WASHINGTON (Reuters) – President-elect Joe Biden will nominate Rhode Island Governor Gina Raimondo as his Commerce Department secretary and former union official and Boston Mayor Marty Walsh as Labor secretary, people familiar with the choices told Reuters on Thursday.
The two Democrats will head sprawling agencies that will shape Biden’s agenda on climate change, technology, investment, the minimum wage and other workforce rules and policies.
The team would work to “create millions of good-paying American jobs, raise incomes, advance racial equity across the economy, and rebuild a stronger, more inclusive middle class,” said one of the sources.
Biden also will nominate Isabel Guzman, a California state economic development official and small business advocate, to lead the Small Business Administration (SBA), a person familiar with the matter told Reuters.
The SBA has played a key role in distributing hundreds of billions of dollars in coronavirus aid to small businesses over the past year.
The announcements are expected to be made on Friday along with other Biden administration positions, the sources said.
Raimondo’s expected nomination was first reported by CNN. As Rhode Island’s first woman governor, she has pushed for a $15-an-hour minimum wage in her state, but said in a recent interview with the Providence Journal that she is reluctant to raise taxes on big earners to cover a state budget deficit.
Raimondo, 49, also said in the interview https://www.providencejournal.com/story/news/politics/2020/12/15/where-raimondo-stands-taxes-nursing-home-staffing-marijuana/6549015002 she would push for state-operated stores to sell marijuana.
A Harvard- and Yale-educated lawyer with a background in venture capital, Raimondo has launched successful workforce training programs in Rhode Island, which a source familiar with her selection said was in line with Biden’s plans to boost education and worker training for 21st-century skills.
Christine Bliss, president of the Coalition of Services Industries, welcomed Biden’s selection of a woman for the key economic role, adding Raimondo’s experience as a governor and her business acumen would serve her well.
The Commerce Department is the official face of American business overseas but also runs such key federal departments as the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA), the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office, and the U.S. Census Bureau.
The department has also played a major role in Republican President Donald Trump’s “America First” trade agenda, imposing national security tariffs on steel and aluminum and banning numerous Chinese companies from acquiring U.S. technology, including telecommunications equipment giant Huawei.
UNION FAVORITE
Walsh, 53, now in his second four-year term as mayor of Boston, has focused on rebuilding the middle class while advocating for workers in his hometown, a source familiar with his choice said, adding that Walsh backed both a $15 minimum wage and paid family leave.
Walsh, who served from 1997 to 2014 in the Massachusetts House of Representatives, was elected Boston mayor in 2013. He is a past president of the Laborers’ Union Local 223, which he joined at 21, and later headed the Boston Metropolitan District Building Trades Council.
Union leaders applauded his choice.
“Walsh knows that collective bargaining is essential to building back better by combating inequality, beating COVID-19 and expanding opportunities for immigrants, women and people of color,” AFL-CIO President Richard Trumka said in a statement.
“He will have the ear of the White House, the Cabinet and Congress as we work to increase union density and create a stronger, fairer America.”
Marc Perrone, president of the United Food and Commercial Workers Union, the largest U.S. private sector union, gave Walsh and Biden both good marks for standing with UFCW grocery workers during a strike in Boston in 2019.
“With Marty Walsh serving as Labor Secretary, American workers will know they have a champion who will hold corporations accountable and support the good-paying union jobs our country needs,” he said.
Guzman currently heads California’s Office of the Small Business Advocate and helped coordinate the state’s economic recovery response amid the COVID-19 crisis.
A former senior SBA official during the Obama administration and small business entrepreneur, Guzman learned about entrepreneurship while working in her father’s chain of veterinary hospitals.
Source: Economy - investing.com
