What’s Next for Public Investment?

One of the signature legacies of the Biden-Harris administration is a significant expansion of government investments in the US economy, most notably through the Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act (2021), the CHIPS and Science Act (2022), and the Inflation Reduction Act (2022).

In each case, legislation cleared the House of Representatives largely along partisan lines, with most Democrats voting in support and most or all Republicans voting against. Passage in the Senate was bipartisan for the Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act and CHIPS and Science Act though not for the Inflation Reduction Act, which received no Republican support.

With a new Republican administration now in office, there is reason to wonder whether these potentially transformational government investments—and the shift in policymaking they represent—will be continued, rolled back, or even expanded.

This set of research reports details results from two representative surveys of the American public, fielded by the Foreign Policy in a Diverse Society project in the summer 2024, on perceptions and attitudes regarding government investments in the US economy. The findings suggest significant partisan divisions in perceptions of how investments have been distributed across the US economy this far, whether investment in domestic manufacturing should be increased or decreased in the future, and over what government’s involvement in the US economy can and should accomplish more broadly.