Whenever he touted his infrastructure plan during his 2020 presidential campaign, Joe Biden was emphatic about one key proviso: The infrastructure itself would be Made in the USA.  On the campaign website, some policy scribe pledged, “Biden will rely on American union labor and American-made materials and products to build this infrastructure.” .

After all, Biden’s pro-jobs-at-home message was not limited to his website.  Here’s Biden himself on the campaign trail last September, delivering his economic-nationalist message to an audience in the swing state of Michigan. Not only did he call for making more things here, but he also lambasted Donald Trump for not doing enough to create good jobs at good wages.

Happily, Hamilton’s Report came to dominate American economic thinking for most of the 19th and 20th centuries, tilting the nation toward industry, security, and prosperity. ?

And someone on the Biden campaign knew of this glorious history. As the campaign website reminded us, “U.S.

manufacturing was the Arsenal of Democracy in World War II, and must be part of the Arsenal of American Prosperity today, helping fuel an economic recovery for working families.” (In past years here at Breitbart News, this author has written much about the U.S. economy during World War Two and the lessons its success holds for us today.) .

Breitbart News’ John Binder combed through the 2,700 pages (as Breitbart News scooped) of the new infrastructure bill, and he made a key catch.

So now we can wonder: What would the federal government do if Buy American got in the way of some other objective, such as, say, importing solar panels from China as part of a crash effort to combat climate change.

To put the matter another way, since we were importing so much stuff from China, American dollars spent by consumers here went over there to producers in China, thereby stimulating Chinese manufacturers. Moreover, the Chinese used that money wisely to build lots of boom-sustaining infrastructure in China. !

Thus we Americans find ourselves falling back into the same trap we were in back in the 18th century: Our adversary (Britain then, China now) makes the wares we need, including the wares for military defense.   

to claw back its manufacturing base in hardware, in middleware, and in everything else. After all, as this author has noted last month here at Breitbart News, “good jobs at good wages” come from making things here at home, not from installing things, such as solar panels, imported from overseas (China has 80 percent of the world market)

So the infrastructure bill is good way to start restoring American manufacturing capacity by buying American. To be sure, restarting American industries might take a while, and it might cost more than simply importing more goods, and yet it would be healthy, strategically as well as economically, for us to get off the China drip

Today, given the challenges we face abroad as well as at home, we need exactly that sort of Can Do Spirit. Most obviously, if we can no longer trust China, then it’s not a good idea that so many at the Pentagon use Chinese-made iPhones and iPads. So let’s rid ourselves of that dangerous dependence and start by using the infrastructure bill as a new kind of declaration of independence from China. Yes, let’s have Made In USA infrastructure, as a prelude to more of everything else being Made In USA. 

Yet unfortunately, from the current looks of the infrastructure bill, “Middle Class Joe” isn’t keeping his make-it-here campaign promise. To be sure, it’s possible that real and enforceable Made in USA provisions will be added in the legislative process still to come—there will, after all, be plenty of twists and turns inside the Capitol Hill sausage factory. And public pressure (hint, hint) can work wonders. As they say of pols, “When they feel the heat, they see the light.”  

Is that a bad rap? A malicious slur? Maybe, but there’s an easy way to get a definitive answer: Let’s see what happens with this bill as it progresses.  There’s no guarantee that it will pass, of course, and yet if it does, ending up on Joe Biden’s desk for his signature, we can count on the intrepid reporters at Breitbart News to tell us the fate of the various sneaky provisions they have already sleuthed, plus whatever other interesting provisions might be found hidden inside