Rep. Ro Khanna (D-Cal) issued a statement heralding the election results as “a great day for democracy and a resounding rebuke of Trump’s agenda,” but adds that the “Democrats now have an opportunity—and an obligation—to offer a fundamentally different vision for the country. I laid out that vision in my latest op-ed: America’s Next New Deal.”
That [op-ed]( Ro Khanna: Democrats’ economic agenda should be America’s next New Deal) published on MS-NOW on Nov. 4, while lacking any comment on the global crisis or the financial bubble currently exploding, does pose an FDR approach to some of the domestic problems. He blames the crisis not on Trump alone, but it “traces back more than four decades, to the 1981 Economic Recovery Tax Act, through the gutting of antitrust enforcement and Nafta, and the so-called One Big Beautiful Bill Act.”
His proposal “begins with a common national purpose. To close the economic gulf, Democrats need to develop an ambitious economic project with the same ‘bold, persistent experimentation’ that guided Franklin D. Roosevelt through the New Deal. Business, workers, universities and government need to join together to foster economic development and revitalization…, it is America’s Next New Deal.” He calls for a “National Industrial Bank to invest in the industries defining the future: semiconductors, rare earth minerals, advanced manufacturing, key starting materials for drugs, medical innovation, modern steel, robotics, shipbuilding and AI.” He points to the 2022 CHIPS and Science Act as a successful model, but adds: “We need to do the same across all these industries, building factories in places like Lorain, Ohio, and Johnstown, Pennsylvania, that suffered deindustrialization.”
With some irony, he writes: “If Trump can bully tech billionaires into investing in his ballroom, the next Democratic administration must make them invest in our classrooms…. Let’s start by convening the leaders of the 200 largest business and tech entities to invest in schools, jobs, apprenticeships and entrepreneurs in deindustrialized towns, the Black South and the Southwest. We should create 10-year commitments for 100,000 new Black technology jobs annually, for innovation hubs in the Midwest and for a new capital fund for rural communities and factory towns.”
