Power Games: How General Electric Exports Privatization

ABSTRACT:Last February, when President Joe Biden’s Build Back Better plan looked all but dead, General Electric joined twenty-six other U.S. companies to call on Congress to salvage a climate deal. On its website, GE stressed that tax credits and grants to boost clean energy would advance U.S. interests in the global energy transition, generating domestic jobs in the wind industry. Filings compiled by the watchdog group OpenSecrets show that the negotiated successor to BBB, the Inflation Reduction Act, was the biggest target of GE’s lobbying efforts in 2022. These efforts paid off. In August, Biden signed the IRA, securing exactly the kinds of lucrative tax credits GE had trumpeted. Yet less than two months later, the company laid off 20 percent of its U.S. onshore wind workers.