President Joe Biden will announce a $60 million investment from Enphase Energy Inc., a manufacturer of solar-energy equipment, when he travels Thursday to South Carolina, the latest effort to underscore his administration’s economic agenda as he seeks reelection.
The investment will create 1,800 new jobs across the US, including 600 jobs in South Carolina between Enphase and its partner, multinational manufacturing giant Flex Ltd, according to the White House. Enphase intends to open up six new manufacturing lines, bolstering clean-energy supply chains and helping power as many as 1 million homes per year with solar energy.
The trip to South Carolina comes as the president is heightening his reelection campaign with a series of events to champion his administration’s accomplishments — in particular his economic agenda, which the White House has taken to calling Bidenomics.
He has been highlighting his efforts to create manufacturing jobs in the US as a centerpiece of his efforts, boosted in part by legislation he signed into law including the $370 billion Inflation Reduction Act and the $52 billion CHIPS and Science Act.
Biden has argued that those laws will bring deep and lasting changes to the American economy, yet despite a boom in factory construction, many of those facilities won’t come online for years — a challenge for a president whose economic record will be central to his reelection prospects.
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Voters are worried about the threat of a potential recession and still struggling with unusually high inflation. The president has been weighed down by low polling numbers and has sought to combat perceptions that he has accomplished little in office.
Biden will announce the investment at a Flex facility in West Columbia, South Carolina. Flex will make products for Enphase at the plant. Enphase sells microinverters and batteries for solar arrays but its products are manufactured at factories in China, Mexico and India. Thursday’s announcement will mark Enphase’s first US-based contract manufacturing facility.
Biden has focused his political efforts on South Carolina, pushing the Democratic National Committee to revamp its presidential primary calendar to move the state first, rewarding its Black voters, whom Biden credits with helping him turn around his campaign in 2020.
Biden is slated to be joined at the event by Flex Chief Executive Officer Revathi Advaithi and Badri Kothandaraman, president and CEO of Enphase.
The president has touted the Inflation Reduction Act’s subsidies and tax credits for green investments as a centerpiece of his climate agenda, even as some green groups have criticized the administration’s support for other energy projects. The White House agreed to expedite the Mountain Valley Pipeline, a $6.6 billion project, that would carry natural gas across West Virginia, the home state of influential Democratic Senator Joe Manchin, as part of the debt-ceiling deal.
Last month, Biden defended his climate record as he received the endorsement of top environmental groups, including the Sierra Club, National Resources Defense Council’s Action Fund, the League of Conservation Voters and the NextGen political action committee.
--With assistance from David R. Baker.