President Joe Biden again takes a measure on Monday to boost the economy by signing an executive order that seeks to increase the federal government's purchases of US products and services.
While the first negotiations for the stimulus package proposed by the new Administration, which includes a check for 1,400 dollars, begin in private, the president finalizes a measure aimed at promoting national production and benefiting workers in the country.
Biden thus fulfills one of his campaign promises that the future "be built in the United States", amid an unprecedented economic crisis and runaway unemployment due to the COVID-19 pandemic.
The new order to boost national production
The new executive order will reinforce the requirement for federal authorities to purchase national products and services, eliminate some red tape and create a position in the Office of Management and Budget responsible for enforcing the directive, the White House said in a statement.
The president, Joe Biden, plans to take new measures to face the economic crisis in the country in his first week in office.
The federal government spends approximately
$ 600 billion a year
contracting products and services (with taxpayers' money), the White House said.
The new order seeks to
prioritize those who are of American origin
.
In this measure, Biden reiterates his Administration's support for the Jones Act, which regulates maritime commerce and requires that ships used to move goods between ports in the United States be built in the country and belong to citizens or permanent residents.
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The executive order also seeks to resolve some legal loopholes so that companies cannot easily evade the requirement to purchase domestic products and import.
How is it different from Trump's policy?
Former President Donald Trump pursued a policy he called '
America First
'
to prioritize, as he said, jobs and national products.
On the day of his inauguration, in January 2017, he even published on Twitter that the two rules of his Government would be:
Buy American
(Buy American products, in Spanish) and
Hire American
(Hire Americans).
Biden took these expressions to give his own proposal on the necessary changes in the economy during his election campaign in 2020.
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"I don't believe for a second that having a vibrant industry in America is a thing of the past," Biden said at a campaign event in Pennsylvania in June 2020 detailing his version of putting Americans first.
Biden said he would implement trade, tax and investment policies to stimulate domestic innovation, reduce the country's dependence on foreign-sourced products and create five million more jobs from American production and innovation.
He proposed a plan that would
increase the federal government's purchases of
$ 400 billion worth of
US products and services
by
four years
.
Trump took a similar move, but an official in the new Administration says Biden's order is a "clear directive" with a "clear direction."
"It is based on [Biden's] vision that we are doing things in the United States and that the entire United States is the center of our economic strategy," the aforementioned official told NBC News.
He added that the order is part of
a broader policy
that seeks to "strengthen supply chains" and "modernize the rules of international trade."
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The president has already signed a series of executive orders in his first days in office, undoing Trump's policies and with a markedly different approach to fighting the COVID-19 pandemic and the economic crisis.
With information from NBC News and The New York Times.
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