Joe Biden’s effort to remake the economy is ambitious, risky—and selfish

Get behind the wheel of an electric vehicle made in Detroit and drive south. The outline of a city that was once a byword for industrial decline fades in the rear-view mirror. Head into Ohio, where the battery under your feet was made. The semiconductors that regulate its charging speed were made there too, in a vast new factory that counts the Pentagon among its biggest customers. Recharge with electricity transmitted from one of West Virginia’s new nuclear plants, then start the long journey into the heartlands. After the endless wind farms of Kansas, you drive through Oklahoma’s vast solar fields, then loop back to the gulf coast. The trip ends by the water, the bright sun glinting off a spanking-new green-hydrogen plant.