@POTUS’s announcement today on actions to limit junk fees is an important step in lowering costs for consumers & promoting competition

It’s also a milestone for behavioral economics – decades of scholarship bearing fruit in policies that make a difference
whitehouse.gov/briefing-room/… Scholars like @kahneman_daniel, @R_Thaler, and @umalmend demonstrated that, contrary to assumptions, “some people behave like humans, at least some of the time”

They also ID’d how companies exploit human behavior with hidden or surprise charges – what we call junk fees

Since announcing record new business applications for '21-22, we’ve only seen more evidence of a historic expansion in entrepreneurship - Yelp found '22 was a record year for new biz openings & new biz growth in 86% of states exceeded pre-pandemic levels
yelpeconomicaverage.com/business-openi… And these new businesses are job creators. Yesterday, Axios highlighted that these last two years set new records for applications for businesses that are expecting to hire employees.
axios.com/2023/01/25/pan…

2 yrs ago, @POTUS laid out his strategy for rescue and recovery; and his vision for growing the economy from the bottom-up and middle-out.

Today, I reviewed his commitments and our progress, starting with our historically strong jobs recovery.

whitehouse.gov/nec/briefing-r… The historic declines in unemployment we have seen were far from pre-ordained 2 yrs ago. Before Biden’s economic plan, the @USCBO projected that the unemployment rate would be 4.9% in the final quarter of 2022, rather than the 3.5% it actually reached.

The President is in Arizona today to mark TSMC’s historic investment in advanced semiconductor manufacturing.

BUT this is just one aspect of something bigger that’s happening across Arizona and the entire U.S. economy.

A 🧵 TSMC is one of many major private investments that the State of Arizona is benefiting from:

$30B semiconductor fab expansion by Intel in Chandler
$1B+ lithium-ion battery mfg facility by KORE Power in Buckeye
$100M fiber-optic mfg facility by Corning in Gilbert

In Jul ‘21, @POTUS’ Competition EO directed HHS to consider proposing rules for hearing aids to be sold OTC w/o a prescription

Fast forward to today, affordable hearing aids are now available on retail shelves across the country

An outcome millions of Americans long hoped for Starting today, Walgreens is selling hearings aids at stores nationwide and online for $799 per pair.

According to Walgreens, comparable models sold by specialists range from $2,000 to $8,000 a pair.

Today, I joined @TheCityClub in Cleveland to discuss how the historic legislation of the past year - the Bipartisan Infrastructure Law, CHIPS & Science Act, and Inflation Reduction Act - fit together under a Modern American Industrial Strategy.

A 🧵 There’s hardly a better place than Cleveland that embodies the impact of this strategy.

1. Home to the first electrified streetcar, traffic light and public square

2. Pioneer of the earliest EVs 100 yrs ago

3. A vital transportation hub for the oil and steel industries

A 🧵on today’s WH Hunger Summit.

With a concrete strategy AND creative action, we can make real the goal of eliminating hunger & reducing diet-related diseases by 2030.

washingtonpost.com/politics/2022/… The American Rescue Plan made historic progress in reducing food insecurity:

It extended Pandemic-EBT so 36M students had food access over summer.

It extended SNAP benefit increases for 40M people

It expanded the CTC, lifting 3M+ children from poverty.
cbpp.org/blog/after-chi…

Last summer, the President’s Competition Council met for the very first time.

Today we convene again, this time against the backdrop of historic progress just over one year in.

Here are 4 takeaways from this body of work so far: 1.The breadth of action has been wide:

Agencies have taken steps to promote competition and reduce costs for internet, insurance, hearing aids, ocean shipping, agriculture, defense, consumer goods, and more.

The impact, as a result, will be economy-wide.

Impt context ahead of this wk's Q2 GDP release:

The data will capture Apr-Jun economic conditions, ie backward looking

Hiring, spending, and production data look solid

CEA outlines why economists look broadly at data to assess the economy’s health

whitehouse.gov/cea/written-ma… On hiring:

The economy created 1.1 million jobs in Q2.

That's simply not consistent w/ a recession, where historically the economy is consistently LOSING jobs.

It’s also not consistent with near recession. Q2 job growth was 3X historic growth in the quarter before a recession.

Important context ahead of tomorrow’s CPI release:

Headline inflation from last month will be significantly affected by stale gas price data:

Retail prices have declined from the June avg and declining oil prices and gas futures suggest they have further to fall. Here’s another way to visualize the recent decline in gas prices compared to the June avg, which is the period CPI data will capture.

Underscores why core inflation is even more important to focus on than normal.

