Free Republic

When exit polls began to be released on Tuesday night, it appeared to contain a nugget that augured well for Kamala Harris. In the end, it didn't. Americans were asked who they trusted more to handle the economy. It was a win for Donald Trump — 51% picked him to 47% for Harris — but it was a much more narrow victory than would have been imaginable earlier this year when the former president was trouncing President Joe Biden regularly on the issue. It seemed to be a validation of a strategy for Harris in the final few days of...

Kamala Harris doesn’t just want to build more factories in the US if elected president. She also wants to help secure steady supplies of materials to fuel them. A recent promise that embodies this approach is her proposed establishment of a "national reserve" of critical minerals such as cobalt, lithium, and nickel — the crucial building blocks in everything from electric vehicle batteries to jet engines to medical devices.

The Biden administration laid out an ambitious new goal for the US: produce 20% of the world’s most advanced semiconductor chips by the end of the decade. It currently makes 0% of the so-called leading edge logic chips that are considerably more powerful than older-generation semiconductors, making them crucial for everything from mobile phones to AI to quantum computing. The legislation allows the White House to spend $50 billion in taxpayer dollars — $39 billion specifically earmarked for manufacturing — to try and help reignite American manufacturing in the years ahead.