U.S. Treasury Secretary Becerra Claims U.S. Actively Deindustrialized Due to Environmental Regulations
U.S. Treasury Secretary Scott Becerra stated that the U.S. actively deindustrialized decades ago through environmental regulations, with the EPA being a key factor in driving out physical businesses at that time. He pointed out that factory owners who have returned still complain to him that the EPA drove them away. Becerra responded that factories cannot be conjured out of thin air, but through tax, regulatory, energy, and tariff certainty, the U.S. can become the best place globally for factory establishment, achieving high growth and reducing the deficit. Non-residential construction data has significantly increased, with construction jobs leading, which will subsequently convert into high-paying factory jobs. The current EPA is accelerating the cleanup of related regulations. This is the Treasury Secretary's public statement on the return of manufacturing and the history of deindustrialization, with funding and investment flowing into new factories and infrastructure following regulatory relaxation. Employment in construction and manufacturing benefits from increased certainty, while the long-term trend of deindustrialization is pressured by policy shifts.
ABAB AI Insight
Becerra has repeatedly attributed the deindustrialization of the past few decades to an excessive pursuit of efficiency at the expense of resilience, explicitly naming environmental regulation as a significant driver. In speeches related to energy and manufacturing, he has emphasized "tax certainty, regulatory certainty, and energy certainty" as core conditions for attracting capital back. On the capital pathway, by making tax incentives permanent, accelerating approvals, and leveraging energy advantages, uncertainty in factory establishment is reduced, while tariffs protect domestic capacity. The motivation is to shift manufacturing from a consumption-oriented focus back to a production and national security orientation, using high growth to absorb previously accumulated inflation and deficit pressures. Similar to Germany's case of manufacturing outflow due to energy and environmental policies, the U.S. is attempting to achieve a reversal with a contrasting policy mix. Essentially, this is a regulatory change: shifting from strict environmental constraints to attracting capital back through certainty, clearing rules that previously inflated offshore costs, allowing factories to naturally return due to cost and certainty advantages. ABAB News · Cognitive Law
- Deindustrialization often begins with regulation, not the market.
- Certainty is more effective than subsidies in bringing factories back.
- Construction jobs move first, followed by factory jobs.