This week marks 1 year since @POTUS signed an historic competition EO and created the new WH Competition Council. Already, the Council has gone above & beyond the initial 72+ EO directives to promote competition in the economy. To name just a few:

whitehouse.gov/briefing-room/… Just days after the EO was signed, @FTC unanimously issued a new “right to repair” enforcement policy. In response, companies like Microsoft and Apple stepped up to make their devices easier for users to repair themselves.

https://twitter.com/BrianDeeseNEC/status/1461019734296702994?s=20&t=pwkdKKEMp4Vn6so4AocUbg

The high gas prices we have today are tough and are impacting families. @POTUS understands this.

But high gas prices are also generating a lot of political arguments that aren’t based in facts.

https://twitter.com/GOPLeader/status/1534193683322617860

Our critics are making two arguments.

1) Gas prices are Joe Biden’s fault because they went up before Putin began his aggression.

2) Somehow, the increases we’ve seen since Putin invaded are due to something other than the impact of the war.

Both are wrong.

.@ezraklein's weekend piece raises important questions and challenges to how we renew our country's capacity to build - fast, fairly, and cost-effectively in America. Policymakers should take notice.

A thread:

nytimes.com/2022/05/29/opi… First, it is important to look forward.

As I raised in my @EconClubNY speech last month, we need to move from “why” we need an American industrial strategy, to “how” to do so effectively.
whitehouse.gov/briefing-room/…

Driving a historically strong labor market recovery generates economic benefits that extend beyond jobs.

It has meant significant improvements in household finances as well.

Some striking findings from the Fed’s most recent Economic Well Being survey:

federalreserve.gov/newsevents/pre… Self-reported financial well-being in Q4 2021 reached its highest level, going back to 2013, w/ 78% of adults reporting that they are financially comfortable.

The share of financially comfortable parents, in particular, experienced an 8 percentage point increase.

The Indo-Pacific Economic Framework represents America’s most significant economic engagement in the Indo-Pacific region, and

A new, forward-looking model for the United States’ economic engagement w/ allies

A thread on the central features of this deal:
cnbc.com/2022/05/23/us-… #1

This framework is the starting point for coalescing a critical region of the world – Australia, Brunei, India, Indonesia, Japan, South Korea, Malaysia, New Zealand, the Philippines, Singapore, Thailand, and Vietnam.

60% of the world’s population and 40% of global GDP.

Today, we’re launching a new public-private partnership to expand the use of 3D printing in American manufacturing.

This is a new element of our industrial strategy that recognizes the outsized role smaller manufacturers play in our industrial base. A 🧵

forbes.com/sites/willyshi… As part of this effort, some of our largest manufacturers – @GEAviation, @honeywell, @LockheedMartin, @RaytheonTech, @Siemens_Energy – are committing to help their small mfg suppliers to deploy 3D printing in their processes.

This is important for several reasons:

Applications for the RAISE program are now open. This Infrastructure Law program helps communities fund key projects & is one of the first transportation grant programs to reward communities w/ land use policies that promote density & rural revitalization
transportation.gov/briefing-room/… This is an important step forward in our efforts to use all levers to encourage state and local governments to adopt policies that improve land use policies and boost housing supply. A pressing challenge in our efforts to expand economic capacity and achieve equitable growth.

.@POTUS heads to PA today amidst an historic manufacturing comeback in America.

This was not guaranteed. It is the result of an industrial strategy @POTUS has been pursuing since day one. Now we need to keep the momentum going.

My piece out today:

cnn.com/2022/01/28/per… Over the last week, Intel announced one of the largest ever investments in U.S. semiconductor manufacturing, followed shortly after by GM’s largest ever investment in U.S. EV and battery production.

This was not just good news on jobs but a milestone in our industrial renewal.

For decades, our country has underinvested in its domestic industrial base.

The Bipartisan Infrastructure Law reverses that trend. Its historic investments put the United States on a strong path to succeed in the 21st century economy.

A thread:

freep.com/story/opinion/… In June, I laid out the Administration’s vision for a 21st century industrial strategy, centered on 5 key pillars:

-Resilient supply chains
-Targeted public investment
-Strategic public procurement
-Climate resilience
-Equity

atlanticcouncil.org/event/a-specia…

Wanted to share the White House blog post written by the team working on the Supply Chain Disruptions Task Force.

They have been working around the clock to restore fluidity and velocity to our transportation system. (1/4)

whitehouse.gov/briefing-room/… One of the reasons supply chains are experiencing challenges is the extraordinary amount of goods they are moving. Even though consumer spending is back to pre-COVID trend, consumers are spending more on goods, in part because of the pandemic. (2/4)

Today was a big moment for climate finance at #COP26

Here’s what we’ve seen so far, and here’s why it’s vital to our effort to combat climate change. A thread: #1: The United States is back at the table and raising the bar.

- @POTUS in Sept quadrupled the U.S. public finance commitment for developing countries to over $11B by 2024

- With other donor and MDB pledges, we are now on track to meet the collective $100B Paris goal