President Donald Trump signed an avalanche of executive orders on his first day in office, consuming policymakers’ and the media’s attention. Meanwhile, former President Joe Biden’s very last executive order on economic policy—issued on January 19, the last full day of his tenure—has gone relatively unnoticed.
Yet Biden’s order—on “helping left-behind communities make a comeback”—merits attention. Not only does it memorialize an important part of the Biden-Harris economic agenda, but given continued bipartisan concern for “left-behind places,” the action also extends important ideas about place into the next administration and beyond. As such, Biden’s order provides a strong foundation on which the Trump administration can build.
Biden came into office pledging to address the nation’s stark economic divides, which the 2016 election had brought into sharp relief. Geographic inequality between places had risen across the country, related in part to the extreme concentration of the nation’s innovation sector.
The 117th Congress responded to those concerns by mobilizing often bipartisan support for investments in distressed places via legislation such as the American Rescue Plan Act, the Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act, and the CHIPS and Science Act. These laws created groundbreaking new programs such as the Good Jobs Challenge and Recompete Pilot Program, which focused on turning “setback into comeback,” as a White House fact sheet about the executive order declared. Other programs such as the Regional Technology and Innovation Hubs, Regional Innovation Engines, and Microelectronics Commons sought to fuse regional uplift with place-based innovation strategies.
In short, the Biden administration moved quickly to prioritize investment in distressed areas such as rural villages, struggling factory towns, Native American reservations, and former coal communities. What’s more, it elevated numerous regional commissions, drove the development of new community leadership coalitions, and created initiatives such as the Build Back Better Regional Challenge, the Economic Recovery Corps, and the Rural Partners Network to ensure localities—including small-town communities—had the capacity to access and use federal resources.
Are the new policies working? Early signs are positive, though the programs’ effectiveness cannot be ascertained yet. Still, the “comeback” push represents a coherent and well-designed approach to economic development that merits a chance to work. And that is the ultimate purpose of Biden’s executive order: As one of his final public actions, the directive seeks to extend important ideas about helping struggling communities into the next administration and beyond, given how important consistency will be to achieving success.
In this direction, the executive order urges policymakers to:
- Maintain the focus on left-behind communities in economic development funding opportunities, tasking the assistant secretary of economic development at the Department of Commerce to work over the next year with federal agencies to support localized community economic development.
- Develop and maintain a “whole-of-government” coordination of such investments.
- Establish a more user-friendly “No Wrong Door” responsiveness to community inquiries as stakeholders navigate the federal system to identify the appropriate investments and technical assistance that can advance places’ economic development.
- Leverage federal programs for rebuilding resilience in disaster-prone and disaster-affected communities.
Will the executive order actually influence the Trump administration? Further infusions of investment capital are unlikely, as cost-cutting talk swirls in some corners of Washington. Yet the genie of helping left-behind places with focused, coherent, place-based economic policies is out of the bag—often with bipartisan support.
It bears noting, for example, that Trump signed his own executive order on such issues during his first term, creating a White House Opportunity and Revitalization Council to address concerns about distressed communities that “despite the growing national economy…are plagued by high poverty levels, failing schools, and a scarcity of jobs.” More recently, Republican senators played important roles in the early development of place-based programs such as the Regional Technology and Innovation Hubs in the CHIPS and Science Act. And Brookings research has found that the Biden administration’s implementation of these investments in distressed communities has often tilted significantly toward places—many of them rural—where a majority of residents voted for Trump.
In short, both Republicans and Democrats have taken an interest in helping left-behind places, both rural and urban. Such professed concern raises the hope that the priorities set out in Biden’s closing executive order really might persist and get the time and support they need to enable local transformations.
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Commentary
In one of his final actions, Biden urges continued help for left-behind places
January 22, 2025