WASHINGTON – The Senate on Tuesday confirmed two key members of President Biden’s economic team, heading Gina Raimondo, a former Rhode Island governor and former venture capitalist, as next Secretary of Commerce and Cecilia Rouse, a Princeton University economist, a chairman of the Board of Economic Advisers of the White House.
Dr. Rouse becomes the first black business council chairman in its 75-year history. It was adopted with 95 votes to 4.
Ms. Raimondo was confirmed 84-15. Hours later, she resigned as governor of Rhode Island. Ms. Raimondo, a moderate Democrat with a background in the financial industry, is expected to use her private and public sector experience to oversee an extensive bureaucracy responsible for both promoting and regulating American business .
Under Ms. Raimondo, the Commerce Department is likely to play a pivotal role in several of Mr. Biden’s policy efforts, including boosting the American economy, building rural broadband and other infrastructures, and leading American technology competition with China. The department also conducts the census and monitors American fisheries, weather surveillance, telecommunications standards, and the collection of economic data, among other things.
Senator Maria Cantwell, Democrat of Washington, said she believed Ms. Raimondo’s experience in the private sector would help her attract new investments and create jobs in the United States and that they “are counting on Governor Raimondo to help us with our export economy. ”
Ms. Cantwell also said she believed Ms. Raimondo would be a departure from Wilbur Ross, President Donald J. Trump’s trade secretary. “I think he and the president spent a lot more time shaking hands with the global community than they were looking at guidelines that would really help the markets and help us get our products in the door,” said they.
A graduate of Yale and Oxford, Ms. Raimondo was a founding associate at Village Ventures, a Bain Capital-backed investment firm. She co-founded her own venture capital firm, Point Judith Capital, before being elected treasurer and then governor of Rhode Island.
As the state’s first female governor, she was known for adopting a centrist agenda that included training programs, fewer regulations, and reduced taxes for businesses. She also led a restructuring of the state pension programs, clashing with the unions in the process.
Ms. Raimondo was criticized by some Republicans in her January nomination hearing for refusing to maintain certain restrictions on exports that could be sent to Chinese telecommunications company Huawei, which many American lawmakers see as a threat to nationals security.
Senator Ted Cruz, Republican of Texas, spoke in the Senate Tuesday of these statements and urged his colleagues to vote against Ms. Raimondo. “There has been a rush to accept the worst elements of the Chinese Communist Party in the Biden government. And that includes Governor Raimondo, ”he said.
Under Mr Trump, the Commerce Department played an oversized role in trade policy, imposing tariffs on imported aluminum and steel for national security reasons, investigating additional tariffs on automobiles, and imposing various restrictions on technology exports to China.
Ms. Raimondo and other Biden administrators have not clarified whether they will maintain these restrictions and stated that they will first conduct a full review of their impact.
Dr. Rouse is the dean of the Princeton School of Public and International Affairs and a former councilor under President Barack Obama. Her academic research has focused on education, discrimination, and the forces holding back some people in the American economy. In her confirmation hearing, she received praise from Republicans and Democrats alike. The senators unanimously voted to send their nomination from the banking committee to the entire Senate.
She will take up her post amid an economic and health crisis caused by the coronavirus pandemic and in the dwindling days of Congressional debate over a $ 1.9 trillion economic aid package that Mr Biden has made his first major legislative priority.
In interviews and her hearing certificates, Dr. However, Rouse made it clear that she sees a larger number of priorities as the Council Chair: overhauling the inner workings of the federal government to promote race and gender equality in the economy.
“As troubling as this pandemic and economic consequences have been,” she said in her hearing, “it is also an opportunity to rebuild the economy better than before – to make it work for everyone by increasing job availability and leaving the company becomes.” Nobody is prone to falling through the cracks. “
One of their initiatives will be to examine the way the government collects and reports economic data to break it down by race, gender, and other demographic variables, and to improve the government’s ability to target economic policy to historical helping disadvantaged groups.
“We want to develop guidelines that are economically effective,” said Dr. Rouse in an interview earlier this year. When asked how she would rate its effectiveness, she replied, “We keep an eye on this ball and ask ourselves each time we look at a policy: What is the racial and ethnic impact?”
