The following blog post is part of a series on corporate revolvers who diminished the Biden administration’s effectiveness when it came to helping working people. Click here and here to read our full rebuttals to Matt Yglesias’ error-filled celebrations of the revolving door (which he published in Bloomberg on August 4 and on his Substack on August 12). Long story short: Joe Biden appointees with extensive ties to big business did real damage to his agenda; Democratic presidential nominee Kamala Harris should not make the same mistake.
Commerce Secretary Gina Raimondo and her team have played a major role in implementing Biden’s industrial policy. This is unfortunate given Raimondo’s history as an anti-worker and pro-monopoly shill for myriad industries, both in her current role and in her previous position as governor of Rhode Island.
For example, when the bipartisan infrastructure deal was being negotiated in 2021, Raimondo “barely fought for Biden’s sweeping initial pledges to lower broadband prices and expand coverage,” in the words of my colleague Vishal Shankar. “In late-summer negotiations with Collins, The Wall Street Journal reported that Raimondo—acting as Biden’s representative for broadband policy—acceded to [Senator Susan] Collins’ objections to price caps on plans offered by private broadband providers.”
During the microchip shortage of 2021, Raimondo sold the country’s limited supply to Huawei Technologies rather than union automakers in the United States. UAW leaders said the chip crunch directly led to layoffs. Meanwhile, Huawei has tested artificial intelligence (AI) software that could make it easier for Chinese officials to identify and brutalize Uyghurs, a mostly Muslim ethnic minority. It’s worrisome, to say the least, that Biden tasked Raimondo, Big Tech’s biggest ally in his Cabinet, with regulating AI.
Throughout the Covid-19 pandemic, Raimondo prioritized Big Pharma’s profits over the lives of people in the Global South. A vast majority of the world’s governments supported India and South Africa’s motion to suspend intellectual property (IP) restrictions on Covid-19 medical tools for the duration of the pandemic to allow generic drug manufacturers to increase the global supply of vaccines, tests, and treatments. Nevertheless, Raimondo, who oversees the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office, sided with Big Pharma by opposing U.S. support for such a move. The U.S. only agreed in principle to a partial IP waiver after Raimondo was excluded from the meeting at which the Biden administration’s decision was finalized.
Raimondo has also publicly criticized the European Union’s legislative efforts to rein in Big Tech, thereby blunting White House messaging around the need to hold monopolistic internet platforms accountable for harming workers and consumers. Given that Raimondo stacked her Commerce Department with former Big Tech executives who are now shaping major digital trade rules, it’s little surprise that she is widely regarded as the industry’s “favorite Biden official.”
Raimondo’s fealty to corporate interests began long before she joined the Biden administration (Hence why we should absolutely not “bring back the revolving door!”). As Rhode Island governor, Raimondo was critical of public schools and contended that “Democrats have to have the courage” to fight teachers’ unions. She also curtailed abortion access and slashed the state’s social safety net at the beginning of and during the coronavirus pandemic. Moreover, when nursing home residents were dying from Covid-19 at the start of the public health emergency, Raimondo gave the industry legal immunity in Rhode Island.
Finally, as RDP fellow Max Moran has explained, Raimondo “wrote the playbook for selling out her state’s pension fund while cutting benefits for actual retirees—a playbook, mind you, which an organization funded by the Koch brothers loved so much they tried to spread it nationwide.”
This saga began years before Raimondo became a public official, as my colleague Henry Burke pointed out in November 2023: “Prior to holding public office in Rhode Island, Raimondo worked for an investment firm backed by Bain Capital and later founded her own venture capital firm, Point Judith Capital (PJC), in 2001. Though she left the firm in 2010 when she was elected general treasurer, she retained equity and continued to make money off of it well into her years as governor. PJC became a recurring media story when Raimondo was in office as it had received a $5 million investment from the Rhode Island state pension fund, so she, as an elected official, profited from the unprecedented fees PJC charged the pension fund.”
Yglesias’ August 12 blog post celebrating the revolving door states that nonprofits are not immune from conflicts of interest. Fair enough. Nevertheless, there’s a huge difference between those conflicts of interest and the conflicts of interest that plague the for-profit sector, which redound to the benefit of the country’s corporations and wealthy elite. The most important question about the well-oiled revolving door between corporate America/Wall Street and the federal government—cui bono?—is the one that Yglesias refuses to consider.