Foreign corporations will wring massive profits from U.S. taxpayers under Joe Biden’s Inflation Reduction Act (IRA), and Rupert Murdoch mouthpieces are apparently delighted about it.
In an article with the BuzzFeed-style headline ‘Foreigners Will Benefit From U.S. Climate Subsidies, and That Is Good News‘, the Wall Street Journal (WSJ) argues overseas firms like Panasonic gathering in up to $2 billion a year in climate tax credits to build American battery plants is a feature of the IRA, rather than a bug.
The WSJ favorably compares the situation to that in Communist China, where the regime “require[s] local production” to access its market – but admits this approach has also left the Chinese struggling with excessive waste and a mountain of debt.
“China’s local government debt burden has exploded over the past decade, in no small part due to an arms race among city governments to support local industrial policy champions in areas like solar, robotics, electric vehicles and microchips,” the WSJ concedes.
Aping the Chinese could therefore prove costly for American taxpayers, given the national debt is already running well over $32,65o,000,000,000 – roughly $100,000 per person.