Rising Support For An American First Agenda

For 31 months President Joe Biden has worked tirelessly to destroy the “America First” achievements of his predecessor. Unfortunately, Biden has largely succeeded in reversing the popular agenda enacted by President Donald Trump. 

While Trump had achieved enhanced security at the southern border, Biden immediately reversed those programs upon taking office. He stopped construction of the border wall, changed key policies, and rolled out the welcome mat for illegal immigrants from across the world. The result has been a humanitarian crisis reaching into our major metropolitan areas, such as New York City, and causing severe stress on our border states which have faced innumerable problems. 

Biden’s policies are unpopular with the American people. A recent poll by the Economist and YouGov found that 66% of Americans want increased border security. Unfortunately, President Biden has ignored these demands. 

Upon taking office, Biden also decided to attack our domestic oil and gas industry. He shut down construction of the Keystone XL pipeline, placed a moratorium on oil and gas drilling on federal property and enacted a slew of “green energy” initiatives that mainly benefit our foremost enemy, communist China. Thus, America lost its coveted status of being energy independent and became dependent on foreign countries once again. 

While Trump achieved peace deals, had diplomatic dialogue with our major adversaries and kept the United States from involvement in any new wars, the Biden approach has been much different. There have been no new peace deals, worsening relationships with our adversaries and a growing involvement in a war against the largest nuclear power in the world, Russia. 

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Last week, the Biden administration proposed sending another $24 billion in aid to Ukraine, which is $12 billion more than it offered for disaster relief in our country. The package was combined to try to entice skeptical Republicans to support the legislation.

Republicans are right to oppose more funding to a country that has already received $113 billion in military and economic assistance, more than the total aid given by the rest of the world combined.  Americans are souring on the constant focus on Ukraine, while problems in our country are ignored. 

A new CNN poll indicated that 55% of Americans opposed the authorization of any additional funds to Ukraine. Once again, the Biden administration is ignoring the wishes of most Americans. 

The Biden economic agenda also runs contrary to the interests of Americans. President Trump renegotiated the terrible North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA) and created terms more beneficial to our economic interests. He also worked diligently to bring back manufacturing jobs to the United States. His goal was to put “America First” in all areas, especially economically. 

Unfortunately, numerous corporate leaders in this country are not concerned about American workers. They prefer cheap, foreign labor that is supposedly better for their bottom line. 

Many of our leading corporations, such as Apple and Amazon, take advantage of the H-1B guest worker program to hire foreign labor instead of qualified American workers. Every year, 85,000 H-1B visas are issued to foreign workers in specialized areas such as engineering or information technology. 

According to the Federation for American Immigration Reform, “the intent behind the program was to create a means for companies to fill temporary skilled worker shortages, but rather than supplementing the U.S. workforce, the program has morphed into a means by which companies can secure cheap labor at the expense of American workers.”

Proponents of this program claim that the visas are needed because of a lack of talented workers in our country. Nonetheless, 2019 research by scholars from the Atlantic Council found that “most H-1B workers have no more than ordinary skills, skills that are abundantly available in the U.S. labor market.”

Such abusive treatment of American workers is now on display in Arizona. The Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Company (TSMC) is building a manufacturing facility in north Phoenix that is slated to produce $40 billion in advanced chips. 

Last December, President Biden visited the facility and touted its work as evidence of the success of the “CHIPS Act” which was passed in 2022. The legislation authorized $280 billion toward domestic semiconductor research and manufacturing. 

However, Aaron Butler, President of the Arizona Building and Construction Trades Council, notes that the legislation has a major “loophole.” It “does not require” that these “facilities will be built by American workers.”

In June, TSMC took advantage of this “loophole” and announced that they would be displacing five hundred American construction workers. These jobs will be filled by five hundred workers from Taiwan. 

TSMC stated that the Taiwanese workers are only temporary and have specialized skills. In addition, TSMC claims that the move is needed because it would take longer to train American workers. 

Butler vigorously disputes these accusations and notes that American workers have had decades of experience on similar projects and are “well-equipped and able to meet semiconductor demands right now.” He asserts that the American workers have “hundreds of hours of classroom training and field experience.”

Predictably, the Biden administration has refused to get involved in this dispute and has done nothing to protect these American jobs. Key officials should have met with Lai Ching-te, Taiwan’s Vice President and 2024 presidential frontrunner, during his recent visit to New York City, to advocate for U.S. jobs and encourage him to lobby TSMC to change their policies. 

As Taiwan is under constant threat of attack by communist China, the country is very dependent on protection from the United States. With such leverage, we should be able to convince Taiwan not to abuse American workers. 

Sadly, Biden is not focused on protecting American jobs, border security or our national security. Americans want him to prioritize issues in this country such as our economic woes, our open border, and the historically high drug overdose deaths. 

As our social and economic problems grow, Biden seems totally oblivious and wants to send more U.S. tax dollars to Ukraine. Is anyone surprised that he remains incredibly unpopular?