Summary:
- Tens of billions in new public and private investments are landing in North Carolina
- These investments are funding new and upgraded roads, bridges, clean water and more
- Every corner of the state will see the impact of new investments in infrastructure
Whatever happens in this November’s election, and regardless of one’s political sympathies, the Biden-Harris administration will go down in history as among the most legislatively productive in generations. Arguably not since President Lyndon Johnson (who himself also declined to seek a second term) has America seen an administration preside over so much far-reaching legislation – the full effect of which likely won’t be appreciated for years, or even decades, to come.
If the Biden-Harris administration had passed “only” the $1.9 trillion American Rescue Plan alone, which built upon the economic stimulus contained in the Trump administration’s CARES Act, it would’ve ranked respectably. But working with the slimmest possible majority in the U.S. Senate and a similarly tight margin in the House, President Joe Biden demonstrated the legislative prowess that came from 36 years as a Senator. He successfully shepherded the Inflation Reduction Act (IRA), the Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act and the CHIPS Act into law, three major pieces of legislation that have led to giant changes in the U.S. economy. Regardless of one’s politics, the sheer feat of passing such far-reaching legislation with vanishingly narrow voting margins is a triumph.
The IRA, Infrastructure and CHIPS acts in particular are already having a major economic impact across North Carolina, and are poised to continue to do so. These investments are touching every county in the state: urban and rural, red and blue, east and west. After years of excuses and inaction by the Trump administration – when promises about “infrastructure week” became a long-running joke – the Biden-Harris administration made it real, unleashing billions for North Carolina’s economy.
Where, and how much
Using publicly available data from the Center for American Progress, the Carolina Forward research team assembled a comprehensive list of nearly 1,500 specific, ongoing county and municipal-level investments from the Biden-Harris administration’s Inflation Reduction Act and Infrastructure Plan. There are so many, in fact, that listing them all nearly crashes our preferred mapping software. Thus, this map instead lists the top 5 projects in each county, with the others available in spreadsheet form. See the full data here.
According to the White House, $10.3 billion in total public investments have been committed for infrastructure just in North Carolina, mainly in transportation, clean water and energy. (That includes funds beyond just the IRA and Infrastructure plan, which are the two sources reflected in the map above.) But this public investment has unlocked an additional $41.8 billion in private investments, mainly in advanced manufacturing such as the Wolfspeed semiconductor plant in Chatham county, Toyota's battery plant in Randolph county, and Corning's optical cable manufacturing expansion in Catawba county, among dozens of others.
These investments in North Carolina's physical infrastructure plant - from roads, to water, to ports and bridges - will have reverberating returns for decades. While the exact magnitude of the economic "multiplier effects" of infrastructure investments vary by their specific type, there is consensus agreement across right and left that they are extremely positive. And this doesn't take into account the future planning of major economic developments, either. We've written before about how, thanks to both the Biden-Harris investments as well as policy choices by Governor Roy Cooper, North Carolina is increasingly well-positioned to benefit from the automotive industry's pivot to electric vehicles.
Of course, not everyone agrees. Not a single Republican member of North Carolina's delegation in the U.S. House voted in favor of the Infrastructure Bill, and not a single Republican member of Congress voted for the Inflation Reduction Act. Yet the investments are going forward anyway, and voters should know who to thank.
