Biden visits South Carolina to demonstrate that his economic agenda keeps even red-colored states active

President Joe Biden heads to South Carolina on Thursday to show that the economic measures he pushed through Congress despite tough Republican opposition are helping keep that Republican state, and others who voted for Donald Trump in 2020, active.

Before Biden’s visit to a state that lost by nearly 12 percentage points in 2020, White House officials argued that if Republicans had their way, South Carolina, like many other Republican-controlled states, would have lost. billions of dollars in investment and thousands of jobs.

Biden will use his visit to showcase a new clean energy manufacturing partnership between solar company Enphase Energy and manufacturer Flex Ltd. that is projected to create 600 jobs in the state and 1,200 more across the country.

Enphase, which is investing $60 million to open six new manufacturing lines, including two in South Carolina, is benefiting from tax breaks included in the $370 billion Reduction Inflation Act passed by Biden in August past.

The White House on Wednesday criticized Republicans for voting against the legislation and subsequent efforts to bring back tax breaks included in the bill.

“Republicans in Congress, including every Republican representative from South Carolina, want to threaten these investments, jobs and economic opportunities by repealing the Cut Inflation Act, which actually helps the American people,” said the press secretary of the White House, Karine Jean-Pierre. “But as the president said at his first inauguration, he is the president of all Americans. It doesn’t matter if you’re in a red or blue state.”

Republican Rep. Joe Wilson, who represents an area that will benefit from Enphase’s new investment, took to Twitter after the bill passed on a partisan vote to say it passed “to the detriment of American families,” calling it a “Waste of money. Wilson also voted in April to nullify clean energy tax credits in legislation that encouraged investment by Enphase.

The visit to South Carolina, a state that has not supported a Democrat in a general presidential election since Jimmy Carter’s victory in 1976, comes less than a week after Trump, the frontrunner for the 2024 Republican nomination , will visit the small town of Pickens for a demonstration that drew tens of thousands of people.

[Con información de The Associated Press]

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