even by recipient organization and company. Results are returned in an intuitive table that outlines various elements of the project such as recipient, location, dollar amount, and agency, if applicable. 

Additional filters maximize this tracker’s utility. Policy researchers looking to trace spending and its origin, for example, will be pleased to find that they can filter results by private or government investment. Additionally, the ability to see easily from which legislative package investment dollars flow makes it particularly helpful for situating projects within a federal agenda. If you want to go even further, you can expand the results to see the state and congressional districts for each individual project. 

The various tags for filtering results also include biomanufacturing, heavy industry, and semiconductors, making it especially useful for people interested in industrial policy. The availability of district data, too, makes this tracker useful for grounding federal agenda policy at the local jurisdictional level, helping to reveal how these investments intersect with state policy and community-based strategies. 

Brookings: ARPA Investment Tracker

Though it is perhaps now overshadowed by the passage of the IRA, The American Rescue Plan (ARPA) of 2021 was a critical piece of legislation marking the Biden administration’s first year in office. Crafted to beat back COVID-19 and the resulting economic stress, ARPA delivered an unprecedented level of support to Americans through child and healthcare, public health, and economic development. 

Brookings has created a tracker for monitoring ARPA investments at the level of local government. Rather than searching by type of investment, users can search the database by city and county (a huge plus) via a drop down list, and thus pull up all projects associated with a specific geography. This functionality makes this resource quite useful, especially if you want to narrow in quickly on a particular community. In addition, each locale comes with a percentage breakdown for various investment typologies, including government operations, community aid, economic development, infrastructure, and more. Though ARPA (nor this tool) deals specifically with manufacturing, this tracker should be an indispensable resource for those looking to gain a quick yet detailed assessment of a particular city or county. Researchers should use this in tandem with the Center for American Progress tool to get a fuller picture of geographies and their various investments over time.

Inflation Reduction Act Tracker 

This joint project between Columbia Law School and the Environmental Defense Fund monitors climate-related IRA spend and programs. Taking a differing approach from the previous trackers, this tool outlines federal programs and funds available, rather than tabulating the concrete deployment of funds at the local level. In other words, this tool tells us how the money has and will be spent, as opposed to where. As such, this tracker is particularly useful since it allows one to search for programs for which there may be federal funding, tax incentives, and grant opportunities available.  

Users have the option of combing through the tracker’s database, which is organized by various federal agencies, or by searching for initiatives by selected criteria. The option to filter data by agency is welcomed, as it allows end-users to quickly conduct a high level and organized assessment of various climate-related programs. Users can also search by eligible entities, whether that be corporation, individual, local government, technology developer/manufacturer, etc, translating into a more robust user experience.   

National League of Cities Tracker 

Like the previous tool, The National League of Cities Tracker proceeds from the other end of the equation, telling us how federal dollars are deployed as opposed to where. Users can search for programs by “purpose,” such as economic development, labor, transportation, environment, etc. Sadly, there is no filter devoted to manufacturing, so users wanting to gain insights from this particular focus will find it wanting. 

The NLC contextualizes their tool within the federal appropriations process, providing an overview of spend by fiscal year. At this time however, there is not an overview of funds for the fiscal year 2025, which for the federal government starts on September 29, 2024. We imagine this will be updated shortly. For the time being, then, this tracker provides meager utility for those looking to assess forthcoming federal funds. For researchers looking to gauge past federal funding and appropriations, however, this tracker has some value.

Infrastructure (+IRA) Funding Tracker

Hosted on Substack, this tracker was created by a former city and state economic development manager, “primarily out of frustration that a similar tool did not exist.” We’re grateful that this individual stepped up, as this resource is consistently updated with new federal funding and grant opportunities. Like the two preceding trackers, this tool details how money is to be spent, and thus will be most useful to people trying to sift their way through all of federal expenditures in search of potential opportunities. If you’re searching for where money was spent, this tracker won’t be of much use to you. But even still, the fact that this tool is updated regularly should make it an indispensable resource for anyone looking for quick, up-to-date takeaways on IRA, IIJA, and CHIPS. This tracker also functions as a newsletter, and you can subscribe to receive these updates on a consistent basis. 

In summary, each of these trackers provide some clarity into the mountain of spending and myriad opportunities related to this Biden-Harris policy agenda. The first three trackers are especially useful for grounding recent investments and analyzing where money has been spent. The latter three tools will be more useful for a top-down analysis and for benchmarking federal policy priorities. Integrating the two perspectives serves as an excellent place to start for conducting more thorough studies.

For those with a focus on manufacturing, the semiconductor ecosystem map and the Center for American Progress tool will likely be your best bet. Although these tools provide insight into where money is being spent, as well as who is receiving it, they do little to answer questions related to workforce development, hiring practices, and racial equity. Rather, these tools should serve as a point of departure for probing deeper into this line of questioning. As to queries that originated this overview – how have these investments jumpstarted and/or delivered community-centered economic and social benefits  – the approach we’re taking is that we’ll have to wait for more information to assess the extent to which Bidenomics has made good on its stated aims. Stay tuned!

Iain McDavid is a 2024 UMA Policy Fellow. He is pursuing his Master’s degree in urban policy from Hunter College. When asked about why he sought out this fellowship he said “I see industrial land use and manufacturing as an avenue towards more equal cities. That’s why I was drawn to UMA’s work, because I saw an alignment there. UMA is also really embedded with and connected to practitioners and advocates, so I like being part of an organization that is concretely situated within the field.”