George Will assesses Biden’s term

From Cafe Hayek.

"George Will assesses Biden’s term in the White House with appropriate harshness – and also gives us a glimpse of how industrial policy really works. Three slices:

After he lost 42 of the 48 states in 1932, Herbert Hoover wrote: “Democracy is a harsh employer.” Sometimes appropriately so.

Joe Biden’s failed presidency is ending with a blizzard of decisions that validate voters’ rejection of his vice president, who, when asked, could not think of a flaw in his record. He and she pretended, from opposite directions, to be what they are not.

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Two months into his presidency, the seeds of its ruin were sown with the American Rescue Plan, which pumped up demand for goods and services beyond the capacity of the economy to produce them. The predicted result, inflation, was exacerbated by the Inflation Reduction Act’s torrent of subsidies in the service of “industrial policy.”

Three weeks after the 2024 election, Biden’s administration, rushing to open wide the spending sluices before Jan. 20, provided almost $8 billion in subsidies to chip-maker Intel. Five days later, Intel’s CEO retired, effective immediately, his company having lost $16.6 billion in the previous quarter. The chair of Intel’s board of directors said the CEO’s departure would facilitate “restoring investor confidence.” The Biden administration’s investors of other people’s money already had sky-high confidence.

In December, the Biden administration gave a $15 billion low-interest loan to California utility PG&E. This loan is the largest ever from the Energy Department’s incorrigibly overconfident Loan Programs Office. The second-largest was made the day before — a $9.6 billion loan for a joint-venture Ford Motor battery plant.

In November, the LPO had funneled $6 billion to Rivian, an electric vehicle start-up that the New York Times reports “has had trouble ramping up sales beyond about 50,000 vehicles a year.” Fewer might be better: The Wall Street Journal reports that Rivian lost $107,043 on every vehicle it sold in the first nine months of 2024, even with Biden’s $7,500 tax credit per vehicle (up to $40,000 for its heaviest commercial EV). Rivian blames a “more challenging consumer environment” — customers are pickier than the Biden administration’s investors.

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(In 2009, the LPO served Barack Obama’s industrial policy by sinking $535 million in solar panel manufacturer Solyndra, which filed for bankruptcy in 2011. In 2010, the LPO gave a $465 million loan to Tesla. Henceforth, such transactions might be subjected to the withering squint of Elon Musk’s new “Department of Government Efficiency.”)"