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Hurricane Helene hit, the US vice presidential debate happened, I found out my mom’s area of North Carolina was suffering dramatically from the effects of Helene (they still don’t have water) and I helped her get out of there, then Hurricane Milton terrorized us down here in Florida. I watched that debate, and it drove me nuts because of the constant lying and misinformation, but I didn’t get the chance to return to it … until now.
Again, there was a lot of misinformation, and there was the infamous “you said you weren’t going to fact check us” line, but as it relates to CleanTechnica, I found the claims about US manufacturing from JD Vance to be shocking and blatantly false. Luckily, I turned to Twitter (aka X) and saw a great thread doing much of the work for me. Eric Feigl-Ding, an epidemiologist & health economist, laid out the facts and included some charts.
Fact check—US manufacturing under Trump versus Biden.
JD Vance is wrong (ie lying) pic.twitter.com/llraQwJB7j
— Eric Feigl-Ding (@DrEricDing) October 2, 2024
Vance claimed that Kamala Harris’s policies as vice president had pushed “more manufacturing overseas” and said that “if we actually care about getting cleaner air and cleaner water, the best thing to do is to double down and invest in American workers and the American people. And unfortunately, Kamala Harris has done exactly the opposite.” Bonkers. These claims are absolutely bonkers.
As you can see in the chart above, manufacturing spending in the US stagnated under Donald Trump, and even declined prior to the COVID pandemic. Biden and Harris took office, and with Democrats controlling the House of Representatives and the Senate for a short period of time, they passed the massive Inflation Reduction Act (IRA) and Bipartisan Infrastructure Law. (Republicans now control the House and Democrats, thus, can’t do anything.) The Inflation Reduction Act is the greatest stimulus for manufacturing since Roosevelt and the greatest legislation for re-shoring US manufacturing jobs in the history of the country. So, even though we’re at the beginning stages of it, the IRA has stimulated a massive amount of manufacturing spending — soaring far above what happened under Trump and even making the green stimulus programs initiated under Obama look minor.
There is no bigger or better US manufacturing presidency, and yet Vance somehow thought that would be an attacking point. Perhaps it’s the continual flow of misinformation circulating around the Trump–Vance camp to blame, or perhaps it’s pure gaslighting.
Anyway, Eric Feigl-Ding came to play. He had several more charts and graphs to share. Let’s go through them.
2) JD Vance lied on solar panels from China too. https://t.co/DMB39uuoqG
— Eric Feigl-Ding (@DrEricDing) October 2, 2024
JD Vance also shared a lie about where the US was getting its solar panels, and Eric Feigl-Ding corrected the record.
3) Manufacturing jobs higher under Biden than Trump. Period. https://t.co/QCrBMGvs1r
— Eric Feigl-Ding (@DrEricDing) October 2, 2024
He also returned to claims regarding manufacturing jobs created under Trump and Biden.
4) Also regarding ACA claims… https://t.co/BlVxeaqydl
— Eric Feigl-Ding (@DrEricDing) October 2, 2024
There was also a response regarding fake Affordable Care Act (aka Obamacare) statements that Eric felt compelled to respond to. But that’s not our topic area.
5) Fact—US manufacturing construction spending in 2021-2023 is not only the highest in 40 years… but it’s actually DOUBLE and TRIPLE!!! pic.twitter.com/0BH19TpMjf
— Eric Feigl-Ding (@DrEricDing) October 2, 2024
Here’s another chart showing the soaring investment in US manufacturing under Biden.
I find it disappointing that more people don’t realize how much Biden and Harris have been bringing good jobs back to the US.
6) If JD Vance is mad at being fact checked, then maybe he shouldn’t tell so many obvious lies. https://t.co/2wli4bgTrT
— Eric Feigl-Ding (@DrEricDing) October 2, 2024
9) economists think another $10T is a lot. https://t.co/r6t5yPjcBL
— Eric Feigl-Ding (@DrEricDing) October 3, 2024
To close, there’s that last tweet above. As he’s done in the past, if elected, Trump will explode the national debt.
In short, Biden–Harris have been better for manufacturing investment and jobs, better for the economy, and better for national debt than Tump. And much of that is because of what they’ve been been focused on — getting more clean energy, getting batteries to store it, etc.
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