As Biden’s Build Back Better Initiative Stalls at Home, Many Doubt the World Edition Will Fare Any Better

U.S. President Joe Biden tours the National Renewable Energy Laboratory in Arvada, Colorado, on September 14, 2021, before delivering a speech on the infrastructure deal and the Build Back Better agenda. Brendan SMIALOWSKI / AFP

With U.S. President Joe Biden’s ambitious $3.5 trillion infrastructure agenda bogged down in Congress, his campaign promise to “Build Back Better” now hangs in limbo. If the president’s plan fails to make it out of Congress, or if it’s scaled down to the point where it’s not impactful, it’s likely to hamper the effort to mobilize a coalition of “like-minded democracies” to sign on to the U.S.-led international edition known as B3W.

Although Washington is now taking its first steps to move forward with B3W, the White House has yet to provide detailed information about what kinds of projects it will pursue, in which countries, and how much funding it plans to allocate to the program.

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by Eric Olander

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